Beverly Hills, Chicago Literary Elements

The speaker of "Beverly Hills, Chicago" is not from Beverly, but rather implies they are from a working-class, predominantly Black neighborhood in Chicago.

Tercets with every second and fourth line end-rhymed

In the second stanza, the refuse is referred to metaphorically as "a neat brilliancy."

In the second line of the second stanza, Brooks uses alliteration: "The summer ripeness rots. But not raggedly."

The poem makes ample use of verbal irony, which resembles sarcasm. Every time the speaker claims that "Nobody" thinks a certain thing or feels a certain way, it is clear that in truth, plenty of people feel that way (perhaps even the narrator). For example, in the fifth stanza when the speaker claims, "Nobody hates these people," the truth is that plenty of people hate the affluent residents of Beverly, and the reason for their hatred is the huge income gap between white-collar and working-class people, especially working-class people of color.

poetry

Beverly Hills, Chicago (Suburbs of Chicago)

Ironic, embittered

The protagonist can be thought of as the speaker and their passengers, while the antagonists are the affluent residents of Beverly.

The major conflict is the wealth gap between the rich who live in Beverly and the poor who live in other Chicago neighborhoods. People living in luxury live less than a mile away from people who are struggling to survive, and there is no effort to close that wealth gap in a society that champions capitalist values.

When the speaker observes that "their wood and brick and stone" is different from the materials used in working-class neighborhoods, it is an understatement to describe the differences as lying in these basic materials, when really everything about the Beverly residents' day-to-day lives is different, because they don't have to worry about money or perform hard labor.

Brooks alludes to a jazz tune called "Knock Me a Kiss."

There are a few instances of personification in this poem. In the first stanza, leaves are described as "coughing." The phonograph in the fourth stanza is described as "bleating" like a goat. And finally, in the seventh stanza, the pine trees are described as breathing a breeze.

To say that the corpses of affluent people are "excellent" is a humorous exaggeration.

The closest to an instance of onomatopoeia in the poem is when the speaker describes their voices in the car turning "gruff." Gruff mimics the rough, gravelly sound it describes.