“The Lovers of the Poor” is a satirical, free verse poem with 99 lines. There are seven sections, which can be called verse paragraphs because each section starts with an indented line like a paragraph. The title is part of the first sentence of the poem. Here, Brooks’s third person speaker—who serves a role similar to a narrator in a novel—announces that the lovers of the poor are arriving. The poem archly reveals that these “lovers” do not actually love those who are living in poverty.

The first section is 21 lines long and contains various descriptions of the “Ladies from the Ladies’ Betterment League” (Line 1). The speaker’s descriptions contain many paradoxes. Their faces show both “mercy and murder” (Line 4), which is a paradox with alliteration (repetition of the letter “m” at the beginning of both words). This highlights that the upper class position of the women was created by murderous systems (read: their families became rich by the poor dying). Because of their position, they are able to show mercy to members of the lower class. Other juxtaposed qualities include being “deep and debonair” (Line 5), or being both deep and superficial. The multiplicity of the paradoxes drives home the theme that philanthropy is corrupt.

The first section also introduces two things that return later in the poem: love and the ladies’ quality of movement. Love is initially described as “Cutting with knives served by their softest care, / served by their love, so barbarously fair” (Lines 8-9). The speaker continues to add paradoxes: sharp and soft, uncivilized and fair. The knives that cut and the repetition of “serve” hints at food, which is an important motif throughout the poem. Additionally, the ladies move in a “gingerly manner up the hall” (Line 7). This physically indicates their distaste for the poor; the poem ends on the image of the rich women gingerly exiting a building.

Starting in Line 10, the first section explores the reason why the ladies engage in philanthropy. Their mothers’ advice is presented in exclamatory sentences: “You’d better not be cruel!” (Line 10) It is not the desire to help others, but parental admonishments that inspire charity. This rationale underlies the paradoxes, as the ladies “kiss and coddle and assault” (Line 12). The contradictions are rooted in being shamed into helping others.

Next, the speaker pairs physical descriptions of the ladies with their ideas about what philanthropy means. The women are “Sleek, tender-clad, fit, fiftyish, a-glow” (Line 15). These descriptors indicate good health, which comes from being able to afford skin care products, leisure time, and healthy food. The ladies’ perception of charity is not aligned with anything practical. The third person speaker uses figurative language: “To resurrect. To moisten with milky chill” (Line 19). This diction alludes to the religious mystery of Christ returning from the dead, then moves to an even more abstract concept. The adjective “milky” returns to the motif of food, and hints at a kind of mothering. The juxtaposition of these images in the same line positions the ladies as similar to Mary, the mother of Christ.

In the second section, which has 10 lines, the speaker describes to whom the ladies want to give money. To receive their charitable donations, the poor people must be worthy and beautiful. These qualities are defined by their opposite, or what they are not. The ladies want to help those who are “Perhaps just not too swarthy? / Perhaps just not too dirty nor too dim” (Lines 24-25). This question and the repeated use of “perhaps” illustrate how the ladies do not understand the conditions of poverty. “Swarthy” is an archaic term for having dark skin—whether from genetics or laboring outside. Poor people have less access to good education, which can make them “dim,” and cannot always afford cleaning products, so they are seen as “dirty.” This can be connected to the means-testing used in modern philanthropy and welfare programs.

Also, the ladies do not want to aid people who are violent or too vocal. The ladies invoke “God” to “shield them sharply” (Line 29), which refers back to the religious diction of resurrection in the previous section. Despite their desire to be like Jesus, they want to be shielded from people who might stab or hit. This is ironic because there are many stories in the Bible about Jesus spending time with criminals.

The third section is 18 lines long, and contrasts the housing of the poor with the housing of the rich. In the homes of the poor, the ladies of the Betterment League are repulsed by aromas of human waste and food. The narrator lists the foods the ladies find offensive: “cabbage, and dead beans, / Dead porridges of assorted dusty grains” (Lines 33-34). These are inexpensive foods, and beans specifically connect with the title of the book in which “The Lovers of the Poor” appears, The Bean Eaters, and Brooks’s poem of the same title. Beans are used in both poems to illuminate the conditions of living in poverty.

The ladies associate cleanliness with worthiness of charity, and condemn any sort of filth in the homes of the poor. The ladies disdain the “dirty light” (Line 37) and “soil,” which is repeated three times in Lines 37-38. This repetition is echoed in the repetition of “old,” which appears six times in Lines 39-40. The soiled homes of the poor are equated with a pervasive oldness. However, “oldness”—which is repeated twice in Lines 39 and 41—is the point where the speaker’s contrast between the poor and the rich emerges in the third section.

