A communist revolutionary song

The Hebrew/Jew (people of God) are portrayed as the socialists; the fascists are portrayed as the hill upon Christ was crucified.

Industrial idolatry. Allusion to Babel.

The narrators identity surfaces a bit here: he forsakes Moloch.

Moloch possesses the soul as a demon does.

Again, allusion to the dynamo, that industrial, uncontrollable, un-understandable idol.

Capitalist impulse/drive?

Moloch, the god to whom children were sacrificed, is here pitched as the god who consumes the fruit of the intelligent minds.

Some of Christ’s last words on the cross, if not his last words.

Eternal, all-powerful, Father God?

Carl, for whom the poem was written

Repetition: Last this, last that.

There is a repeated theme of eternity in this poem.

Editors are likened to mustard gas; believers in “Absolute Reality” are likened to drunken taxicabs.

who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed,

Allusion to Henry Adams: the uncontrollable idol of modern civilization.

The main clause, the clause which the rest of this exceedingly long sentence modifies.

The message that she sings is not one of optimism or the empty positive and encouraging self-help messages of today; rather, Ma Rainey is a realist who simply tells the dire truth for all that it is, and people gravitate toward her.

Repetition of lonesomeness.

As rain brings life to the earth, Ma Rainey's music seems to bring life to those who throng around her in the midst of the difficult road they must walk.

The speaker notes that those who are flocking to Ma come from a variety of locales, including cornrows and lumber camps. Likewise, they come from a life of suffering ("aches an' miseries") and lightheartedness ("laughs a goin'").

Ma Rainey, whoever this is, is clearly a big deal.

Note the diction here. It seems to be a classic African-American vernacular, implying that it is through such a perception and consciousness that we are to understand the poem.

This image is as beautiful as it is complex. While on the one hand, the priceless treasures are there beneath the surface, on the other hand they are sinking deeper in the sand. How to make sense of this? The speaker's vision of what America could be is attainable, yet buried; however, the current "cultured hell" of America is causing it to sink lower still?

It seems that the speaker admires America for what it could be, rather than for what it is, and yet he loves America in the present enough to not hate it in the present and commit to making it what it could be.

The poem appears to be written in the sonnet form, the classic form of love poetry. In this case, the object of the speaker's love is America, as the title suggests, rather than a singular muse.

Does the turn in the sonnet come early compared to traditional sonnets?

The repetition of "I shall return" throughout the poem enables there to be a fuller and fuller vision of that which the speaker expects to return to. Additionally, it expresses resolve, even as the "I will arise and go now" in Yeats' "Lake Isle of Innisfree does.

What might McKay being doing here with the formal poetry patterns, the ababcc? Is this a matter of using the language and form of the oppressor to speak back to the oppressor?

Note the verbiage here: "shapes" of girls, bringing out the ghostly language that's been so present in the course.

Note the evident repetition in "feet" and "footsteps." These slippered, gray, tired, timid, and weary are at the same time the "sacred brown feet." The same degraded feet are sacred feet, implying an unholy misuse.

This situates Negro art in an even more meaningful way. As the world witnesses the great worth of the African's cultural products, their respect will grow, and as their respect grows, race relations will too.

The new situation that Locke seems to be describing is one wherein the Negro has a place on the world stage.

There is a "great discrepancy" between what Americans claim to believe and what they practice in the setting.

There is a common thread with Hughes in these lines. Both Locke and Hughes long to make black culture something to take pride in, rather than something to be ashamed of.

New

New

New

Again, the word "new" comes up.

A note on the setting: while common white and black people might often intermingle, it is not very common for the white and black elite to do so.

A main change is the omnipresence of the "Negro problem," its shift from being "predominantly Southern" to be being everywhere.

"New"

Again, Locke emphasizes the new.

The "Old Negro" has been more of a "formula than a human being." Rather than considering these people as individuals with consciousness, they were considered as abstract entities.

Repeated emphasis of "newness" prepares the reader to hear what is new about the "New Negro."

Note that there is no simile here. The pattern has been broken. This absence of simile arguably has a broadening effect when paired with the word "explode." It leaves it more open-ended, in other words. Compare it to the image of drying up like a raisin, for example. Whereas this provides a very narrow and close-ended image, the latter "explosion" could be anything.

Moreover, exposition itself can have a negative and positive connotation: that of self-destruction (which would align with the images of deterioration) or of expansion, wherein the dream would come to fruition in a dynamic way. The break in similes and the open-endedness makes this take on the text arguable, in my opinion.

