The world is so broken from the cruelty of racism/ violence that she can’t bare to bring a child into it. She feels hopeless for her own life, how could she “do that” to a child too? These lines make the child seem restless to come into the world and make it seem as though the speaker feels like it’s wrong but also right for her to refuse him/her entry: wrong because the child doesn’t understand and wants to come, but right because she couldn’t bare to see him corrupted.

The “there” in “and span the gulf of challenge there” is “everywhere”. It takes different people form different places to become determined to bridge the gap. The gap is everywhere, so everyone has to work to bridge it.

This poem is resonant of Gwendolyn B. Bennett’s “Usward” where she creates an allegory from a ginger jar. Here Helen Johnson creates one with a glass jar of Saharan sand. At first she thinks it’s wierd for someone to have bottled the sand, but then she realizes that’s what’s been done in America to African Americans.

I love how the speaker assigns colors to this emotion and passion. The language and intensity whips and flickers like tongues of the flame she describes.

The speaker is really idolizing and romanticizing fighting in battle. They do see that it’s really hard and that every battle runs the risk of defeat and death, but the speaker feels at least they would be striving valiantly at something.

I love the way the speaker juxtaposes their two foreseeable possibilities for life: to fight and be valiant in the battle against injustice, or to sit and sew. They definitely feel like their mundane task is useless and they want to fight even if it means death—cause then at least they’d be a martyr and useful for something—which is how the speaker would put it. But another angle is that this may short-change the importance of these mundane tasks. Cause while they may seem boring, they’re not useless. I can understand why she wouldn’t want to, but I also see that value in people helping and fixing things that need fixing on “the home front”. They’re needed just as much as people who go out and fight in a physical battle.The reality of mundane tasks is a battle in itself—a mental one.

In this time period, Black Americans would generally only be accepted into White society if they were performers/ entertainers.There were segregation laws but they were still allowed to entertain and Bennett is lamenting that all they are only recognized as are minstrels/ the entertainment. That they’re still slaves/ in chains.

It’s like her “sad people’s soul” are surging with the river/the Nile. And it speaks to something I always think about: how people can listen to blues and enjoy or not enjoy the sound, but be totally lost on all the pain that it s captures and was born out of. Many think they’re just “nice songs” but they mean something so much more.

This is speaking to the differences in experience and world view as being a good thing, not something to hide. And if anything the speaker feels that they are needed for society and that those with different experiences should speak up about them.

Creation bends to the sadness of the jazz singer and harmonizes with his melody. Creation weeps with him and mourns with him. The singer croons a blues tune and the earth is blue with him. The earth sees the wrong done to him. Creation knows and creation listens like an attentive friend.

The lines of this poem widely vary in length, pushing out longer or pulling in shorter, drawing us in like audible jazz. It is the slow sway of a saxophone and piano and entire jazz band playing off each other and experimenting with sound, telling a story. It is the same story he has to tell in “I, Too, Sing America” that America will someday see as beautiful, because it is.

He also sings America. It may sound different because he has a different story than White Americans, and jazz captures that, but it is still meant to be sung. And in time they will see how beautiful he is.

The “...”and short lines brings out the motion of jazzy “lazy swaying” that the lines talk about. Not only that, but Hughe’s use of “o’” instead of “of” is directly using bluesy, “low-down” dialect and gives the impression that the speaker is is actually speaking, enlightening us audibly. It’s a very audible poem that puts us in the swing of the music.

This hits in the idea that you can’t control the world but you can control yourself. The solution to the overarching issue begins with thinking rightly about the self. As much as statisticians (as Locke talks about) want to see the macro-economical problem as needing macro-economical solution, the true solution begins and perhaps lives out its days working and weaving at a micro-economical level: in relationships. Locke is saying it begins with the relationship to the self. From there it branches out into relationships with the people around you. “You can’t change the world but you can change someone’s world”, and who was ever more affected, in their soul, by national powers doing national things than by a kind and loving person meeting their every-day needs?

“A problem well defined is a problem half solved”, it’s taken time but now writers/thinkers like Hughes and Locke are verbalizing the dam break that finally happened after decades of prejudice building up in stuffy waves and seas. Now that the issue is being outright declared and Americans (of all colors) finally have words for the ruling tensions of the day, they can begin a conversation about solutions.

It’s like a toxic/abusive relationship. It can be hard to realize that what the abusive partner or person says about you is not necessarily the truth; and is often not. It takes time to free yourself form the brain washing and to push back against the lies of implied inferiority and, thereafter, the need to imitate or “fall in line”.

I like that he is hopeful for a change. The unspoken patterns of American tendencies is now spoken, by him and other writers and artists. Hughes is in tune with the way societies work: they change. They veer towards the voices that speak the loudest and longest. Hughes beats a drum that others have beaten before him and he is hopeful that many more will take up the cause; that countless creative minds will be inspired to cement this important movement into history using the tangible creation of art forms that tell stories to all generations.

