David Wright

In “A Protest Poem,” David Wright begins with the speaker’s experiences hanging storm windows on his old-fashioned windows in preparation for winter. He then switches to the view from behind the glass where he watches protestors on TV. The poem continues in this fashion, alternating between descriptions of the speaker repairing a house and observations of the protestors a march led by Jesse Jackson. Wright ends the poem by remarking that both activities will continue the next year, and offering his hope that both the house and the country can survive the tough times ahead.

One way that Wright sets the two ideas of hanging the storm windows and protestors marching apart is by the use of vivid and distinct imagery. In talking about preparing the house for winter, Wright uses terms such as “force them into frames” and “arms stretching past their reach,” emphasizing the physical effort involved in the task (lines 2,13).  In contrast to this, the sections dealing with the protest are filled with images of conflict, like “generals and rebels wit blood on their boots” and “marching, …warriors link arms”  (lines 7-8, 21-22). This difference in tone between the sections makes it clear when Wright makes the switch. At the end, when he brings the two ideas come together, Wright uses language of change, such as “history erupts beneath the homes” and “tearing rooted / and rootless away from the earth” to show that the house and world are changing (lines 39-41).

By juxtaposing a civil rights protest with the activity of winterizing a house, Wright makes the latter symbolic of the former. Forcing the windows “into frames / that have settled, not square” symbolizes how the civil rights movement had to integrate the idea (windows) that all races are equal into the existing culture (frame) which was predominantly racist (lines 2-3). Wright describes how the connections on the house must be “strong enough to last the winter,” symbolizing both how Jackson’s march is an attempt to have more than just a transient effect on people, and also how the Civil Rights movement in general needs to work toward a lasting change in the entire structure of the country (lines 16). In the last section, Wright describes the need to:

“pull together seed and tools
enough to tend shoots like children.
They may no even know they want,
or need, to bloom here, take root deep.”

Wright cleverly uses a simile to compare the plants to children that need nurturing.  Wright is really comparing the children of the next generation to plants, in that they need to be tended to by teaching them about civil rights, so that they can eventually live in a world in which those rights have been obtained and can “bloom.” 

Because Wright uses the idea of winterizing a house to describe the Civil Rights movement, he really conveys his sense that the movement needs to focus on its long-term goals for social equality. Reading the section about the protest alone, one only gets a sense of Wright’s skepticism towards the movement. But because it is juxtaposed to images of working on the solid house, a kind of optimism shows through, hinting at the idea that if we really work hard at it, someday equal rights for people of all races can be achieved. But I think Wright would argue that it has been, and will continue to be, a very long and very hard road to travel.