After reading the whole poem, I wanted to know what drugs the people described in the poem were taking so I did some 1950s drug research and I came across this: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/buyers/socialhistory.html If you scroll down a bit, there is a section about opium and herion, and these users are specifically called "hipsters". I didn't know that, I assumed when it said hipsters it was like today's version of a hipster, you know, someone who carries around a typewriter for the aesthetic and was into that band you like waaaay before you even knew about them. But it's not that, it's a term referencing members of the "Beatnik" aesthetic who abuse heroin. It kind of makes the poem make a lot more sense, knowing that.

!! I was trying to figure out what this poem reminded me of and this was the line that brought me clarity!! It reminds me of getting of work at 12 AM in downtown SF and seeing and hearing the some of people who are addicted to drugs and usually without anywhere to go just sort of crying and screaming and not knowing where they are and not fully clothed.

This poem brings up nighttime and different kinds of adventures over and over, but I don't think it is about having a grand old time at night. I think it is about people of color (the poem references Black people, Native people, and Chinese people within the narrative of nighttime adventures, but the focus seems to be on Black people) finding solace and some fading sense of belonging in the nightlife, but there are also many references to substance abuse, loneliness and fear. I think nighttime is pretty universally acknowledged as the most vulnerable time our 24 hour long days. It is the time you have to be alone with your thoughts and feelings or the time you fill the void with distraction.

this is the longest sentence I've ever read

Can't help but connect to "The Dynamo and the Virgin" except here this starry dynamo is mixed directly with spirituality: "the ancient heavenly connection" to the "starry dynamo". Unlike in "TDatV", both spirituality and science seem to be celebrated as a means of freedom, or else why would the "angelheaded hipsters" yearn for them?

I'm pretty sure the "Harlem Shadows" are sex workers. Part of what makes this poem so sad is that his other poems listed below are about having courage and hope and staying strong and learning from the pain, but this one has no hope. It's more a report of what some black women in Harlem had to do to get by, how they had to compromise their safety and put aside their own dreams and aspirations. I like how he says what the world has forced these girls to do is dishonorable and disgraceful, and not the girls themselves.

This is hardcore!! The speaker is not scared of the personified institution that steps on him. Reminds me of David and Goliath.

the starting in all caps is such a strong way to start a poem. You already know this speaker means business, but there is a softness that follows in the next line: "to laugh and love and watch with wonder-eyes", that makes the speaker seem so gentle, and you can see the wholesomeness they have been after. Even though the starting line is like BAM, you find that all the speaker wants to get to be happy and home.

Took me a second to realize she was talking about Egypt. The title of this poem is "Heritage" which makes me think that this poem is about a longing to know what life was like for the speaker's ancestors who lived freely way back before America even existed.

Beautiful line!! Birth is anew. Sing the songs of change and growth.

Heck yeah !! New art new identities new perspectives !! We have to make space for the unheard. No need to give them voices, they have their own, just need to share the space that has been for so long held by only a select few.

The water is constantly moving in a river ("you can't step in the same river twice") but the river is still the river. To me this suggests that though the speaker's soul has faced constant struggle, and though he may change in some ways as the metaphorical water wears down his metaphorical banks and widens or narrows the river of his soul, he is still himself. Water is supposed to be cathartic, so it is interesting that he chose to compare himself to a river. Always moving and always changing, washing and burying muck and sad deep beneath and then pushing on.

Hughes has a strong sense of hope for oncoming change. There is no sense of doubt here. I will be at the table tomorrow. He has faith in the future and security in his own identity.

This seems like it could go one of two ways: like a spark of rage that explodes into deeper suffering or a spark of change that explodes into revolution.

Heck yeah !! This is something those with prejudice and privilege seem to not understand. It's cool if you like it, but it's not made for you. This is true of art and style, clothing and fashion and music. This reminds me of two things:

1. It reminds me of when people say "women wear too much makeup" or "guys like it better if you wear this". That's nice, but women don't wear makeup or put on specific outfits to please others.
2. It reminds me of the Wounded Knee Massacre where hundreds of Natives were fleeing persecution from the US government for doing the Ghost Dance. Hundreds were killed, including children and pregnant women, because US officials disapproved of the dance. It's not for you, it doesn't have anything to do with you.

Beautiful message of self-love and acceptance. Those like the young poet and the club owner will never be happy with themselves because they have set unattainable goals for themselves. They want to be white but can never be white and will always feel like they are not enough.It's not enough for laws to change, core values must change as well.

