Lola Ridge, The Ghetto and Other Poems (1918)
Generally, this is a literature that offers an explanation to people about an anarchist poet, Lola Ridge, who happened to be an influential editor of many publications across the world after several poems that she produced by herself over the years since 1918. In essence, avant-garde, Marxist and feminist periodicals recalled her for her best and outstanding and long poems that offered poetic sequences to all other people who were interested in either joining her in the poetic profession or those who enjoyed reading her piece. In the Ghetto and other poems, we get an idea of Jewish society in the New York streets of Hester.
To the people of that time, the piece of literature captured the effects of capitalist societies, gender biasness, and disagreements between the generations of that time and the immigrant community. For instance, the other poems include Broadway, Flotsam, spring, Bowery Afternoon, Promenade, The Fog, Faces, Debris, Dedication, The Song of Iron, Frank Little at Calvary, and many others as the list is long than enough. In essence, gender discrimination, in most instances, is focused on the male gender’s preference to the female gender in which most important positions and societal activities are viewed as the sole responsibility of the male gender. As well, in a capitalist society, every individual is meant to work for themselves as the property is individually owned as trade and industry owners make profits for themselves rather than the state. There is no communal responsibility for any mistake or achievement from an individual effort.
In the aspect of gender bias, the author brought the people the awareness of why there were a few artists and a significant challenge in success based on the female gender. By doing this, her efforts served as a motivating factor to the society to uplift the female gender and the importance of discouraging gender discrimination. In essence, such pieces are useful to an organization that cares because Lola’s setting is based on a capitalist background in which everyone survives by their efforts. This means that if you do not do anything to earn you a living or get you a suit in your society, you may not survive a capitalist society’s ruthless culture. For this reason, the author explores and insists on the fact that, even though many societies dwell on the nature of bisexual genius, there does not exist great women artists because they have been deprived of their rights to express themselves and their ideas in the society in their full capacity and experience.
Since this has been the trend during this time, the poetry literature reveals that the people who lived during this period were not interested in female gender prosperity at all costs. The author uses the example of the materialist position to pose future probabilities of subsequent gender discrimination and focuses on the social reconstruction of the female gender and diversity. She argues that a woman is not and would never be a man’s natural inferior. She maintains her stand to the fact that women have been and are still suffering from the cornered and arrested development in the capitalist society. Therefore, in my view, the piece reveals to us that the people living during this time were all dependent on the male gender for survival and decision making. As well, the women who lived during the time of Lola were struggling to come out as important and reliable people in a society that never supported their efforts whatsoever. This is why the author refers to Murillo as an overpowered and assaulted female artist who appeared years before she was introduced to readers.
Ideally, the poem is a collection of information portraying the Jews of Hester’s immigrant society in the Lower Eastside of New York. It depicts society’s situation during the last century, where everybody was preoccupied with capitalist ideas, gender discrimination against women, and conflicts against sure generations based on various comparisons. Through this artwork, she tries to renew the critical attention needed within the society to realize development in appropriation to the changing and digitalizing world. Her poetry setting shows a harsh environment in which people, especially the female gender, lived in urban centers in the last century in the United States of America. For this matter, she never joined any political party or participated in politics. Still, as a way of fighting for the freedom of her gender, she took part in many radical causes by protesting against the executions of decisions that deprived women of liberty and rights over whatever they wanted to do for themselves and the society. Precisely, the people living in this society were purely capitalists and discriminative of the female gender.