who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts,
Sounds like a typical ride on Bart. I feel like the speaker is saying that people write these kinds of people off as crazy but we don't know what they were like before that state.
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
It's strange because the speaker sounds like they're talking about hipsters in New York now, this whole poem feels ahead of it's time.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
That's often what happens to brilliant minds, they destroy their minds with drugs and alcohol.
How tears and torturing distress May masquerade as happiness: Then you will know when my heart’s aching And I when yours is slowly breaking.
This whole poem says to me that yes it's great to build bridges and connect with other people. But building bridges isn't all happiness and love. It can really show the struggles that people are hiding.
You do not know the monster men Inhabiting the earth, Be still, be still, my precious child, I must not give you birth!
Sounds like she wants to get an abortion to prevent bringing this child into this screwed up world.
There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe—
I'm guessing since the author mentioned men going off to war earlier that she is referencing the events of world war II here.
My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams— The panoply of war, the martial tred of men, Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death, Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath—
Men had to put their dreams on hold to go fight in a war that drained the souls out of them.
That’s what they done to this shine, ain’t it? Bottled him. Trick shoes, trick coat, trick cane, trick everything — all glass — But inside — Gee, that poor shine!
The way the speaker talks about how the dancer is bottled makes me think that society views him the same way the sand is bottled in the beginning. Not like a person but as an artifact of sorts.
A real honest-to-cripe jungle, and he wouldn’t have on them Trick clothes — those yaller shoes and yaller gloves And swallow-tail coat. He wouldn’t have on nothing. And he wouldn’t be carrying no cane.
It almost sounds like speaker is comparing the people dancing in "jungle" of Harlem to African natives dancing in the jungle.
Oh let them sing Before the urgency of Youth’s behest! For some of us have songs to sing Of jungle heat and fires,
Let the youth sing before they have to face the hardships of reality.
A dancing girl with swaying hips Sets mad the queen in the harlot’s eye. Praying slave Jazz-band after Breaking heart
Using Jazz as a way to escape the harsh reality that African-Americans had to face at the time.
I want to see the slim palm-trees, Pulling at the clouds With little pointed fingers … I want to see lithe Negro girls,
This whole poem sounds like the author yearning for a place where African-American people can be free to express themselves and their culture.
Big bloodhound came aroarin’ Like Niagry Falls, Sicked on by white devils In overhalls.
Sounds like a black person being chased by white people and hound dogs in the south.
They dragged you from homeland, They chained you in coffles, They huddled you spoon-fashion in filthy hatches, They sold you to give a few gentlemen ease. They broke you in like oxen, They scourged you, They branded you, They made your women breeders, They swelled your numbers with bastards. . . . They taught you the religion they disgraced.
It sounds like a reference to slavery, how they brought slaves in and broke them like they were horses. But the poem is saying no matter what, they are strong men. No matter how much they tried to break them, they are strong men.
Or packed in trains, Picknickin’ fools. . . . That’s what it’s like, Fo’ miles on down, To New Orleans delta
Sounds like everybody is packing into train cars like sardines in order to pursue a better life.
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat?
The whole talk of dreams and having them deferred makes me think of Douglas's Aspirations painting:
I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes,
This is the picture that came to mind when reading this:
I bathe in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
Sounds like he's talking about Africans heritage in Africa in order to contrast it with how they are treated here in the United States.
I think we are in rats’ alley Where the dead men lost their bones.
Images like this make me think of the poem "They Feed They Lion." It sounds like a dog eat dog world where everyone is out for themselves. I feel like both describe two different types of wastelands, but at the same time very similar. An apocalyptic wasteland that exists in our world, we just ignore it. It gives the reader a glimpse of how ruthless this world is, if you fall behind you're going to be the one in the alley getting eaten by rats.
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
I immediately got the image in my head of a dead tree. No leaves or anything like that sitting in the middle of a wasteland. This is one of the first images that came to mind. You can interpret the dead tree creeping over everything as smog covering the sky, with only bit's of sunshine breaking through. It gives a depressing feeling, a place where you never get to see the sun.
Unreal City Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Another one of our text that I felt was similar was the mystery text assignment "The South of the Slot" by Jack London. This quote "South of the Slot were the factories, slums, laundries, machine-shops, boiler works, and the abodes of the working class." (London) made me think of an industrial wasteland similar to "Unreal City." It feels like Eliot is at first describing an apocalyptic wasteland but the more you read it the more familiar it feels. It's not an apocalyptic wasteland, it's just the world we live in that some pretend doesn't exist.
I think we are in rats’ alley Where the dead men lost their bones.
An alleyway where dead bodies are dumped, and then rats come out to feast. What an image.
