Both Ginsberg and Solomon found themselves subjected to shock therapy. Apparently it didn't do much good for them.

Great minds but trapped by the Moloch of modernity

Tying back to his analogy of Moloch to a dystopian prison state, Moloch apparently is modernity itself, something which those who live and die in the city are bound to, forced upon it and seemingly unable to free themselves.

Definitely a reference to the H-bomb. Hydrogen is the most abundant chemical in the universe and is often linked with water and life. Defining it here as sexless implies some opposite of life and vigor.

Ginsberg seems to tie modernity and machinery to war and death consistently. With the Moloch repetition he seems to be building a dystopian image of children's futures sacrificed for the sake of trains and printing presses running on time.

Heavy judge of men because he is associated with the death of children? Is there some Spartan ideology here of deciding which children are the most fit and deserving to grow into strong adults?

Biblical name of a Canaanite god of child sacrifice by means of fire and war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch

The sphinx, an icon of ancient Egyptian civilization is here represented through modern building materials. This modern sphinx eats imagination, likely a comment on the forward thrust of modernity diminishing a true connection to the mystical and creative.

"Omnipotent Eternal Father God"

An interesting break here where Ginsberg sympathizes with Carl Solomon, whom the poem is dedicated to. Considering they met in a psychiatric hospital, it seems that Ginsberg got out, left his friend behind, and is now suddenly worried for his safety and sanity in the midst of writing this poem.

Every time I try to read about Dada I get headaches. It's some form of avant-garde, anti-art, art movement that embraces nonsense. So I suppose this section describes it pretty well.

Golgotha - the place where Jesus was crucified Birmingham - where MLKJR was imprisoned and wrote some of his most famous letters. This was written before MLK was imprisoned there but it's an interesting coincidence at the very least.

The lack of punctuation around "this actually happened" heightens the sense of rambling that comes with each of these anecdotes. Not even one free beer after surviving a plunge from the Brooklyn Bridge... can't catch a break.

Really brutal anecdote here. An attempted suicide that ends in resignation to the frailty of age, trapped in a self-made tomb of aging debris.

Probably how Ginsberg wrote most of his poems... Honestly I do love this. Incantations of Gibberish is a great Lovecraftian image, and the inclusion of yellow here only accentuates that.

A strange vignette of presentness, being "in the momemnt" in a secret back alley meetings with sex workers.

A nice way of saying that no empire lasts forever. With all the rhetoric of America being the "greatest nation", Ginsberg makes a point to say that nothing is certain or eternal. I'd direct you to Percy Shelley's poem Ozymandias for more of this sentiment...

Plotinus was a Hellenistic philosopher whose works focused on the trinity of The One, The Intellect, and The Soul. St John of the Cross was a 16th century priest whose writings focused primarily on the soul. Ginsberg seems to be making a connection between mysticism, the soul, and other eclectic studies as speaking to those who feel an instinctive connection to the universe and the energies surrounding them within it. This line (as with much of Howl) seems like a call for a modern revitalization of mysticism, most likely through the focus of sex, drugs and rock and roll.

Remembering Henry Adam's glorification of "the dynamo", Ginsberg also relates mechanical modernization to some celestial unknown.

A fellow writer who Ginsberg met in the waiting room of a psychiatric hospital. An advocate of Surrealism and Dadaism, Solomon voluntarily institutionalized himself and was exposed to shock therapy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Solomon

The pain comes with the repetition of the denial. This is not a one time occurrence, and this fact lends weight to the idea "You know"

In relation to the previous mention of "A meeting place-a common ground", an Altar can be considered a meeting place with a higher power. The juxtaposition of communion and impulsion is very powerful.

Relating lips to the color and softness of a flower (a rose?). A feature that the speaker finds beauty in both sight and touch.

Sewing is generally considered a relaxing activity, but here the speaker can't shake thoughts of soldiers gone to war. What good does sitting and sewing do while others give their lives?

