The horribly racist and segregated america of this time was certainly a sort of hell for many people of color.

This poem theatrically discusses the absolute torture and immorality of slavery and the unrelentingly oppressive decades that immediately followed. Here he references specific locations in the U.S., as well as Rome to show that brutal slavery has been happening for centuries. It is truly hard to imagine the depths of hell that these slaves endured.

It's interesting that he seems to often divides his poems into sections, signified by roman numerals. His poetry is quite narrative so these seem to be poetic chapters. This is sort of funny because this poetic style makes me think of people like Dante and Eliot, who are poets that he is most certainly trying to get away from. Although, more probably, he is potentially paying homage to this formalist style, using it to juxtapose his colloquial diction.

Until this final stanza it seems like the "strong men" he is referencing are white colonists, slave owners, and systemic oppression in general. The inclusion of this stanza clarifies that he is, in fact, celebrating the enduring strength of the black community, and the individual, throughout time.

I think it may be said without very much contention that Langston Hughes would have absolutely considered Sterling Brown to be somebody who has embraced black American culture and subsequently carved out his own space in both the black community and the related community of greater America. Like the singing of Paul Robeson that Hughes remarks upon in "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain", Brown's poetry is at once "distinctly racial" in that it communicates sentiments that are specific to the African American community with syntax and diction that recall the blues, gospel, and a tragic, but powerful history.

This is a great reference to Langston Hughes. This demonstrates the support and intimacy of this intellectual community.

The issue with adopting traditional Anglo church hymns is really a point of issue for these authors. I don't think I've paid attention to that before.

Hughes structures this poem so that the two stanzas reflect the juxtaposition of the Bluesman himself.The first one celebrates his beauty, talent, and energy, while the second stanza reveals/hones in on the sadness and suffering that is behind it. Though Hughes is obviously lamenting this dichotomy (something he feels is common amongst black people in America, according to his essay), he is also celebrating the beauty it manifests. Also, I think this quotation emphasizes how much Langston Hughes was keyed in to contemporary poetry (and literature in general), because I recently learned that "The Waste Land" was one of the first popular poems to use quotations, which was published just a year before this piece. Before that it was really only done by Marianne Moore apparently.

I love this poem and have discussed this line in particular at length in other English and creative writing classes. This idea of "a dream deferred" encapsulates a huge greivance put upon the black community, especially at the time. This constraint on one's aspirations, or "dreams", as a result political and socioeconomic limitations is horribly unjust and I think Hughes gets at the real frustration of being in such a position with the last line of this poem.

I think this poem is complementary to the ideas Hughes is discussing in The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain. Both speak of Langston Hughes firm belief that the black community was slowly but surely breaking its way into mass culture/society and that an idea of "blackness" should be celebrated and reveled in. This poem is a beautiful and strong statement regarding individuality and self worth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0bezsMVU7c

This video is quite bizarre. The announcer referring to him as a "Negro singer and actor" speaks to the limits that the young poet in the story at the start of this essay was wanting to escape. I had never heard of Paul Robeson before but his singing is amazing (hauntingly beautiful for some reason).

Hughes is doing exactly this. In and of itself, his rhetoric props up socioeconomic barriers, encourages systematically created differences, and patronizes the highly complex and varying responses of the black community. This is why I prefer authors like Baldwin and W.E.B. Du Bois. I empathize with the condemnation of widespread inferiority complexes that result from generations of oppression, but it seems bizarre to describe these various groups of people in the way Langston Highes does. He should condemn the "color line" that is drawn while condemning it with his very diction and syntax.

Though the first paragraph is arguably a bad start to this essay, this second paragraph is quite interesting. I think that Hughes is addressing a very important aspect of black culture, and of being black in a daly sense, that was quintessential to the black experience during his time and continues to have negative effects on the present. The imposed sense of self-loathing that he is discussing is extremely important in understanding contemporary expressions of blackness, as well as a variety of socioeconomic stereotypes. This made me think, of course, of Pecola's tragic obsession with whiteness (the literal color) in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

I think, hopefully, that what Hughes is trying to get at is the absolute agency afforded to white people. Rather than turning away from the potential limitations of a "Negro artist", Hughes is encouraging him to revel in them and to celebrate the identity that the young poet is frustrated by.

