The fact tat the humor is invisible speaks to, one, the fact that one must make light of the harshest experiences in order to cope, to be 'madder than I am', and two, the laughing same as the howling, is not only a sign of grief, but a sign of resistance, a declaration of the torturer's powerlessness.

This repetition seems useful because of both its emphasis on the prominence of this experience of having to stay in boxcars, as well as the phonetic string emulating the sound of a moving train's wheels.

It seems this phrase can be taken two ways. Firstly, this might allude to the ghettoization of African American neighborhoods, and the consequent and inevitable environmental racism that comes with this. On the other hand, this could be referring to some kind of comradery and understanding shared by those who have suffered the fate hereafter described. This dualism of positive and negative connotations seems particularly appropriate the experience the poem tackles, with the positive interpretation being secondary, and much harder to glean, similar to optimism in the African American experience.

While the tale seems simple enough, this stanza has me puzzled, in that it seems to suggest that the toil Slim had undergone in his life is what prevents him from making it to heaven. Instead, he is asked to return to earth because he is too dumb. This might allude to the fact that the toil was almost normalized to Slim, which is why he thought it could not have been hell. Perhaps this stanza speaks to the dangerous (and 'dumb') normalization of abuse.

This is the first instance of ellipsis in this poem, which is likely do the fact that this line is suggestive rather than outright. The poem hitherto describes the tribulations and gross injustices done to black slaves in American history, but this injustice (rape) is the first to only be suggested. This can both be seen as rape being a worse injustice than the others mentioned, but also that this was one of the acts that was hidden even at the time, slaveowners being far less overt about raping their slaves than the other injustices.

This phrase seems to hint at the dilapidation of the performance and of the piano, but also refers to Ma Rainy with her 'gold-toofed smiles'. This perhaps suggests a ubiquity to the dilapidation, but that even that can form something positive, namely a black and yellow smile and the ability of this performer to please her audience with a black and yellow piano, a pleasure that is drawn from their cries (which later referred to in the poem). It is a misery she transforms into a pleasure by articulating it.

One of the most popular Hughes poems, because it investigates the ways the possibility of aging hope. To illustrate this point he uses a series of similes, some of which present the possibility that the dream might improve, and others that suggest it might grow, or "dry up", losing its initial taste. These two lines, however, is the only statement, because it is not a long term change of the dream deferred that we must predict, but a certainty of the immediate. A heavy load is a burden, and hope deferred is another, which is why April is so cruel.

This line encapsulates well what the imagery suggests: a man trying to get past the dilapidation he is in through music (he even says so pretty much explicitly at the end of the stanza). He is trying to make the best out of his situation and move past it. However, as is tackled in the last stanza, the melody is simply a coping mechanism, and a perpetuation of his dilapidation, which is why i think the phrase "poor piano" here is so appropriate.

This part of the poem speaks to the preparation of future resistance, but what fascinates me is the structure. This listing here is so different from all other parts of the poem, flowing in short bursts, increasing (ever so slightly) in length every time, which I read as the characterization of resistance: it is not a steady incline nor is it an instance, but a series of bursts.

These two lines seem evocative of a constant apocalypse, either approaching or obstructing one's path. This seems to suggest that the dilapidated world Eliot here describes was an inevitability. What is interesting here though is that this shadow may refer to the memory and desire above mentioned, which are described is distinct from the shadow under the red rock, a shadow that turns out to mean fear. Memory and hope (desire for something in the future) are encouraged, but immediate desire brings about fear. This is reminiscent of the increasing craving for instant gratification and idealization of the past in the 21st century, a motif investigated in Last Night in Soho.

The film investigates how nostalgia can idealize a past that must have been more cruel than it is remembered. If this is a natural element of nostalgia, then this notion that hoping the future is kept to the same standard as a warped recollection of the past is a dangerous one because it brings about the inevitability of disappointment. It is easy to look at the past through rose-tinted glasses, but much harder to do that with the present or future. Therefore, to have this warped memory (of the 60's in Last Night in Soho and of winter in The Wasteland) is an inevitably cruel process which ends with the disappointment in the present and future.

