Wearing a crown of laurel is a reference to Ancient Greece and Rome, only those who does something heroic gets one. So is the speaker telling us that if they commit suicide they would be given a crown of laurel because they were being heroic for killing themself?

Each line in this section of the poem describes the action of the "best minds" of the speaker's generation. These people are poor, and/ or on drugs, these people don't seem to be sober or thinking clearly (which adds to the dream-like language of this poem). It seems that "the best minds" could be many different people.

I wonder if the speaker is using the word "vomiting" metaphorically here in this line because it seems that there's a lot of talking going on. Also, since there are no commas, everything feels so fast paced.

The way this poem ends feel cynical to me because of the last line. By ending the poem with “span the gulf of challenge there” it’s as if the speaker is sarcastically expressing that the idea of “building a bridge” will actually bring more challenges.

The speaker doesn’t want to let the child “in” because they don’t want them to be born into a world that is full of monstrous people who will not understand them.

It seems that Inez is a performer of some sort, and they are in the spot light performing successfully.

The speaker feels their potential is being wasted by doing this type of homely task, they feel they can serve more of a purpose, especially during war time. At the end of the poem, the speaker seems resentful.

The speaker is visualizing what this man would look like if he were in a jungle. His appearance is connected to his culture, the yellow gloves and swallow tail coat represents his assimilation to America. Where the face piercing, elephant teeth jewelry, and nudeness represents his and the speaker’s true culture.

The speaker, along with everyone else around him, seems to be amused by this person’s way of dressing.

Bennett is using the “low-down folks” dialect, and it’s a poem about music. She’s celebrating her cultural heritage by writing these lines in this way (I’m assuming she’s writing about jazz music), I wonder if she was inspired by Hughes’ “The Weary Blues”, they seem to be similar in themes and tone.

A reference to the Nile, just like in Langston Hughes’ “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”. In this poem it seems that the Nile is a connection to the African American heritage. Bennett is expressing her desire to experience her racial heritage in this poem.

Gwendolyn B. Bennett is using rhymes in this poem, but don’t think there’s a set pattern or form to the rhyme scheme. The rhyming does give the poem a flow to it, and the rhyming seems more natural.

The things that Slim saw were things that many southern African Americans witnessed and experience during that time, it seems that Brown is explaining what living in the south was like during that time. These things are the “push factors” for African Americans, they are the reasons why people decided to migrate north.

The speaker here is stating that what Ma Rainey does simply cannot be put into words, she creates more of a resonating feeling. The poem captures some of that feeling, but by ending it this way the speaker is trying to express that her music is so much more powerful live.

This poem is like an ode to Ma Rainey’s music, in subject matter, but it is written without a specific form. The poem is written in a language used by the “low-down folks” it’s in their perspective, and it’s a celebration of an artist who addresses issues they understand and relate to. In these lines the poet uses the word ‘us’ as an indication of a shared experience, because they are all there witnessing Ma Rainey healing souls with her songs.

The form of this poem is free and it isn't bound by structure, like Jazz music. This music is coming from the soul of the musician because it's not how the music is played, but how the musician expresses it.

The color of the speaker's skin and how they are sent to eat in the kitchen indicates that the speaker is a slave, but the speaker is expressing that they and their people will grow strong despite that. This image by Aaron Douglas depicts the progression of African Americans from slavery to the new negro movement, supporting the idea presented in the poem.

In the south many African Americans worked in the field, but once the conditions started to change (due to natural factors like boll weevils) the field was no longer providing crops. The dying field is like a symbol of the people's source of living , dreams of prosperity, and their opportunities are as dry and dead as the crops on these failing farms.

The way Mordor was depicted in the Lord of the Rings movie alluded to the fact that it was a dry desolate land, and there was no water to drink (and I keep thinking about that scene where Frodo was super dehydrated when he was nearing Mt. Doom, and Sam gave him the little amount of water he had left). When I imagine a waste land in “What the Thunder Said” I think of this scene from the movie. There’s thunder and lightning, but the land is dry and it never rains. The only kind of creature that makes up this waste land are monsters, in the gif the monsters are "fell beasts" flying around.

I remember this image feeling very mystic when I first saw it because of how the loops extend from the head. This lithograph by Odilon Redon, Oannès: Moi, la première conscience de chaos (translation from French: I, the First Consciousness of Chaos), is in black and white, which gives the image an ominous aura about it. The figure looks like a spooky clairvoyant to me, with the eyes closed it’s like the figure is doing a reading. The figure is surrounded by a dark void, and on the area of the figure's shoulders, the round objects look like eyeballs. The eyeballs are what sees the "wicked pack of cards".

“I WENT to the dances at Chandlerville,/ And played snap-out at Winchester./ One time we changed partners,/ Driving home in the moonlight of middle June"

Just like Edger Lee Master’s poem “Lucinda Matlock” the speaker here seems to be recalling a memory from their past. Both speakers have feelings of nostalgia for simpler times in their lives. Both lines are about summertime, and in a way they both feel like a contrast to the cold of winter.

Isn't this a line from The Tempest? I think is it because a couple of lines later Shakespeare is mentioned.

This is the most creative way to tell someone they look old.

The speaker seems to be having a nervous/ mental break down here. Is there only one speaker in this poem, who are they speaking to?

The imagery Eliot describes here is very opulent, the woman must be very wealthy.

