A Brook in the City

A Brook In The City / Good Hours Steve Allsop

The titles of the poems are pretty easy to understand. The first poem’s is titled A Brook In The City and is self-explanatory it is simply about a brook in the city and how it has changed throughout the years. The second poem Good Hours seems to be more about a person and a reflection on his past life.

A Brook In The City is easy to read and flows nicely it has a beginning where “A new city Street it has to wear” sets the scene for new city springing up where the brook and a farmhouse had stood before. The middle where the brook was no longer need to provide water and was cast down underground into the sewers and an ending where no one even new that there was a brook unless they looked at old maps.

The whole poem is about a brook that used to run above ground and around the farmhouse. The brook had strength and as the poem say’s “having dipped my finger length and made it leap my knuckle” you could imagine children lying next to the brook putting their fingers in and watching the water flow over the tops of their knuckles so this poem has good imagery. The meadows seem to of been concreted over to make way for pavements and apple trees torn up and burnt on peoples fires as the poem says “The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame.” The Brook itself needed to be got rid off as it is referred to as an immortal force and no longer needed and was thrown deep underground to be forgot about. The people in the city probably don’t even know that there is a brook running underneath them, but the poem says the brook is immortal and you cant help but feel that the brook still lives and runs silently underground, just waiting until it can run freely again.

Good Hours is more of a personal journey and you get the feeling that it is about someone who is older and who is now on their own. The poem begins with the character going for an evening walk and there is a good description of imagery here where he talks about...