The Personal and the Political

"Rusted Legacy" is a work with political themes, but those themes are suggested not by any sustained action or statements in the poem but by different images scattered throughout the four stanzas. The images presented for the most part are intimate, implying the close connection between personal attitudes and events and political ideas. The poet invites the reader from the beginning to "Imagine a city," and this city is not an abstract, ideal city (like the philosopher Plato's city in The Republic or the theologian St. Augustine's city in The City of God) but what seems to be a very real, recognizable place with deer being killed on highways, where there are sewers and parks, and where there is architecture, governance, and people in power. The intimate connection between the poet and the city, the personal and the political, is emphasized by the poet...