Oh, let’s build bridges everywhere
I think Johnson is talking about building bridges both between the races, butn also within the African American community. To "build bridges everywhere" would ultimately strengthen all aspects of blackness within America -- strengthen the black community by coming together and building bridges with one another, and lessen the culture gap with white America
Of lesser souls
I've noticed the word "souls" recurring in African-American works, notbly DuBois' 'Souls of Black Folk'. Black writers favouring the word "souls" reflectes the soulfullness lof their art (especialluy in music). To have soul is a good thing, and their use of teh word highlights a pride and an undertsanidng if their own humanity - humanity that was forever being stripped from them by white people. Use of the word empowers them.
The crowd kept yellin’ but he didn’t hear, Just kept on dancin’ and twirlin’ that cane
These lines reflect the growing sense of value in African-Americans. It highlights the 'New Negro's refusual to submit to White men and the inequalities of segregation and racism.
You would a died to see him.
Johnson's initial negative reaction to the "darky" being flipped to one of amazement and awe reflects the underestimation of the African American community. The gradual realisation that he is dignified and proud, is similar to the gradual growth in emporwerment and pride in Ablack Harlem. The stanza works as if to say, "You may laugh at the negro now, but you'll soon realise how misguided you were"
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstacies! gone down the American river!
Ginsberg sees the good and the miraculous aspects of America being flushed away. In this new, modern landscaope, all is lost -- perhaps, then, the frenzied turn to drugs as an escape or attempt to revive these lost "miracles"
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares
The blending of dreams and drugs, "waking nighhtmares", creates a sense of delirium. The line between dream and reality has been blurred. The copius drugs, mixed with the madness of society has made it hard for people to distimnguish reality from illusion
burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,
Depicting the "best minds" "burning their money"highlighhts the opposition to capitlaims that a lot of the Beats and hippies backed. In the mad modern world ofm1950s America, burning their money can be seen as a rejection of this culture and alos a last-ditch attempt at survival in an ever-maddening world
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans,*
This line seems like a prelude to "I, Too, Sing America". By By writing that he "heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans", Hughes places himself in a truly American moment, as if to say "yes, I was there... And I'm still here now." He ties blackness to America in this poem.
Besides, They’ll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed— I, too, am America.
Hughes' loose structure and use of free verse gives the poem a cadence that, when spoken aloud, strengthens the protest message. The lines don’t rhyme and follow no strict rhythm, unable to be contained, and the lines are short and declarative, building to that final: “I, too, am America.”
When Ma hits Anywheres aroun’.
Brown’s unapologetic use of black, African-American dialect is 'new' and striking. The diction and spellings are colloquial, using African-American vernacular to create dialectic verse that is distinct to the writing of the ‘New Negro Movement.’
II
Stanza's refelect verse/chorus structure in music: stanzas I & III have a lilting, rhythmic flow, a counterpoint to stanzas II & IV that have a more free, melodic flow that follows less of a set rhythm. This experimentation with rhythm adheres to Pound’s third principle of modernism: “As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.” The similarities between stanzas I & III, and their rhythmic structuring, conjure a chorus-like quality, with stanzas II & IV acting as verses. Brown is writing a poem about music, whilst consciously structuring the poem in a musical way, not to a metronome but to that of “musical phrase”.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images,
This reminds me of Levine's 'They Feed They Lion'. "What branches grow/Out of this stony rubbish?" Stony rubbish echoes the negative imagery in the first stanzo of Levine's poem. "A heap of broken images" - Levine's poem features a lot of fractured, undeveloped images that heap up to show what "they lion" grow "out of". Also links to the Armory show and the exhibition of Cubist art, that fragments images to show multiple perceptions of the same subject. []
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
"Human engine" portrays the working class as a machine. Echoes Marx in the 'Communist Manifesto', in which he sees the proletariat as a machine-like force of labour. Ideas of engine's makes me think of The Dynamo in 'Adams' - a force: the working class can be viewed as such a force.
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many.
Remenisceint of the "aparition" of faces in Pound's "In a Station of the Metro". The "flow" and "aparition" of people in a crowd touches on the idea of movement that is so intrinsic to modernism, highlighting Marx's idea that "All that is solid melts into air".
The witch that came (the withered hag) To wash the steps with pail and rag, Was once the beauty Abishag, The picture pride of Hollywood. Too many fall from great and good For you to doubt the likelihood.
The 1930s saw a huge influx of greed and corruption into Hollywood and L.A. The poem opens this way, as if an opening thesis on the downfall of those in Hollywood
And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler
Alludes to the common feeling of wanting two things at once, and the struggle knowing that only one decision or path can be taken. (Long shot...) Has subtle connections to DuBois's theory of double-consciousness, in as much as African American's felt both African AND American, but struggled to be truly either. How they wished they could be both, like Frost wishes he could travel both paths and be one traveler.
John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.
The immediacy in which Gilman notes on the narrator's expectations of marriage highlights how ingrained the ideea of women being lower than and subserviant to the man in marriage was at bthis time.
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.
Here, DuBois could be referring to other promiment African American voices and leaders. Perhaps he is denouncinhg the 'false salvation' that marcus Garvey purported was to be found in re-mighrating to Africa in his 'Back to Africa' campaign. Perhaps the shame he writes of is in relation to Booker T. Washington's urge for African Americans to 'accomodate' white Americans and settle, almost veiled, amongst white America.
this double-consciousness
Double-consciousness of the African American can also refer to the double life or experience of both African and American. Though he is both, he simultaneously avoids being truly either. He was seen as an 'other', not truly part of either identity. This is something Paul Gilroy notes on in 'The Black Atlantic'.
The year 1900 was not the first to upset schoolmasters. Copernicus and Galileo had broken many professorial necks about 1600; Columbus had stood the world on its head towards 1500;
Interesting how Adams uses words/phrases with negative connotations to describe the effect that new ideas and new technology/design has on himself and others. "Upset schoolmasters", "broken many professional necks", "stood the world on its head". Does Adams intend to evoke negativity in relation to these, or illustrate the potential pain that the death of the old and birth of the new can have on those accustomed to the past?
The planet itself seemed less impressive, in its old-fashioned, deliberate, annual or daily revolution, than this huge wheel,
Adams establishes the notion that technology and egineering was quickly overshadowing the impressiveness of nature. For so long, landscape and nature had been the primary object of fascination and art in American culture; here we see an objection to the "old-fashioned" planet, as technology and egineering emerges as a new awe-inspiring object for discussion/critique.
my
Here, the first-person is introduced for the first time. By repeating "my", and using it only in the final stanza, seems to add greater impact to it, drawing some attention to the closeness of the lion to the poet. I wonder what other reasons the poet had for using first-person at this late point?
Come they Lion from the reeds of shovels, The grained arm that pulls the hands, They Lion grow.
These lines depart from earlier motifs of the lion coming independently from or out of something, either an object or nature (as is seen in imagery of the Earth). These lines conjour images of the lion being built and lifted up by some human endeavour - linking to the line before it: "Rise Up"