And everyone Was laughing at him
I believe Johnson is visualizing the dancing man to someone dancing in Africa in the Sahara Desert. She mentions that everyone is laughing at him but he seems unbothered and happy because it an alternate universe he is "dancin' in a jungle."
I cannot let you in, You know not what a world this is Of cruelty and sin.
I interpret the "door" to be her womb, and that she does not want to bring a child into the world because of all the chaos. These lines remind me of Alice Dunbar-Nelson "I Sit and Sew" in terms of how they see the world, from a realistic lens. I also believe that she feels the weight of the world in a heavier way, in a way that only a Black woman might.
But—I must sit and sew. The little useless seam, the idle patch
Nelson feels that what she's doing all day is useless. To me she also seems overwhelmed and uses the metaphor of sewing to illustrate that she is trying to fix the "wasted fields and writhing grotesque things" but is unable to keep up and sew fast enough.
I want to hear the chanting Around a heathen fire Of a strange black race.
Bennett wants to get back in touch with her roots and wants to reconnect especially with her culture that might feel suppressed in the U.S.
has sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of salvation, and at times has even seemed about to make them ashamed of themselves.
He makes it clear that he writes towards both Black and white audiences. However, the use of "false gods" and "false means of salvation" is directly about white savior complex which he is careful not to pander towards.
their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white
This highlights the systemic racism that is not necessary a product of name-calling or overt bullying by racism, but the lingering anger that many Black youth have, which results in its own mental prison.
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.
Du Bois mentions being a "problem" child, and I wonder from a phycological viewpoint if this was exacerbated by being excluded by his white peers who had been taught Black kids were different.
He raised again the jug regretfully And shook his head, and was again alone.
Again, Mr. Flood is very lonely to the point that he relies on alcohol to cope. In some ways, the alcohol might be a way to speed up the death process.
Alone, as if enduring to the end
One of the main themes of this poem is loneliness, Mr. Flood has no friends left in town and no one is interested in being his friend. The poem could also be an opinion about elderly people, that they are often the most vulnerable members of society.
I did not think that I should find them there When I came back again; but there they stood,
Immediately, this gives me images of nostalgia, of visiting a hometown and being reminded of old friends and acquaintances.
Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth,
Wondering why he is listing things in fours, I can't think of any reason why other than structure.
Was sold at auction on the public square, As if to destroy the last vestige Of my memory and influence.
This seems to signify something bureaucratic, boring, mindless. The word 'sold' seems to describe the death of a person.
I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,
Each action is given its own line, which could illustrate different weeks, months, years even. I like to think that she went through life slowly, took each day at a time.
There comes John, and I must put this away,—he hates to have me write a word. We have been here two weeks, and I haven’t felt like writing before, since that first day.
John is suffocating her both by being too controlling, but also by not being present enough. She is quite literally trapped in her house and her creativity is being stifled.
Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do?
A call back to when John does not believe that she is sick even if he is a physician. The first "what can one do" is about how she feels unheard and unseen by her own husband. The second "what is one to do" is more about how yes she does not feel heard, but she can't even contribute her opinions, she is silenced in her home.
John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.
It is clear that this is to be expected in marriage during the 1900s. It is such a small aggression towards her, but hurtful nonetheless otherwise she wouldn't have mentioned it. It is not a physical aggression--yet.
The day of “aunties,” “uncles” and “mammies” is equally gone.
These terms can feel like caricatures.
For the younger generation is vibrant with a new psychology; the new spirit is awake in the masses, and under the very eyes of the professional observers is transforming what has been a perennial problem into the progressive phases of contemporary Negro life.
This can be easily incorporated into the civil rights movements of today, with the increase in protests for BLM and young people that believe that the work of Reconstruction is not finished. It is an optimistic lens.
The Old Negro, we must remember, was a creature of moral debate and historical controversy. His has been a stock figure perpetuated as an historical fiction partly in innocent sentimentalism, partly in deliberate reactionism.
The misconception of the "Old Negro" comes from the belief older Black people were not as socially enlightened or confident. But this was mostly perpetuated by conservatives, similar to the "boomers" of today who claim to miss old American culture.
“Be stereotyped, don’t go too far, don’t shatter our illusions about you, don’t amuse us too seriously. We will pay you,” say the whites.
