III
This last section is extremely tragic. It brought tears to my eyes. This sounds like Allen's declaration to Carl, his best friend in the entire world, someone who means a lot to him. That despite what everyone says or whatever Carl is saying, Allen knows the true Carl and he is with him in spirit and heart.
II
The constant use of exclamation points give me a sense of urgency and anxiety throughout section II. It's like being pushed into a corner.
I
Nearly every line begins with who, the speaker is definitely filled with frustrations as it goes on and on.
I I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
While the speaker begins with "I" and what they witness, the list transcends into a chaos. I see a lot of light contrasted constantly with darkness. It's a really in your face opening.
“Ma Rainey” (1932)
Ma Rainey holds a special place for these people. She is more than just a singer, she understands what the hardships these people go through. "O Ma Rainey, Sing yo’ song; Now you’s back Whah you belong, Git way inside us, Keep us strong. . . ."
She gives them strength.
Ah, little dark girls who in slippered feet Go prowling through the night from street to street!
Little girls prowling. Bending and bartering at desires call. I can only think this isn't a good thing. The later use of half-clad girls makes me think, they are sex workers/prostitutes.
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth, Stealing my breath of life, I will confess I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.
Reads as slam poetry to me. The rhythm and meter is really profound, especially the rhymes. It's full of anger and yet I see the speakers hopes and motivation to rise above the America that puts them through hell.
So the choice is not between one way for the Negro and another way for the rest, but between American institutions frustrated on the one hand and American ideals progressively fulfilled and realized on the other.
A good attack on politics. Politics are typically based on those who will benefit from it. He states how there isn't just one way for African American folks and America itself needs to be restructured as a whole to work for everyone and not just some.
So for generations in the mind of America, the Negro has been more of a formula than a human being –a something to be argued about, condemned or defended, to be “kept down,” or “in his place,” or “helped up,” to be worried with or worried over, harassed or patronized, a social bogey or a social burden.
For some reason I am reminded of the Heart of Darkness. How Africans and African Americans have always been viewed as sub-human. For generations they've been seen as inhuman and rather than people.
“The Weary Blues” (1923)
Soulful and musical. This poem captured the feeling of the blues and conveyed in words its rhythm, melody. The blues is about life and death and the poem illustrates this.
“Harlem” (1951)
I love the way it flowed. A series of questions and answers. The flow and rhyme goes well together. As if one were pondering.
I bathe in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans,* and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I’ve known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers.
I feel like Hughes is alluding how much history these rivers have also seen. From ancient beginnings to the present, we've seen societies come and go and rivers remain. They carry history within their streams and just like himself, his soul and history is within the rivers as well.
Until recently he received almost no encouragement for his work from either white or colored people.
To be a black artist will be a lonely road. There won't be support from either side. Truly disheartening.
I am ashamed, too, for the colored artist who runs from the painting of Negro faces to the painting of sunsets after the manner of the academicians because he fears the strange unwhiteness of his own features. An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he must choose.
Can one be ashamed and not afraid to be authentic to oneself? I don't think it is possible. The artist has to choose to ultimately survive, and sometimes being true to yourself doesn't always pan out.
The Negro artist works against an undertow of sharp criticism and misunderstanding from his own group and unintentional bribes from the whites.
Unfortunately we have a double edged sword here. The negro poet will always have inner turmoil with their own group and the at the same time they are not seeking approval from the whites, but they are judging his craft too. I see a lot of double consciousness throughout this essay.
Comrades here is my hand! Here’s all of me, my friends, brothers in arms and fellow builders! We together through the long transition marching will notch the trees along the way.
This poem changes and becomes about unity in the end. Although times of war are seen as despair and destruction. This poem gives a different perspective compared to the others that revolve around sadness and hopelessness. This poem illustrates that their can be hope and through comradeship.
Death House Blues
The language used in this poem is powerful. I believe the term is now called African American Vernacular English, previously known as Ebonics. I think Gellert is illustrating what it is to be a regular African American living during these times. That African Americans are living in a daily hell and are dying due to being framed and jailed. This isn't written for the average reader, this is for the ones who understand and only those who understand it can relate to it.
Don West, “Southern Lullaby” (For Lillian)
This lullaby is foreshadowing what is to come for this child. The mother is wanting their baby to be strong because the world and odds will be stacked against them. To grow up with a single parent will already be hard as they wont see her tears.