The constant use of caesura and enjambment to isolate the verbs associated with these seasons seems to speak to an emphasis on the purpose of things rather than their nature, an idea reinforced by the seemingly contradictory "Winter kept us warm". Furthermore, the lilacs out of the dead land and the spring rain are not beautiful for their own sake, but for what they do. Function over form, in the 21st century, can be seen with the ever-increasing reality of industrialized farming, where even the idea of a living animal becoming one's food is an idea that is estranged from laity. There is a fragmentation between the origin of food and the food itself.

This speaks to the "fall", with April being used here as the transitive season as well as, hermeneutically speaking, the transition between the ideal and dystopian worlds, when one still remembers and desires the ideal. That is why it gave me the impression of a palimpsest, which in turn reminded me of "Synecdoche, New York", a film whose entire edifice is to investigate the idea of the ideal with the protagonist essentially creating a city in order to create a play that stays true to life.

In the film, this introduces an infinite self-reflexivity within play by wanting to recreate the play within the play (and so forth), which ends up being nothing. The cruel, endless self-reflexivity becomes a sort of palimpsest of itself, with the memory of life and earlier versions of the play, and the desire to recreate all of it perfectly.

The film focuses of the unattainability of the ideal in reproducing the real world, whereas the poem recognizes hope as cruel because it focuses on the unattainability of the ideal because of how dystopic and desperate this wasteland is.

This reminds me of Foucauldian resistance, namely how a group of oppressed people must have a method of rebellion for resistance to occur. This can be seen when comparing the middle class and lower class of black people described. The lower class is not interested in resistance because they are so detached from the white population, financially, culturally, and environmentally, that they are able to accept themselves as separate. The middle class, however, strives to be more white because it is much closer to that goal, if white means richer, with a house and two cars. They have a method through which to resist and therefore cannot separate themselves from white people, conforming in an attempt to resist the exclusivity of the white class.

This phrasing goes back to my first annotation, namely that in conforming to white standards and being subjected to internalized racism, a black man attempts to discover himself, meaning that he desires to become nothing by default, so that he may let his individuality speak, rather than the color of his skin. The standardization is therefore both the process and the goal for those who have recognized this need to be individual.

While I understand Hughes' interpretation of this young poet's statement, I relate to it by interpreting it as something other than "I want to be white." Being part pf any minority group has with it the constant vexation of being reduced to that one trait. As such I do not see the first statement as "I want to be a white poet", but rather "I want to be known as a poet more than a black poet."

The leap Hughes makes from the phrase of the young poet to his interpretation even has some hesitation with the "I believe", recognizing some other possibility, perhaps mine. However, even my interpretation fits Hughes' argument being wanting to be white is also a desire to be standard, so that you are assessed based on nothing other than your qualifications, or in this case, the young black poet's writing rather than their blackness.

This is another moment of clinging on to life, again reminiscent of the undead. Here, this woman is being chastised for her abortions, and is dying in so doing because of the pills' side effects. The fool that she is called by the narrator can be seen, in the Shakespearean sense, as to mean prophetic and truth-telling, that she is rather progressive in her autonomy to reject the product of the implied rapes from Albert. She is undead because she clings on to her life (autonomy) while dying from the very process necessary for doing it.

This phrase suggests eyes that cannot sleep, reminding the reader of the idea of the undead, escaping the rain, a romantic pleasure, and rather focusing on a game of chess as a pastime, a qualitative game of exploitation and distraction as a means of clinging onto life while disregarding the deathly contempt of rain (and synecdochally speaking, nature).

What seems to be described as the stump of time, after its tree-like death, a zombie-like figure making the silence in the room that much more prominent. These stumps of time are made synonymous to Philomel, a famous figure of desperation and rebirth, suggesting that zombies of time refer to the death of expression in the dystopia, "hushing the room enclosed" rather than leaving room for liberty. This is again evoked when 'she' is stood savagely still after expressing herself.

