The poems title "Lovers of the poor" is discussing the women from the women betterment league. Brooks calls them lovers of the indegent because the rich girls want to help the poor. If indeed they weren't poor I don't think the rich girls would like them, but instead they might be jealous. The rich women act like they would like to help but deep down they know they really don't care about the poor and they also know that they will be out of ghetto and in their nice homes as the poor will be stuck in the slums. Inside our society we make it out to appear to be you want to help the indegent by creating programs and other things to benefit the poor, but when push comes to shove you may still find poor people residing in these ghettos and society cannot do anything about it.
The order of which things happen in the poem looks like it just keeps getting worse and the poor have found out how the rich really feel. At first it seems like the rich females came to help the poor and maybe even get them from the gutter. As the poem progresses we see increasingly more that the rich women don't really care because it does not affect them in any way. As Brooks says on the second page of the poem "they winter in Palm Beach; cross this particular in June; attend, when suitable, the nice Art institute". The rich women know that they can be moving on with the daily lives. The quote that presents this is "their league is allotting largesse to the lost. But to put their clean, their pretty money. . . seems. . . " I think that brooks didn't put any word after seems to let us figure it out for ourselves. The word that fits there in my own opinion is the word crazy.
American history plays a great part in this poem because were a society that is split into classes. We have the middle class, which is most of society, and then we've top of the class and the low class. The rich keep getting richer and the indegent keep getting poorer. Everybody only looks out for themselves. As the poem progresses I think that the poor people begin to realize that more and more. They realize that the rich women do not value them and can not be able to help them. Brooks doesn't reveal straight out that the rich women won't help the indegent.
"Although her poetic voice is objective, there's a strong sense that she--as an observer--is never definately not her action. . . She sets forth the reality without embellishment or interpretation, however the simplicity of the reality helps it be impossible for readers to come away unconvinced--despite whatever discomfort they could feel--whether she is authoring suburban females who go into the ghetto to provide occasional aid. . . "( The Oxford Companion).
Toward the end of the poem it seems as if the rich females experienced enough and need to get out of there. They finally realized that this is what the poor have to go through everyday. They just couldn't handle it. Brooks says "The girls from the women betterment league agree it will be better to achieve the outer air that rights and steadies, to hie to a residence that will not holler. . . " The finish of the poem implies that they really could care less about the indegent people. They even say "possibly the money can be posted, perhaps two may choose another slum. . . trying to avoid inhaling the laden air". This quote in my own opinion summarizes the mentality that the rich women have. They will give them some cash so long as they can escape there and never come back. This really shows the options that these people have. All of the rich folks have to do is say the word that they would like to leave the ghetto. The poor people don't have this choice. This is actually the hand these were dealt no rich women will help them.
It is a fairly bleak picture of an unhealthy, lonely couple that Gwendolyn Brooks portrays in her poem, "The Bean Eaters. " Unable to afford meat, the old "yellow pair, " African-Americans who've not been out much, sit at the creaking table--much like their creaking joints--and eat from their "plain chipware" with "tin flatware. " This lonely couple, who are "Mostly Good" never have met with fortune since their tableware is meager and "their rented back room" is all they have from having "lived their day. " And, although there is reference to "dolls, " it seems that there are no other folks in their lives now. Perhaps, as the old pair remember with "twinklings and twinges, " you have the joyful remembrance of a child now lost; only beads and dolls remain, and some futile attempt once at luxury: "vases and fringes. " Indeed, this is a portrayal of two old people who live lives of "quiet desperation, " having suffered in poverty all their lives. Now, they have only each other, in support of their small day to day routine of subsistence, "gaining their clothers/And putting things away. " This poem is characteristic of Gwendolyn Brooks, who wrote of the frustration, reality, and injustice of black lives. With a style of the individual's seek out self within an inhumane society, Brooks writes, "The Lord was their shepherd. /Yet did they want"
