again, the subjects the narrator speaks of truly believe in something greater than what their society offers, and maybe it is magic they believe in, but at the end of the night or as this line says by morning, they have not come up with anything actually coherent. However, it could be that their incantations are only gibberish to the non "mad" person and that is to be the point of them.

the narrator seems to be speaking the hypocrisy of the protesting of capitalism when they are also buying into with their need for cigarettes thus causing them to burn themselves in the process and perhaps further speaking to the madness the narrator is so focused on analyzing.

i feel like in connection to the rest of the line this refers to having spent your money on drugs which bring out a greater consciousness and thus the terrors or horrors that come to light about society.

this poem is basically repeating how awful and tedious life is and that theres no resolve regardless of all the avenues a person explores

the theme of of madness or psychotic break downs comes up over and over again in this poem

the subject of the narrator is constantly looking for something more fulfilling and exploring identities that just don't quite seem to fit them well at all, thus moving on from place to place

it seems as if most of the experiences of the people the narrator writes about are made up almost, or at least very hazy and without meaning.

the repetition of the word "who" to start every new line for the first part of the poem creates a sort of rhythm that makes the poem sound like spoken word.

While there is no outright mention of a river like in the prior stanza there is a definite evoking of rivers in these lines. However, in this instance the river is all dried up. There is not water, no spring, only rock and mud cracked houses. House no longer viable for living can be implied through the use of mud crack due to the lack of water flowing. This concept of dried up streams and dried up sweat and mountains certainly alludes to the concept of a/the wasteland. In these lines, every source of water or hydration has dried up such as the "carious teeth that cannot spit" life cannot continue as normal.

Furthermore, as the mountains remain dry and without life one can imply that they are silent, however, the lines evoke a further eeriness to the drying by stating that the mountains create a "sterile thunder" unwilling to bring about rain and therefore obsolete.

In this reference of the river there is no life, no water to sustain it's existence which contrast the earlier reference to the Thames river which runs, incredibly exhaustive however, as it is been polluted with the waste of the town, another allusion to the wasteland. The river referenced here has been abandoned altogether, not even used for trash. The conflict here truly pushes the idea of the wasteland and even more so with the lack of the actual use of the word "river" in this stanza; as it has disappeared it is no longer referenced. There are other instances throughout the poem that play with the concept of irony especially as dead/alive, for example the opening lines "Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/Memory and desire, stirring/Dull roots with spring rain./Winter kept us warm, covering/Earth in forgetful snow, feeding" one does not often think that anything can grow out of dead land or bad soil but here in the month of April the lilacs grow regardless. Winter keeping us warm seems like the most bizarre concept but this poem seems speaks to the solitude that comes with winter, the death like feeling in the air. The spring that usually brings back life culturally and biblically has lost its common concept/purpose in this poem right off the bat. Much like the "sterile thunder" how useful can plants and flowers grown from dead land be!

song and art has always been part of african american culture and perhaps thats why hughes disapproves of the black artist trying to mold "white" art or be a "mainstream" artist.

i really like this line because i find it critical of the popular myth of the "absent black father" when in fact so many families have been forcefully separated since the beginning of this country.

i dont think we read the poem "mother to son" in class but these lines evoke a lot of what that poem by hughes writes about.

Brown writes in the style that Hughes advocates for, using southern dialect and admiring the art created by Black folk not aspiring to the "mainstream" art.

one of the best responds to this poem i think, is A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. It truly embodies this poem.

these lines create a rhythmic pattern in this poem, as most of the rest of the poem.

this is such an important quote. Hughes is no longer waiting for the acceptance of the greater majority, rather he expects it as all people of color should.

speaking to the resilience of the Black american, really Black people everywhere.

definitely feels like reference to the strong civilizations prior to imperialism and the slave trade.

again i get what he's saying against this quote, and in his context it creates a different meaning. however, the quote alone creates a standard where whiteness is the default and for an artist who isn't white that can be exhausting.

more double consciousness and a concept i've heard before of the Harlem renaissance and the black art movement. Where does Black art become art for white folk and when does it remain truly art for and by black people and who judges.