Note the pattern of numerous similes here: dry up like, fester like, stink like, crust and sugar over like, sag like. In each of these similes, the image is negative; in each, there is deterioration.

This phrase seems to allude to the biblical proverb: "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life" (Proverbs 13:12). Here, however, the speaker doesn't ask what happens to the person with their dream deferred, but to what happens to the dream itself.

Personification of the piano.

Beginning with "besides," this cannot be the only thing that causes the radical change to which the speaker alludes; rather, them seeing this "darker brother's" beauty is something in addition.

These lines are are extremely provoking. What is it that is going to change, effecting such a radical reversal as this?

Note the repeated first-person pronouns here, the "I" and the "my." Contrary to Eliot's Waste Land, this speaker actually appears to be a united, singular person, but not your ordinary person. This person has bathed in the Euphrates, dwelled in the Congo, looked upon the Nile, and more, demonstrating a radically diverse and deep experience.

Could this "I" be a stand-in for the African person?

If so, this relates quite perfectly with the motif within "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain"; namely, how Hughes repeats over and over again just how inexhaustible and rich the African's heritage and culture is.

An ethic of authenticity arguably arises here in the latter clause: "he must also never be afraid to do what he must choose." To Hughes, the Negro has an obligation, a duty, to live true to himself. He mustn't sell himself out in assimilation, in other words.

Note the contrast in being ashamed here and being fearless in the next paragraph and elsewhere.

The duty of the Negro artist is to transform this presupposition of Negro people about White culture being the standard and Negro culture being intrinsically inferior. It is to offer an alternative with a beauty of its own.

Here, the supremacy of white culture is featured as being "subconscious," demonstrating just how ingrained it is in this culture.

Biblical allusion to the NT. When Jesus Christ was rejected by those in his village, he articulated this expression (Luke 4.24). In doing so, Hughes likens the Negro poet to Christ who has a message of substance to say, but is rejected by his own people because of his identity.

Again, authenticity.

Repetition: the mountain x3

Continued refinement and expansion of the mountainous metaphor. There's a road to be travelled, and it is rocky and high.

See comments on "They live on Seventh Street in Washington..." especially as regards to authenticity. The moral up and down in this piece seems to be authenticity.

Contrary to the middle and upper class Negro, the lower class Negro pursues authenticity, the alignment of himself with his own ideals and culture.

Noteworthy in this regard is that one's class corresponds to one's willingness to assimilate. The well-off upper class and middle-class assimilate; the impoverished lower class does not.

Repetition: the mountain. The image is refined here, though. The mountain is not something merely to cast one's gaze upon, but to climb.

The pattern in this paragraph can be summarized by the phrase "aping of things white." Even the upper class Negro seeks to defamiliarize himself with the Negro culture, shedding it in order to assimilate into the white culture.

Since the white way of life is seen as the standard for the middle class Negro, the Negro way of life is by definition subpar and transgressive, something of which to be ashamed according to this viewpoint.

A note on the setting: For the Negro middle class, the way of life of American white people is the standard by which good and evil, beautiful and ugliness, and prosperity and poverty are weighed. It is as though the white way of life is simply presupposed to be superior to other cultures.

Pattern: middle class, upper class, and here, lower class.

The mountain metaphor entails (1) an "urge toward whiteness"; in other words, to assimilate into America's white way of life.

Juxtaposition between a real and white poet versus a false and black poet.

The imagery of the mountain comes full-circle here, with the Negro artist successfully making the ascent. Since the last few lines suggest that the Negro artist has overcome the presupposition of white culture being the standard and has found that his own culture has a distinct beauty of its own, it is fitting to end in this way.

Likewise, the temples imagery, which I don't believe features elsewhere is fascinating. It is as though the Negro artist is building the solid structures—their art—for people to enter in an admire, not knowing whether or not his present generation will even come at all.

The diction in this poem is noteworthy, seemingly coming from an African-American vernacular. What this means for the poem is that the news that the speaker is reading from is being read through the lens of an African-American.

The pattern in this poem is quite evident: suck, laugh, sleep, eat, and hate. The mother is raising her baby to be strong so that the baby might be an effective "Bolshevik," the more radical branch of the Russian Communist Party.

This mother seems to be putting her hope in this little baby, perhaps symbolic of the upcoming generation, to bring about liberation.

Phonetically, this words could mean two thing: the giving up of one's prerogative and power (cede) or the organism that blossoms into new life (seed). Both seem to work in this poem. The deaths of these average men, the ceding of their power, is like a seed that brings new life. They are like "tendrils," rising up, supported by stones, that will "blossom everywhere."

