April is the cruellest month, breeding 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 A little life with dried tubers.
The progressive tenses he uses to end the sentences give me a feeling of the spring (April): everything's actively growing.
By the road to the contagious hospital under the surge of the blue mottled clouds driven from the northeast—a cold wind. Beyond, the waste of broad, muddy fields brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen
Without the title, we might think this poem is describing winter. It is different from the softness and brightness of spring that we are familiar with.
But now the stark dignity of entrance—Still, the profound change has come upon them: rooted they grip down and begin to awaken
I think he's not only writing about the spring has already spread out, but the spring that contains infinite vitality and infinite possibilities. The spring itself is not so sweet and lovely, and still has what winter has left. Isn't this how the original early spring look like?
The pure products of America
Does pure products of America represents innocent childhood? Does the process of producing mean to abandon one's childhood imaginations?
Strive not to speak, poor scattered mouth; I know.
I think this last line demonstrates the narrator's confusion and upset that no one mourn the man who lies there. The "I know" makes me feel like the narrator has the same emotions of being ignored or not being cared by others that he/she knows the feeling.
But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
Where is he going? Why is he urgent to leave instead of enjoying the woods for a longer time?
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
The two roads are equally unknown, and perhaps because of the unknown, they are equally beautiful. We are on the road to life, is learning or life always supporting and guiding us? Life itself may choose a path that is the best for us.
Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child Down tenderly, fearing it may awake,
The simile of connecting mother-baby relationship with Mr. Flood and his bottle gives me an image of a lonely old man sitting under the moon sky. He treats the bottle so carefully just like how a mother treats her own child. The fear of if the bottle accidentally breaks, this only "relative" will also leave him.
He sat the jug down slowly at his feet With trembling care, knowing that most things break;
The phrases emphasize that Mr. Flood is very old, yet he has not much time nor much hope. I think "knowing that most things will break" is a metaphor that all things in the world will break, and old Mr. Flood's body is steadily breaking down as well.
And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!
I think the wallpaper here represents what has been trapping her, a place that seems like home but is actually a prison to her. By tearing the wallpaper down, she finally escapes.
I don’t like to LOOK out of the windows even—there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?
She was tearing off the wallpaper that what she had been avoiding connected to herself. She also wondered if there were women like her, if they also had to struggle the way as her? Were they trapped? Did they all have to tear their “wallpaper” in order to be free?
But he said I wasn’t able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there; and I did not make out a very good case for myself, for I was crying before I had finished.
Her crying reveals the hopelessness of how she is being treated for her illness. He believes that her writing makes her worse, so he refuses her idea of going to visit her relatives.
asking himself whether he knew of any American artist who had ever insisted on the power of sex
I think here he is expressing his concern of seeing a dangerous confrontation in modern science and technology, the Dynamo, and the essential of humanity, such as religion and traditional values, which he calls the Virgin. I think he is also worried and concerned that whether the human spirit can survive through the new Age of the Machine.
he turned from the Virgin to the Dynamo
I think these two opposite symbols represent the style of life that “virgin” represents art, religion, and tradition; while “dynamo” represents technology, ideology, and evolution.
That man that took that sand from the Sahara desert And put it in a little bottle on a shelf in the library, That’s what they done to this shine, ain’t it?
I think she's giving a metaphor that this dancing man is like the bottle of the sand from the Sahara desert, taken from its (his) original place and put in a new bottle. This man chose to follow the white culture by dressing like them, but she thinks he should have picked up his black culture and identity instead.
Don’t knock at my heart, little one, I cannot bear the pain Of turning deaf-ear to your call Time and time again! You do not know the monster men Inhabiting the earth, Be still, be still, my precious child, I must not give you birth!
The structure of the second stanza is similar to the first stanza. But in this second stanza, she expresses her feeling that it’s too painful for her to bear the child knocking at her heart because she knows this world has not kind to children with color. She is aware of this and she hopes to wait until a better time when the world is ready to accept the child.
Red mouth; flower soft,
When I started reading this poem, I thought maybe she's describing a friend of hers or someone she met. But when I saw this line, I felt like she's describing her female lover. because if she had never tasted her red mouth(lips), how did she know they're as soft as flower?
Etched dark against the sky While sunset lingers.
I think Bennett is trying to tell African Americans not to feel ashamed of their culture but embrace it. I also like how she pictures the lights lingering at sunset.
We have tomorrow Bright before us Like a flame. Yesterday, a night-gone thing A sun-down name. And dawn today Broad arch above the road we came. We march!
The Young Negro (New Negro) brings up hope. It talks about how yesterday was the past that cannot be changed. Instead, they should focus on the present and march on towards their dreams.
But jazz to me is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America; the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul–the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile.
He explains what Jazz means to him, and uses it as a symbol of African-American culture. Jazz brings the acceptance and enjoyment that shows those culturally respected African Americans' ideal characteristics.
We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.
He is suggesting that the artists can conquer the racial mountain and be free within themselves when they become aware of their racial art "builds temples for tomorrow," and it doesn't matter whether the audience are pleased or not.
One of the most promising of the young Negro poets said to me once, “I want to be a poet–not a Negro poet,” meaning, I believe, “I want to write like a white poet”; meaning subconsciously, “I would like to be a white poet”; meaning behind that, “I would like to be white.”
He is mentioning the subconscious of “white is best” runs through Black people's mind. Because the poets knows how difficult it could be for them becoming an artist without categories of color, that "[they] want to be white.”
It well may be. I do not think I would.
Even though the poem starts with saying love is not all, it ends with love is all we need. I think this is interesting and relatable among teenagers that they want to be loved and feel love, but at the same time, they act as they don't really care about not being loved.
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
When I read the first few lines, I think the author was trying to say that love is nothing similar to what we need physically, such as basic needs, but it is essential for us to feel loved and be loved.
the more careful adjustment of education to real life, the clearer perception of the Negroes’ social responsibilities, and the sobering realization of the meaning of progress.
I think he's emphasizing the importance of education that makes African Americans more aware of how they look at themselves. Education also helps them to understand what difficulties or discriminations they had been through.
He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.
This paragraph makes me feel like listening to a narrator speaking out a protagonist's belief of an ideal world. I could see the struggles he had been through and the conflict he might face in the future.
walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation,
I think he's calling our attention and referring to that even though African-Americans had been free from slavery, which seemed to be free, there are still constrictions and limitations as imprisonment in reality.
Adams haunted it,
Adams refers to himself in a third-person perspective. Does this mean that he wants to introduce his life to us as a story with the third-person perspective?
From “Bow Down” come “Rise Up,”
I wonder if this comes with a metaphor of a rising social class, or they finally get the rights they demand for through a movement.
earth is calling in her little ones,
Does "her little ones" mean wild animals or human?
They Lion grow.
Does he mean "they, the lion, grow"? Does lion refer to human?
Lion
Lions are considered as the kings of the jungle.