There are many points and chunks of text where Ginsberg is just saying words in seemingly random order (with purpose, of course) and it is both disorienting and cryptic, however resonating. The alliteration that occurs in this stanza and the next connect the ideas in the reader's minds to form a coherently incoherent image of a maybe-correct-but-who-knows concept that Ginsberg was aiming for. Was he aiming at all?

Showing the mania of the people he was surrounded by, or of the people he knew were surrounded by, or even of himself.

The most brilliant minds Ginsberg knew were from his days at University. The minds that he says were destroyed by madness were the kids he knew likely from classes, they were young people. Also want to note the weird wording of "who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene..."; it doesn't sound grammatically correct, I'm not sure what the goal was there but it will trip up the reader indefinitely.

Who did this happen to specifically? Is he talking about one person or many? There are moments in this piece where it sounds like Ginsberg is speaking from experience, however many other moments where it doesn't sound this way. It's hard to tell which is which, or if any are from his experience at all. He simultaneously speaks for the individual as well as the generation.

She doesn't want to give birth or raise a child in the time that she's living in. She would rather meet it in the afterlife.

Once you truly understand someone or are in the process of beginning to attempt to, you dig deeper than just their surface level personality. You get more than just the positives, you get it all.

This seems like a love poem to me. One that's about a new love interest.

During war, it was common that women stayed home and didn't experience the same hardships that the men who were fighting the war had; however, they did experience their own hardships such as being responsible for everything else outside of war.

In this line, "we" is used for the first time which could be interpreted as coupling both her and the person she is observing. To group them in the same category of person is showing that their roots are similar and the author holds empathy for that individual.

I thought at first that "yaller" was just the choice of the author to spell "yellow" in a way that demonstrates a sort of dialect, but after looking it up I found that to be one of two explanations. "Yaller" is, "a term used to describe persons classified as a very light-skinned mulatto." I wonder which explanation is the reason behind the spelling of yellow as yaller.

She wants to experience what her ancestors or other people within her culture have experienced, even the "heathen" parts of this.

Different types of people with different life experiences and wants, but still have a want to do the same thing: sing. They must sing before they grow old, or before they pass. No matter what their duties are or what they desire.

Personifying the feelings of abandonment and sadness to emphasize the root of singing the heart of race or being the cry of a soul. Sadness is paired with somber tones such as whispering and crying, and the soul.

They, being white people I presume, feel uneasy when they hear the strong men laughing. The strong men get beaten down so often, and although it seems as if the strong men are referring to the oppressors in the beginning, by the end it's obvious that they're representative of black people at the time. This "deeper terror" that comes about from the happiness of black people is very telling of the relation between the two groups- one is afraid of the other, so they beat them down.

St. Peter assumes that Slim would already know that the South is where Hell is. Perhaps Hell in this sense is the South somewhat fictionalized, which is why Slim couldn't tell which was which. This makes it all the more unsettling as this shows just how intense the black experience was in the South.

This stanza and the next insinuate that this version of Hell is entirely run by white people, white devils. This stanza in particular is a very uncomfortable image; what's more uncomfortable is acknowledging the fact that traces of this version of Hell could be found exhibited on Earth.

I think he's trying to elude to the fact that his soul is similar if not the same with the souls of his ancestors who also knew these rivers. He personally does not know them, but as stories and life experiences get passed down from generation to generation, your soul deepens like the rivers he feels a connection to.

This line reminds me of this piece by Aaron Douglas, "Song of the Towers". There is a man with a saxophone and it's depicted as if he is singing. While this is the center of the painting, there are details such as the cogs and the in use factory buildings with smoke wafting out of the tops that could symbolize industrialization. That, plus the man behind the subject of the painting who is running with a suitcase which represents business, reminds me of what America would be depicted as.

This poem begins with a feeling of impending disappointment or hopelessness, and the end is up to interpretation. A dream "exploding" could mean various things, but I believe that in this case it was meant to be a positive thing. Pointing to the title of this poem, which was a booming area for creation and dreams alike, it's easy to infer that this poem ends with a highly positive note.

