And let us be contained By entities of Self …
The idea that we contain ourselves is completely on the nose. People hide away to attempt to fit in with society and by doing so are like specimens in these jars not really living to their full potential because they feel they must fit in instead maybe for safety or for some longing to be in a higher position in life.
There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe—
The alliteration of “holocost oh hell” along with the imagery of the fields being a place warrenting that image of death and sorrow is powerful. Without explaining what she means it is immediately understood.
God, must I sit and sew?
I like how Alice Dunbar-Nelson beings and ends to poem with “sit and sew” while also sprinkling it in the middle. It's repetition seems so monotonous that by the end when she says “God, must I sit and sew” it also makes the read feel tired as well.
Stirring the depths of passionate desire!
The author described Inez in such vivid terms while also making it sensual. She draws attention to her mouth, uses words like passion, desire, soft, flame, etc. I would infer from reading this that there is this lust or romantic love for Inez.
Gee, that poor shine!
After reading this poem over I think I understand the jar reference better. The sand is from Africa but its bottled up here in America. It's stuck fitting into this jar in a way Americans can accept and understand it. She sees the man dancing and pictures him in the jungle being a different version of himself, and how if he wasn't in the clothes everybody's laughing at he’d be beautiful. So the man, like the jar of desert sand is being contained by the outside appearance. She sees him as condensed in his own jar.
Does it stink like rotten meat?
The way he’s describing the words viscerally sticks with me. The dreams are dying and I can almost smell the dying meat, I can picture a dried raisin or a sore. He’s putting the concept of dreams into this powerful image invoking the senses to understand what he means.
Coming from a black man’s soul.
I listened to a lot of blues music growing up because of my mom loves blues music and she took me to blues festivals growing up. I always felt such power and emotion in the words, not all genres are so powerful and speak to genuine emotion. I don’t relate exactly because it’s not my experience but to feel words instead of just hearing them even though coming from a different background shows the power behind each word.
I, too, am America.
I too am America. This is a powerful statement even today. We are all American we sing our anthem the same we all live on the same land under the same flag. The fact that we discriminate against our own people is insane. I think that’s what the narrator is saying, I am American too so don’t tell me to eat in the kitchen.
Ancient, dusky rivers.
When we pictures rivers we picture something with water flowing and containing life but to say it’s dry is almost seeming hopeless. The river is dry and dead almost like he is saying his soul has died somewhat.
I, too, am America.
This is a powerful statement even today. We are all American we sing our anthem the same we all live on the same land under the same flag. The fact that we discriminate against our own people is insane. I think that’s what the narrator is saying, I am American too so don’t tell me to eat in the kitchen.
I’ve known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers.
When we pictures rivers we picture something with water flowing and containing life but to say it’s dry is almost seeming hopeless. The river is dry and dead almost like he is saying his soul has died somewhat.
I must not give you birth!
The poem seems like the narrator is speaking to an existing child but with this line it’s made more clear she’s speaking to the metaphorical child she could bring into the world but is too fearful to.
What laughing lips will never show: How tears and torturing distress May masquerade as happiness:
There is so much sadness in these lines. Hiding the pain behind a mask of smiles and laughter.
No Charleston or Black Bottom for him.
I had to look up the meaning of Black Bottom because in this context I understand it’s a dance but it also made me think of the new movie that was nominated for oscars Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (call back to Ma Rainey from a few weeks ago!) Black Bottom is also according to Webster “low-lying section of a southern town occupied primarily by black people” which I’ve never heard the term before the movie and now this poem.
Then Peter say, “you must Be crazy, I vow, Where’n hell dja think Hell was, Anyhow?
Growing up religious I was ingrained to think hell was a specific place but as I got older I started hearing people say Hell is a place on Earth and wondered how that could be until I grew to understand the real world a little more. To have such traumatic life experiences that even the image of hell is where you’re from is so devastating, those times as well as now hell is a specific place to so many people and it’s not just one specific place but all around us.
Cheerin’ lak roarin’ water, lak wind in river swamps.
Ma Rainey sings songs for people who can relate to them. The African American experience of the times. Blues and jazz are ways to reach the soul and sing from the heart. This may be the first time or the strongest time anybody has sang of their shared experience.
To New Orleans delta
Knowing this piece takes place in Louisiana really sets up the setting and makes the language of the poem fit well. I’ve been to New Orleans and I can hear the diction of the accents based on the writing.
One sees immediately how difficult it would be for an artist born in such a home to interest himself in interpreting the beauty of his own people.
By suppressing the beauty of culture and individuality I can see how being an artist growing up in that time wouldn’t draw or write about their own background. It’s incredibly sad how erasure has taken the pride of ones self and turned it into something to be ashamed of. I feel like Hughes is trying to drive the point that writing and and expressing your culture is so important especially since even some of the people in that group don’t partake in art that they find too racial. It’s important to be seen and to keep the love of ones self and culture alive despite who does and doesn’t like it.
In many of them I try to grasp and hold some of the meanings and rhythms of jazz.