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Sounds like a crowd of men dying on the London Bridge, from either pollution or some other cause.
April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring
Yeah when you think about it, everyone celebrates fall and loves that time of year when really it's just a bunch of plants dying and then in Spring new plants start to grow out of a pile of dead ones. Pretty metal if you ask me.
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Sounds like being in a state of just existing as an empty shell.
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water.
I like the image this creates of the sun rays coming through the branches of the tree.
April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.
You don't hear spring described like this very often. It sounds like somebody getting angry about their alarm clock going off and having to wake up.
But by this familiarity they grew used to him, and so, at last,
While other people view them as poor and beneath them they feel they are normal because that is the way they grew up.
devil-may-care men who have taken to railroading out of sheer lust of adventure—
Kind of reminds me how so many people I went to High School with went into the service because they barely left the small town we grew up in.
The pure products of America go crazy— mountain folk from Kentucky
Nice to see the stereotype of Americans being a bunch of rednecks has been around forever.
with dead, brown leaves under them leafless vines— Lifeless in appearance, sluggish dazed spring approaches—
I've always felt this way about fall how everyone just goes crazy and celebrates a bunch of cold dead leaves.
But by this familiarity they grew used to him, and so, at last, took him for their friend and adviser.
I feel like this just means that after a while they got used to the hate.
The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.
Makes me think of a Bart/Muni station during rush hour. Just so many people trying to go in the same direction that they just become one mass.
All will be easier when the mind To meet the brutal age has grown An iron cortex of its own.
Sounds like it's saying kind of a "what doesn't hurt you makes you stronger message."
Man, doughty Man, what power has brought you low,
I interpret this and the rest of the poem as maybe a renowned solider at sea who was killed in battle. His body was lost, no one there to mourn him as it floated away. His legacy now over-shadowed by everything else.
I might be driven to sell your love for peace, Or trade the memory of this night for food. It well may be. I do not think I would.
Sounds like they're talking about prostitution while the whole piece talks about how love is more than just sex, while others over think love thinking it can fix everything.
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.
A fall from grace, once they're done with you they cast you out. This part reminded me of the film "Sunset Blvd."
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
Taking the road less traveled has made things better for the speaker. It feels like the opposite of what we were talking about last class where we were saying you had to go to the city in order to be somebody.
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
Sounds like the speaker feels that the wall has set him back.
For I could never make you see That no one knows what is good Who knows not what is evil;
Sounds like a place that was desperate for guidance but he just couldn't get through to these people
And managed for the good of inquiring minds, Was sold at auction on the public square, As if to destroy the last vestige Of my memory and influence.
I feel the library being auctioned off represents peoples memory of him already fading.
As in the days they dreamed of when young blood Was in their cheeks and women called them fair.
Depressing, sounds like they're stuck growing old in a crappy job.
I did not think that I should find them there When I came back again; but there they stood,
It's amazing how relevant this still feels today. Some things never change.
It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.
I like how this is supposed to be a relaxing weekend for the young woman to treat her depression yet they stay in a room that feels like a jail.
After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,
This is relevant even today as ancient civilizations such as Ethiopia get zero credit compared to the ones listed above.
Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it.
I liked this line because it made me think how there are always things that people are afraid to bring up and talk about. Things people are afraid to question, this usually occurs around the topic of race.
Neither of them felt goddesses as power–only as reflected emotion, human expression, beauty, purity, taste, scarcely even as sympathy.
It is interesting how they viewed goddesses as not a symbol of power, but viewed something like a train to be more powerful. I don't know I just found it kind of funny.
revolving within arm’s length at some vertiginous speed, and barely murmuring–scarcely humming an audible warning to stand a hair’s-breadth further for respect of power–while it would not wake the baby lying close against its frame.
Sounds like Adams is saying despite it being so quiet you need to respect the power and danger of this machine.
From the oak turned to a wall, they Lion, From they sack and they belly opened And all that was hidden burning on the oil-stained earth They feed they Lion and he comes.
The next generation is going to stay in this small town and continue to "feed the lion."
Earth is eating trees, fence posts, Gutted cars, earth is calling in her little ones,
Sounds like the town is decaying and returning to earth.
Out of the gray hills Of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride, West Virginia to Kiss My Ass, out of buried aunties, Mothers hardening like pounded stumps, out of stumps, Out of the bones’ need to sharpen and the muscles’ to stretch, They Lion grow.
Reminds me of somebody who stayed in their hometown, a place with family history and blue collar work.
Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter, Out of black bean and wet slate bread, Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar, Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies, They Lion grow.
This whole sentence makes me think of someone making a hard living. Somebody whose working as maybe a mechanic or something along those lines to put food on the table.