I wonder if Ginsberg is commenting on the amount of people incarcerated just for possession of marijuana?

this poem is dedicated for all of those that break through the oppressive nature of conformity in society. He welcomes anybody that stands outside of the normal, and protests against it, saying that these are the "best minds of our generation"

Ginsberg creates specific scenes that are full of incredible imagery, that seems to be in reference to specific crucial events, letting us into the world that he sees

Even through hardship and disconnection, Ma Rainey was a staple in the rich and beautiful black culture that blossoms in music.

Besides just bringing the community together, Ma Rainey also seems to stand for hope. I can imagine these songs are repeated like prayers and sung back to encourage one another not to give up.

Ma Rainey seems to represent such a strong community. Once connected through passion and love, all reminded by her songs.

I love the use of rhythm this piece has, and how it the poem ebbs and flows as you read it. I think the musical element and passion is really highlighted in this line, and I think we can all relate to being "a fool" to music and worshiping it beyond reason.

If I am correct, I remember that Hughes possibly wrote this in response to Walt Whitman's, *I Hear America Singing. * The first and last lines of Huges piece are so powerful and in stark contrast to the tone of Whitman's poem and provide an insight into what was really going on in America. Pieces similar to Whitman's poem overlooked who truly built America, which was the hands of black slaves and unethical labor.

There is incredible imagery within this poem, all about losing dreams. There seems to be a build up throughout the piece and then an explosion at the end. The final line, "Or does it explode," seems to be a call to action to the reader. Since the poem is titled "Harlem," I am wondering if Hughes is trying to inspire the growth and development of that neighborhood and give the people that live there hope to not give up want, they desire in life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH7bjV0Q_44 Work Song by Hozier

I think this song relates to these lines of the poem, specifically the lyrics:

"When my time comes around / Lay me gently in the cold dark earth / No grave can hold my body down / I'll crawl home to her"

Both have themes of resurrection, and how even a grave won't stop you from coming back to do what needs to be done.

The poem and the song express similar themes of resurrection, both having a corpse buried that no matter what will come back to find their love or companion. In Hozier’s lyrics, he expresses that even a grave could not separate him and his love, that he will somehow find his way back home to her. In the poem, it seems as that a dog was buried in the garden. They warn not to go near his grave, since the dog will sense that its companion is near and come back to the surface. An eerie contrast to Hozier's themes of love, which overall fits with the mood of the wasteland.

This also just made me realize how this section of the poem both starts and ends with things coming out of the dead land.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImKY6TZEyrI Fade Into You by Mazzy Star

I think this song fits these lines of the poem, and specifically relates to these lyrics from the song:

"I look to you when I see nothing / I look to you to see the truth / You live your life, you go in shadows / You'll come apart and you'll go black / Some kind of night into your darkness / Colors your eyes with what's not there / Fade into you"

Seeing something, like the Wasteland for what it used to be, but knowing what you loved about it is no longer there.

I think “fade into you” in the song is about watching love dimmer and burn out, while also losing yourself in trying to love someone, and fading into them quite literally. In this poem, the hyacinth couple looks into each other and sees the past only, they don’t know each other as living in this dystopia. The last line, “Looking into the heart of light, the silence,” when they look at each other they know the reason they were together is gone, just as Hope Sandoval (Mazzy Star) illustrates in her song. With the hyacinth couple, there is nothing left there in love for one another, and I think Mazzy Star knows that her relationship is leading to that point and is heartbroken about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PC68rEfF-o

The lines I believe to specifically relate to this song include:

“I lost myself on a cool damp night / I gave myself in that misty light (spring rain) / was hypnotized by a strange delight / under a lilac tree / I made wine from the lilac tree / Put my heart in its recipe / makes me see what I want to see / and be what I want to be / when I think more than I want to think / I do things I never should do / I drink much more than I ought to drink / because it brings me back you (mixing memory with desire)”

I think this song highlights the pain of this poem, and shows how misty light can fog what you see and make everything soft and malleable to what you want to perceive. I think although this is a song about missing a person, it can relate to how to poem is missing a world. A world that is no longer romantic, where memory and desire bring about pain like the memory of a lover lost to time.

I love how human this line feels. We are all so beautifully flawed, each in our own way, to which we can create powerful poetry. Hughes utilizes this to emphasize that people of color should not have to prove their humanity, that they are beautiful and flawed.

