About the Poet James Patrick Kinney James Patrick Kinney is an American poet. He had a very tough childhood. He was constantly malnourished, along with his brothers and sisters. He only went to the tenth grade of high school, when he dropped out to take care of his mother. He was discriminated against because of his poor financial status. He spent his whole life self-educating and in the process fell in love with poetry. He read a great number of poems and began to write poetry himself. He was a devout Christian, and very conservative. He decided to join the military. Following his military service he worked as a teacher, a profession which helped him stay in touch with his interest of writing and storytelling. Kinney has written a couple of poems which reflect his positive credo towards life. Some of these poems include 'The Cold Within', 'The Secret of Life' and 'A Better World' among others
Central Idea of the Poem :
This poem depicts the different forms of inhuman discrimation that was prevalent during the African American Civil Rights Movement. It is a parable - a story with a moral. It is set in the western part of Cincinnati Ohio - aplace where the blacks were hated and ignored. The poem projects discrimination based on race, class and religion by narrating the story of six individuals who are caught together by chance in extreme cold. Everyone had a piece of wood that could keep the fire burning to keep them warm but none of them agreed to share their wood just because of their prejudices for others. Some had the racial hatred, some were prejudiced with financial and social classes and some were merely narrow-minded and selfish. All of them had something common among them that is human sin –as the poet says it. The discrimination, racism and bigotry prove futile as none of the six people stay alive at the end. Each perishes, not because of the cold outside but of the cold within their heart, the lack of compassion that killed them.
The poem is a simple yet powerful reminder that if we selfishly hold on to the world’s resources, and the wealth that it has to offer, if we persist in discriminating on grounds of race, religion, caste, gender and ethnicity, we are all lost