I see a connection between the represenations of rivers and railroads/trains. Both symbolize the force of connecting and movement. But while railroads represent modernity, the river represents the natural, ancient and traditional.

Here lie connections to the living (sleeping) dead, the speaker wishing he had died but is still living. "Ain't got nobody in all this world" shows his feelings of alienation.

This poem's subject is striking when considering the notion of the American Dream--the idea that anyone can succed in America by pulling themselves up by the bootstraps. Anyone except African Americans, whose dream is deferred, put off and continuously out of reach.

This line reminds me of one of the final lines of The Waste Land when Eliot writes, "These fragments I have shored against my ruins". Both artists share a desire to create something with the strength to save them from their current conditions.

Hughes' grammar slides a little in this section. I wonder if it's a literary technique to capture the more free style of low-down folks.

Unmentioned but implicit is the danger that when the word white symbolizes virtue and good, the world black, its opposite, will symbolize bad. Another implied danger is when white symbolizes both virtue and money, money becomes confused with real virtues, such as beauty and morality. Although money makes possible an easier and more comfortable life, it is not synonymous with virtue. On the contrary, it is the root of all evil and the smugness Hughes refers to.

A beautiful and meaningful line I am trying to understand. The fragments, the isolate flecks, shored or displayed against my ruins, against the ancient and classical literary ruins Eliot alludes to, as well as the individual feeling of ruin and alienation of the human experience.

Another image of a seer and fortune teller, this time described in first person. Throbbing between two lives, male and female, and another image of dwelling in a world in between boundaries.

These lines seem to be small talk about the garden (very English), but are actually a morbid conversation about the dog digging up a corpse. In the previous section, when the clairvoyant speaks her warnings about death by water and hanging etc. the next lines are a bit of jarring small talk as well. The disconnect, the contradiction and incoherence makes me think of the Berman modernist snippet.

To me, it seems like the stony rubbish describes the disintegration, the fallen world.

April is not usually coined a cruel month; it's when flowers are in bloom and winter has melted away into spring. It is a month of new life, making it a cruel month for the dead.

This reminds me of WCW's cunning and beautiful little note about stealing the plums!

This makes me think of the change in the manufacturing of clothing, when instead of taking a person's individual measurements, all people are expected to fit into clothing mass produced into three varieties- S, M, or L.

Reminds me of a child learning to speak, who mispronounces a word because that's the way they hear/understand it.

The lines describing the "young slatterns" are so depressing. Williams strips them of the character that comes with traditions from the old and places them in the new modern world of consumption--both of cheap, gaudy objects and their sexualized bodies. The numbed terror which they cannot express is terrifying and unnatural, juxtaposed with the choke-cherry and viburnum that is nature.

Although the poem's format makes one zoom by, lines such as these are cryptic, forcing the reader to slow down and reflect on their meaning. Voluptuous is an adjective commonly used to describe a female, but not usually to describe water. Is the water actually a girl, Elsie? The body's majority is made up of water, although that's an unfamiliar way to look at ourselves, and water is our main life source.

Williams' ending line makes allusions to themes of speed, and modernity in the reference of the car. The whole poem seems to zoom by, with its short lines and lack of punctuation. The reader is just a passenger in the car, with no control, watching from the windows as the world deteriorates.

Because his neighbor moves in a darkness not created by the natural shade of trees and the woods, this darkness could symbolize something darkly sinister and/or dim, not enlightened.

Here in the two sides of a fence, one on either side, I see the doubleness echoed in our previous readings. Could one side be tradition--the side that mends the wall because his father did, and the other modernity--a questioning of why do we need the wall, what is its purpose?

Frost begins mysteriously with the "something" that he doesn't name. Both works by DuBois and Gilman also deal with a mysterious something. While DuBois does explain what's behind the unasked question, Gilman doesn't overtly state what kind of condition her protagonist has, and Frost never explains what this "something" is.

It may be the case that the crack and rumble of lightening and thunder, and the pleasant drumming of the rain tonight has heightened my poetic sensibilities, but I really enjoyed reading the poems by these two authors. They both have a style of poetry that reads to me a little like a story, rather than a collection of images and phrases pieced together, which is easier for me to follow. Both authors use beautiful language and poetic imagery that make their poems a joy to read, such as the lines,

"Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth, Courage, constancy, heroism, failure– All in the loom, and oh what patterns!"

This line stuck out to me. Petit seems very much to be a poet; he describes beautifully what can be seen, heard and felt. He intertwines that with the intangibles of tragedy, comedy, valor, truth, etc. And yet, could it be that he was really "blind to all of it all my life long" and can only see the beauty of life now that he is dead? And if so, how can anyone see anything once they are dead? The line gives me a sense of loss.

