The quotation marks around "over there" caught my attention, as we don't see this punctuation anywhere else in this stanza or the previous one.

The second stanza of the poem describes how the "darky," as the narrator calls him, is dressed and dances. The third stanza describes how the narrator believes the man might look if he were dancing in a jungle instead of on Seventh Avenue. The comparison of the hypothetical spear with which the jungle version of the man is dancing to "the bayonets" they had "over there" is hard to ignore.

Given that the poem was published in 1927, my first assumption is that "over there" is referring to Europe, and "the bayonets" are referring to the actual bayonets used in Europe by African American soldiers during WWI. That would certainly give this seemingly out-of-place line more weight, and perhaps even add more gravity to the poem as a whole.

These two couplets are by far the most religiously imbued lines of "Interracial." Much of the poem seems straightforward and maybe even largely explained by its title, but these four lines aren't quite as transparent to me.

Wearing "the thorns" might be a reference to the crown of thorns worn by Jesus according to the Bible, but the overall meaning of these lines is eluding me. Is "Commune—" a command? What will the altars reveal? What will impulse us to kneel and send a prayer? Who is wearing the thorns today, and was someone different wearing them yesterday? Will someone else be wearing them tomorrow?

Perhaps there are more important ideas to glean from this poem, but noting the experiences of the 369th Infantry Regiment in WWI seems very relevant.

The First World War, of course, has gone down in history for its unprecedented horrors. But the men of the 369th ("known for being one of the first African-American regiments to serve with the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I") suffered worse than most. Right away on the 369th's Wikipedia page, you see that they "spent 191 days in frontline trenches, more than any other American unit. They also suffered the most losses of any American regiment, with 1,500 casualties."

The 369th Regiment had been part of the New York Army National Guard and was organized in New York City. They acquired many nicknames, but the one that stuck was "Höllenkämpfer," or "Hell-fighters," from the Germans. Today the regiment is commonly referred to as the Harlem Hellfighters.

Nelson wrote "I Sit and Sew" in 1918, the year that the Harlem Hellfighters did their fighting in Europe, and was published in 1919 or 1920, after their return. It seems likely that some of the terrifying images of pain and death, the poignant scenes of war, and the depictions of what we would today refer to as post-traumatic stress disorders in the surviving war veterans that Nelson paints were informed by her connections to members of the Harlem Hellfighters.

I was a little confused by Bennett beginning this poem with the imagery of the palm-trees, given our focus right now on the Harlem Renaissance. I went to her Wikipedia page and learned that she was born in Giddings, TX, spent her early childhood in Wadsworth, NV, grew up in DC, Pennsylvania, and New York, studied in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Paris, taught in DC, was associated with the Harlem Renaissance, and finally died in Reading, PA. My point being, I wouldn't associate any of those locations with palm-trees. When I think of palm-trees in the United States, I think of Hawaii, California, the Southern states, or the Texas Gulf Coast. So, it seemed odd to me for the poem to focus on them in the very first line.

Of course, after reading the rest of the poem, it is clear from "sands," "Sphinx," "Lotus flow'r," and "Nile" that "Heritage" is centered around Egypt, and the placement of "palm-trees" makes more sense.

This is interesting to me, thinking back to the chapter we read from The Souls of Black Folk by Du Bois (published twenty years before "Heritage") that we read earlier in the semester. My annotations for that chapter focused mostly on the imagery Du Bois provoked comparing the slavery the Israelites endured in Egypt according to the Bible to the slavery African Americans were subjected to in America. It is fascinating to see how the writers each use the setting of Egypt, but do so very differently.

A dream being deferred didn’t sound like so bad of a thing as I read the first line of the poem. As individuals, we have all likely experienced the disappointment of putting something important to us on hold for a time. But at least the dream in the poem is only deferred, not altogether canceled.

