Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street! III Carl Solomon! I’m with you in Rockland
Ginsberg's sporadic employment of an abundance of punctuation (specifically exclamation marks) in the second part of the poem then compared to the lack of it in the third part helps to convey the insanity and madness of both the poem and the speaker
where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won’t let us sleep
a love-hate relationship with the country; the 'we' in the poem shows its adoration for the United States by 'kissing and hugging' it, while in return it doesn't like the 'we' sleep - does this suggest a shattering of the American Dream?
lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston
A lot of the imagery presented in this poem reminds me of the landscape Eliot constructs in The Wasteland, a bleak and barren space where souls are somewhat unfulfilled.
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for an Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade
This line stood out to me; it seems to depict the generation's frustration with order, in their increasing state of madness; no matter how much they resist the fixed and conventional structures such as time (in their symbolic throwing away of watches), they are never able to escape it, trapped (for the following ten years) by the predictable and never-ending reminder of time in the fact they have no control over the alarm clocks falling on their heads.
boxcars boxcars boxcars r
the repetition of boxcars, boxcars, boxcars mimics the madness of the generation's minds that the speaker wishes to make clear
Boy! You should a seen that darky’s face! It just shone. Gee, he was happy!
The speaker's voice is present throughout the poem, especially with the use of dialect such as 'gee' and 'boy' - it helps give the poem authenticity.
Bottled
Johnson's use of the repeating imagery 'bottled' is interesting; the sand that is bottled up in the library works to symbolise the way in which the man is bottled up by his seemingly 'crazy' appearance, on display for passer's by to view, look at and scrutinise, just like the sand in the library.
I sit and sew?
The poet expresses her distress regarding performing the stationary act of sitting and sewing which seems useless and unfulfilling; her use of profanity reinforces this view. Could she be expressing some kind of anger regarding the role of a woman, tied to the domestic sphere, with acts such as sewing?
Let’s build bridges here and there Or sometimes, just a spiral stair
I like Johnson's use of rhyming couplets throughout this poem; it somewhat mimics the content of her poem - the 'building of bridges' or the uniting of two things, so they have 'common ground'.
Don’t knock at my door, little child,
The use of repetition and a regular, simple rhyme scheme in this short poem gives it the feel of a nursery rhyme or lullaby type song. In the case of the dark subject matter Johnson is covering, the use of this type of form is ironically spooky.
Shaken from firm, brown limbs, Or heads thrown back
The verbs used here 'shaken' and 'thrown back' are harsh and give connotations of rough treatment, potentially echoing back to images of slavery.
A-shoutin’ in de ole camp-meeting-place, A-strummin’ o’ de ole banjo.
The dialogue here suddenly shifts; showing how the poet is keen to hold on to her heritage and language used, she does not want it to become 'old and forgotten' like the 'banjo songs'.
Sing a little faster, Sing a little faster, Sing!
The repetitive ending is somewhat exclamatory, hopeful and joyous, suggesting the use of song is a mechanism used to bring light and happiness to unbearable situations.
The strong men . . . coming on The strong men gittin’ stronger. Strong men. . . . Stronger. . . .
At first, it seems the 'strong' men in this poem are the ones doing the 'breaking' , the 'dragging', the 'chaining' etc, but by the end of the poem this subverts and it becomes clear the strong men are the ones who have withstood this treatment, and have come out the other side 'singing'. I like this change developed throughout the poem.
They point with pride to the roads you built for them They ride in comfort over the rails you laid for them
These lines remind me of some of Lawrence's artwork - the notion that African-Americans were essential to the building of railroads and the growth of the steel industry, thus the modernising of the country 
Dere wasn’t much more de fellow say: She jes’ gits hold of us dataway
Idea that everything can be expressed by and through this music, all the hardships of their life can be felt in the music of Ma Railey - this music is carthartic.
I, too, sing America
Important to think of the 'I' in this poem as not just the individual, but also as resembling a whole group - or rather a whole race of people, demonstrated by Lawrence in his artwork:
I like what this poem seeks to say about community; that every individual person is integral to the 'being of America' and once this is embraced, 'beauty' can be seen
What happens to a dream deferred?
This poem is centrally concerned with 'dreams', reminding me of Douglas' work 'aspirations'
I like how this poem builds up from negative imagery 'drying up in the sun' or 'stinking like rotten meat' to what becomes an 'explosion' mimicking the building up of something revolutionary. Douglas painting also ties into this idea; the faded chained hands in the forefront of the picture resemble this negative past, the 'heavy load' and the 'drying up in the sun', yet similarly looks to a more aspirational future following a revolt or rebellion of some kind.
Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together But when I look ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded I do not know whether a man or a woman —But who is that on the other side of you?
[The Road, Cormac McCarthy]
This stanza makes me think of Cormac McCarthy's dystopian novel, The Road. The novel centres around the journey of a father and a son who are walking along a dry, barren and desolate 'road' in a post-apocalyptic and destroyed world. There is always the two of them walking side by side, yet the feeling of something or someone else being there is also present - is this presence in both cases the grim reaper, perhaps, reminding them and a reader of an imminent death, or is it evocative of something more alive, stalking the walking couple from behind and planning to attack?
