Volume 10 19

pivotal because it introduces the poem’s central
metaphor: “the usual two machines” for dispensing
drinks, “the grape one, empty, and the orange one,
empty.” Seen by the speaker in the most abstract
way, these everyday items represent the distinctions
made possible through the labels of language. Line
21, the last line of the stanza introduces the figure
of a “black boy” who wanders through the scene.
His racial labeling as “black” (as opposed to
“brown” in the stanza above) is a concrete example
of how language is used to make either/or distinc-
tions that have real social significance.

Lines 22-28
In these lines the speaker describes the action
that informs the central idea of the poem. She ob-
serves the hot-dog vendor refilling the drink ma-
chines. Paying no heed to the words on the ma-
chines that make a clear distinction between the
two flavors, he puts the grape drink in the one
marked orange, and vice versa. This stanza, through
its repetition and capitalization of the words “or-
ange” and “grape,” emphasizes the relationship be-
tween language and reality. The words are “large
and clear, unmistakable,” but that does not mean
that they reflect reality.

Lines 29-35
In this stanza the speaker interprets the events
described in the preceding stanza in the form of a
series of questions posed to the hot-dog vendor, in-
terrogating his disregard for language. She asks
him, how can we come to understand anything,
“How can we go on reading and make sense of
what we read,” if people pay so little heed to so
simple and clear a distinction as that between or-
ange and grape? This refers back to her own work
as a reader and writer. In the next question, she
frames the issue more broadly, in terms of the chil-
dren in the neighborhood and their ability to have
faith in the knowledge that is communicated
through language: “How can they write and believe
what they’re writing, / the young ones across the
street?” In the stanza’s closing lines she expands
on her point about the faith in knowledge that
comes from reading and writing to encompass
“what we say” (another form of language) and also,
crucially, “what we do.” For Rukeyser, writing po-
etry is a political act that has real impact on the
world; abstract concepts shape lived reality.

Lines 36-42
The hot-dog vendor’s response to this series of
questions is to shrug and smile. He is indifferent to

her passionate attachment to the integrity of lan-

guage and the distinctions it enables us to make.

He doesn’t seem to see her point. But his indiffer-

ence toward the meaningful distinction between the

categories of orange and grape could just as well

be, she suggests, an indifference toward the dis-

tinction between the opposing terms in “any binary

system,” including “violence and nonviolence,”

“white and black,” “women and men.” These dis-

tinctions, as Rukeyser has subtly illustrated earlier

in the poem, have a huge impact on life in East

Harlem in the twentieth century. The ability to have

faith in the meaning and integrity of language

makes the difference between “what we do and

what we don’t do.” Again, Rukeyser connects lan-

guage to action.

Lines 43-49

Rukeyser closes the poem with a descriptive

stanza that has a somewhat looser form than the

previous ones. The rhyme scheme, which is always

broken in the last line, is further attenuated in this

stanza by the slant rhyme between “rape,” “hope,”

and “GRAPE.” This loosening of the rhyme

scheme points up the chaos of the urban setting:

“garbage, reading, a deep smile, rape, / forgetful-

ness, a hot street of murder, / misery, withered

hope.” These are the concrete human repercussions

of people’s indifference to language and its po-

tential to effect change. The poem closes by reit-

erating the hot-dog vendor’s central symbolic ac-

tion, projecting him pouring grape into orange and

orange into grape “forever.” Thus, Rukeyser sug-

gests that action and change are not possible until

people—everyone, not just poets and intellectu-

als—understand and respect the integrity of

language.

Ballad of Orange and Grape

Media

Adaptations

• A film concerning Rukeyser, Three Women
  Artists: Anna Sokolow, Alice Neel, Muriel
  Rukeyser,by Lucille Rhodes and Margaret Mur-
  phy, is available on a 1998 videotape distributed
  by Kultur.