These lines paint a different picture, perhaps illustrating the poet’s point of view. A sore festering and then running is a very unpleasant image. Looking at when the this poem was published, 1951, and when the Harlem Renaissance more or less ended, in the 1930s, it makes sense that Hughes would have some bitter feelings toward the still unfulfilled dreams and ambitions of decades past.

I was very curious about this avenue, the only location mentioned in the poem clearly and unambiguously. I realized no amount of close reading could answer that, so I went on Wikipedia and found this: “The avenue was the heart of Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s.”

It seems Hughes wanted to make sure there weren’t any misunderstandings about where the piano player in the poem was playing at, not Baltimore or Philadelphia or the South, but right at the center of the Harlem Renaissance in New York. With that in mind, it seems clear that the piano player isn’t just a curiosity or an anomaly, but a central protagonist, maybe even representative of the Harlem Renaissance as a whole.

The essay begins provocatively, effectively drawing the reader in with its opening arguments in the first paragraph. The first sentence of the whole essay in particular invites challenge. Hughes likely realized that, alone and without context, interpreting the "I want to be a poet–not a Negro poet" statement from the promising young poet as "I would like to be white" is a stretch, maybe even a logical fallacy of a sort.

But the point Hughes is making is deeper than a surface level examination, and he proves his point throughout the essay. He starts by looking "at the immediate background of this young poet." Only halfway through the second paragraph, a skeptical reader is likely to already start coming around to Hughes's point of view. With black parents who actively and continually plant in their children's minds the ideas that they shouldn't act like members of their own race and should emulate white men, the "I want to be a poet–not a Negro poet" claim becomes far less innocuous.

I also think that Hughes, by starting his essay by putting words in "the young Negro" poet's mouth, but then effectively justifying that interpretation of the poet's actual words with his knowledge of where the poet comes from, establishes himself in this essay as an authority who can not only make bold claims, but can also back them up.

Interestingly, Hughes suggests that it is not the responsibility of the "Negro Artist" alone to move beyond poetry and art that simply mimic "Nordic" preferences and traditions, but also his community's responsibility. Some part of the "racial mountain," according to Hughes, seems to be imposed by other black people, who encourage the "Negro Artist" to create poetry and art that are conventional and conform to the expectations of the whites (who will underappreciate the results anyway). Hughes argues for this attitude to drastically change, especially among the more cultured and wealthy, who he earlier in the essay called "the Nordicized Negro intelligentsia."

From the perspective of a student reading an essay, I was caught by this sentence and found it by far the least persuasive of an otherwise very persuasive essay. Hughes acknowledges, with a tone that I can't help but construe as begrudging, the importance of artistic freedom. Then in the very same sentence, he uses the contrasting conjunction "but" to contradict his minimalistic support for artistic freedom and claims that the artist can't "be afraid to do what he must choose." If Hughes wants to allow that an "artist must be free to choose what he does," how can he also argue that an artist "must choose" anything?

I comprehend his greater point, that the "colored artist" who chooses to paint sunsets over "Negro faces" is actually being subconsciously influenced by his internalized racism, and that this is an endemic problem among his people.

However, this sentence is just so blatantly weak from an argumentative standpoint, especially being at the end of a paragraph. Why does Hughes think the "colored artist" in his example "must choose" to paint "Negro faces" over sunsets? I can think of a number of perfectly valid reasons, but Hughes doesn't present any of them, where I feel there is a great opportunity to have done so. It's even one of the shortest paragraphs in the essay: there was plenty of room to develop his point as expertly as he did in the rest of his powerful essay, instead of ending the paragraph with what I perceive as a self-contradicting sentence.

The last characteristic of Locke's "New Negro" that I was personally fascinated by was the growth from slavery, poverty, and persecution into individuals who are finally being recognized for their cultural, artistic, and musical contributions, among other social accomplishments, and that such impressive achievements are directly improving race relations.

The second of the three characteristics I found most intriguing of those Locke describes of his "New Negro" is that they are becoming politically active internationally, joining causes with other oppressed nonwhite people around the globe, and are becoming generally more aware of their potential in the wider world, particularly in Africa.