I like how many times jazz is brought up in this poem. Jazz music is poetry and tells a story. It’s hard not to listen to and feel something. I compare this to my previous annotation, if you don’t truly feel the message it can be see through, things like music and writing involve being vulnerable and accessing some real emotions to be remembered. Authenticity is important.
And I doubted then that, with his desire to run away spiritually from his race, this boy would ever be a great poet.
Poetry comes from the heart and soul so what I think this means is that by denying who you are you can’t produce real poetry. It becomes fictitious and inauthentic, it becomes easy to see through when you don’t embrace yourself fully meaning he will never be a great poet because of it.
promiscuity between devil-may-care men
In Paul Gauguin’s painting “Words of the devil” there’s an actual word connection with the phrase “devil” within the poem. With a closer look the phrase “devil-may-care” I looked it up to clarify the meaning, it’s someone who relaxed or nonchalant. In the painting we see the face of the woman being almost enamored by the man behind her as he looks at the flowers. He is unaffected by anything but nature. He seems serene and relaxed.
They enter the new world naked, cold, uncertain
The idea of being “naked” whether physically or emotionally can be connected through vulnerability. The subject of Georges Seurat’s painting is vulnerable attempting to cover herself and the line in the poem of being vulnerable as we enter the world naked and uncertain, the uncertainty makes us bare and vulnerable to the world until we build our metaphorical clothes of experience.
Is food for thought, but not despair:
The food for thought saying means something to think about but this line makes me think about eating when you’re sad for some reason. Let’s feed our sorrow but not think about it.
might be driven to sell your love for peace,
This line suggests that not only does this author not love the subject of the poem but it says they don’t like this person to me. If you don’t love someone but care about them you wouldn’t sell that love, you’d respect it enough to just walk away.
For auld lang syne.
Auld Lang syne is used as a way of saying goodbye to the old. To begin the last stanza with this reference is like the beginning of the end. In the poem above the line “poets and kings are but the clerks of time” Robinson sees himself as this person who keeps records of time so tying in the poem by Robert Burns to say goodbye to a period of time seems fitting.
Life is too strong for you– It takes life to love Life.
This seems like an existentialism moment. To emphasize their life looking back. It’s something about life that we don’t understand until the very end. Through the ups and downs of her life Lucinda Matlock still enjoyed it.
WHEN I died, the circulating library
The author is speaking about themselves from the “grave“. I would think that is a way of using double consciousness to view themselves from the eyes of other. Especially when someone dies we view them differently than when they were alive.
Bless her little heart!” said he with a big hug, “she shall be as sick as she pleases! But now let’s improve the shining hours by going to sleep, and talk about it in the morning!”
He’s speaking to her about herself in the third person. Her husband is incredibly patronizing.
But he said I wasn’t able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there; and I did not make out a very good case for myself, for I was crying before I had finished.
It’s frustrating to read about this woman being capable enough to try and make decisions she thinks will help her get better like writing or visiting family and her husband is controlling her and treating her like an object who can’t make a normal decision. He’s telling her what she won’t be able to handle. Is the mental illness aspect causing him to other her? Or because she’s a woman.
I am glad my case is not serious!
This line is so sad. This is someone who is suffering and because of the stigma of mental illness especially in women at that time she’s being treated like she’s just making it up when it is very serious.
John says if I don’t pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall.
Throughout this piece she keeps talking about her husband in these controlling ways. It’s like he’s saying “try harder or I’m going to send you away” which especially to a new mother can be threatening.
They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil?
Irony is to say one thing but mean another, the comments that Du Bois experienced he is telling us that they are meaning something different than what they say, and at the same time they are othering Du Bois by asking him questions related to his race.
few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries.
Adams compared the science of the Dynamo to worship and Du Bois is comparing worship to freedom. Two very different takes on what something of importance is in different peoples lives.
double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others,
This is similar to how Adams turned himself into a character. With this he can view himself through someone else’s eyes. When he turned himself into the object he was able to write about himself as if he were someone watching himself. He created his own double consciousness instead of having someone write about him.
otherwise they would not have strewn fig-leaves so profusely all over her.
Looking up the symbolism of fig leaves explained the phrase as something to cover up shame but I also found in the book of Genesis Adam and Eve covered themselves in fig leaves to hide their bodies. So far he has brought up religion a few times, the cross, the use of Venus and the virgin, and praying to the dynamo. I like how he combines science and religion this way since ether seem like opposing topics.
Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
This is incredibly relevant even today and it made me think about how the world may gain more knowledge but if we repeatedly ignore the facts of what we learn we will stay on this repetitive cycle of ignorance that’s been going on long before this line was ever written.
From the ferocity of pig driven to holiness
I found this line interesting and my favorite in the whole piece even though I don't know exactly what it means it still stuck out to me, I want to picture literal pigs with halos even though I know he's using it as a metaphor for something.
Of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride,
This paints a pictures in my head of where Levine is from, using only a few examples, they are specific enough that I get a picture of this area but not too specific that it takes away from the flow of the piece.
Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter, Out of black bean and wet slate bread,
The use of alliteration in these first two lines grabs the attention of the reader and sets a rhythm right away.