A powerful twist that truly illustrates the horror of the south through the experiences of Black people, a subject matter of many poems we've read throughout the semester

Also like Hughes, there is an emphasis on the cultural significance of the blues

Like Langston Hughes, Brown likes to include the vernacular of the "low-down" folks

This is the other side of the coin that Langston Hughes was talking about, that to focus on racial issues is actually perpetuating the view that Black people are a "social problem" instead of individual people.

That seems like a slippery slope, do those assumptions necessarily follow?

Theme of entrapment/ no escape from the cycle, like in The Wasteland and The Yellow Wallpaper

Like in The Wasteland and Spoon River there are multiple narrators who are dead, who still have something to say. This line, like most of our previous readings, feels zombie-like.

Similar to the other poems we've been reading, like "The Wasteland," this poem talks about commemoration and refusal to be forgotten (to live on in memory).

Continuous allusion to Greek myth throughout the poem

The repetition of this phrase really adds to the eeriness and suspense of the section

Alluding to the Phoenician sailor again

It's an overwhelming atmosphere, you feel like you're almost choking on the oppressive smells

a garden in Munich

a big lake in Germany, near Munich

Often confused with poison hemlock.

This flower symbolizes “delicate attention,” which could be taken to mean caution or restraint

But this might happen for some and not for others with different works

He's definitely being sarcastic, he obviously has some disdain for the new discourse

Is he being a little sarcastic here?

Is he talking about specific people? Maybe he's saying that the Metro is the dreary black bough, through which so many people (petals) drift quickly and aimlessly through

Is this talking about armor? Is this poem saying something about the futility of war?

No matter how useless/futile it seems to her, she still wouldn't trade it for practicalities

The poem is a Shakespearean sonnet: it has 14 lines, is in iambic pentameter, has two quatrains and ends in a couplet.

Oh the speaker is offended that the neighbor put up the wall in the first place?

I wonder what the significance of the 'spell' is? Maybe having fun with the futility of fixing the wall?

Is this about an actual wall that is crumbling due to weathering?

This poem is pretty depressing, the classic story of small town people having big dreams but ending up working at the drug store on the corner anyway, reliving the "good old days".

This seems to be the only poem where the speaker was not only satisfied but really happy with her life. She wants others to share in her contentedness.

He believes knowledge is true power and the library represented knowledge to him. So I think he feels that they took away the only power of sincerity in Spoon River and now that it's gone, Spoon River is doomed.

This line is repeated from the beginning I think to show just how boring and repetitive this same old poetry really gets, on top of the already dry and monotonous seed noise metaphor

Seems like he's mocking the common tropes in basic poetry, that the popular imagery of snow and roses is way overplayed

This last bit gave me the chills, she's so creepy!

I wonder what this means, does she believe she came out of the wallpaper?

So earlier she noticed that the bed was gnawed in places, and yet she takes a bite out of it. Everything she seems to have noticed about the room that made her uneasy at first, she is beginning to do, like ripping up the wallpaper. Making me think more so that this room probably housed mental patients, as she's clearly going off the deep end at this point.

She's finally showing some bitterness toward John, now that, in her mind, he's preventing her from "seeing through" the wallpaper to find the woman.

Ironic since she's so affected by the wall paper as well

The fact that the bed is nailed down, that the windows are barred, and that there are scratches on the wall and floor makes me feel like this room once housed someone against their will. Maybe another "patient" like the main character

This is so clearly depression, and from the next line, it looks like postpartum

She even cuts herself off here! She knows exactly what her husband would say

Her romantic side comes out here, she's certain that a little excitement would do her some good, but because she's a woman (whose husband and brother are doctors) she knows her opinion matters very little, if at all.

John is not a nice husband, he not only doesn't listen to her but he openly laughs at her thoughts as well. This really shows how little the woman's opinion matters, how little respect they garner, which we see throughout the rest of this piece.

She already seems very romantic, maybe unsatisfied with her life, foreshadowing her downward spiral

an unfair perpetual advantage

I wonder what he meant by capitalizing opportunity, is he making it an entity/ a physical space instead of a concept? Why?

Foreshadowing for how he later dedicates himself to being better ?

His frankness in this first paragraph, as well as throughout the whole chapter, is powerful. It's shocking in its honesty, forcing the reader to confront head on something that might be difficult to consider.

Continually uses language like this, giving science a more human feel, trying to get over how alien/fictional it all feels.

Does he keep relating religion to technology because he sees but does not understand the attracting forces that pull so many people to each?

the power that motivates intellectual advancement

This is such a powerful line, and this sentiment is definitely echoed throughout time as one of the main issues people have with public education

like from necessity to political gain?

Talking about the pollution that comes with progress ?