I decided to focus my annotations on the three characteristics of the "New Negro," according to Locke, which I found the most interesting. The characteristic seen here is that Locke's "New Negro" desires equality and goodwill to exist between the races and for steps to be taken toward that goal, far more than they want animosity or revenge, even though such reactions would have been logical.

Unlike the Thames sailing barges with their wide sails swinging on heavy spars, the references to Shakespeare's The Tempest and its titular storm and resulting shipwreck, or Phlebas the drowned Phoenician sailor, the sailing in this stanza is easygoing and on calm seas.

Damyata is supposed to bring to mind the virtue of self-control, and we even see this stanza end with "controlling hands." The boat responds easily to the sailor's hands. Here we have a much more pleasant image of sailing, as practiced by the sailor practicing calmness and self-control, than we did with Phlebas the Phoenician and his strongly contrasting wicked cards, pearls for eyes, doomed pursuit of profit, and overall hedonism.

Another sailing metaphor. Turning to windward has to be done carefully, to avoid ending up in irons and stopped by the wind. Even if the sailor (or the reader, here) is not making a full tack through the wind, turning toward windward means sailing close-hauled, which can be more difficult to manage properly than some other points of sail.

The imagery here is of a sailor, possibly the reader, on a voyage, a journey possibly representing one's life altogether. The "you" the narrator is addressing is in control of the ship, and therefore, responsible for its course. Decisions have to be made, some of them bold ones. Phlebas the Phoenician may be purposely reminiscent of Plato's Philebus, who advocated for the value of hedonism. Whatever Phlebas's decisions, hedonistic or not, he ended up drowning.

By the time of The Waste Land's publishing, the peak economic activity of the Thames sailing barges was in the past; or at the very least, their forthcoming decline would have been obvious. So in Eliot's inclusion of them here, the sailboats could be a symbol of the recent past, or of impending technological changes.

The word choices in this stanza also imply some difficulty or hard labor on the part of the sailors. The river "sweats," the spar is "heavy," and the sails being "wide to leeward" would mean they are sailing at a broad reach, by no means the easiest or the fastest point of sail.

In the middle of the first stanza of this first section of the poem, the narrator seems to be warmly recalling a summer of rain showers and sunlight in Bavaria. By the final stanza, we are definitely not in a bright Munich, but clearly in a very dark, wintry London.

So what is Eliot trying to convey with the imagery of roots and branches growing, or trying to grow, out "of this stony rubbish?"

When reading these two lines, I pictured weeds struggling to grow in the cracks of a city sidewalk. Knowing that parts of this first section of the poem is centered in London where Eliot lived, I get the sense of this being a criticism of the urban culture of his time, the lack of meaningfulness, cultural enrichment, spirituality, or healthy growth. Just as there was little physical nourishment for plant life in the modern cities of the early 20th century, there seems to be little in the way of more metaphysical nourishment for the people who lived in them.

I also feel the idea of vegetation struggling to grow in "stony rubbish" is a little reminiscent of the "Parable of the Sower" found in most of the gospels (especially with the "Son of man" phrase in this stanza as well). In it, the sower scatters seeds, some of which land on stony ground. The seeds that land on stony ground sprout up quickly, but the plant soon dies because there is no soil and so no way to take root.

But, what else could the poet be communicating with this image?

As if being the last stanza of the poem was not attention-grabbing enough, this is the only stanza of the poem where the first line has less than three words (and there are usually even more words in the first lines of each stanza, as many seven, such as in the penultimate stanza).

Furthermore, this final stanza is also the only one where the second line is longer than either the first or the third line.

As seen in the other poems here, Williams is highly conscious of form, and I doubt the inherent differences of this final stanza are incidental. I suspect that this final stanza is the most important of the poem to Williams, and that everything else is largely building to this emotionally packed and meaning filled final statement.