Mike Gold, “Examples of Worker Correspondence”
The use of the color red brings a lot of imagery to life. While red can represent the communist party, I associate red with emotions also like anger and frustration. Red for the hearts that are filled with anger and red for the blood of those who have died. Colors can have a lot of deeper meanings and it shows here.
“Ballad of Lenin”
This poem was amazing for me. The rhyme and the meter flows really well. Langston illustrates the reality of the working class, but specifically people in marginalized communities. I can see why this is radical, no one wants to speak out about the injustices in the world. Quite powerful.
If there were water And no rock If there were rock And also water And water A spring A pool among the rock If there were the sound of water only Not the cicada And dry grass singing But sound of water over a rock Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop But there is no water
The speaker again repeats again here the images of the rocks and water. There is no life, and one can only imagine the sounds of nature. There's a focus on sound. The sounds of water, the sounds of the winds among on the trees, and grass. But it seems like the wasteland is the only thing left.
Here is no water but only rock Rock and no water and the sandy road The road winding above among the mountains Which are mountains of rock without water If there were water we should stop and drink Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand If there were only water amongst the rock
Here is the imagery of a dry barren land. As if the speaker is desperate for any sign of life. There is only rocks, sand, and no water. If only there was water, even the sweat is dry. It sounds and feels like agony.
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
It's easy to get lost in the sea. Just like how it's easy to lose ones direction in life like the wind. These lines remind me of what it is to be lost and to lose ones direction in life.
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
The use of you, is very sudden. Could it be eluding to ourselves as people who are traveling throughout our lives like a ship. We turn our wheels in the direction our lives takes us, like the wind? This line was very mysterious to me.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses, The meal is ended, she is bored and tired, Endeavours to engage her in caresses Which still are unreproved, if undesired. Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; Exploring hands encounter no defence; His vanity requires no response, And makes a welcome of indifference. (And I Tiresias have foresuffered all Enacted on this same divan or bed; I who have sat by Thebes below the wall And walked among the lowest of the dead.) Bestows one final patronising kiss, And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .
There are parts in the poem like this one where there is flow and rhyme. Every other ending word in the lines rhyme. "Guesses/Caresses" "Tired/Undesired" I have these moments where I try to read it differently to see if it sounds different. The writing style sounds and feels weird to me. It's uncomfortable.
The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed. Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song. The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed. And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors; Departed, have left no addresses.
I can't help but, feel like this is what a waste land would look like.
Powerful imagery of life that has been sucked dry and is now deceased. The leaves have sunk, the land is brown, and there's no longer sign of life in the river. People would litter when they spent time at the river. Everyone has left and there is no traces of where they've gone. Truly illustrates a post apocalyptic world for me.
It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said. (She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George.) The chemist said it would be all right, but I’ve never been the same.
While reading these lines. I had immediate thoughts of an unhappy marriage. It’s clear that there isn’t an attraction anymore. Yet, the speaker has to make some kind of façade to make her husband happy, if not he can leave her for others who are willing to make him happy. This refers to sexual gratification. Yet, something that pops into my mind is the The Yellow Wall Paper” when I read these lines. The reference to the chemist and the pills. The speaker said she’s never felt the same, what illness could she have despite a chemist telling her she’s fine?
“My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me. “Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak. “What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? “I never know what you are thinking. Think.” I think we are in rats’ alley Where the dead men lost their bones. “What is that noise?” The wind under the door. “What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?” Nothing again nothing. “Do “You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember “Nothing?”
These lines illustrated paranoia for me. The speaker is clearly distressed. They are talking to someone and themselves. That distress comes out in the repetition with the words “speak”, “think”, “noise”, and “nothing”. That same distress is what illustrates the paranoia. Is it the rats alley? What is the rats alley? If dead men lost their bones here, it gives me the sense that wherever they are isn’t good and there’s a bad omen among them.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson! “You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! “That corpse you planted last year in your garden, “Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? “Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? “Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men, “Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again! “You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”
I find it unique that Eliot uses a different war to reference what is currently WW1. What is interesting is the the dead body buried in the garden. Could it be that wars and death are one of the many things that happen even in places that are considered ones home. The use of french is also weird. There's a lot of outside references coming into the text.
There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Can't help but notice Eliot repeats the word "shadow" 4 times here. Shadow under the rock and "your shadow".
