Not strong black men, just “strong men.” Like Hughes’ “I, Too, Sing America,” declaring “I, too, am America.” Men (and Women), Americans, America

So rhythmic, like Hughes' poetry (most notably “The Weary Blues”), and of course sounds best when read aloud.

Similar to Hughes' ending line in “Harlem” regarding the “dream deferred,” where it is asked: “Or does it explode?” These are both extremely powerful and defiant inferences at the end, finishing with fair warning.

... They feed they lion ...

The “march” to “tomorrow” seems to be Locke’s call for black people to move forward and create progress, leaving the forms behind because the forms will not be changed or altered.

Rather than forms...

Is “being himself” being black or just bypassing the oppressive forms of society?

This ending has an explicit call to change that is similar of Eliot’s more subtle call for change at the end of The Waste Land

This dead child (or just death itself) matches up with the Phoenician Sailor in The Waste Land. Both deaths are a central part of their respective works. It’s almost if something happens after death, as if dying signals or triggers something

“April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.”

The recurrence of this closing time announcement is signifying it is time to go, time has expired, yet the people linger like a ghost or a zombie

At a loss regarding the present, this again points to the zombie motif (or the in betweenness motif). This speaker is stuck between past and future, unable to make anything of the current moment

Alluding to the zombie motif. Between life and death, having a functioning head but at the same time an empty head.

I immediately think of images of mountains being representative of the place of death. I think directly of Hemingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”

This image of being buried in “forgetful snow” could point to either a time before or after humanity, possibly underlining the warmth or peace that exists without humanity. There’s something eerily peaceful about the silence of death

What a terrifyingly powerful line... one’s own death is the ultimate fear

Something brings me back to the Twilight Zone https://youtu.be/zDtCTljduv0

https://youtu.be/KEZIYPjQnUg

https://youtu.be/Ns6WSrE1oIo

This needs to be printed and hung in every high school poetry class. Don’t try to make something useless look like something useful

We can’t go two seconds without finding a word or phrase that pertains to ghosts for any of our readings

I think the speaker refers to the flowers thorns as armor because those thorns are a kind of barrier, fragmenting the beauty of the rose up by making it untouchable. Could this have anything to do with society's barriers on females regarding sexuality and a need for liberation? This is Millay after all...

Cortex is defined as “the outer layer of the cerebrum (the cerebral cortex ), composed of folded gray matter and playing an important role in consciousness.”

The neighbor seems so keen on this notion. Is a “good fence” the separation of individuality? Is that differentiation good, to accept one for who they are by fully accepting a difference? That difference being the wall?

The repetition of this line emphasizes the notion of sleepiness. Repetition has a lulling effect

Sounds like a bit of paranoia. Why worry about what the horse is thinking?

If this is supposed to be good advice then why say it with a sigh? The sigh creates doubt in what the speaker is saying.

No you didn’t. But who does?

Monotony; we always repeat ourselves throughout the years

Homer wrote in unrhymed dactylic hexameter and Whitman was The Godfather of free verse poetry. Do we not have to fully imitate the Nature’s “iambics” of nature to create beautiful poetry?

An existentialist viewpoint. Good and evil, truth and fallacy are not inherently embedded in the world, but rather in the consciousness of the people inhabiting the world, who, with that consciousness, can classify and pin what is good, what is bad, what is true, what is false, etc. The focus of this poem also seems to defend literature; and what literature does is help make some sense of this absurd world.

Only underlining the fact that this room is a prison which points to the idea of two-ness. The room is where she resides but it is also where she is withheld. The bars represent a veil of sorts

Here we sort of see a case of double consciousness—one, she’s the woman, the other half, in the matrimonial bond, but through the eyes of her husband she is worthy of being laughed at and belittled.

A moment of triumph over the oppressor. She had to pass over him to be liberated

Not only do these questions dodge the actual, inherently divisive perspectives but they solidify them in normalcy which not only lacks in fixing issues but also allows the issues to seep deeper into society’s core

In Exodus, God bestowed the Israelites with a pillar of fire to give light during the night as they ventured through the desert

Does the term “African-American” somehow illustrate the unfortunate reality of double consciousness? Though they are heard from time to time, terms like “Italian-American” or “French-American” are less common, implying that there need not be any, or as much, clarification for white people pertaining to their nationhood as Americans, but for black people we see more clarification, more spotlight on pigment.

The alienation of double conciousness

Again, hitting that theme of how profoundly impactful the surge of science and technology was on people’s lives in this transitional time. Each hint at this theme occurs one after the other, similarly to the frequent introductions of new advancements in the years surrounding the start of the 20th century.

Perhaps a growing sentiment in the 19th Century... think of Walt Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”: there is a monotony felt by the speaker in regards to the “learn’d astronomer” and perhaps the education system as a whole. Education is about conviction in regards to knowledge, and a hunger to apply what is learned into real life. Education is not about complacency and lazy attention to detail.

Adams is all on his own in this time of transition. This new era of scientific/technological breakthrough is isolating as it reminds Adams that the world, no matter how sure he may be of himself, is out of his control and will always continue to trudge forward even if that means running him over

Considering this was written following Detroit's race riots of the 1960s, this mention of “white sins” could be an allusion to that. White sins could be the injustice white people can inflict, or it could simply be the inequity amongst racial groups stemming from oppression and privilege. Saying they are forgiven, however, possibly points to a rebellious coming-together of the working class in order to stand up to the government, the establishment, “the man” or how ever one chooses to put it. Regardless of who it is pointed at there is undoubtedly a deeply rooted anger emanating from the working class.

Saying “They feed they Lion” really means “they feed their lion” and by saying this it implies some sort of captivity. Lions, generally speaking, are not the ideal candidates for being domesticated pets so it is safe to assume that this lion is held against its will. The city of Detroit (no coincidence that their football team is the Lions) is a prison for its people by keeping them with options for work but punishing them with a mix of hard labor and poverty thus evoking their anger which mirrors the ferociousness of a lion.