Using the words "promiscuity," "lust," and "slatterns" imbues these three stanzas with a sexual charge, and not necessarily with corresponding positive connotations. The choice of the word "slattern" instead of any other gentler synonym for prostitute makes this clear enough, but describing them as "bathed in filth" really provides a bleak view of these women.

In the prior stanza though, the "devil-may-care men" avoid much of the negative imagery the "slatterns" are burdened with. In fact, the whole concept of a railroad tramp was and is highly romanticized in American literature. The Wikipedia page for "Freighthopping" features a 1916 picture of Hemingway hopping a freight train, Kerouac depicts the trainhopping lifestyle rather famously in 1957's On the Road, and the 1996 Krakauer non-fiction book Into the Wild (and its 2007 film adaptation) features protagonist Chris McCandless hopping a train as well.

Within "To Elsie," there is a clear and certainly unfair disparity between the "devil-may-care men" and the "young slatterns," despite being in similar economic plights and being tied together in their mutual promiscuity. The men are portrayed positively as hot-blooded and adventurous, and their lust is seemingly a good thing. For the women, lust and promiscuity are part of their downfall.

The tightly spaced, cutoff lines, with no more than three words per line (averaging closer to two words per line), create a poem that is very narrow in a literal sense. It is easier to imagine Williams writing this work by hand on a small napkin than typing it onto paper with a typewriter.

Given the domestic content of the poem, the idea of it being written on a napkin or a scrap of paper and left for the owner of the plums to find meshes well with the subject. It is intriguing how Williams makes the form work so well with his subject matter.

Generally when we've read works by poets I knew little about before this class, I've tried to read first and make my annotations before looking up anything about the poets. However, I knew nothing about Williams and decided to quickly look up his Wikipedia entry, and noticed that in addition to being a poet, he was also a physician practicing pediatrics.

It seems likely that his poem "The Poor" was greatly autobiographical. The second to last line, "at last," is by far the shortest in the poem. I feel by taking up an entire line by themselves, those two words convey the feeling to the reader that it was a long process to convince the poor parents that he really was their friend.

Considering his dual roles in society as both writer and doctor, it is interesting that Williams ends the poem by describing the School Physician as also an adviser to the parents of his schoolchildren patients. An adviser in an academic setting has its own meaning, so it is clear that Williams believes the School Physician is accountable for more than just the physical health of his patients. Perhaps the physician is assigning himself responsibility for the emotional well-being, academic achievement, or future economic progress of his poor patients and even their parents.

In reading the lines here, the back and forth here between "Resting cow curtain" and "Resting bull pin," my attention was drawn chiefly to the female and male difference between cows and bulls.

I think you could make an argument of there being some kind of underlying or incipient conflict between the male and the female in at least a few places in "Sacred Emily." Maybe not necessarily between a literal man and a literal woman, but at least between the feminine and the masculine.

The words "pin" and "frame" unavoidably bring to mind bowling, which admittedly is a non-contact sport. But at the same time, a bowling alley contains within it a cacophony of noisy participants launching heavy projectiles down lane after lane with the goal of violently striking and knocking over pins. In a non-traditional sense, bowling does bring to mind violence and conflict.

After starting this annotation, I found a PhD dissertation by Emily Verfurth, in which she wrote about the history of women and bowling in the United States of the 20th century, found here: https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/bitstream/handle/2346/50768/Verfurth_Emily_Diss.pdf?sequence=1

The most relevant single sentence from that dissertation to this discussion is probably that "[w]omen were barred from most bowling alleys, in some cities, as late as 1940." I feel this lends some credence to my gut feeling that these five or so lines from a poem published in 1922 are supposed to imply some struggle between the masculine and the feminine beneath the surface of the verses.

These three lines caught my eye, even forgetting that the poem is titled "Sacred Emily."

Of course, there is a huge amount of repetition and unconventional grammar and odd spelling choices throughout the poem. But it is really interesting that the first two of the three lines I highlighted here use homonyms. For instance, if "Sacred Emily" heard being read aloud, the listener would have no idea that the two lines only had a single word, "Emily," in common.