II. A Game of Chess
Eliot's naming of the second part of the epic poem, 'A Game of Chess' reminded me of Duchamp's painting, 'Portrait of Chess Player' in the Armory Show. What links these two images most specifically for me, is the chaos in which surrounds a simple game of chess. Eliot employs an abundance of differing and contrasting voices, speakers and images in this part of the poem, while Duchamp's use of cubism in his painting gives the portrait a chaotic and confusing feel. This disorganisation and confusion is somewhat ironic in both instances as a game of chess is, traditionally, very simple and plain, in other words, in black and white.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.
http://teaching.lfhanley.net/english528fa19/texts/gertrude-stein/ This part reminds me of Gertrude Stein's poem, 'Sacred Emily.' The repetition and slight alteration of the words 'good night ladies' echoes Stein's continuous use of this kind of language in her poem, e.g. 'begging to state begging to state begging to state alright.' This obsessive repetition works to give off a kind of madness in the poems; each speaker gives off an impression of instability in their repeating, and slight alteration, of certain phrases.
A heap of broken images
Conveys the fragmentary nature of this poem, it is a combination of several broken images and parts put together - but do they fit?
April is the cruellest month
The first line of the poem challenges traditional expectations of a reader - as April, a month usually associated with Spring, new life, growth, a symbol of promise and hope, is described as the 'cruellest'
We get the sense of constructing something new, of leaving previous traditions, rules and rigid structures behind
of
apparition implies a 'ghostlike' presence of these people; this works to suggest that the people at this metro station are no longer living beings and that their souls have left them, as a result of the toils of daily life, such as the morning commute
Die early and avoid the fate. Or if predestined to die late, Make up your mind to die in state.
This poem sees an influx of command verbs, 'make' 'die' 'avoid' and, of course, the title too is made up of a repeated commanding verb 'provide, provide.' The heavy use of these throughout gives the poet's voice a sense of authority; the advice he is giving is not just an option for the reader, but the steps they have no choice but to take due to the life they have chosen to live.
I like how Time is capitalised here; it emphasises the importance of it; causing a reader to think more about what time has taken from or how it has changed "The Clerks".
The weary throat gave out, The last word wavered, and the song was done.
His throat 'giving out' and his last word wavering resembles the weariness of Eben; the song being 'done' reflecting the way in which his relationship with this town, now too, is 'done.'
Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time
An ambiguous ending to the text; John 'that man' faints to the floor, which suggests a breaking down of patriarchal pressures on wives and mothers, and an almost victory for our trapped narrator. However, noticeably he is said to have fallen in a way 'right across my path by the wall.' This leaves a reader uncertain as to whether our narrator has been freed, or if, even after the falling of her husband, she is still left physically blocked and emotionally trapped by her husband, a continuing symbol of wider patriarchy.
And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern—it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads.
The lady inside the paper is a double of our narrator; the way in which she 'is all the time trying to climb through the paper' mirrors the way in which our narrator feels trapped inside the room with the Yellow Wallpaper by her husband and by wider social constructs of the time which force her into a domestic female role, which she considers to be a form of imprisonment.
I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through
The continued imagery of the veil used through Du Bois' work stands out for me - it reminds me of a bride, wearing white. The whiteness of the veil's imagery emphasises issues of race in this passage. interesting also, the veil seems to have been placed on him by the 'other world' in order to 'shut him out' from 'their' world - they don't want him in 'their world' yet thrust a strikingly white object upon him.
He felt the weight of his ignorance,—not simply of letters, but of life, of business, of the humanities; the accumulated sloth and shirking and awkwardness of decades and centuries shackled his hands and feet.
The imagery Du Bois uses here of 'weight' and 'shackles' is interesting; it reinforces his earlier arguments about the continuing burden of slavery and reminds a reader that the weight of this history is painfully felt day after day, despite emancipation. It also works to paint an important picture that the burden of being shackled is still felt as long as African-American's are still separated from the freedoms of 'work, culture, and liberty'
In such labyrinths, the staff is a force almost more necessary than the legs; the pen becomes a sort of blind-man’s dog, to keep him from falling into the gutters. The
Really like the imagery used here; comparing the pen to a 'blind man's dog' suggests that a pen has the power to give and aid life to a person who is disadvantaged. The pen, as a kind of symbol for education, emphasises the importance of it, highlighting the power education inhibits to sort of open up a new and visible world to previously disadvantaged people.
From my five arms and all my hands, From all my white sins forgiven, they feed
These lines appear to reiterate the poem's continuing theme of sacrifice; it is apparent that things are constantly being sacrificed or taken from elsewhere in order for the Lion to grow. Here, sacrifice is particularly felt as now the poet must sacrifice 'all' his own body in order for the Lion to be fed
Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter, Out of black bean and wet slate bread,
Alliteration of the letter 'b' at the start of the poem here and the repetition of the phrase 'out of' works to slowly increase the pace of the poem as it is read aloud, mimicking a slowly increasing rising up or rebellion that may occur throughout the poem.