Contrary to the modernist pieces, this one seems to hold on to a meaningfulness, even giving meaning to death.

These lines seem to suggest that death is the great equalizers, as it has been said. Those who are great and those who are small all must die.

The progressive "1-2-3" seems to be mirrored in these lines where one good thing happens after another.

Progression versus digression.

These lines are juxtaposed sharply with the Communist Party. While the speaker maintains that the American Legion, the capitalists of America, do not seem to care at all about the poor, he says of the Communists:

We marched in thousands to her grave. Red roses came from the Communist Party A wreath of lilies from the Unemployed Councils.

As such, the poem ends with a declaration to end capitalism.

These repeated lines, "Move over, Comrade Lenin, / And give me room" in the tomb, suggest a stuffiness of sorts in the context. As such, they contrast sharply with the last line: "The world is our room." Before and during the revolution, these proletariat had very little; after, the world is theirs.

Once again, contrary to the Modernist poetry, there is a unified story here, rather than mere fragments. On top of this, there is a focus on classical form, such as the repeated rhyming of tomb and room, etc. In a word, Hughes poem reflects a belief in a cosmos with a center, a Marxist one perhaps.

By the end of the poem, Dempsey seems to be the one responsible for the people, yet failing to deliver. Is he the government as such? Is he a particular president? Is he the police force? As for now, it is quite unclear to me.

Dempsey, whoever he is, is likened to a failed monarch.

As regards to the fragment-whole relationship, this poem varied radically from the modernist poetry. The poem systematically tells a unified story, rather than merely sharing instragramesque fragments like Gertrude Stein.

What is this alluding/referring to?

This line helps to make sense of the title, as well as the seasonal allusions. Spring, being the time of new life, and May, being the quintessential month and beginning of Spring, is the time of liberation. The revolution is likened to Spring because it brings new life.

Very explicitly Marxist—"class struggle" idea.

Notice the imagery associated with liberty: bells (as in liberty bells) and birds (the unbounded creatures). On "this day," this liberty will be actualized for the proletariat.

Note the juxtaposition here of the winter and the spring, of Christmas/new year and the new year. The former seems to draw out the sufferings of the past; the latter arguably connotes the Marxist revolution spoken of all throughout the poem, the liberation of the proletariat.

As we discussed in class, with regard to the part-whole relationship, Modernism features the parts, the fragments apart from their relation to the whole. What's interesting in this line is the fact that the narrator here "shore[s]" these fragments, and if they are the fragments that consist of the wasteland, then there could possibly be some unified narrator.

The voice from above that seems to provide the least guideline in navigating through the waste land are mere fragments; they are thunderings from the sky. Although slightly different, this reminds me of the idea of lightning casting light on the horizon, but only doing so momentarily.

Notice the motif of rain and showers. They were at the beginning of the poem, and they are now here at the end of the poem.

An allusion to Christ on the Road to Emmaus? In this case, they never end up recognizing him, as is what happens in the gospel accounts.

There is so much repetition of there being no water and only rock here. My question is whether this could be an allusion to the biblical account of Israel wandering through the desert wherein they thirsted and Moses struck the rock from which flowed water for the nation.

Allusion to the aforementioned desert? Also, the motif of water once again comes up, and the canto IV spoke of death by water. I'm still not sure what to make of this.

Allusion to the aforementioned Tarot card?

Saint Augustine's voice now featured?

Water motif.

3x

The bringing together of two commonly incompatible things: an old man with wrinkled female breasts.

Repetition

Tiresias, the narrator here.

2x "Unreal City" was used.

Note the different languages featured in the poem, again permitting there to be variant narrators.

Waters motif.

The narrator here seems to have shifted from the one with Albert et al.

Who's this "I"?

A symbol of frustrated communication, the nightingale speaks in the desert, but none are able to hear.

Note how recurrent water is in the poem. What does it mean?

The Tarot Cards. What do each of these cards mean? What do they suggest?

This reminds me of the fragments theme we discussed in class. All that we are able to take hold of are "a heap of broken images" in this waste land. There's no center, no orienting point of departure; it's all wandering through an arid land.

This "fragment" image occurs at the ends of the poem, too; in that case, with the thunders (cf. comments there).

Notice how the subject goes from a rural landscape to an urban landscape, back to a rural landscape so quickly. Again, it is disorienting to read.

The pronouns are disorienting.

Note the initial pattern of present participles—breeding, mixing, etc.

The introduction of the pronouns: "us." The speaker is no merely a speaker, as in the case with most poetry, but an ambiguous "we," which itself is later turned into a singular subject in the line "he took me out on a sled" and "I was afraid."