Robinson ironically uses the word "party" in the title, when the poem's actual feeling is one of beautiful and heart-aching loneliness. Eben Flood is an old man, whose time is running short and whose friends are all gone. The only person he can share a drink and a song with is himself. He still cares about taking precautions not to let things break, about being respected although it is just himself calling himself Mr. Flood, and he still cares about the old times. It's heart-aching to think of this man who still cares about life, not having much of it left to live and not having anyone with which to share that little bit that still remains.

When mulling over the pieces by Adams, DuBois, and Gilman and trying to capture the connection between them, the term "alienation" emerges. We see alienation from the self in Adams' third person narrative autobiography and in the DuBois and Gilman pieces. According to DuBois, African Americans are alienated from the self because they cannot escape the veil through which society, including themselves, see themselves. In Gilman's short story, the woman's alienation from the self is brought on by her husband's subjugation, backed by a patriarchal society, a condition (the real condition!) that ultimately drives her to madness.

Personally, if I was locked away in a room for the entire summer, not allowed to see my baby, not allowed to do much of anything except sleep, and the only people I had contact with treated me like a silly child--as a sensitive person who also has an active imagination--I can see how a smelly, tacky wallpaper could be the catalyst to my crazy too!

Mirror mirror on the wall...and on the windows!

The wording and lack of specificity of her "condition" in this piece is reminiscent of the "problem" described by DuBois. In this case, instead of being black, her condition that is never fully explained but just fluttered around seems to be that she is a woman.

Is there a connection between Adams' "The Dynamo and the Virgin" and this piece in their treatment of progress? They both seem to challenge society's assumptions of the word, in order to put forth a new take on the word.

In this paragraph and the one preceding it, Dubois highlights the struggle between the "dawning self-consciousness, self-realization, self-respect" that black people are beginning to grasp and the "self-criticism" and internalized racism that comes with the pervading prejudice of whites against blacks in America that black people cannot escape. However, DuBois ends the paragraph saying the weight of prejudice should crush any it oppresses, save that black host. Meaning this oppression would crush anyone, except the black people. The reason he gives is "'discouragement' is an unwritten word". Does this mean despite all pressure, and because of the pressures already lived though and currently experienced, black people have become impervious to discouragement? If this is the case, Dubois ends the paragraph with a shift to black strength and resistance.

There is irony here between what the artist knows is beautiful, forces of art that originate from his own culture, and yet he is ashamed to showcase it because he knows a white audience will not recognize it, will in fact look down on it. What can be done by the artist?

This essay was such a breeze to read. Yeah right! All the casual references to people, places, eras, science terms, art pieces, etc. that I have little to no prior knowledge about led me to my first question, should I be looking all this stuff up? Instead of getting bogged down with that, I read and reread and just tried to get a sense of what point the author was trying to get across. He seems to be interested in force, who or what wields it (namely women, religion, science and technology), and how that has changed over time and place (America vs. Europe). Does Adams think these forces are at odds? Does Adams make a case for one or the other being a more noble force? What is the point of his essay--is it to warn, to advise, to philosophize?

It seems to me that Adams is referencing Sir Lancelot's very precarious predicament, in which his honor, duty and love as a chivalrous knight towards his king is at odds with the mutual love he shares with Guinevere, the King's wife and Queen. His honor and love for his king and the feeling of true love are two powerful forces that seem impossibly difficult to bring to a compromise. Is Adams paralleling this conundrum with the two forces of the Dynamo and the Virgin, technology and religion?

Henry Adams was a historian and this reading is an excerpt from his autobiography. Adams refers to himself in the third person in this essay. Is he also referring to himself in this quote when referencing "an elderly American"? Later in the reading he speaks for "an American historian" as well as more specifically (sorta) "the historian". I find the different references to the narrator a bit confusing. Is it a stylistic choice or does it serve another purpose?

Adams draws a similarity between technological and religious forces, both unable to be completely understood or explained but also exerting undeniable forces felt by all.

The lion is the king of the jungle, he represents power and danger. "They Lion" may symbolize the power and danger within the oppressed. It grows with each injustice and is fed with the growing strength of the oppressed and the knowledge that comes from each acquired freedom. Eventually, they Lion will be powerful enough and when provoked will cause damage to his enemy.

Starting with the line "From 'Bow Down' come 'Rise Up'", I feel a shift in the tone of the poem, from suffering and helplessness to rising power. The downtrodden can only be told to bow down for so long, until they are motivated to band together and rise up. The downtrodden who have toiled with shovels, etc. have arms and hands that are strong, and are a force to be reckoned with.

Terms in the first stanza including burlap sacks, bearing butter (car grease), tar, gasoline, drive shafts, and wooden dollies bring to mind a laborer, specifically one working in the automotive industry. Black bean and wet slate bread evokes the image of someone who can't afford good food and instead only eats that which sustains him.