Page 270 - Wordsmith A Guide to College Writing

language at the end of paragraphs 2 and 3. What do these
descriptions show you about the character of the whiners as

opposed to the character of the grandmother, Sister

Henderson?

Examining a Poem

The poem that follows is by American poet Edwin Arlington Robinson,

who wrote in the early twentieth century and was a three-time winner

of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

As with Angelou’s essay, the predominant technique is narration.

Robinson is telling a story. Description is used to tell us both about

Richard Cory and about the “people on the pavement” from whose

point of view he is described. And the words “whenever” and “always”
in first two stanzas indicate that those stanzas show a typical example

of what happened when Richard Cory “went down town.”

Richard Cory

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim. And he was always quietly 4

arrayed,