"Here lies, and none to mourn him but the sea, That falls incessant on the empty shore," The nameless man that died near the sea in Edna St. Vincent Millay's piece and the man who died under the sea due to the current of the whirlpool in The Waste Land reminded me of each other here. They both passed in what seems to be a quiet manner.

The title of this piece reminds me of the painting by Kenneth Hayes Miller, "The Waste". It has the same idea of a Waste Land as we talked about in class; desolate, lonely, dreary, etc. It seems that both of these pieces play with the idea of a Waste Land in different ways; the painting being more literal. http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MUSEUM/Armory/galleryD/D_191_49.b.jpg

The corpse was dug up before? What could the corpse represent in this situation? The narrator mentions that it may not have bloomed because it was too cold or because it could have been dug up.

There are a lot of references regarding the sea, some of them in German. This line being in English caught me off guard before I realized how many references to the sea there were.

Splitting the word "door" in half to create an entirely different meaning.

The process of the narrator formulating a sentence?

This entire poem seems to be a literal stream of consciousness— I feel as though I'm following along in someone's day to day life, this being the narrator annoyed at someone named Lizzie.

To be in his grave and be dust like the rest of the people in their graves.

Someone who is evidently unimportant has died and, though the narrator is speaking of him, his name isn't even remembered. The only being there to mourn is the sea that looks upon an "empty shore", further emphasizing that literally no one is there to mourn this guy.

Despite going on for an entire piece about how love isn't a cure-all for life's various obstacles and tragedies, by the end of it she admits to being one of the people fooled by the intensity of love's power over people. Love is that valuable.

Nothing you do or remember from your prime will help you when it comes to your end; it will be hard regardless of whether or not you starred.

The rhyme scheme of this poem is written in a way that feels comfortable to the reader or whoever the poem is being read to. It has a lullaby-like quality to it. The last two lines really confirm this quality because of the repetition.

Setting a wall between the narrator and his neighbor seem to be some sort of tradition that they've both agreed upon. The narrator doesn't seem fond if tradition while the neighbor is insistent on it.

Why would the person who's asking the narrator this be asking this in the first place? The narrator seems to be of importance and I can't tell if it's something they're placing upon themselves.

I find this calming. It's always nice to know someone was happy with their life before they passed. "A sweet repose" is the goal.

The narrator is meeting with people that he knew when he was younger. Meeting felt the same as it had back when it was more frequent, and when the "brotherhood" came to be.

Mr. Flood seems to be an older man that is drinking by himself because he had just lost one of his dear friends, or maybe one of the last of them. I see the use of "phantom" in this line as an implication that this salutation of the dead (his passed friends) has happened before, possibly many times. It could have "Rang thinly" because Mr. Flood has become accustomed to this.

Throughout this piece we watch John blatantly patronize the narrator by using his profession as a way to dismiss any worries she might have. She'll say things like, it must be my condition, as if dealing with this condition isn't a serious matter. She says she never used to be so sensitive; I see that as she never used to be deemed sensitive by others.

People of color that have strong influences from both their familial experiences and American experiences strive to merge both of these into one balanced sense of self. Often, it's too hard to hold onto the part of you that is heavily rejected by the masses and sometimes that part can be lost.

Dealing with microaggressions such as these warrant nothing more than what he describes in this sentence. People may not have ill intentions when asking Du Bois these sorts of questions, but they're still prejudice in the most obvious way. "Reducing the boiling to a simmer" is something learned having dealt with these kinds of questions or comments frequently.

While this paragraph is talking about the importance of women of how highly they can be regarded in certain places of the world, Adams comments on how the woman is a goddess because of her force. While this can be agreed upon, he quickly compares that to what he's been writing about- machines. Are machines and advancement of science of the utmost importance to Adams?

Adams seems to rely on the comparison of the advancement of science to religion in a broad sense; if these new "forces", being the forces of new science, are "anarchical" to Langley, what does that say about religion? Did Adams make this comparison as well?

There is no specification on the number of hands this being may have in addition to its five arms which leads me to believe that it could be from the perspective of a higher being. If this is from the perspective of something higher, who or what could "they" be?

It's interesting to see where the supposed "Lion" came from with the continuous use of Out at the start of each line; I also found the contrast between mostly food products to things like tar and gasoline to be strange. What could the Lion represent if it comes from these two different groups of things?