This is really interesting because jazz became a stepping stool for most of the music we as a nation would come to enjoy: rock, hip-hop,R&B, pop, alternative. I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have screamo without jazz, so that's something to think about, I guess. Anyway there is a heart-heavy sadness about the upper and middle class black people who had to comply with white taste. There is also something to be said about the class differences: those who are more wealthy and "successful" are those more willing to assimilate to white culture, and based on the description of the "so-called common element" - "Their joy runs, bang! into ecstasy" - those who do end up assimilating are no where near as happy with themselves and their lives as those who love themselves for who they are.

This is something we are all still struggling with and actively working on. Representation in the media, in entertainment, in working positions like CEOs or Congress or doctors or lawyers, etc. There are still disparities and gaps and clear places for change. There is no shortage for contemporary stereotypes about black people in movies, television, music, etc.

!! It's no coincidence that when we think of poor communities we often associate them with people of color. Decades of racist housing policies, exclusive job opportunities, and intentionally underfunded educational programs have created systemic racial and socioeconomic inequalities. This is reminiscent of the present day Silicon Valley tech companies abusing people of color, especially immigrant Filipina women, to do dangerous work with radioactive materials. Check out Janice Lobo Sapigao's "microchips for millions".

I think this is really important !! I know that in my family there are people who think that racism is something that happens in the South, and refuse to believe its happening here. I've spoken to many West Coast folk who seem to believe racism isn't as big an issue as we make it out to be.

Rings familiar to Du Bois' notion of the "double consciousness". Here Locke suggests that a black man's shadow, or how others see him, is more definitive of his own identity than his actual character, or how he knows himself to be.

This reminds me of the main character of August Wilson's "Fences", Troy, who is stuck in the "old" mindset because he was conditioned to buy into it. One of the key words here is "protective"; in order to survive, one must assimilate, and upon assimilation, one loses their own sense of identity as it was and it becomes something warped: who I am and who I will never be. This is also present in the histories of the Indigenous peoples in North America.

The first most motif that is clearest to me in this stanza is the voices. The speaker clearly hears something that sounds like it could belong to a woman, not just any woman, a grieving mother. This also acknowledges the gender motif and the zombie motif. I kind of feel bad saying this, but a motherless child is kind of like a zombie. She no longer has the child physically, so she isn’t technically a mother, but she still had a child and raised them for however long she could, so she is a mother. The dry/wet motif is present in the cracked earth. If the soil is too dry, it is dead. Exile is also somewhat present in that the plains are endless and the hordes, or tribes or families, must roam them. Communities of people looking to settle don’t go to dry cracked plains, so this suggests to me that a select number of people were turned away and forced to live in the bad lands.

I had to look up Phoenicia because I wasn’t sure if it was a real place, and it turns out it was a Semitic-speaking area in the Middle East, but Phoenicia is a term of Greek origin for this area. That, mixed with my blurred memories of watching Disney’s Hercules as a child, leads me to the conclusion that Phlebas is dying in the River Styx, especially because he enters a whirlpool, and allegedly Styx meets the River Lethe in a deadly whirlpool.

First, the most apparent motif is the not quite dead not quite alive zombie motif. Though this section of the poem begins claiming Phlebas to have been dead a fortnight (or two weeks) already, in the second stanza he “passed the stages of his age and youth”. It’s like his life was flashing before his eyes as he drowned, and he is experiencing the transition between life and death, where time is obsolete.

The second motif I thought could be the women and men motif, and I only say this because of the word “handsome and tall” in the final line. Handsome is a male-centric compliment, and height is often associated with manliness.

Water is supposed to be a life giver, but here Phlebas is wet and dead. Soggy and decaying, like a zombie.

There is also fragmentation in this short stanza, in the third line where the words are clearly indented. If Eliot had written “Gentile or Jew” on the line previous, it would have been about as long as any other line in the stanza, but he broke them up instead. This fragmentation could connect to the glitching nature of pausing to think of what you want to say next, or pausing for dramatic affect.

Finally, there is also desire frustrated, as the stanza acknowledges that Phlebas was like you, once handsome and tall and ambitious, “[turning] the wheel and [looking] windward”. He was not cautious, he believed he could do anything, but then he died. He couldn't find the balance between being cautious and being ambitious.

Strange that this is in quotations. Is it a quote of a quote?

