who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,
Ginsberg's use of expletives must have been shocking for the time period. The explicitness of the poem give it a sense of harsh reality, as Ginsberg is describing the world that society likes to ignore and brush over. This is reality, whether we like it or not.
who
The continued use of "who" helps bear down on the idea that all these people society glosses over are the best society has to offer. The repetition hammers this home, and in a public reading I can imagine the repetition would build and build with his voice getting louder and angrier with each repetition.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
Ginsberg sees the best minds of his generation being destroyed by society. However, to him the best minds are not success stories like doctors or presidents. Rather, they are lower class people, junkies, homeless, the impoverished. This is a rather bold statement, as he is saying that these are the best minds but society never gave them a chance.
Boy! You should a seen that darky’s face!
Casual racism is thrown around in this poem. "Darky" refers to the black skin color.
Be still, be still, my precious child, I must not give you birth!
A heartbreaking ending to a powerful poem. She wants a child so bad, but does not want to bring one into the world due to the adversity and hate the child would have to face.
sit and sew—a useless task it seems, My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams— The panoply of war, the martial tread of men, Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death, Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath—
The narrator is contemplating the grim reality of life and war. She is sitting and sewing, likely assisting in the war effort. She is realizing the pointlessness of war and all the effort it takes to assist and contribute.
We claim no part with racial dearth; We want to sing the songs of birth!
They do not want to sing songs about race. They would rather sing songs and rejoice the wonder of birth and new existence. They want to celebrate freedom and acceptance.
Or does it explode?
The black community can only take so much oppression and degradation. At a certain point, the unrest explodes and a revolution occurs.
I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes,
He is hidden when company comes due to the color of his skin. He cannot eat with the company as he is not seen as equal to them.
I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world
The river he mentions here symbolizes the centuries of black struggle. Like a river, the struggle can be massive and its stream may seem endless.
His shadow, so to speak, has been more real to him than his personality
Tying back to "the Negro has been more of a formula than a human," his shadow represents his reality. His personality was not considered by white society, and only his physicality could prove his status as a real human.
he Negro has been more of a formula than a human being
Black people were seen as inhuman by many whites. They filled a niche in white society, something that was just around and served to rile up the white community.
For the younger generation is vibrant with a new psychology; the new spirit is awake in the masses, and under the very eyes of the professional observers is transforming what has been a perennial problem into the progressive phases of contemporary Negro life.
This holds much more optimism than the last piece. The younger generation is "awake."
For racial culture the home of a self-styled “high-class” Negro has nothing better to offer.
A high class negro is an oxymoron in this case. While they are high class and therefore higher on the social ladder than their peers, being black still makes them be seen as lesser.
And the mother often says “Don’t be like niggers” when the children are bad.
This sums up white attitudes of the time. Black people were seen as lesser beings, and being like one of them would be to lower your status.
One of the most promising of the young Negro poets said to me once, “I want to be a poet–not a Negro poet,” meaning, I believe, “I want to write like a white poet”; meaning subconsciously, “I would like to be a white poet”; meaning behind that, “I would like to be white.” And I was sorry the young man said that, for no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself. And I doubted then that, with his desire to run away spiritually from his race, this boy would ever be a great poet. But this is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America–this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.
This highlights the black experience of the earlier 20th century. Being white was what they aspired to be, as then they could be accepted by white society and not have to deal with the struggle they faced in their everyday lives.
Death by Water
The nature motif again. Water is going to be the death of mankind
The river sweats
This personification of nature relates to the nature motif seen throughout the poem. The river does not normally sweat, but the events of the poem are scaring the river.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
This is the first of a few lines of German in this text. I wonder what purpose this is supposed to serve? Is it meant to be immersive? Are there hidden meanings or Easter eggs in these phrases that the non-germanic speaker will not pick up on? The lines appear out of nowhere and are gone so suddenly, it seems like a peculiar choice.
By constantly tormenting them with reminders of the lice in their children’s hair, the School Physician first brought their hatred down on him. But by this familiarity they grew used to him, and so, at last, took him for their friend and adviser.
At first they hated the school physician, but soon grew to love him only out of his familiarity.
reared by the state and sent out at fifteen to work in some hard-pressed house in the suburbs—
Elsie lives a working class life. Here life is stereotypical of a working class person. It is interesting that her introduction in a poem to her is so late in the poem, appearing closer to the end than the beginning.