The spelling changes in these lines resulting in entirely different words but that are still pronounced the same makes me think about how rather arbitrarily we assign meaning to words and the letters that make them up. These two lines evoke very different reactions in me, with the first line being less provoking and practically normal, even though outside of this poem, it wouldn't be a normal sentence at all. It feels almost irrational that I am more comfortable with "So great so great Emily" than with "Sew grate sew grate Emily."

I also found the third of these three lines I highlighted humorous, since it really felt like the words in the second line were not spelled nicely... even though there were, in fact, no actual spelling errors at all in that line.

Stein would have been 18 when the first known organized large-scale recital of the Pledge of Allegiance of the United States occurred, recited by around 12 million schoolchildren throughout the country.

At that time, the pledge read: "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

The pledge must have still been commonly known in 1922, as the wording was officially altered at the National Flag Conference in 1923. Even today in 2021, the words "one" and "indivisible" being used in the same sentence immediately makes me think of the Pledge of Allegiance and I imagine it was the same for many of Stein's American readers in 1922 when "Sacred Emily" was published.

Additionally, "renounce" in the next line is arguably a near antonym for pledge, making me feel even more confident that Stein is alluding to the Pledge of Allegiance here (and probably mocking it, at least to some extent).

For a prose sentence in a a more or less instructional essay, this one single sentence is very poignant and vividly describes a sensation that would have been hard for me, at least, to put into words.

Pound seems rather disillusioned, or at least disappointed, with the directions some people have taken vers libre, specifically when these poets make it more verbose than he feels necessary. However, Pound does seem to acknowledge, although perhaps only reluctantly (if he's even being sincere at all), that a few good poems have come about this way and that that would justify their method.

One of my initial reactions to this first principle of Pound's is that it seems almost the opposite of what I would instinctively expect from poetry. Poetry, at least poetry from before the 19th century ended, strikes me as being, if anything, indirect in the way it usually treats its subject matter.

The juxtaposition of an iron column and an aspen tree in the seventh and eighth lines of this sonnet paints a very vivid picture. The rains have "tunnelled" the tall core of the main object here, the rusted iron column, which gives a sense of decay and of destruction wrought by the elements.

On the other hand, it's hard to imagine rains afflicting much damage to the aspen tree. Aspen trees need rain to survive and, except in the case of a severe storm, rain rarely causes much harm to these trees, excepting the tunneling of the bark. Though I'm no botanist, I don't think this is an especially harmful process to an aspen. For all the hardness and strength of man's construction, this iron column, nature's original column, aspen tree, stands up better to something as seemingly innocuous as rain.

These two lines stand out to me from the others before and after them. While the two lines before and the two lines after feel largely like a matter-of-fact explanation of how love is not a physiological need or a safety need (to reference Maslow), the third and fourth lines of the poem seem more nuanced and metaphorical to me.

Also, I'm not sure what the poet is trying to convey with the repetition in the fourth line, the rising and the sinking. Just an image of men trying desperately not to drown? I suppose "not drowning" qualifies as a physiological/safety need.

The volta of this sonnet sees the rich imagery of flowers, abundant with adjectives, as they are being picked from the ground (or perhaps grown, gardened, touched, or observed-- I found it hard to tell) give way in the ninth line to what almost reads like an interpretation of the previous lines, sort of a moral to the story.

The poem says to "not despair" over the apparent defeat of refinement by coarseness, stating that it "will be easier when the mind... has grown an iron cortex of its own." This silver lining seems like a negligible concession. I can't imagine an iron cortex (whether a cortex in an anatomical sense or in a botanical sense) being capable of producing anything as beautiful as the flowers in the poem or of appreciating their exquisiteness.

Although I could guess from context that a heal-all is a flower, I had to search on the Internet for more details about what kind of flower it is after I read the first couple lines of the poem. Of course, a heal-all is normally blue, as Frost indicates in the first two lines of the second stanza.