The music transports him, he seems to exist in both places simultaneously

We keep seeing a lot of direct references to street names and locations across all the writers we've discussed in the Harlem Renaissance. Here's the website for this one: https://www.nyclgbtsites.org/site/new-york-public-library-135th-street-library/

Throughout these poems Bennett uses plenty of elemental nature imagery, and each of these elements is given some humanly characteristic as well. Fire is heretical, sands are silents observers, water is melodic.

Prometheus stole fire from the gods. Fire is symbolic of passion and rebellion. This line evokes a primal emotion.

These lines coupled with the previous "if any have a song to sing..." seems to be calling for a new era of art and poetry. according to the speaker, the time of dreariness and "dearth" are done and the next step should be one of cultural "birth" and prosperity.

Saint Peter notes Slim as a wanderer and thus tasks him with one more adventure before he gets his peace. It's like the start of some southern american Divine Comedy.

This song seems to speak to a self-empowerment of an otherwise powerless situation. The previous stanza shows hammers being forced upon workers and emphasizes the class separation between them and those riding along in cars and trains, but the workers find some pride in their work nonetheless.

Before we learn what exactly Ma's "stuff" is, we already know people comes from miles around to see it. Whatever the "stuff" is, it's something she's crafted and made her own.

Also known as "Malcolm X Avenue", Hughes describes this area as "Harlem's Heartbeat" in another of his poems. A hugely important area for Jazz during the 1930's. The street has it's own wikipedia page too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenox_Avenue

Being "sent to the kitchen", separated for the group, doesn't bother the speaker now, as they seem to have their sights set on the future. The speaker laughs at these small injustices and simply hones their body and mind, preparing for a future where power will shift in their favor.

The use of "flow" immediately relates the rivers to the human body in a physical, rythmic way as well as a spiritual one. With what we've seen in DuBois, there is a strong sentiment of ancient blood and ancestral memeory that is likely at work here as well.

Seems like a reference to Moses drawing water from a stone while wandering the desert after escape from Egypt. God provided many miracles to the the people of Israel while they wandered the desert, but Eliot says there are no miracles here.

Great contrast, bringing the reader fully into the winter chill, but introducing it first with a flash of fire.

Blind prophet in Greek mythology who gained powers of clairvoyance after being turned into a woman for a number of years.

Gives a stark image of monotony. Upward from the desk as if slaving away at an office all day, like a taxi waiting to get back on the road again. Restless, yet bored.

Nymph is used often to refer to a mystical young beauty, but their absence here speaks to the end of summer and the start of the cold season of decay. Hence the "brown land" and "cold blast" mentioned in the stanza as well.

Taps into the idea of "burying memories with the garden". A corpse buried in a coffin will rot, but one buried in a forest might grow.

Spring, Summer and Winter are all mentioned by name in this first stanza, but not fall. Perhaps this "down we went" is a double meaning.

Each of these lines ends with an action that is only completed by the next line.

Traditions here deemed quaint or base as opposed to the bustling of civilization. "Imagination" in the line before gives the sense of the surreal, breaking from the mundane and elevating into something new.

I love this phrasing. Leaning fully into the "product of environment" mindset on a national scale and amplifying it to a national scale.

Opting against iambic meters and heartbeat like rhythms.

A piece of art literary or otherwise must have some base "thing" at its center as the focus.

Treats the faces and the crowd as one singular entity. One ghost.

Acknowledgment that the path (or decision) is not infinite. Leaving something "for another day" means risking it not being there when you wish to return.

Moving behind this manufactured barrier, alienating oneself not in the woods and trees but behind some emotional or spiritual wall.

The speaker wants his friend to admit what he"s distancing himself from, what he's afraid of.

A wall is a physical manifestation of a desired distance or alienation from something. The sudden construction of a barrier would definitely be offensive if I was on the wrong side of it.

Given the fact that the speaker has lost so many children, this may be a message to children who have strayed from their families. Life is too short for bad blood between family members.