Oldness, in the homes of the rich, indicates enduring legacy. Rather than associated with dirt, oldness is associated with being “sturdy [and] majestic” (Line 42). The speaker lists specific places where these homes of the rich are located. “Lake Forest” and “Glencoe,” both repeated in Lines 41 and 46, are affluent suburbs to the north of Chicago. This specific neighborhood name-dropping contrasts with the vague discussion of where the poor live. The place where the rich ladies arrive and leave over the course of the poem is not clear. They enter and exit through a “hall,” repeated in Lines 7 and 95.

In the fourth section, which is 11 lines long, the speaker describes the home of an impoverished family. The ladies focus on how it does not resemble what they would call a “flat” (Line 51), or apartment. The woman hosting them changes out the newspapers, “Readies to spread clean rugs for afternoon” (Line 54), but this does not meet the standards of cleanliness the ladies associate with charity worthiness. In the middle of this section, the speaker uses a second person pronoun: “Here is a scene for you” (Line 55). This can be read as the only moment where the speaker addresses the reader, giving the poem a tone of gossip.

The scene the speaker introduces in this gossip-y way includes a large woman and children, as well as a pet and, once again, food. The ladies are horrified at the “potato peelings” and “soft- / Eyed kitten” (Lines 60-61) on the floor behind the woman. This scene illustrates how the title is satirical—the women feel “horror” (Line 56), not love, when they see poor people. This scene also leads them to question their philanthropic actions in the following section.

The fifth section is the shortest section, with only four lines, and the ellipses at the end of it indicates that it trails off rather than completing a thought. Here, the speaker implies that the ladies think it would be a shame to give “their clean, their pretty money” (Line 63) to the unclean poor people. The description of the ladies’ beautiful hands collecting the money for charity contrasts the scene with newspapers as rugs and potato detritus.

With 28 lines, the sixth section is the longest. As in the third section, the speaker examines the conditions in which both the poor and the rich live. The section begins with a catalog of things the rich own. Many entries in this list are simply brand names of luxury items: Spode (a pottery company), Chippendale (a cabinet company), and Hattie Carnegie (a clothing company). Someone must be born into a family with old money to recognize these names; otherwise, one must research what the names mean. The speaker’s choice not to clarify what objects the brands make, but only including the brand names as shorthand, mimics how the members of the Ladies’ Betterment League speak to one another.

The next list in the sixth section includes mostly locations. The speaker positions the locations far from Chicago alongside local Chicago landmarks. The ladies travel to Palm Beach (Florida) during the winter, and “cross the Water in June” (Line 70), implying traveling abroad. Locally, the ladies go to the famous Chicago Art Institute and “saunter / On Michigan” (Lines 72-73). Michigan Avenue is a place frequently visited by tourists, and includes the Art Institute and Millennium Park. It begins in an affluent area called the Gold Coast District. These are all places the ladies would go to be seen.

The speaker contrasts this luxurious life with the “Squalor” (74) in which the poor live. While the rich ladies have expensive carpets, indicated only by the brand name “Aubussons,” the poor have “this fibre [sic]/ With fissures everywhere” (Lines 74-75). Basic fibrous goods, like carpets and fabric, are breaking apart. Instead of listing locations, the speaker lists what is found in the home of the poor: “Tin can, blocked fire escape and chitterling” (Line 78), “porridges of the underslung” (Line 81), and a “rat” (Line 83). These differences cause the ladies to feel their charity comes from “loath-love” (Line 76). In other words, while they claim to love the poor, they actually loathe the reality of living in impoverished conditions—as well as those enduring said conditions.

The rat causes the ladies to leave the home they are visiting, and the remainder of this section is the speaker weighing other options for distributing charity. The ladies hope to avoid the realities of living in poverty by visiting the poor at another time or going to a different “Slum” (Line 91). Their naivety is highlighted by their desire to leave, or to “get / Away” (Lines 89-90), as soon as possible. The enjambment, or line break, between the words “get” and “away” visually reinforces the ladies’ intense need to separate themselves from reality. They even consider mailing money instead of traveling to a poor neighborhood, to stay in their privileged Glencoe and Lake Forest bubbles.

The seventh and final section has six lines. Here, the speaker focuses on how the ladies move as they exit the “hall” (Line 95). The word hall is repeated twice in Line 95, but the location of the hall is never revealed. The specific location is not worth naming in comparison to the specific names of locations and brands associated with the rich. These final lines return to describing the ladies’ quality of movement. As before, they gingerly move, trying to keep their bodies and clothes from touching the walls. They also try to not breathe the same air as the poor, which speaks not only to the previously mentioned smell of human waste, but also creates the image that the ladies believe poverty is contagious.