This poem has multiple lines in languages other than English. Elliot is really making you work to find the meaning.

this is an unconventional sentiment, winter is known for being cold and harsh. there is no warmth in the winter, at least not outside.

i hate that i can't even highlight the passage below this so that i can copy and paste it on google translate, but it looks like it's made up of at least two different languages

elliot is flexin on single language speakers

sky poop

the earth under "our" feet, the speaker makes it inclusive but I think part of the "we" is elsie, and not necessarily the reader directly.

spring just woke up and is re familiarizing herself with the world; it's like if you took a nap and someone came in and rearranged the furniture while you slept

this poem makes me mad because he couldn't have just eaten one? like if it was just one of my plums, I would have been like "bruh". But ALL of my plums?? BRUH and then you are just going to rub it in my face that they were delicious??

"pay attention to the criticism of men" is the only good advice to come out of this essay

op oʇ ʇɐɥʍ ǝɯ llǝʇ ʇuop

hahaha he's mad because no one in his little club likes his rule he reminds me of Angelica from Rugrats

when you add too many rules to an art form it loses its revolutionary nature

"brave and persistent" according to Google; why does "Man" keep going?

While love is not a physical need like food or water, love and a sense of belonging are on the third row of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Part of the human experience is needing to know that somebody cares that you are alive.

i had to look up what this was, it's a genus of flower, they grow on a stalk and they are bright blue, sometimes purple or white; used to make blue dye and sometimes symbolizes an open heart

they are equally garbage choices

abbaabba acaacc weird rhyme scheme

the horse is those people who tell you "just be happy" when you tell them you have depression

it's so comfortable to be in that darkness, and it would be so easy to sit in it and let the snow bury you and just decompose in the quiet and cold, but something - be that a promise or an obligation - keeps you going, there's too much to do before i lay myself down eternally

this is sad!! when you get old and all your friends die and it's too hard to meet new people !! i am sad for Mr. Flood!!

translates to "time gone by"; Mr. Flood is feeling nostalgic and accepting that he is nearing death.

cute !!

This is like when my grandma is watching TV and changes the channel because the news is "too negative" and she's "tired of people being so political all the time". You have to see the bad to know the value of the good, but also, you have to know the bad in order to help stop it and prevent it from happening again.

An eclectic view of the multifaceted nature of coexisting.

Are Lucinda and Seth residents of the same town/village? Both talk about Spoon River.

Reminds me of Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street. The women in the doorways or looking out the windows, trapped by the authoritative male figures in their lives. They can see freedom, they know what it looks like, but they can't ever have it.

okay but he still could have changed it because it was ugly?? if she is forced to be there all day she might as well get to look at something pretty?? John sucks.

When I first told my grandmother that I was diagnosed with clinical depression and taking medication, literally the first thing she said was "Why aren't you grateful?" I know this story is about more than just depression but this really brings to light how people who don't have mental illnesses sometimes do not understand, or more importantly, do not try to understand.

This really summarizes conditioning people to accept their position. If you think about your oppression, you will just feel worse, so don't think about it. Oppressors have to convince their victims that they deserve the position they're in.

really wraps up the issue of representation: how do you accurately represent a group that you are not part of or explain a perspective you do not have?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nmhAJYxFT4 The Color of Fear - What it means to be an American

Hoped he could prove that he was worthy to be treated like a person by working hard, while the white kids didn't have to prove anything, working or not. This mindset is going to create a mentality of never being enough.

hard hitting !! really makes me stand back and wonder if I have ever asked this without realizing it

me

sick burn

The capitalized P feels like a continuation of the religious overtones of the previous paragraph, and suggests that peace comes from the unknown - not ignorance is bliss, but rather, having new things to discover and learn.

demonstrates the importance of teaching students to think and analyze critically and form opinions of their own rather than to take every opinion the teacher has as fact

Showed him chaos or showed him how much of the knowledge "could have been grasped by the best--informed man"?

I don't like that the number of hands is unspecified??? Five arms means five hands, right? Right??? Also, what kind of arms? Like arms on a chair, arms of all the people in a team (but why 5, and not 4 or 6), or does the speaker just have five arms?

This encourages my original idea that the poem may be about keeping on in the face of opposition.

These two lines feel like descriptions of the lesser resources that people of a lower socioeconomic class have. The stanza ends with "They Lion Grow", so it sounds like this could be about resilience (out of suffering, they grew). P.S. "Bearing Butter" is a brand of skateboard bearing lubricant.