Winters: Poetry as a Marxist Statement

The use of allusions in the poems of Anne Winters give the poems a real-world basis and escalates them from merely poems into political statements. As such, these allusions indicate Winters’ marxist beliefs in one of the most evident ways. They connect to elements present in the lives of the readers such as the New York Times and even the normality of an every morning coffee drinking and paper reading routine. By connecting to the reader so personally, Winters applies her theme to the reality of the readers.

Additionally by placing “the displaced of capital” in everyday settings, Winters is playing on the call and response function of poetry. Focusing on the poem sharing the title of the collection, The Displaced of Capital, Winters repeats “the displaced of capital has come to the capital” to indicate to readers that the problem is coming to them. Additionally, Winters applies possessive pronouns to public places to reinforce the element of familiarity with “Broadway, [her] café, and [her] table” (12). The effects of the author’s (and consequently the readers’) normality is having a negative impact on the “old country,” calling readers to become aware of the consequences of the human capital system. Supplementally, Winters draws upon pathos to connect the reader more emotionally to the issues in An Immigrant Woman by referencing a personal story complete with imagery of “a machine-gunned death heap in the center of a village” (15).