What is the connection between the people, objects, and events in the poem?

When purchasing a piece of clothing, how often does one stop to consider who made it and under what conditions? In his poem, Shirt, Pinsky infuses a seemingly ordinary object, a simple shirt, with historical significance, conferring upon it an almost-mythological status.
As he contemplates his recent purchase, which, in all probability, had been made in an overseas sweatshop, he begins to reflect not only on the relationship between the consumer and manufacturer, but also how one can choose to ignore inhumane working conditions. Pinsky’s musings take him on a selective world tour of the clothing industry: the 1911 Triangle Factory fire, in which nearly 150 workers were killed; workers in Scottish mills creating clan tartans for kilts; American slaves picking cotton in fields; and finally to Irma, a possible descendent of slaves, who inspects shirts from their shape and fit to their “simulated bone” buttons. Through the purchase of a simple shirt, one becomes connected to others culturally, politically, and historically.

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