Does this line connote the speaker receiving a blow without complaint or retaliation?

Does this connect with the repeated "push sea push sea push sea push sea push sea" earlier?

The speaker is alliterating here and elsewhere quite a bit; they also use a lot of rhyme. It almost seems as though they are practicing.

There's also a pattern in names. Who are these people, though? Children? Guests? Family?

There's a pattern in kitchen objects in this piece, such as the apron here, cauliflower, and eggs elsewhere.

There's a pattern of dirty words and sexual words:

slatterns bathed in filth, excrement, filth; promiscuity, lust (of adventure).

I'm not sure what to make of these things as of yet.

Note the capitalization, especially of the words that are not proper noun. They help one to know where one sentence begins and the other ends, making the reading a bit lighter.

Is this a individual or a name of a position?

That "faces" and "petals" are both plural arguably suggests a connection, implying that the speaker is referring to the faces as "petals." The petal has a number of connotations, but beauty (as in a flower petal) and transience (the fast life and death of the flower and its petals) surface most immediately for me. "Black" likewise suggests death.

Is the image that the speaker is communicating one wherein these particular faces are coming in and out of his perspective, creating a beautiful, yet swift experience of little deaths?

What's interesting in this line is that the speaker actually sees particular "faces," which is denoted in the word "these." He doesn't merely see a crowd in a metro station, but appearances of faces, making the image more concrete.

There's a pattern here. Even though Pound scalds the poets earlier, claiming that they mainly produce rubbish, he says that there work was justified in that it may have produce a few good poems. In this line, Pound describes the great worth of producing even one image, though he maintains that producing a large number of works is not worthwhile.

Definition of "image," which will later make sense of "imagisme."

The name of this "new" poetry?

Repetition of "new."

The words express Pound's distaste for past poets.

A note on the setting: people claim to be following Pound et al., but they are transgressing the poetic principles.

After mentioning dire situations that the speaker might find herself in, she still claims that she wouldn't trade in her love to save herself, demonstrating that, to her, love is the greater possession.

The speaker seems to be saying that to have love alone will not supply you with a number of the most basic necessities, love itself is more worthwhile than those basic necessities. How can the speaker say so? Because she believes that many are dying solely out of the lack of love, clearly an even greater lack than all of the aforementioned basic necessities. The last lines agree with this take on things (see comments).

The word "yet" suggests a radical transition.

Note the repetition of "not" and "nor," both words that evidently signal negation. The points seems to be that love is impotent in a number of significant ways; it cannot provide to us our most basic needs.

At last, the poem achieves a sort of resolution, the speaker makes his decision to go with his obligations rather than remaining in the presence of the sublime nature.

That the speaker takes pains to express the horses confused response to the pause is suggestive. While horses (and other animals) cannot appreciate the sublime and thus would be dumbfounded when a sublime object is on the scene, the human person is able to do so.

Note the repetition of "stop." In this case, the speaker paints a picture of a man who's cross-pressured: to stop and stare at the beautiful woods being covered with snow or to continue on to where he's obliged to go.

Why might the speaker "be telling this with a sigh"? Might it be that he yearns to return to this "other" way while he finds himself in a location opposed to it? If so, though it "made all the difference" to take this path, he has found himself at the end of it, wishing he could go back.

This "other way" is the "one less travelled by." It is the one that is more undisturbed by people. Its leaves have not been trodden and it "wanted wear." The nature versus culture idea seems to surface in this description of the road, and that speaker "kept the first for another day" and "doubted if [he] should ever come back" suggests that nature is the better option of the two.

There at the crossroads, the narrator weighs up his two options, counting the cost, and takes the other. The following narrates some of his reasons for why he took the one he did.

Why "yellow" wood? Why not green?

Note the language of life: "degeneracy" and "life." By calling the discontented sons and daughters "degenerate," the speaker seems to imply that those who desire more in life are the lifeless ones, rather than the ones with life. So the morally superior ones are like Camus' Sisyphus who loved life passionately, despite its absurdity (and I mean "absurdity" technically, in the French existential sense).

Note the repeated "I," as the speaker narrates an ordinary life, one filled with mundane joys and challenges. Her life seems disenchanted in this poem, but, as the next lines suppose, not in such a way that warrants raising one's fist.

As was true in "Petit, the Poet," so it is here: nature is given a higher place over against "culture"—the spinning, weaving, keeping of the house, etc.

