Ginsberg places a lot of emphasis in the intense imagery he uses to paint the scene. It appeals to our vision, but also appeals to our other senses. You can almost feel the cold water and smell the smoke.

Ginsberg uses a lot of variety in his use of punctuation and capitalization. The shorter sentences invite a sense of speed into the poem. It's almost absurd how quickly you dive into thee madness.

Howl was written in the 1950s, which was a delicate time period. In the context of the world at hand, the 1950s gave us the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Korean War, the Lavender Scare, th Red Scare, and more. Many of "the best minds" weree lost to war and drugs and hatred if we look at the discrimination that ran rampant then.

"The lonesome road" can allude to the trails and tribulations that black people go through as they navigate life. "Lonesome" is an interesting contrast to this idea that Ma Rainey is a spiritual connector for this community. They're alone in their battles yet surrounded by other people.

Ma Rainey shows a lot of connection between the black community as she is a part of them and keeps them strong. "Song" can allude to the songs slaves sung on plantations for moral and to send messages. It can also allude to church hymns that unify the community at Sunday church.

The piece is not written in standard English, instead placing an emphasis on phonetic sounds. From the mentions of places such as New Orleans, the delta, and Mobile, we can assume that the piece is set in the US South. There, they have very distinct accents and the phonetic spellings help add to that characterization.

What is a dream in this case? Is it the dream of equality? A dream of a better future? If it is a dream of a better future, how does it get deferred?

There is a promise of a better future for black Americans in this poem. There is also the reassurance that America is not just white, but built on black Americans. They have been deeply rooted in America since the beginning and helped build its foundations. Things may be rough today, but tomorrow will be better.

Rivers have carved a large mark on the world. Many of them have lasted for many years and erode away the earth. Water is often seen as a bringer of life and renewal. Under the water, it can also hold relics of the past. Things that have sunk, flooded, etc. It holds a lot of information about the world. similar to the soul composing a human.

Hughes brings up the gap between gender where the man is seen as the breadwinner and the woman is the homekeeper. Not only do we see issues with race in this essay, we get issues with gender. Racism and misogny are big issues in society, and they only get worse as these things intersect and interact with each other.

Whiteness has often become the standard for things in life. It's a goal to achieve for people of color. The young poet is then surrounded by this standard of whiteness. There is an implication that everything virtuous is white and everything else is not.

Hughes brings up the issue of standardization. The issue with standardization is the fact that it can take away from the individual in order to cater to the majority. The issue of the American "melting pot" is thee assumption that things can be blended together perfectly. However, to do this, as Hughes said, you must be "as little Negro and as much American as possible."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmMO42bOTZ4

The line "Oed’ und leer das Meer" ("Desolate and empty is the sea") reflects back on the idea of a waste land. Water is known to bring life, without water there is nothing. However, Eliott contradicts that notion by describing the sea as desolate and empty. There is no life in that sea.

Similarly, the same can be said of the character, Coraline, in Måneskin's song, "CORALINE." In this case, Coraline is desolate and empty. The lyrics go: "Sì, Coraline vorrebbe sparire / E Coraline piange / Coraline ha l'ansia" ("Yes, Coraline would like to disappear / And Coraline cries / Coraline has anxiety"). The sea is also mentioned in "CORALINE": "Coraline vuole il mare ma ha paura dell'acqua / E forse il mare è dentro di lei" ("Coraline wants the sea but is afraid of water / And maybe the sea is inside her"). In this scenario, we have to consider the meaning of what the sea and water is. Coraline seems to be striving for the life the sea could bring but she is afraid of it. The sea is inside Coraline, implying that she is capable of gaining this sense of life.

The Burial of the Dead has an emphasis on the difficulties of living in this wasteland, where the sun is hot and there is no shelter from it. You're just stuck there, like Coraline. Both have a stuggle to find salvation only for it to come up empty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un2AAqNCYtw

"Sounds of Someday" by Radio Company tells a story of a world lost in madness. "All gone is here today / Finding room to breathe" and "Even the fire is on the road / Tryin' to get away" show signs of a broken world, where you are trapped. They are constantly trying to look for a better life aka "the sounds of someday." They hope those sounds will bring them back home.

In this passage, we have "where the sun beats, / And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief / And the dry stone no sound of water." It's another description of a broken world with no life.

