Answer: C) Workers talking during a break
Explanation: ‘Shirt’ by Robert Pinsky was published in 1990 in The Want Bone. The poem consists of sixteen stanzas that are separated into sets three lines, or tercets. These tercets do not follow a specific pattern of rhythm or rhyme. But, there are moments of half, or slant, rhyme scattered throughout the text. These mostly depend on consonance or consonant rhyme. This feature, as well as the variety of poetic techniques that Pinsky makes use of, structure the poem and work together to bring greater attention to the important themes Pinsky wanted to bring to a reader’s attention. For example, in the second stanza the words “presser,” “cutter” and “wringer” appear right next to one another. In the same lines, there are all the words, “needle,” “mangle” and “treadle.” It is this kind of rhythm that carries the poem on. It also helps to emphasize the lists in general, keeping the reader’s attention on them for longer. The poem begins with the speaker doing his best to humanize those who try to make a living in sweatshops. These are miserable, unseen jobs. Hardly, if ever, do people in the western world consider where their clothes come from. Pinsky seeks throughout ‘Shirt’ to change that. He speaks in detail on the historical fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and the outrageous conditions that lead to it, and the deaths that resulted from it. He also brings two different poets into the poem and connects the slavery of the 17th and 18th centuries to its equivalent today. At its most basic level, this is a poem about making shirts. But it speaks deeply on themes of human rights and explores topics of consumerism and selective ignorance. Throughout the text, Pinsky moves through stories, images, and historical examples of how the clothing industry has always mistreated its “employees.”