Why does he choose to capitalize "hyacinth" this time? Knowing Eliot, there's no way it's purely for emphasis. It must be some reference.

Williams seems to discourage a trust in institutions, at least for the lower classes, in this poem.

This is a powerful last line. It seems to acknowledge and lament the isolation of modern american/western society. With existential overtones, it also recognizes a complete sense of individual agency. This reflects the departure from religion/faith, the increased awareness of violence and poverty, and the subsequent sense of instability that defined the time of William Carlos Williams and was reflected in the condition of the 20th century American. Williams also potentially suggests that there is no one to drive the metaphorical car except for oneself. Simultaneously, he is perhaps commenting on the isolationism of the United States and the futility of attempting to maintain a moral society (No one/ to witness/ and adjust...) in the 20th century (all things considered).

If we accept that Elsie is a direct metaphor for America, these three lines seem to be an especially cutting criticism. Williams appears to be calling out the U.S.'s capitalist tendencies (especially in regards to overproduction and the cheapening of products/commodities) and it's characteristically superficial pop culture.

Elsie is a great personification of America.

Max Ernst "Max Ernst Showing A Young Girl The Head Of His Father"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSmXAG2mYY4

When discussing the working class, and Bill Tots as a character, the author makes use of a largely abhorrent diction. Even the description of his yell in this section is described as "enearthly" and, hilariously, "uncultured".

The sentiment brings to mind the theme of Gilman's "The Yellow Wall". This is due to the metaphor of a house divided. While Gilman works with this metaphor more literally, the theme of division, in a societal and more personal sense, is ever-present.

The author has repeatedly used the word "generalize" pointing, most probably, to the many issues that result from generalizations, but also acknowledging how common they are. Of the many examples of the literal and figurative use of "generalizations" throughout the text, this is a favorite of mine. This is a tongue in cheek comment in which the author is condemning sociologists and those that shape our understanding of the people/societal groups around us.

The enjambment of this line, ending with "starred", recalls the previous theme of the ruined "beauty Abishag".

This is obviously tongue in cheek advice, but a somewhat genuine sentiment still remains regarding Frost's fear of one's name/legacy becoming spoiled. With age comes more time to ruin one's own reputation, as well as just the very facts of old age.

Frost is recognizing the randomness and interconnected nature of death and its supposed "design". He does not even paint the spider as a particularly antagonistic character, describing him as "dimpled", in fact. He also never holds any one aspect of the "design" accountable, nor assumes that he could possibly understand it. Therefore, I believe the speaker is subtly asserting that there actually is no design. The penultimate line accents this beautifully.

I believe Edgar Lee Masters is the speaker, that is he is "Petit, the Poet". The name is potentially a comment on the fact that Masters feels small and helpless to the power, pervasiveness, and complex force that is poetry, Taylorism, and time.

Edgar Lee Masters seems especially dejected, if not outraged, in these final three lines. He is simultaneously lamenting the overwhelming ever-presence of poetry in his life and also wishing for the ability to appreciate the natural, simple things of the world, at once asserting that these things are better or more pure with his belittling "...what little iambics,/". He appears to be raging against time with his use of the onomatopoeia "Tick, tick, tick". Time, as poetry, is ever present and rushes on, perhaps preventing Petit from stopping to smell the proverbial flowers. Just as annoying as the presence of time is the sound of a watch, or rather a machine. I make this comment because the poem is published just after the industrial revolution. Thus, Edgar Lee Masters very well may be correlating the aforementioned themes regarding poetry and time, with the dizzying and sudden presence of mass production, Taylorism, and the like. He desperately craves escape from this constant bombardment, again, ultimately praising Homer and Whitman in finding tranquility in nature.