The spider, the flower, and the moth are all explicitly referred to as white in the poem, as well as described with comparisons to inanimate objects that we would also likely picture being white (a snow-drop, froth, and a paper kite). But why is the flower white instead of blue? Is it dying? Or hasn't fully bloomed yet? Maybe wrapped in spider webs?

Also, more broadly, what is the purpose of the color white in this poem? White often symbolizes purity and innocence in Western cultures, but death and mourning in Eastern cultures. Maybe this Frost poem sits somewhere in the middle.

I'm not exactly sure how a spider can be dimpled, although I do have some mental picture of it that is hard to put into words. Maybe two indents on either side of the spider's abdomen? Regardless, to me, the light-hearted connotations of the word "dimpled" contrasts sharply with the threatening nature the word "spider" would normally bring to my mind, as well as with the themes of death and darkness in this poem.

The narrator seems to find something soothing, maybe even restorative, about stopping to watch snow falling in the woods.

But everything seems situated to prevent them from spending the time in contemplation that they feel this natural spectacle deserves. The possibility of being noticed by the absent property owner, the horse's unease, and the mysterious "promises to keep" all push the narrator reluctantly away from the scene before them.

I think anyone who's been on a long cross-country road trip with lots to see and not enough time to see it all because of work, school, or other social obligations has experienced similar feelings.

It becomes clear here, if not before, that Mr. Flood is talking to himself. This is continued through the poem. This colors the poem a number of ways: it injects some lighter humor in a mostly dark poem, adds to the sense of Flood's loneliness especially, and maybe even brings senility and old age into the picture.

"Mites in a quarrel" strikes me as a conflict of about as low intensity as possible. The consequences would be all but meaningless to anyone but those mites involved. On the other hand, "mites in a quarrel" contrasts sharply with the peaceful image of two peas in a pod that "SEEDS in a dry pod" conjured in my mind.

The language and word choice Gilman uses here to describe her narrator's determination to find meaning and obtain a deeper understanding of something that defies any meaningful conclusion is reminiscent of how Adams in his chapter described his (and Langley's) inability to truly come to any real meaningful understanding of the dynamo.

The narrator here in describing the yellow color of the wallpaper of the room she is trapped in also expresses the "sickly" and "lurid" reaction she all too naturally has to what is essentially an unjustified and seemingly unending house arrest. Early on in "Of Our Spiritual Strivings," Du Bois also uses a color, in this case white, and strong descriptive language to paint a mental picture of walls of a different sort: "...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."

The walls Du Bois refers to might be metaphorical, but like the "The Yellow Wallpaper" narrator, the "black boys" in Du Bois's chapter face arbitrary limits imposed on them without cause, in both cases by powerful white men; or at the very least, by the systems in place that perpetuate mostly white men being in power.

I see some parallels here between Adams, vainly seeking answers to address his disaffection with the world and his understanding of it from his would-be subject matter experts, Langley and Saint-Gaudens, and the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper," in her disappointment with the inadequate diagnosis of her mental condition from her husband and brother, both physicians. A palpable disenchantment with the supposed expertise of established authority figures can be sensed both from Adams and from the narrator here.

From Wikipedia:

"On January 1, 1863, the Proclamation changed the legal status under federal law of more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the secessionist Confederate states from enslaved to free."

"The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches is a 1903 work of American literature by W. E. B. Du Bois."

Only two paragraphs up, Du Bois compares the Emancipation of Black Americans with the promised land of the Israelites. I think it is worth noting that, according to Abrahamic tradition, 40 years is also the amount of time the Israelites wandered in the desert after being delivered from slavery in Egypt but before arriving in the promised land of Canaan. Maybe that is why Du Bois draws attention to the 40 years that have passed between the Emancipation Proclamation and the publication of his The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches.

My other (very long) annotations attempted to elaborate on the self-sacrifice of Du Bois and the other members of the Talented Tenth and used Campbell's popular "Hero's Journey" theory to contextualize this chapter.