It seems like the first or second word of each of these poems is capitalized, which helps to set the scene. SEEDS are a subject, WHEN is a sense of setting and here WENT is an action. All different elements that set the stage for the piece.

Another instance of doubleness, possibly mirroring Mr. Flood's talking with himself as two characters, but also likely that Flood is just very drunk and seeing double.

Lots of different translations but generally tends to mean "in days gone by" or "a long time ago"

Perhaps Mr. Flood is something of a hometown hero, but all of his old friends and fans have left, moved on to bigger and better things.

Seems to suggest that people who spend all their time "feeding" themselves with troublesome thoughts don't anything new or exciting to the bigger picture.

Paining oneself to achieve greatness is a common theme, but the wording here gives it a lot of weight. Great juxtaposition.

The secrets the wallpaper is hiding is a truth that will shock everyone who sees it.

Another notion of "doubleness". The narrator believes there are two aspects of the wallpaper, mirrors of each other. Just as the woman behind the wallpaper mirrors the narrator and the narrator's dual aspects of the person she presents herself to be and the person she is when she's alone.

The only thing that can describe the wallpaper is the wallpaper itself. A singular entity.

The wallpaper was once the object of her suffering, but now the idea of solving it seems liberating to her.

The motif of prison bars returns, this time with the figure of a woman behind them. Perhaps the wallpaper is a mirror.

A great Lovecraftian trope here of trying to determine meaning from something that has none, or at least none that the human mind can fathom.

At first we see the narrator stuck indoors looking out at the tress and shrubbery and other bits of nature through her window. Now though, even when she is walking through the gardens and fresh air, the thought of the wallpaper is poisoning her thoughts.

The fact that this room was simultaneously so sturdy and so torn up further enforces the idea of it being a prison or a cage, designed to keep things trapped inside no matter how ravenously they try to claw their way out.

The fact that this room was simultaneously so sturdy and so torn up further enforces the idea of it being a prison or a cage, designed to keep things trapped inside no matter how ravenously they try to claw their way out.

john does not care for his wife's feelings on the matter, only acknowledging that it SHOULD get better and therefore waits for it to run its course.

Yellow is a color often associated with unease or fear. Yellow Wallpaper, The King in Yellow, the Yellow Sign, Yellow Journalism, Sinestro's Yellow Lantern Corps, etc.

The wallpaper itself seems impossible to focus on and creates a sense of unrest in studying it. The lines and patterns cannot commit suicide or destroy themselves, so perhaps our narrator is reading into things a bit too closely.

Already hinting that this place of restful wellness may in fact be closer to a prison.

Of course the "ancestral hall", potential haunted house and place of mental recovery is secluded from civilization and even if one were to stumble across it, tall hedges, walls and gates keep it even further isolated. "English places that you read about" - like in Wuthering Heights perhaps?

The physicians around the narrator do not permit her to express her feelings about her condition so she turns her attention towards the house. In doing so, perhaps some feelings that could have easily been aired out and dealt with slowly become more and more projected on the walls around her.

I'm no expert on the subject, but Du Bois seems to be tapping into the idea of the black people as the "original" people. The first founders of civilization across the globe. As such, black people are old souls entering a new nation, redefining their place in the world and their place in history.

The true American culture is ultimately the melting pot, but as we know, it is not an easy process for a new culture to be included in the greater scheme of the American way. Du Bois seems to acknowledge the importance of embracing all cultures. Whether they belong to a nation or an individual, they all add to the greater "kingdom of culture" that is being built.

It is extremely difficult to recognize two qualities about oneself that seem to at odds or incompatible with each other and learn to reconcile them. Du Bois points out that "two souls" do not always agree, even if they see through the same eyes. By recognizing this spiritual combativeness, hopeful some greater truth can be reached rather than being forced to side with one soul or the other.

The idea of humanity being a collection of God's children coupled with the reality of inequality among them is a powerful image. If we are all God's children, does he still play favorites?