This poem is so dry as in everything is dead. There are only shadows from rocks and the shadow of a person. Similar to a desert, very dry and there's only dust.
Push sea push sea push sea push sea push sea push sea push sea push sea.
There's so much alliteration throughout the poem in this line and latedr with pat ten patent and the breaking of words.
“Sacred Emily” (1922)
this poem is so strange, there's so much repetition in various and even after reading it many times, I don't understand it.
they grew used to him, and so, at last, took him for their friend and adviser.
does the narrator remind the parents that their child has lice? Later it implies their hatred towards economic class difference.
Eventually does the family of the children accept the physician for who they are and accept them as a friend and adviser?
“This is just to say” (1934)
This poem implies a confession. A confession to themselves and not directed towards the owner of the plums.
Was it intentional or unintended?
Direct treatment of the “thing” whether subjective or objective. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation. As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.
Coming up with principles to create a new style and form of poetry and these are some of the attributes it must contain?
“In a Station of the Metro” (1913) The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.
The juxtaposition stands out so much. From the title to the contents of the poem. Comparing a train/metro and people to petals on a limb of tree. Could it be the existence between nature and industrialization.
To lay aside the lever and the spade
I can't help but feels there's a bigger meaning here. Could the spade represent digging ones own grave? And the lever to lower oneself into it?
“Here lies, and none mourn him” (1934)
Seems like the narrator is the only one that mourns the death of this unknown man, despite saying only the sea does.
“Love Is Not All” (1931)
It's interesting that the title implies love isn't everything. Yet, towards the end of the poem, the speaker implies they wouldn't trade love for some of life's basic necessities and more. Is love that powerful that they would give up themselves in a sense for it?
“Design” (1936)
The speaker definitely repeats the color white several times. White moth, white cloth, white flower, it conjures up bright white imagery, but then the contrast with blue and darkness also is confusing.
He will not see me stopping here
In this initial part of the poem we have a problem. The narrator wants to stop by the woods, but he has promises to keep.
It seems like he's having a hesitant moment about having to leave, but wanting to stay. It seems that he's been here before, there's another story among these woods.
At ninety–six I had lived enough, that is all, And passed to a sweet repose. What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness, Anger, discontent and drooping hopes? Degenerate sons and daughters, Life is too strong for you– It takes life to love Life.
I think the author is referring to how it takes all of ones energy to enjoy and love life for what it is. While their is sorrow, weariness, and of the negative, there's more to it.
Life is only as mundane as one makes it.
The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished; And what is love but a rose that fades? L
A lot of these texts refer to time, things that come to life and how it will all die and fade away. Is this a response to world changing and modernism slowly making it's way into the world?
“Mr. Flood’s Party” (1920)
As I read the poem aloud, their was certain instances where the rhyme and meter flowed really well. Yet their was times where it seems to be abrupt interruptions. It felt as if I was skipping along and immediately tripped in some places.
I also see similar themes about time. The theme of how time has passed and changed things. The past is no longer what it was and trying to create meaning in the world.
Poets and kings are but the clerks of Time, Tiering the same dull webs of discontent, Clipping the same sad alnage of the years.
Famous poets and kings go down in history and become immortalized therefore go on forever in our timelines, but by the use of alnage, could it be that they are just the same as everyone who was?
"And just as human as they ever were"
Perhaps the author alluding that these poets and kings are just mere products of change? Just like everyone else who has to live through it/experience it.
I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time. Of course I don’t when John is here, or anybody else, but when I am alone.
Mary is in a position where she is trapped. She cannot even properly express her emotions when John is around or he threatens to send her off to Weir Mitchell..
Gilman really illustrates the emotional prison that Mary is in within her mind, on top of her own home that is already a prison in itself...
I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort, and here I am a comparative burden already! Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able,—to dress and entertain, and order things. It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby! And yet I CANNOT be with him, it makes me so nervous.
Mary feels guilty that she cannot be a good wife to John. She is the burden and is unable to do daily tasks without John. On top of that, John has separated her from her baby too, which makes her even more nervous.
It seems as if John in an attempt to help Mary, is only making things worse overtime. But since he is the dominant one in the house hold, he calls the shots and has control over her life.
I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more.
