Analysis of “Poppa Chicken”
Margaret Walker 1942 poem “Poppa Chicken” exposes Poppa as a “sugah daddy”. Poppa was a sugah daddy with a stable of women. He gave his women hell but they obeyed every demand he told them to do. The women in his neighbor hood walked on his time and not theirs. Walker’s theme and vivid imagery illustrate that Poppa gets his way around town he basically run the streets with no fear.
The speaker reveals the pimping in Poppa’s life. The unidentified speaker relates the situation in Third person point of view. Therefore, the diction is plain, everyday words that are relevant to pimping, such as “gals on poppa time” (line 7) and “gals around his neck” (line 26). The theme is describing Poppa’s life on how he gets his…show more content… Readers can see “Poppa face was long and black/grin was broad” (9-10) “Poppa smoked his long cigars” (29) “Rocks glist’ning in his tie/on his long black hands” (31) “Walked without a rod”(34) “Though he is old and gray” (46). Certainly you can tell Poppa likes his big diamonds and his things custom made and the author is most defiantly showing us he’s the new and approved pimp walking without a stick. Moreover, “Poppa cussed the coppers out/Talked like he was God” (35-36) are all sounds that show that Poppa owned the town and did what he wanted to do. Poppa had his way of buying himself out of trouble so he said what he want and take who he wants. However, there were only a few figurative images that reinforce the descriptive imagery and the speaker’s way of telling us what he acted like. One is a simile for the way he talked. “Talked like God.” The form is telling a story similar to a fiction story. It is a Narrative poem because it expresses what type of man the speaker sees in her neighborhood. Done in sonnet form, the twelve four-line stanzas of rhyme scheme set in iambic pentameter establish a free verse rhythm which in this case is good because she is telling us what “Poppa Chicken” chicken is doing based off the things she has seen. In conclusion, this poem has showed realism by telling us the things just the way the speaker is seeing it. However, Walker’s poem was to show that the pimp in her town was a commodifier of sex, he was violent, and he had style. Certainly this poem shows us how Poppa Chicken got his way and the gals he