In order to be accepted into the artistic community some people sell out. They appeal to the white artists and defend themselves from white people, and prove that their voice and art is worth being seen. It comes from a place of assimilation. Instead Hughes is saying, Black art is about creating a space where acceptance is unnecessary, and unneeded.
And perhaps these common people will give to the world its truly great Negro artist, the one who is not afraid to be himself.
Call back to the previous sentiment about the poet who does not want to be a "Negro poet." Artistry needs to be approached in a truthful lens, unashamed about his Blackness.
And I was sorry the young man said that, for no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself. And I doubted then that, with his desire to run away spiritually from his race, this boy would ever be a great poet.
Poetry is so much about honesty, honesty about the self, the world, and in order to be a great poet is necessary to be honest to yourself about identity, and even questions about identity.
Frisch weht der Wind Der Heimat zu Mein Irisch Kind, Wo weilest du?
Similar to Amber's confusion about the use of German, Is the somber tone of the poem is reflected in the introduction of German in the poem is on purpose to show the pessimism? "The wind blows fresh/To the Homeland/My Irish Girl/Where are you lingering?" A sort of sign of the times, if not then the translation could be the exact opposite. Does it in fact reflect a light at the end of the tunnel after WW1?
and which you were probably saving for breakfast
He is inconsiderate for eating them and knowing she was saving them for herself.
Forgive me
This is a simple way of saying sorry for indulging myself in the sweetness of life.
I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox
The plums signify something other than just fruit, maybe something that he is apologetic and regretful about.
while the imagination strains after deer going by fields of goldenrod in the stifling heat of September Somehow it seems to destroy us
He wants to get back to simpler times, back to nature, back in touch with our roots because the alternative is losing ourselves in culture wars.
will throw up a girl so desolate so hemmed round with disease or murder
I don't think Elsie is someone he knows, I think she is supposed to be a placeholder of all women or certain women from small towns.
The pure products of America go crazy— mountain folk from Kentucky or the ribbed north end of Jersey with its isolate lakes and valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves old names
Williams seems to use terms like "mountain folk", "ribbed north end", and "isolate lakes and valleys" as a critique on the change in culture, maybe how life has become more bleak.
Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
Even though love cannot provide physical shelter and safety and health, people still would rather die than live without it.
Man, doughty Man, what power has brought you low, That heaven itself in arms could not persuade
This to me, is a narration on the damage humans have inflicted on themselves. The imagery of a man in his prime struck down and weak and frail can be about the destruction of war and what we've done to the planet.
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
People need water, food, shelter to survive, sustenance that cannot be sacrificed. Love is not necessary for survival, more of a luxury, someone can live without love.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;
There is a clear rhyming scheme using iambic tetrameter.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both
This is very clearly to me, an internal fight for this person about choosing a path with a fork in the road. They want to experience both roads, but are blind to what is the better choice, almost exactly the way many young people feel about their futures.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again.
The irony of the poem is the the wall being put up between two neighbors who are civil and friendly, but create a barrier because they think it is what they are meant to do.
The result had satisfied him as little as at Harvard College.
Adams is equating ignorance and education again, but this time to the renowned institution of Harvard. Im not exactly sure what his beef is with higher education. Maybe he is saying there is more to learn outside of the classroom.
The Woman had once been supreme; in France she still seemed potent, not merely as a sentiment, but as a force. Why was she unknown in America?
Could this be about the cliche that America is famously prude compared to Europe? Even today, modern feminism is very pro-sex, but compared to France, still puritan.
Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts
Adams seems to equate education and ignorance, maybe deciding that there is no objectivity in classrooms. What is taught is taught by teachers and professors and therefore room for human error.
From the sweet glues of the trotters Come the sweet kinks of the fist, from the full flower Of the hams the thorax of caves,
This seems a little like a a callback to the beginning of the poem, instead of burlap sacks he writes full flower.
West Virginia to Kiss My Ass
Kiss My Ass is all capitalized, and is meant to signify a location, what is it? Is it a bus ride away?
Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter, Out of black bean and wet slate bread,
This imagery to me sounds like he is describing scenes from the great depression, burlap sacks, wet bread, asking the audience to remember that anything can grow from nothing.
Lion
Lions are ferocious animals and are also featured in the 1994 animated movie The Lion King.