But in both annotations, I also noted scriptural allusions, as well as a number of comparisons Du Bois adeptly made. He drew parallels between African Americans and the Israelites of the Old Testament, the Emancipation Proclamation and the initial Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, the African American community's underwhelming progress 40 years since Emancipation and the Israelites' 40 years of wandering in the desert, the true freedom African Americans were destined for and the Promised Land the Israelites were headed for... and perhaps even between the Talented Tenth and the Levitical priesthood and between himself and Moses.

Here, finally, the chapter has reached the "Apotheosis" stage, using Campbell's theory. The climax of this hero's journey is the shifting of perspective and the realization that taken alone, neither emancipation, suffrage, political activity, economic improvement, nor education will be enough to achieve true freedom for Du Bois's people. He says instead they that "work, culture, liberty, —all these we need, not singly but together, not successively but together, each growing and aiding each, and all striving toward that vaster ideal... the ideal of human brotherhood."

The third and last chapter of Campbell's hero's journey is the return and reintegration with society, which I could see as the future for W. E. B. Du Bois and his colleagues, the hard work of, as he says, "the ideal of fostering and developing the traits and talents of the Negro."

In my previous annotation, I claimed to have noticed a theme or motif of self-sacrifice on the part of Du Bois and the Talented Tenth, for the sake of improving their race (and by extension, he asserts near the end of the chapter, the American Republic as a whole). In addition, I attempted, maybe clumsily, to utilize Joseph Campbell's monomyth template as a convenient framing device for Du Bois's chapter.

The description of the laborious, miserable, almost Sisyphean task that was undertaken by Du Bois and other African Americans as "children of Emancipation" to overcome the obstacles between them and formal education matches Campbell's idea of "The Road of Trials."

The ideal of "book-learning" required that he and the select few other African American men who were managing to achieve classical educations, "the advance guard," toil continuously against the racist systems that were in place that obstructed them, with the help of "little but flattery and criticism."

There is more biblical imagery at work here as well. The "pillar of fire by night" is a direct reference to the visible and miraculous guide given to Moses and the Israelites who followed him. It was provided at night to lead them from the slavery they had escaped in Egypt to the promised land of Canaan.

But the recently emancipated Israelites struggled and encountered hardship after hardship for 40 years before finally reaching Canaan... a parallel not lost on Du Bois when he publishes this book exactly 40 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. He writes earlier in the chapter, "in the few days since Emancipation, the black man’s turning hither and thither in hesitant and doubtful striving has often made his very strength to lose effectiveness, to seem like absence of power, like weakness."

I would argue that W. E. B. Du Bois sees in himself and the rest of the "Talented Tenth" a responsibility to lead the all-too-recently freed African American community, something akin to Moses and his priests receiving a charge to lead the recently freed Israelites to their promised land. Much like Moses, Du Bois was initially resistant to this calling, and he certainly hasn't always enjoyed the task before, but he stepped up to the challenge.

Given that Du Bois was extraordinarily well-educated with a Ph.D. in history from Harvard, as well as the numerous scriptural allusions to Canaan and Israelites he makes throughout this chapter, it seems plausible that he had in mind here Matthew 27:50-51: "And Jesus cried again with a loud voice, and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake; and the rocks were rent..."

My understanding of the veil in the temple was that it separated "the sinful," which included most of humanity, from "the sacred."

DuBois, in his boyhood, refused to even engage with this metaphoric veil which he had come to perceive. He held "in common contempt" a system that perpetuated the segregation of the (as he later in this chapter sardonically refers to them) "higher" and "lower" races.

But the motif I begin to see at this point is self-sacrifice. In order to rend the veil, Jesus had to give up his spirit; a sort of ultimate self-sacrifice. And though perhaps trite or cliché, I think Joseph Campbell's "hero's adventure" motif could provide a ready framework from which to view this chapter as more than an essay, but as a powerful manifesto for the "Talented Tenth." This was a term used by Du Bois and others to describe the African American men who could form a sort of leadership class based on their innate competencies and attainment of classical education.