There is a sense of hope in "Sounds of Someday," but in The Burial of the Dead, the only thing in someday is "a handful of dust" and no life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkXsVr-hNnk

"Je vois le ciel" is a song by Baroque pop artist, Gal Musette. It is a French indie-pop song that talking about how the repetition of the months can be grating on a person. She repeats "Ça se répète toujours," meaning "It always repeats," thorughout the song. There is the imagery of the sky throughout the song as well, "Je vois le ciel mais je m'en fous" ("I see the sky but I don't care"). She sings about how a clear, beautiful sky is nothing to her.

Similar to the beginning of The Burial of the Dead where Eliot describes Spring, winter, and summer. Springtime is describe as "cruel," despite it being a time of clear skies, growth, and change. There is also warmth described in winter, similar to the idea of it "being too cold it's actually hot." There is an implication that things would be better in the cold. Winter is also the opposite of spring and represents stagnation. Therefore, things would be better if nothing changes.

Both the song and the poem show this distaste for the warmth of spring and change. There is no meaning to spring warmth. As the seasons change, you get stuck in the neverending cycle of wanting to go back to something in the past. "Je vois le ciel" reflects the tiredness in The Burial of the Dead where "death had undone so many."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24XKJSBNrPg

Attack on Titan is an action, post-apocalyptic anime and manga series by Hajime Isayama. The setting is within the walls of Maria, Rose, and Sina where the characters live in fear of titans, giant humanoid creatures whose diets consist of humans. In the beginning, it is believed that the people within the walls are the last humans left.

"Boku No Sensou" is the first opening of the final season where the characters discover that humanity has thrived beyond the walls and that titans are actually people that have been transformed. A few reccuring themes in Attack on Titan are the repetition of history. The wall people (Eldians) are targeted for their participation in a previous war hundreds of years ago. Their defeat in the war was their fall from grace. It's a cycle of violence that was neverending. The characters had originally hoped to thrive as the human race once again, only to fall into the hands of another war, then back to hoping to return to good times once again.

Within The Waste Land, we have a sense of time repeating. "Breeding lilacs out of the dead land" set us in a barren land. However, we must return back to the key term "breeding." April is described as cruel for bringing the lilacs back to the waste land. Springtime is a time of change and new beginnings but it doesn't last forever. The cruelty can come out when these flowers are once again ripped away. Then the cycle begins anew, spring, to summer, to autumn, to winter, back to spring.

"I purified my imperfect flowers / The pain in my heart getting higher" from Boku No Sensou is similar to the breeding lilacs. Purification tends to have a very positive connotation where you get rid of all the bad things in something. However, the next line still shows pain is present, not only present but getting more persistent.

The lines of The Burial of the Dead and "Boku No Sensou" are connected through this cycle of change and stagnation. The flowers can continue to grow, but they'll still die at the end of the day. There is cruelty in change if things don't actually end up changing the way you want it to.

Nymphs are nature dieties often associated with water. These lines seem to say that the river Thames has dried up and the nymphs have life, leaving the place barren. The place is barren but the narrator still lives on despite the surrounding death.

Moment of zombie-ness: The questioning of something if they are between life and death. Eyes are often noted as the windows to the soul and they give off a lot of different emotions. "Dead" eyes, eyes that "light up", "kind" eyes, etc.

Tiresias is a blind prophet that is prominent in Greek myth. One of his notable appearances is in Sophocles' Oedipus where he tells Oedipus the truth about the murderer he is hunting, but is ignored. Another prominent appearance by the prophet is in The Odyssesy where he meets Odysseus in the underworld and tells him how to get back home to Ithaca. Both characters are existing in this space between life and death.

The colonnade provides them shelter from the rain. And it led them into summer and into tthe sunshine.

I chose a picture of a dead tree with no branches to emphasize that a dead tree cannot give you any shelter if it has no branches or leaves.

This reminds me of the popular saying: "April showers bring May flowers." April is known for its rain, which can be very destructive or rejuvenating depending on the scenario.

Many of the sentences are cut off leaving us to have to fill in the blanks od what they could possibly mean or to figure out what is missing. We're missing the words the emotions. Are we happy all the time? Why are we seated?

We don't get very many full sentences and all we are left with is a "broken heap of images." We are left having to piece together the pieces ourselves. With the synonyms used (like cow and bull), it almost feels like the same pieces that we need to put together but still slightly different.