I can see what Hughes is saying here, but at the same time he is kind of saying "this person isn't black enough" and sure belonging of a higher socioeconomic class removes a person of color from a lot of the struggles that a poor person of color deals with but it by no means erases their black identity.

this seems to continue to be an issue in the sense that people who are of color and also artist always get put into their representative boxes i.e. black male artist, chicana poet etc. it also reminds me of the 80s art movement for example Keith Harring and Jean Michel Basquiat, both very important and progressive artist but where most people (general population not artist folk) know Harring the same can't be said for Basquiat.

i've heard this quote so many times in so many different contexts. definitely brings up double conciseness/ self awareness but fighting that concept.

a wet river has a tent which are meant as shelter to keep the insides dry? unless there is something about rivers i don't know about this line also seems like a juxtapose for the wet dry motif

aside from the obvious wet dry sea wood contrast i think its interesting to also have the word copper in the line. from my understanding salt water is really corrosive to metals but not as much to wood. and the sea wood is being fed with copper. so this line is also kind of zombie ish.

drowned is typically associated with water as well as stirring but in this line the air is stirring

the contrast of perfumes as either wet or dry

does this line refer to the "wasteland"? has the city become so polluted socially and environmentally that corpses are not anything to think twice about?

why are their so many references to other works in different languages?

I wonder why the use of a different language to state that they aren't Russian

more repetition

this sounds like an allusion to the american pledge of allegiance or a reference of some sort. I feel like that there is some sort of significance to this but again not sure what

more repetition that is not obvious to understand or to see really. I like this break down of the one single line into 3.

this almost sounds like repetition but is not actually. It seems like it connects to the poem as a whole but there is no obvious connection

the mention of America, alone almost immediately identifies this poem as modernist. There seems to be some sort of fixation on the country in american modernist poetry.

does he create a sort of song tone to this line to further show his admiration for the woods, snow, and nature? why does it sound so cheery?

is he using the horse to compare or bring light to how others might feel about him stopping in the snow? is the horse representative of the average person?

is he purposefully leaving out grammar to create a different meaning to this line?

is he implying that this has been such an easy decision that theirs nothing grand about it? or does he regret his choice of roads?

is there a significance about yellow roads? like "the yellow brick road"

is there a reason why all the poems start out in all caps?

the repetition of the tick in this poem creates a very anxious tone further stressing the angst that lines like " and what is love but a rose that fades"

sounds like the opposite of getting better

this line sounds a little forced for some reason

again, very focused on details and extremely visual writing. I always find it kind of amazing when writers are able to describe concrete things such as walls, cars, etc in writing like this.

super detailed discription of the house and it creates a real vivid image of the house

omg this is incredibly sad and hard to read (not an actual annotation just more of a general comment)

everything that has led to this line subtly reminds me of "the awakening" by Kate Chopin it is the same tale in a sense, a women clearly suffering from some form of mental anguish but also being forced into a compulsion like "talk about the house" because they aren't allowed to express any of their real concerns. It is quite a sad read up to this point, and it reminds me of Chopin because i had a similar feeling when i read that.

this still seams to be a common notion in the way people view mental illness today. The early mention of a "colonial mansion...haunted house" also sort of connect for me in the description of her mental state as far as this point in the story anyways.

clearly the emancipation proclamation did not actually do much for the condition of enslaved people, the poorly management of the movement to abolition still affects black communities today, those effects are still felt.

this also reminds me of the popular tendency for people to say "i don't see color" because even as far back as Du Bois it is clear that color is present and one must be able to be seen and felt and still be fully validated in order for people to truly co exist. The idea that some people are colorblind is bogus and really rather racist in its own annoying way.

again, it is clear that he is not seprating himself from the "other world" rather those in the other world are doing all that for him and for themselves. even the "understanding" white come out in micro agressions and almost a "white guilt" when approaching Du Bois

such a great piece to begin an autobiographical work and it feels very much connected to the struggle Du Bois tries to articulate in most of his writing.

is this a reference to being able to reproduce?

It's quite interesting that anyone would be able to ignore "industry" at this time with all the changes that were happening in terms of industry and work.

This experience seems entirely tedious and compulsive, like a machine simply writing the same lines over and over again. It also sounds kind of sad when read with or without context

to me this speaks to how adaptable humans are as a species and even though our environments are always changing and evolving we tend to jump right in terms of technology.

the shortening to "they lion" instead of "they lion grow" and subtle repetition speeds up the pace, or rather arrives at the climax faster of the inevitable, being the lion has been fed, grown and now has naturally become a predator to those (the society/gov) who fed him??

not sure but this feels like a jab at american greed and with the context of Levine's background in Detroit such a line would seem reasonable?

This feels super cannibalistic that the earth would consume its on products, trees that grow from it. also "earth is calling in her little ones" extremely creepy and obsessive, the whole stanza sounds like a horror film really.

This line is actually pretty shocking, "mothers hardening" its rare to think of a mother as a hard or cold person, but also mothers are nurturing and these is a subject growing throughout the piece. The line is definitely added to make a point.

this line definitely creates the sense of city industry happening. industrial barns= factory, bus etc.

the focus seems to be the lion (a predator) though it's done very subtly