Seeded in Stone: The Poetic Optimism of "Carp Poem" Justine S Ramos College

As legendary poet and hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur once said, “The seed must grow regardless of the fact that it’s planted in stone.” Those who live in impoverished neighborhoods are prone to a life empty of education and full of crime. From the very beginning of their lives, these disadvantaged people are often set on the path towards incarceration due to their strained environments. Although they may have the potential to become successful, they are inherently ‘seeds’ trapped in ‘stone,’ seemingly unable to grow past the limitations of a jail cell. However, as Tupac Shakur notes, regardless of the dire predetermined circumstances, the seed is able to break the stone barriers that enclose it and seek the light of day. In his work “Carp Poem,” Terrance Hayes evokes a similar theme, where he describes a moment in which an African-American poet visits a jail to present poetry to a group of young African-American boys. In his poem, Hayes illuminates how the underprivileged can overcome the misguidance of crime with the power of knowledge.

The speaker in “Carp Poem” first illustrates the disadvantaged environment where the jail is located in order to implicate how the underprivileged are misguided in crime. In the first stanza, the...