After my second time reading this, my roommate noticed my confusion and frustration. I told her to try to make sense of this poem and she looked at me when she read this line and she said it reminded her of a Lorde song.

"Mourn" and "morn" are homonyms. It sounds so pleasant when reading it, yet I feel like there should be a sense of somberness, because the line has to do with mourning.

Stein uses anaphora a lot. She begins 12 lines with "Next to" one after another. After each line I read "Next to" stressed more and more. I put more emphasis each time I read it aloud and in my mind.

The reader definitely needs to think while reading this. Is Stein being patronizing to the reader? She's taunting us to think about her poem and testing us if we can figure out what it means.

The word seems eerie when it stands alone. Nevertheless...what? I feel so unsatisfied reading it because usually someone would write is as Nevertheless, blah blah blah and explain their thought more. She just stops her thought with no explanation.

Surprise is definitely a word I would use to describe this poem. If I recommended this poem to a friend, I would tell them that they are in for a surprise.

I like the line "never the less tenderness". Not only does it rhyme, but it's like she's saying that no matter what, we must be gentle and kind.

I wonder is she means that her words are necessary. Every word she's written is necessary for the reader to make sense of what she's written about.

This reminds me of commands you give to a dog. Is Philip a dog? It just seems odd to put these commands in the poem

We read so often in articles about famous celebrities that crack from the pressure of Hollywood. Many actors develop drug addiction and even die from overdoses. Other actors seem to have meltdowns and others go M.I.A from the public eye. It's impossible think about Hollywood and how great it must be to be famous without thinking of a celebrity who fell from the "picture pride of Hollywood".

"(the withered hag)" seems as if Frost was beginning a story and then interrupted himself mid sentence. He beginning recounting this narrative with "the witch that came" and then, as if thinking about the witch reminded him of something that happened, he interrupts by adding a comment of his own that could maybe foreshadow how the witch turns out in the end of the poem.

Frost was describing the two roads and how he has a dilemma about wanting to take both roads because they are different, but then he says that the two roads are the same. He just contradicted himself and he continues to contradict himself in the rest of the stanzas.

It's very jarring to put "Alone" by itself. The comma makes the reader linger on that word. It's disturbing to read when I read that line slowly. My mind focuses on the word "alone" and then it continues to "as if enduring to the end". The word "alone" is enduring to the end of the line because it stays in the back of my mind until I go to the next line.

The first question addressed those who try so hard to be great but can't seem to become that. The second question addresses those who have regret about their own lives so, they try to live vicariously through they're children or other family members. The last question is the reader asking how the plans are working out because they seemed to have not worked.

This line is sad to me because the reader is saying that she's only lived enough. She's making it seem like she indifferent about the life that she's lived. Like she didn't have a bad life or a great life. She lived to make it seem enough and that's it.

This is very daunting to me. What is he out of the way of? Is he letting his own creation run its own course now? It feels like he is putting his hands up in surrender.

Canaan is a biblical reference to the promised land. DuBois makes the reference because the ideal of "book learning" will be their way of growing in status and respect. If they learn how to read and write they can "test the power of the cabalistic letters of white man" and be able to fight for themselves. He notes how the path is "steep and rugged" but he notes it as "straight" which will lead them to "heights high enough to overlook life". The path to their promised land will be full of hardships but seemingly well worth the task.

Their liberty came so fast and unexpectedly that DuBois notes it felt "fearfully, like a dream". He describes it as fearfully because we often say good things that happen are too good to be true, so it must be a dream. DuBois feared that his freedom was a dream because it felt too good to be true.

He realizes that he is different from others because of his skin. DuBois notes that he is also like the others at the same time. He is like them in "heart and life and longing", these reasons are what makes us all human and all the same, but because we can only see the physical, he is cast as different and therefore "shut out from their world by a vast veil". The veil being the racial barriers that segregationists set for society.

This is such a condescending question. Even though the people would go around that question in what they were saying, the act of these sayings, I feel, were meant as act of feeling superior to DuBois.

I found the last line interesting because at the end of the first 4 stanzas there was the repetition of "They Lion grow". As I was finishing the last stanza, I was caught off guard by this change of the last line, because I was expecting the repetition to continue.

I think this is a very interesting line because the words "candor" and "tar" contradict one another. To be candor is to be open, honest, etc. and tar is a substance that consumes, much like the extinct animals that have been discovered in tar pits. The juxtaposition of these two words is striking because of how greatly opposite their meanings are.