The truth Hughes is getting at is so dis-heartening: that in this culture “the church” has become a “in” for good reputation. Also that the color of the faces in that church determine further the level of “in” it gets you. It’s so hypocritical because the church is meant to be God’s people who pray, share and care for each other, befriend and take care of one another and invite everyone and anyone in as invaluable equals since Jesus (who was homeless for a time and NOT white) died for everyone. Hughes is super jaded by this and is desperate for equality and for people being taught to value exactly who they were made to be.

This so true because to bare your soul on paper, for others to read, takes so much vulnerability; and to be great at it so much more. Hughes is saying the best work comes from knowing who you are, accepting who you are, and being who your are. If your fearing people seeing the real you, or the message you’re really trying to get across, there will always be a veil or facade blockading the essence of your work.

This reminds me of “Hunger Under A Bridge” by Eugine Higgins. This painting is about seeing people for what they are. About not merely focusing on the social elite, but seeing everyone as a possible subject for art regardless of (because of) their social status. Here Williams is saying The same thing, that the less priveleged are destined to hunger until they eat filth out if necessity. Both of these works are highlighting poverty stricken realities.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/files/images/1983/SAAM-1983.97_1.jpg?itok=2HcAZswE

This reminds me of “Third Class Train car” by Honorè Daumier. It's where a working class family rides in the train and they are supposedly hard-pressed to find work as well. These two works highlight the working class and the unfair struggles they experience, juxtaposed to the assumed wealth of the upper classes.

http://deyoung.famsf.org/files/imagecache/exhibition_preview_large/1996.51.jpg

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rF-HEE6PepI

I think she’s asking like, “who decides these things? Who’s cutting men down and returning them to dust that blows away in the wind?” This reminds me of Ecclesiastes 2, “So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind...”

All the toil and trouble of “Man’s” life, all that he accumulated and took pride in comes to nothing when he is cut down, I assume by death, but maybe also circumstances. As most of the other poets/writers we’ve read, Millay identifies the pattern that earthly things turn to dust and don’t matter at the end

I think she’s saying that, love doesn’t get us all of these material things we need to sustain us, and yet we all crave it and wouldn’t give it up even if doing so could give us material things we need. This poems reminds me of Matthew 6:25-26, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”

In these poem, Masters displays an entire life with just a few words. He seems satisfied with life in this poem while in the one above he seems very dissatisfied and trying to find meaning. He seems existential in this poem: saying the journey of life is important because that’s all there is.

Like Adams and the other authors/poets we’ve read, Masters declares we can’t find truth and that there is no good or bad. That everyone should find their own good.—interesting though that there are some things we are sure are bad: rape, murder etc. you could argue that to the people committing these things, they don’t see them as bad—but does that really mean that they aren’t bad? Should they—people—really be the judge of what’s good and bad? This begs the question of: where do morals come from? In all societies and civilizations they have existed. A general assumption that certain things are bad and other things are good. If good and bad, wise and foolish (truth) aren’t real things that exist outside of human opinions, then how come every people group and nation has come up with the same general concept of these things? I definitly don’t know everything, but I feel like I can summize that these are real things that exist outside of what humans happen to think of them.

These “tick tick tick”s sound like a clock, marking the passage of time—time going by quickly. He seems to be saying all these attributes of life swell and fade away like snow and roses. Nature is reflecting the evasiveness of life

Just because you’re famous in life, the end is still hard. You still get old. Having starred in Hollywood doesn’t help being disregarded as an old person later In Life. He’s saying fame/glory is not what truly matters and will leave you empty if you pursue it.

It almost seems like he’s trying to say that you could pursue the fame and glory of Hollywood/fame/ beauty etc., but in the end we all get old and then we all die. Here he’s saying it’s better to have true friends by your side who will be there to the end, than to be famous in life or to seek glory

I think he dies here...I think freezes to death. The repeating of lines at the end is like he’s drifting off to sleep—as in final sleep.

This makes me want to cry. This really depicts what it’s like to get old. To have been somebody, to have done things, to have gone places. But when you get old it doesn’t matter because it’s all gone and everyone just sees an old person when they look at you, not a young person who got old. Society marginalizes and dismissed the old. When your old you’ve lost people and there’s no one left to reminisce with who you about who you’ve lost or care that now you yourself are lost with out a community. All these writers and thinkers are coming up with the same conclusions: all things in this world fade and there’s no stopping them. If you cling onto them you’ll only be disappointed. This determines for me,more than ever, that my hope must be placed in something that lasts, something eternal.

It’s somber to read this pome adjacent to the previous, this one written decades alter. Robinson has seen more of the world long enough to be reminded through the different trials in the stages of life what nothing lasts and all things break. He seems to draw the same conclusion as Adams, that striving in life to get somewhere is pointless because there’s nowhere to get.

Woah, he’s like Gollum. Is he joking and drunk, or does he have like a split personality or something? This kind of makes him sound lonely cause he’s walked here alone and is having conversations with himself.