Note the juxtaposition of good and evil, especially how the narrator makes a reversal of sorts with it. Whereas typically one must know the good/true to know evil/false, here it is the opposite. Only by knowing what is evil and false, one can know good and true, making what is good and true essentially the opposite of evil.

The speaker shows here that it is the powerful that control knowledge in the village.

What is the essence and/or common threat of these works?

Note the pragmatism behind the powerful in Spoon River's response. Since they found not use for the books, they sold them away. So, that which is unuseful in this pragmatic sense is thrown to the wind.

These lines might bring together the motif of loneliness and change. Once the speaker had friends (change), but now he does not (loneliness). Of all the things that could powerfully disorient one's life, making one feel the chaos that the speaker is experiencing, the "uncertain lives of men" ranks high.

Note the language of uncertainty here.

Language of certainty/uncertainty

Again, "change" might fit into the language of uncertainty, since it interrupts what is ordinary or regular.

Note the repetition in the language of certainty and uncertainty: "assured," "uncertain," and "assuredly."

With the next two lines describing what these “clerks of time” do, I get the sense that the speaker is claiming that they merely maintain a social hierarchy through their aforementioned rhetoric.

Are “they” the elite poets and kings or the people under them? One way or the other, the speaker seems surprised that things are still the way that they are.

By about them does the speaker mean “around them” or “characteristic to them”? If the former, then the next lines are describing a people; if the latter, then they describe the elite.

The word ancient suggests outdated, perhaps.

Adams looks not at the cathedral, but at St. Guadens, the observer. He's interested in the subjective observer rather than the observed (from class).

These lines seem to suggest that the sexual drive is being suppressed by society, education being one of the major institutions behind the suppression. The metaphor of the staff—the disciplinary rod?—fits into this image of the education instition.

A metaphor of force: the compass-needle.

Perhaps the second time that Adams suggests that the sexual drive began to pull him toward it.

Shift in plot?

Is the Dynamo-to-Adams in this case meant to be understood as industrial inventions such as "the new Daimler motor, and of the automobile"? If so, Adams might be suggesting that such inventions become of supreme importance to him.

This passage might cast light on the reoccurring motif of "force." Force seems to be a sort of pull or weight that a particular object has relative to particular people. Whereas the Virgin held greater weight in Catholic-influenced France, she didn't hold too much in protestant America. Whereas the symbols of sex—Diana of the Ephesians and Oriental goddesses—held great weight to some, such was not the case with the protestant puritan America.

The word "force" is used very often in this piece. Elsewhere, he describes force as a sort of power that one can feel ("When Adams was a boy in Boston, the best chemist in the place had probably never heard of Venus except by way of scandal, or of the Virgin except as idolatry; neither had he heard of dynamos or automobiles or radium; yet his mind was ready to feel the force of all, though the rays were unborn and the women were dead."). What point is he making when he writes things such as: "This problem in dynamics gravely perplexed an American historian. 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?"

The lines speak to the unbreachable borders in the narrative—no one gets through them alive.

"[T]he writing which made me sick!" What does this suggest about what Perkins might mean about sickness and health?

What the protagonist likes about the room is in essence what she sees outside of the room.

Language of entrapment. (cf. barred, too)

Belittlement?

Note barred the word "barred" here; it suggests entrapment, imprisonment.

Note on the setting: John believes that the protagonist has not reason to suffer, that everything in her life is fine. Yet, she does suffer, and he will not take her at her word.

Another note on setting: forbidding women writing.

Note the language of health: "sick," "physician," etc.

Note on the setting and protagonist: She's forbidden to work, but she's given all kinds of things to do. It seems that she'd prefer the other things.

Note on the setting: men laughing at women in marriage, suggesting a belittlement of women on the part of men.

Note how Du Bois begins and ends with the "Negro Problem." Here, he turns the idea on its head, making it a solution: if America could bring resolution, then it would realize its own ideals of freedom.

Another biblical allusion. The land of Canaan in the Bible is the promised land, making sense of why Du Bois would use it for the attainment of the new ideal.

Du Bois enlists a biblical allusion once again. After their emancipation, God guided Israel to the Promised Land by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. In this case, the new idea is the guide, the "pillar of fire by night after a clouded day."

Cf. annotation on "To him, so far as he thought and dreamed..."

There is a pattern of biblical allusions in Du Bois' piece. That Du Bois is writing about the "Spiritual" strivings makes perfect sense of this. Here, he likens African-American people to the Israelites. Just as Israel was emancipated from Egypt, so too were the African-Americans; however, just as Israel had to traverse through the desert toward the promised land, so is it with African-Americans.