Albert Rios S the Cities Inside Us

Eun-Li Deem

Jennings AP English 3

January 17, 2014

Albert Rios’s The Cities Inside Us

You will never understand. It’s almost impossible to understand. Finding the core meaning of Albert Rios’s “The Cities Inside Us” is difficult. But if somehow three words were given before reading the poem to just nudge along the meaning it would impossible not to understand. One’s own experiences.This is the whole embodiment of the piece. The speaker uses words and devices specific to its meaning to express the idea of a city inside us.

The lines, “We live in secret cities/And we travel unmapped roads”, starts the poem off with a mysterious tone. The words “secret” and “unmapped roads” create a feeling of a hidden being, away from any others. Combining these lines opens one’s mindAF to the assumption of a tribe or agency unbeknownst to others. Reading on one can find in lines 3-6 evidence of the secrecy between a group. The speaker says, “We speak words between us that we recognize”. This implies a language amongst those familiar with each other. And the lines “But which cannot be looked up” and “They are our words” further identify that the source of secrecy is from a group of unknown status. PAR. MAIN IDEA=WHAT THIS DOES (ESTABLISH TONE, IMAGERY, MOOD?)

But the speaker begins to involve a new entity. In line 7, “You and I, we are the secret citizens of the city, “Inside us, and inside us” (line 8) it is clear HOW SO? the poem is not relaying the actions of a group or society but of everyone in the world. “There go all the cars we have driven”, the “we” and “us” referring to people in general. Lines 11-12 “We know and have known, there/Are all the places that are” begin the allusions to experiences of the “we” and “us”. “They went. They did not disappear.” (line 14) explains that these experiences are not gone, in fact “We take a piece” (line 15). The speaker gives examples of how we receive these experiences “Through the eye and through the ear” (line 16); through sight and sound. “It’s loud inside us, in here, and when we speak” (line 17). The “loud” the speaker is referring to is the knowledge and observations that have been made by people that others do not know of. The last five lines consist of the reason behind the necessary secrets.

“In the outside world

We have to hope that some of that sound

Does not come out, that an arm

Does not reach out

In the place of the tongue” (lines 19-24).

CLARIFY PAR. MAIN IDEA

The essence of this poem reminds those who are “we” and “us” of the memories that have been made and experiences that have been encountered. They have been kept, and while they were held onto they began to create the person that “we” and “us” became. ”Secret” is used to refer to how those who are “we” and “us” should handle the experiences they have made. Keep them hidden from others because they are theirs alone. Once the mystery is gone the poem has a feeling of preciousness, like the secret is to be kept held near and dear, takes its place. Everywhere they go they “each take a piece” but the those pieces “They do not disappear”, and the hope is that they “Do not reach out/In place of the tongue.” Those pieces used, like a puzzle, were used to build us; The cities inside us.

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