I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox
I am interested in what the form is in this poem and if there is any significance to the word groupings in each line
Here lies, and none to mourn him but the sea,
It is interesting the no one is named. The vagueness makes it seem like this could be an epitaph for anybody.
I might be driven to sell your love for peace, Or trade the memory of this night for food. It well may be. I do not think I would.
Love is all, despite what the poem opens with. If love can be traded for peace, it is clearly a powerful object. In the end, love is not traded for anything because love is all.
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
Love may not be necessary for physical survival, but love ends up driving men insane if they cannot have it. It is necessary for the mind, and it brings men to death when they are deprived of it.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
This line indicates regret on Frost's part. He chose the path less traveled and he seems upset by it, like he wishes he could go back and change paths. Much like life, you cannot go back in time and change the decisions you made.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
Frost takes the road less traveled. This could mean that he took the road that was not filled with temptations and rather took the one that would be more fulfilling. He chose this path and he could not be happier.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;
I find this stanza to be analogous to life. There are always two paths you can take, and once you take one path, you can no longer go back and take the other one, even though we may wish this to be the case.
And you that ache so much to be sublime, And you that feed yourselves with your descent, What comes of all your visions and your fears? Poets and kings are but the clerks of Time, Tiering the same dull webs of discontent, Clipping the same sad alnage of the years.
The direction at "you" makes this poem seem like It is being directed directly at the reader. The message broadens and becomes more applicable to others.
Choose your own good and call it good. For I could never make you see That no one knows what is good Who knows not what is evil; And no one knows what is true Who knows not what is false.
A very profound passage. Essentially, no one knows anything. No one knows what is good, what is evil, what is true, what is false. People just make arbitrary decisions on what makes things "good" or "bad."
Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth, Courage, constancy, heroism, failure–
I love the groupings of four - each item seems unrelated but can actually compliment each other
I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus—but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad.
They have a very toxic relationship, and it seems likely that it is not a relationship built on love but rather on obligation. John is a blatant misogynist who doe not recognize his wife's feelings.
If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do?
This again alludes to the sexist attitudes in society at the time. She is seen as just a little hysterical, something women were bound to do. This is blatantly sexist, as men believed that women were stupid and would not know what was truly happening to them. They saw women as emotional and just getting a little worked up.
John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.
A sign of the times. This alludes to the sexist attitudes that were extremely prevalent in the 19th century. Men looked at women as inferior and as objects. It is sad that she expected to be laughed at be degraded by her husband.
The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people,—a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a lowly people.
A powerful assessment on Du Bois' part. Slavery is gone, but he is still not free. Despite the riddance of slavery, the nation has not atoned for its sins and inequality has instead found new ways to thrive. Du Bois is a free man, but he still faces society's hatred and scorn. It's sad knowing that so little has changed in the century since this passages writing.
Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.
He asks God why he made him a problem. Being a stranger in his own house insinuates that he feels not comfort anywhere and has no sense of belonging, even in a place as safe as his home. His comparison of home to prison is especially powerful. He still feels below the white man, despite slavery's eradication so many years prior.
How does it feel to be a problem?
The author ponders the question. He lists what his white neighbors ask him, and instead of trying to come up with a retort, he rather doesn't know what to say. Constantly being told that he is "a problem" has defeated him.
He had even published a dozen volumes of American history for no other purpose than to satisfy himself
Adams comes off as a figure who is very full of himself and thinks himself to be better and smarter than those around him.
Adams might as well have stood outside in the night
I find it interesting that Adams is referring to himself fin the third person. Why is he doing this in an autobiography?
Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts
Adams states that facts are useless and that ignorance is a byproduct of education. An interesting idea coming from a Harvard graduate.
They Lion
Who, or what, is "Lion?" Is it an action the people are doing? Is it symbolic of the people?
From “Bow Down” come “Rise Up,”
Is this poem a commentary on the working class and how they will no longer be subservient to the upper echelon of society?
They Lion grow.
What purpose does the grammar of this statement serve? Why is Lion capitalized throughout the poem?
Lion
Lions are the kings of the jungle