I sense traces of Stockholm Syndrome from Mary. That Mary feels somewhat guilty that John spends so much taking care of her and has her on a schedule for her prescription. She feels as if she should be more grateful, yet John restricts her from doing the things she longs to do.
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?
It's as if Mary is being medicalized by her own husband. It's the notion of "I know what is best for you" coming from John. It is clear that the male patriarchy is a dominant force within this text. As Mary seems to be victim of her husband enforcing what he wants for her, versus how she feels. She explicitly says she is sick, but he seems to be head of the household so it is his words versus her own.
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
America has always been promoted as a land of opportunity. Yet, these opportunities have never been fair. The use of "poor race" illustrates the how America was built upon racism and equal opportunities were never an option for African Americans even after emancipation. This is the most difficult hardships, because you are set up to not succeed and most likely to stay at the bottom.
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.
This passage is so profound. Du Bois illustrates the struggles that African Americans face in America. That struggle is maintaining their identity as Africans and yet the struggle of wanting to refine their identities in a country where they are oppressed by white Americanism. In a world where it seems that both identities will always be at war with each other due to their own fellows and the oppressors themselves. It's a catch 22. Therefore how does the American Negro find peace within themselves?
In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the boys’ and girls’ heads to buy gorgeous visiting-cards—ten cents a package—and exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card,—refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows.
In this moment as a child, Du Bois begins to experience what is to be different. Once rejected by the girl, he realizes that they are different. He illustrates when the shadow came and swept him. The language itself is full of imagery, being shut out from the world and instead of rejecting the darkness of the world, he beings to embrace the veil. It's when his double consciousness comes to life.
Adams began to ponder, asking himself whether he knew of any American artist who had ever insisted on the power of sex, as every classic had always done; but he could think only of Walt Whitman; Bret Harte, as far as the magazines would let him venture; and one or two painters, for the flesh-tones. All the rest had used sex for sentiment, never for force; to them, Eve was a tender flower, and Herodias an unfeminine horror. American art, like the American language and American education, was as far as possible sexless. Society regarded this victory over sex as its greatest triumph, and the historian readily admitted it, since the moral issue, for the moment, did not concern one who was studying the relations of unmoral force. He cared nothing for the sex of the dynamo until he could measure its energy.
This passage on power of sex is interesting, women in art were only used for artists way of expressing their own personal experiences with women and their bodies, and how American culture attempts to censor that? For the sake of morals? His examples of Eve illustrate that she was a tender flower, but if really analyzed, she is more than a flower. She is a person with a story and to be summed up to a flower is a good critique of how America has perceived women in the past as sometimes mere objects.
Adams, for one, had toiled in vain to find out what he meant. He had even published a dozen volumes of American history for no other purpose than to satisfy himself whether, by severest process of stating, with the least possible comment, such facts as seemed sure, in such order as seemed rigorously consequent, he could fix for a familiar moment a necessary sequence of human movement. The result had satisfied him as little as at Harvard College. Where he saw sequence, other men saw something quite different, and no one saw the same unit of measure. He cared little about his experiments and less about his statesmen, who seemed to him quite as ignorant as himself and, as a rule, no more honest; but he insisted on a relation of sequence, and if he could not reach it by one method, he would try as many methods as science knew. Satisfied that the sequence of men led to nothing and that the sequence of their society could lead no further, while the mere sequence of time was artificial, and the sequence of thought was chaos, he turned at last to the sequence of force; and thus it happened that, after ten years’ pursuit, he found himself lying in the Gallery of Machines at the Great Exposition of 1900, his historical neck broken by the sudden irruption of forces totally new.
It is clear that Adams is obsessed with sequence. To the point where it is chaos in his life, because it gives little to no satisfaction despite working on various historical sequences for long periods of time. It's interesting watching Adams, watching himself and critiquing himself and yet trying to deconstruct these sequences to their bare bones, since he only wants the facts and to be sure of them. Yet, towards the end of this passage he starts to doubt himself once he struggles and the insecurity beings to show.
Among the thousand symbols of ultimate energy the dynamo was not so human as some, but it was the most expressive.
Adams refers to the dynamo as a symbol of infinity previously and now how its energy is something that will exist for eternities and surpass humans. Despite it not being human, it is unique how Adams in sense personifies this machinery as expressive as humans and even more. Which illustrates the transition of simpler times to something becoming modern and in sense how this change is beyond mankind and super natural in a way.