Is the speaker referring to an actual corpse because Belladonna was mentioned earlier in the poem (when the belladonna blooms it smells like a corpse); however, the Belladonna that was mentioned was a reference to a person. Now I'm wondering if the corpse is literal or figurative, this is confusing me a little here.

Is the speaker now speaking to someone, in the poem, or did someone say this to the speaker?

I looked up "Starnberfersee" and 'Hofgarten', they are both located in Germany, which explains the German phrases that followed. Gives me an indication of the speaker's location.

I've seen the word 'rose' all through out this poem, I wonder if Stein is referring to a person or the flower.

She's adding to each of these "Next to barber" lines, then shifts to "Next to hurry" and started adding to that. It feels like a flowing stream of thoughts, almost as if she's trying to find words that fit. It seems though, in her case, all of the words fit.

I noticed these kinds of lines where Stein repeats two words, but they don't make any sense. I wonder if this poem is suppose to be read in a certain way?

I wonder if this Elsie person grew up in some unfortunate ways. The word choice in these stanzas alone are quite depressing, and it continues to be depressing and unfortunate.

The speaker asks for forgiveness for eating the plums, but by ending the poem "so sweet, and so cold" seems to imply that the speaker isn't really sincere about what they have done.

Though this poem is just a couplet, it still has a lot of imagery working for it; however, I wonder why it's so short.

The speaker mentions delphinium and rose, I think the two flowers are metaphors for two different people in the poem. I am guessing a male is the delphinium, because of the first line, and the rose is a woman because the speaker asks if the “rose regrets, The day she did her armour on?”.

The speaker is saying that this person can “lay beside spade” (a spade used to dig graves) and become dust among the dust that blows, becoming a part of those already dead?

In this section, the speaker is explaining that love cannot really cure anyone of aliments. Though it feel nice to have love, it is not what one needs to survive in this world. I seems as if the poet is trying to get someone to understand this in some way. A sonnet about how love is not what you need seems pretty ironic too, very anti-form and avant garde.

All of Robert Frost’s poems stick to a tight rhyming scheme, but it seems that this poem in particular has perfect hard rhymes. I feel that Frost is comfortable with using form and sticking to that form for his poetry.

The way this poem ends is very mysterious because the speaker does not explain whether their decision was a good one or a bad one. Is the speaker happy with their decision to take this path? It made some sort of an impact, but what kind of an impact did it make?

The speaker expresses that on his property there’s an apple orchard, and his neighbor’s property contains pine trees, there’s no meandering animals to cross over to the other person’s property to justify having the wall. However, when confronted with this, the neighbor just replies, “Good fences make good neighbors”; I wonder why the neighbor thinks this.

It seems that the persona of this poem, Lucinda Matlock, is recounting her life. She had twelve children, but eight has died by the time she reached the age of sixty. She’s recounting all the things she did, and it seems like she was a simple, middle class woman. She had no complaints about her life and seems to have loved living it.

The village the persona lives in is rich with tragedy, comedy, valor, truth, courage, constancy, heroism, and failures, they are intertwining in a way. All these things combining is like a loom moving (a little device that weaves threads to make cloths and rugs). The things that make up this village is a pattern that came out of this loom.

Eben Flood, the main subject of this poem, is out at night. I think from the lines “said aloud, For no man to hear” Eben Flood is there alone. He tells himself that there’s a harvest moon, which are very big and bright. He tells himself he may not have many more, meaning that he might be close to death or is thinking about death. He’s talking to himself and also he’s drinking and he gives a toast to a nearby bird.

Eben is feeling lonely and is feeling like there’s nothing left for him. The town he lives in seems unwelcoming and there seems to be an indication that the friends he had have all died or left in some way.

Before the narrator sees a woman “creeping" on the wallpaper, she was seemingly just a shadow; however, as time passes the narrator begins to associates herself as a creeping woman. She explains how she “creeps” herself, then she starts to see many women trapped and creeping in the wallpaper. Finally, she is consumed by the wallpaper and her frenzied attack of the wallpaper, it’s almost as if she fully transformed into the “creeping” trapped woman of the yellow wallpaper.

Du Bois uses the imagery of shackled hands and feet to explain that being even though there is emancipation, African Americans are still not free because they do not have the same rights and freedom as white Americans. He explains that African Americans are the “poor race” because they cannot get the same access to education, and that America is trying to keep African Americans from gaining access to things such as rights to education and voting. They are by law free, yet they are still slaves to the white American system of inequality.

The metaphor Du Bois uses for Americanization here is particularly poignant and attention grabbing because of how it connects to the intersectionality of him as not only a black man but as a one living in America.

In this passage, is Adams criticizing America for its attitudes towards sex in general? The Victorian era brought in censorship on sex and anything related to it; thus, began an era of ridged purity and punishment in regard to sex and sexuality. How does Adams approach the ‘dynamo’ and the American’s mindset on sex?

The word force comes up a lot in this chapter, and it seem that within this section he associates it further with science rather than in idea tied to spirituality. What I wonder though, is Adams suggesting that force needs to studied more, or that maybe we shouldn’t stop asking questions in general even if when it comes to science or spirituality?

Imagery of the lion, from it's ears to it's hung belly. However I cannot decipher what the poet means in terms of "from the purpose".

Why did the poet choose to write it this way?