Explication of a poem

Explication of “Migrunt”


In the three-stanza poem “Migrunt,” the poet uses short lines, diction related to pain, enjambment, and deliberate misspelling of nouns to transmit the debilitating work of migrant laborers. The three stanzas are connected by a rhyming of the final line of each stanza: “heads” (line 3), “bed” (line 5), and “dead” (line 7). By misspelling “migrant” in the title, the poet sets the tone, indicating that the migrant’s work is grunt work, the work that few people would want to do and that because of the physical strain that is put on the body, causes one to grunt as one moves from plant to plant.

The first stanza is a tercet in which we learn that the migrant has been working for twenty years but the poet uses the word “spent” to end the first line. “Spent” has the meaning not only of passing time, but also of being exhausted (line 1). The first enjambment occurs as the sentence continues on the next line (2) with a descriptive word “Bent” set off with commas to give a sense of the pain that goes with exhaustion, and concluding with a prepositional phrase “with a short woe” (line 2) The typical tool for working with lettuce is a short hoe that requires the laborer to squat or bend to weed around each head of lettuce. This is dirty, excruciating work in the hot, humid spring and summer, so the poet transposes a “w” for the “h” to give the sense of suffering that the migrant’s body is enduring. Line 3 is “Caressing lettuce heads” which implies that the migrant is taking great care with his job as if touching the head of a loved one.

A couplet makes up the painful second stanza. “Then he lay, doubled,” is the first line of the stanza, which indicates that the migrant may be in some pain (line 4). Another enjambment occurs taking the reader to the added description “Twisted,” (line 5) once again set off with commas as an addition to “doubled,” implying even greater pain, perhaps twisted muscles or ligaments or inflamed joints. The stanza ends with another prepositional phrase “in his bed” (line 5). The implication is depressing: a bed should be a place of rest and recuperation, but the migrant continues to suffer even abed.

The final couplet ends the short tale of the migrant’s life: “Thirty-six is no age” (line 6). In this nihilistic statement is an implied contrast with what most people think is the prime of life when one might be educated, raising a family, paying a mortgage, and advancing in a chosen career; but for the migrant, life is ending because the work has robbed him of youth and health. The final line “To be old, or dead” (line 7) shows that the migrant, who began working in the fields at sixteen, has grown old—bent over with arthritic pain, his body full of pesticide and fertilizer residue—sick and will die much younger than most Americans because of the work he had to do, so Americans could enjoy fresh salads that kept them youthful.

This poem, as short as a migrant’s life, and crabbed with painful meaning, reveals the labor that can shorten a life.



Work cited

Blanton, Jerry. “Migrunt.” Monsters in a Half-way House. Tampa, Florida: TheTampa Bay Poets.1981.24.

Below are other kinds of explications.