She clearly grew up a lonely child, left to her imagination. She mentioned her brother at the beginning—how he didn’t believe she was sick either. She was probably raised badly, mentally abused by her husbands toxic and controlling behavior and had no relational help outside of the marriage to realize what he’s been doing to her.

This is so creepy. So did she scratch up the wall paper from going crazy but not remembering the episode? Or was there someone else before her? This room sounds like it’s old, like others were locked in there before her, but maybe she scratched up the wall and even scratched in all the “designs” that remind her of suicide and dying. But maybe she just doesn’t remember.

This is terrifying. This room sounds like a dungeon or somewhere someone was locked up, maybe just her? Maybe others before her? Chains go in rings in the wall and bars keep people inside. Her husband is clearly abusive and she’s completely brainwashed into his world view. She believes everything he tells her.

This is interesting. I think twice now he’s reference American society as “the kingdom”. He has a background in the bible—not uncommon for this time period and culture. It’s interesting how he is defining America as the kingdom, cause in the Bible the “kingdom” is the people in heaven—the promise land. He sees full freedom in America as the end goal rather than heaven.

I’m honestly so disheartened by the checkered past of America—unloving to the extreme. It’s so disheartening how easy it is for Nations to normalize cruelty, and how easy it is for its people to go with the flow of social opinions and acceptances, simply because it’s easier to let it be than charge out of your comfort zone to oppose it. On a national level for many, if not all, countries, there will always be so many injustices. This pushes me to realize that on the microscopic level of my life, as a person in a nation, all I can do is choose to love the people around me. You can’t change the world, but you can change someone’s world. Relationships are the most important thing.

From the language used, saying this water is never at rest, it makes me think of the ocean, like waves on a beach. Often times we (I) attribute watching waves forming, folding and crashing as a peaceful and enjoyable experience, but here he uses it as a metaphor for the lack of rest in his life. And maybe he doesn’t mean waves on a beach, but rather waves at sea, throwing his ship around and creating a horrible voyage for him. Cause I’m the first line he identifies with the water, “o water, voice of my heart...”

This is resonant of King Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes. Historically he was the richest, wisest, and most powerful man in the world at the time in which he lived. He had everything he could ever want, and yet the whole book is about how he searched for meaning and fulfillment/satisfaction in the things of this world and never found them. He had access to it all: women, money, power, parties, games, hunting etc. and yet none of it fulfilled him but instead left him empty. Out of his own experience he wrote Ecclesiastes to warn people not to pursue these worldly things because they all eventually fade and are meaningless to pursue (Ecclesiastes 1:14). This is the same, time-old dilemma that Adams faces. He’s realizing all our strivings in the world are meaningless. Solomon has a different conclusion about truth and what really matters than Adams does, and Solomon’s includes the unchanging, trustworthy constant of a loving God—the thing outside of ourselves that has created us with purpose and a meaning. Adams focuses more on trying to create our own meaning out of the journey of life, that comes to nothing at the end. Solomon focuses on trusting what God says our purpose and meaning is because (according to him) He made us; Solomon focuses on trusting God with our journey, eyes fixed on the hope of an eternity with God in heaven where His people will be forever freed from the troubles of this world. So many in history from The Rolling Stones (can’t get no satisfaction) to King Solomon, can relate to the frustrating pursuit of knowledge and worldly things that comes to nothing.

Through this excerpt, Adams keeps coming back to “force”. And always highlighting the fact that great men seem to know a force is needed, but do not what force or from where it comes. This is the main frustration of Adams: everyone knows they need to do or know such and such, but no one actually does or knows such and such. They just keep repeating the fact that they need to know it or do it, calling their suppositions knowledge, but no one actually has the answers that Adams is looking for. It’s like what the world has defined as knowledge is simply the charade of knowing things, but Adam’s really wants to know things. And not only learn them but apply them.

Yes, you could know everything in the world but if you don’t know how to apply it, the great pains you endured to learn it is for nothing. And what’s more, is there are things about the universe/this world that seem to matter so much more than knowing things about stuff. Like family, friends—love. Not to get romantic but, even if you had all knowledge and wisdom but didn’t have love (love for people and knowing how to love people—which is an action, meeting needs) then what’s even the point of knowing things. I agree with Adams, applying knowledge is everything, not knowing everything.

This is so interesting, it’s like overtime, things we build that we want to last (fence posts), or the things that seem like a given (trees) all fade to dust eventually. Earth eating it up gives a picture that there is nothing to cling to, it all fades away and is eaten up and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.

Oak trees get bigger and bigger over a long period of time until they’re really huge. I love this analogy about how they can become a wall—this whole poem is about the passage of time and it gives the sense that it is not only slipping away form us but leaving quiet destruction in its wake.

Acids corrodes overtime. Overtime rage/anger becomes bitterness—this bitterness corrodes over time the same way acid does. When bitterroots grow up they destroy relationships.