These two lines seem evocative of a constant apocalypse, either approaching or obstructing one's path. This seems to suggest that the dilapidated world Eliot here describes was an inevitability, like Yeat's "Jesus" in "The Second Coming", here pictured.

The constant use of caesura and enjambment to isolate the verbs associated with these seasons seems to speak to an emphasis of the purpose of things rather than their nature, an idea reinforced by the seemingly contradictory "Winter kept us warm". This reminded me of a compass, like the one detailed in "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning", which is a love that is important only insofar as what it does.

This speaks to the "fall", with April being used here as the transitive season as well as, hermeneutically speaking, the transition between the ideal and the dystopian worlds, when one still remembers and desires the ideal. That is why it gave me the impression of a palimpsest.

At this point in the poem, I think it is a bit pointless to try and analyze individual lines. What I interpret this poem to be is a sort of stream of consciousness where even cohesion and logic take a backseat, to the point where the only thing that seems to be leading it is the phonetics. What this creates is fragments, often illogical, but that seem to be in the same line only because they sound pleasing together. However, when phonetics are allowed to be chained together, they materialize as fragmented images, supporting the modernist push for this style by suggesting that it is more faithful to the human thought process.

I believe this first line speaks to the composition of the entire poem, and how repetition is used as its very composition, while the bed seems to refer to the period at the end of each line. As such, this first line seems to be describing what is consistent in poem filled with isolate flecks.

The use of the term "profound" suggests that this is a metaphor for rebellion, from the hard, paradoxical winter that is described in the bulk of the poem to a rooted, awakened spring.

The school physician seems to be an agent of statism, that while being correct, is also being antagonistic toward the poor as a reminder of their frail existence, by neither pointing out something terribly important (lice are not a priority) nor by suggesting a solution to this issue. Therefore, this Physician becomes more of a reminder of discrimination, something the poor come to see as a friend because he gives a sense of martyrdom.

The start of the latter stanza can either be read with or without the context of what preceded it, suggesting a contrast between an imagination devoid of peasant traditions, and the perpetuity of these peasant traditions outside of the imagination. This seems to imply an optimistic possibility of being able to give up these traditions in exchange for more character-defining, imaginative action.

This and the other allusions to thorns, spines, and iron cortexes seem to establish a phallic suggestion to this poem, but also suggesting that the dark delphinium is death, a theme of conflating sex and death which reminds me of Pink Floyd's "The Wall".

This whole poem suggests that "Man" referred to time and again is used in the grandest sense, which is to mean that is refers to all of humanity, in all its variations, as can be seen with this line. But because it is the grand Man, it is also the grand Death that has extinguished "Him", meaning extinction, and the fact that no one remembers humanity after its extinction, speaks to humanity's collective ego, or "a rusted iron column" (l. 7)

This goes back to the idea presented at the beginning of the poem, devaluing the grandiose nature that is usually associated with love. I go so far as to imagine love to be this tiny thing when reading this poem, a thing infinitesimal in scale and infinite in effect ("making friends with death" (l. 7))

This, for me, suggests the unpredictability of death, because its design is so ubiquitously filled with white elements, but it is the design of darkness, an appalling juxtaposition. This exists too in the smallness of the spider and its moth in the next line and the grandeur of the idea of death.

This repetition suggests that he is sleeping, contrary to his strong desire not to. The morbid undertone of this poem ("darkest evening", "dark and deep") suggests that this narrator is clinging to his life in vein.

This seems to speak to the idealist adventurer who, even after having recognized that both paths were equally fair and that neither one no step had trodden either black, convinces himself to have chosen the more daring, uncharted path. Not only does it recognize the impulse of the want to be the minority, but also the unreliability of memory and its inclination to idealize.

This enjambment allows for the following lines to be taken doubly, first with the primary meaning of a mother and her child, but if starting with the second line, the "it" can also refer to the jug. What is most important here, however, is the enjambment's consequent isolation of "down tenderly", which gives it the double entendre of the beginning of life with the mother putting him down tenderly, or the end of life, as he tenderly sets down the jug himself.