Stein not only repeats a lot of words but she also repeats a lot of sounds. "Pat ten" then "patent." "Push sea push sea". Stein seems to be drawing attention to how things sound and how they sound next to other words.

There doesn't seem to be anyone who cares about what is happening to the working class. Those on the lower parts of society don't have anyone to bear witness to their struggles.

Following the tthought of the people being products, "Elise" here seems to be a product that can be sent out for work, no mattter how young she is.

With this line coming righ after "pure products", it makes me wonder wha the "pure products of America are". Are the products raw goods tthat get produced? Or are the real products the people?

Doubleness / Division: Freddie seems to code-swotch frequently, he can switch up between two personalities very quickly (aka North vs South).

Doubleness / Division: There are many instances of things like "brains vs. brawns". Freddie can imitate a good laborer (brawn, poor, hardworking) while he is a linguinist (brains, intellect, rich).

Doubleness: There is a split between "the North" and "the South". The North is upscale and the South is the labor force. Reminds me a lot of the East and West Egg from the Great Gatsby.

Death, isolation, lonliness all comes for us in the end, It "stalks" us until the day we meet. It's inevitable.

The isolation is amplified by the silence in the matter. Ttheree is no sense of care for the man and he himself is silenced.

Love cannot keep you alive and it can't give you what you need. It is moree that it can only give you whatt you want.

You can go back to previous choices but sometimes the first choice was the right choice.

The whole poem seems to be shrouded in darkness. They seem to be clinging on to something in the dark instead of moving forward.

This seems to imply that you can always go back to the other decision if you feel like you have made the wrong one.

Can we avoid our own fate? It reminds me of the long discussions of fate versus free will. Do we actually have choice? Or are we just going along the path laid there for us?

Flowers have a million different meanings. Each flower means something different and those meanings can change depending on the color. What is the significance of mentioning flowers here?

There are many people that struggle with indecision. The roads reflect options that we are given and the narrator seems apologetic that they have to make a choice.

Out of the three poems, this is the only one with any dialogue in it. The dialogue adds to the relationships between the characters present versus other poems where you have to infer a bit more to see those relationships.

People have this idea of "humanity" and what it means to be human. In the context of this poem, what does it mean to be human? What is humanity here?

The village has died to the point that even God looks away. How desolate can one village be? There is a more somber tone to this poem due to the feelings of abandonment present.

This poem utilizes a lot of shorter and straightforward sentences. It's "simple" writing for someone who speaks like they had a simple and content life.

The ideas of "good and evil" are constantly in flux. However, itt is difficult for people to see that the definitions of "good and evil" can change from place to place and person to person. Can we actually ttell ourselves what is good and what is evil?

Masters repeats things in lists of fours. From different types of poems to different types of genres. There are references to poetry and writing throughout this poem.

Inanimate objects in literature always have meaning. Even in real life, we tend to find meaning and entertainment in anything we could find.

The narrator speaks in a way that seems almost hysterical based on the shorter sentences and the constant exclamation points. It feels like mood swings.

This feels reminiscient of how woman could be institutionalized for anything. All these people have authority over her body despite it being her own body.

"Cold" is an interesting choice to use as it has connotations of being detached from something. The numbers and progress as a result feels detached from the successes and failures.

The constant questioning present in the text is very reminiscent of how people are constantly questioning or striving for new ideas. There's a constantly line of questioning to understand why people are thought of as "lesser".

There's an insinuation that black people are the problem in society. This is an unspoken question but everyone knows what it means.

The divide between religion and science has always been prominent. Evolving technology and science often clashes with the rigid beliefs in religion.

It is easy to assume cause and effect and it is easy to get sequences mixed up. Once again, it plays into this idea of ignorance and that just knowing the facts does not mean you are educated.

Ignorance often comes from the lack of effort people put into learning new things or from people being isolated from the ability to learn. Inert, meaning unable to move, implies that ignorance comes from the rigidity facts. Being unable to accept change is what causes ignorance.

White has plenty of associations, suh as purity and innocence. Black is typically the color associated with sin. There's a sense of competition between the words that don't align with typical associations.

Lions are often associated with things like courage and bravery. They are referred to as "the king of the jungle". Time continues to pass as we see nature slowly evolve to be techonology which seems to imply that there is a heirarchy being established.

The four lines above go through the progression of technology from the old-fashioned "burlap" to the inclusion of things like tar and gasoline which we are more accustomed to today.