His realization that he had a responsibility, as part of the Talented Tenth, to tear down the veil of segregation, even if it would require him to put aside personal interests and ambitions in an act of self-sacrifice, aligns well enough with Campbell's concept of "The Call to Adventure." And Du Bois's initial boyhood resistance to this struggle could fit well with Campbell's "Refusal of the Call."

Like the word "forces," I have struggled to understand what Adams was suggesting with the way he used the word "rays" in this excerpt of his autobiography.

I would imagine the turn of the 20th century brought about radical new ideas and discoveries about electromagnetic energy, discoveries that clearly he and Langley did not yet fully grasp, if they ever did. In the following paragraph, Adams talks about "translating rays into faith" and the dismissive attitude a stereotypical chemist might have towards that idea, even though the chemist would not be able to deny the power of either rays or faith.

I sort of feel like Adams's "rays" were a scientific novelty that sat in his mind rather comfortably, somewhere between the thrilling but almost unfathomable scientific advances of his time (represented by the dynamo), and the fascinating, almost spiritual mysticism he felt when he considered the natural world around him (represented by the Virgin).

In one of my other annotations, I mentioned not really understanding how Adams is using the word "force" throughout this excerpt, or what he is expressing with it when he does, anyway. I am particularly unclear when he talks about "the Virgin or Venus as force."

I would guess that Adams is using these religious figures to align the forces of femininity, art, beauty, and the mysteries of spirituality on the one hand, against the powers of masculinity, science, mechanics, and the rapid pace of technological progress on the other hand... but I am far from sure about my comprehension here.

Do Adams's feelings of terror at new, more powerful modes of transportation point to a fear of their raw destructive capability, of "forces" more generally, or of his inability to comprehend them and other emerging technologies? And is it the technology itself he fears, or the accompanying societal upheaval?

I also don't feel that I really know what Adams is referring to with his repeated mentions of "forces."

I read Bogost's The Geek’s Chihuahua: Living with Apple that was mentioned in the most recent class announcement. The parallels from this excerpt of Adams's autobiography to Bogost's booklet are striking, despite being written a century or so apart. It makes me wonder if the speed of technological advancements in the industrial and post-industrial eras (and beyond) will always be perceived as inaccessible, foreign, other, or alien by, as Adams describes himself, the elderly. Is it an unavoidable rite of passage in the modern aging process to be perplexed and scornful of new aspects of life that you did not grow up accustomed to? Or were Adams and Bogost just individuals who were especially sensitive to their changing times?

Of all the animals Levine could use for imagery, why a pig? I don't particularly associate pigs with ferocity or holiness, but maybe that's just me? Or is that the point here?

On the other hand, I do associate pigs with greed, as well as agriculture. Perhaps the pig points back to the barns in the previous stanza?

And, after some more thought, there is a religious or spiritual subtext that often accompanies pigs, and Levine's Jewish heritage is hard to completely ignore here. So maybe the religious aspect of "pig" helps explain the use of the word "holiness" in this line after all.

Why is West Virginia the only state explicitly mentioned in this poem? And why would "Kiss My Ass" be a destination? Is it just an expression of contempt here, or something else entirely?

Why the dismal imagery? And why do both of these adjectives seem so incongruous with the nouns they modify? Is Levine imbuing some level of dissonance here?

A quick Google Images search of "hills" shows me I'm not alone in mentally associating that particular terrain feature with the colors green or brown or gold, almost anything but gray. I would say Levine's "gray hills" are a pretty far cry from the picturesque "Fern Hill" of Dylan Thomas or even from "the hills are alive with the sound of music."

And the first sentence on the Wikipedia page for "barn" starts off: "A barn is an agricultural building usually on farms..." Industrial and agricultural are two very disparate descriptors, in my opinion.

Large savanna animal