Here the poem seems to touch upon something of an interesting perspective on death, namely that after death one does not stop being human in terms of how they are thought of, but rather stay as good and human as they ever were; nothing sublime, nothing to wish for in death, or "descent".

This caesura seems to effectively capture the the sudden transition between life and death because the poem captures both in the same line, only broken by this dash.

This list seems to be included in her summary of her life, suggesting that it was a prominent part of her life, but is simultaneously juxtaposed with what followed afterward, like the singing larks, which are included in more detailed and longer lines, showing their superiority to this list not because of their inclusion, but because of their proportional importance within the span of her life.

This is interesting, as if to suggest that those with no moral inhibitions or references for good and bad are willing to be morally turpitudinous and therefore become more powerful, in choosing its own good for its own benefit.

while the iamb has been only subtly made awkward hitherto, here is the first instance where it is explicitly broken, by the pine tree's symphony. It seems this fits the theme quite well, not being constrained to the iamb because life, love, and all the great things cannot be constrained by it.

This seems to me a metaphor of the ways in which her mind is limited by the damage that has been done to it (primarily by her husband and brother). I am unsure of the low patch, but perhaps it speaks to having even the children she rears for the sake of the family being removed because of her limited decisions.

This seems to echo the idea that an oppressed group is deprived of any proaction, thereby making rebellion and establishment of change that much more difficult.

This touches upon the way in which rebellion and furtivity are in themselves deterrent to immediate progress while they are still in effect, because the opposition allows for less energy to focus on the progress itself.

This touches upon more than just the idea that black people were disadvantaged because of poor education. This speaks more to the fact that black people, because they were stripped of their identities, ancestries, and familiarity to the world around them, first needed to recognize the issue and how to solve it, something that made it that much harder to fight for their own rights.

He reinvokes the idea of a veil, a source of polemics in his experience as a child, but this one seems to refer to an introspective veil. This is a particularly interesting contrast as it does not follow the black person's "tasteless sycophancy" (another sign of polemics) but rather the loss of identity, giving it priority over what seems to be the aforementioned contemporary complaint.

Here, Dubois recalls the sky once again, a feature he seems to stress as a sign of happiness from his childhood, but one of despondence for black people. This commonality shows the extent to which he believes societal discrimination can alter the perception of something common across different strata, but viewed almost oppositional to his own experience by those oppressed. The sky is bluest for him when he's happy, but always merely a streak in the air by those persecuted.

A recall to the relationship between Adams and Langley, but now applied to different cultures, where the exchange of information can only bring about the dispersion of "inert facts".

The constant allusion to religiosity and this use of "abysmal" once again hints at the fact that this machinery is divine, and is therefore ontologically distinct from everything it is compared to, namely the engine-house in this case. When this parallel is developed, one can see the "abysmal" epithet applied to the distance between the world and God, another worrisome schism, one that emphasizes the unlikelihood of a caring, good God. And like the dynamo, God is possibly destructive.

This characterization of the dynamo through an antagonistic approach in describing the planet, as "deliberate" in particular, seems an effective use of transferred epithet to designate the former as something of happenstance and divine, something later emphasized when it is compared to religiosity and the infinite.

This transferred epithet seems yet another way to strengthen the pervasive motif of rebellion in this poem; particularly that from a degradation comes sweet rebellion, but even the rebellion is in itself violent in its kinking action, much like the royal and savage Lion.

This is the first instance of Lion turning into a verb, going from the Lion growing to it acting as a Lion would, likely to be some sort of euphemism for vengeful hunting. This seems a deliberate conflation of religious ("five arms"), racial ("white sins"), and environmental ("car passing under the stars") rebellion.

the "b" alliteration is interrupted by the "acids of rage", a violence on a poetic level as well as a narrative one, being the only unmaterialistic source of the so called "Lion".