This essay highlights in many ways how internalized racism, that is often so buried and beaten down, can make it seem that the "white way" is perceived as being the "best" or the only way to do things. Even when faced with the creation of your own work, it can be automatic to dismiss it if it doesn't align with European standards. Hughes focuses on this throughout the entirety of his essay, and shows how deep this generational trauma can run, and all the aspects of life internalized racism affects.

This line immediately reminded me of W.E.B. Du Bois, "Of Our Spiritual Strivings." In both pieces, the speakers are trying to explain how they don't want to only identify as their race; escape the white gaze and just exist as their own.

This line reminds me of one of my favorite poems by Alex Dimitrov, "The Years." Specifically, the line, "Behind the glass and inside, all your friends buzzed. You could feel the shape of their voices. You could tell from their eyes they were in some other place. 1999 or 2008 or last June." I think both authors encapsule the feeling of being surround by countless people, and how that is one of the loneliest feelings one experiences. Where everyone around you is fixated on what they need to do, where they are going, and forgetting that everyone around them is doing the exact same thing. I think it completely creates a dystopian, wasteland feeling, since you are surrounded by zombie, ghostlike presences.

A shadow also reminds me of a zombie, something that is always tracing behind you. It resembles your silhouette and something living yet is only a gap of light.

This line reminds me of a zombie, a dead tree is no longer living yet its corpse stays upright, haunting the ground it rests upon. It will only change if someone removes it, so it a way it is undead.

This feels like something zombie-like and in between, with the new life of lilacs being born out of dead land.

I think Madame Sosostris wicked pack of cards are some sort of tarot cards or angel cards, and could be a variation of the Rider-Waite tarot deck.

This image reminded me of this line, how your shadow will always trace behind you, whether in companionship or guilt.

This line reminded me of a scene in the 2005 movie adaptation of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. In this scene Elizabeth runs to a colonnade, to seek protection from the rain and Mr. Darcy.

When words are repeated like this throughout the poem it feels as though she has so much she wants to say yet isn't allowed to vocalize any of it.

This poem, as others have commented, feels like a stream of consciousnesses recorded. There are some lines, such as this one that are really stark and stand out to me. There is pain behind the words and internal struggle of justifying how she feels. It completely makes me picture her sitting in a chair with a deadpan expression, working this all out on her own.

Throughout the entirety of the poem, and especially in this line, I feel like there is a lot of feminine experience shown, the struggle between wanting to adhere to your own will, while also having to conform to the patriarchal society.

It seemed like Elsie might have been sold or taken or offered into prostitution/workhouse at an incredibly young age in order to make some money for herself or her family.

the way Elsie is described is like she isn't even given an identity. She represents numerous young girls in her situation, and her "situation" and methods of getting out of it are the only identity she is allowed to have.

It seems Elsie, even at 15 years old, is already forced to get out of the life she was given in the working class. She wears cheap, flashy jewelry only to attract wealthy young men, instead of being a child.

this line reminds me of Macbeth, "Fair is foul and fouls is fair," (Act 1, Scene 1, Lines 12-13). I think in this poem it is commenting on the bittersweetness of the poisonous plant. It is so beautiful yet dangerous, and also the speaker's seeming bittersweetness with death.

I thought this poem was going to be completely against love, but I am happy that the speaker acknowledges that no matter what we are all human and we yearn for it- even over meeting our survival needs. How often we wish to "trade a memory," especially when it is a painful, or even worse, a happy memory with someone who is no longer around.

This reminds me again of the work seen earlier in class, where the speakers put lots of pressure on themselves to have something to look back onto after death. That if you don't do something great in your life, you will always be haunted by the chance or 'what if.'

It almost feels like the speaker has come to these woods before and knows that somebody now occupies it. That he knows the woods enough to know where to not be seen. Having something you know being occupied by someone else, and the use of the word 'village' reminds me greatly of the other works we have read.

This line reminds me a lot of Robinson's work, and how haunted he was. It seems Frost will always be haunted by the choices he made, especially when deciding which road to take. Even though this choice was a long time ago, the haunt of it will never go away.

It seems like Mr. Flood is alone and has nobody left. The town isn't the same as it once was, and it has created a world that is unrecognizable to him. He is only haunted by the ghosts of what used to be.

Even though the poet and the King are so separated, they still feel the same sadness that resides in all of us humans?

It seems like the speaker is missing the life and spirit the used to reside in this village before the change, a loss of community.

Since it seems like the speaker is a ghost or not a part of this world anymore, it feels like they are commenting on the fact that in death nothing is one way or the other. It feels existentialist. The morals that guided our lives no longer have meaning in death.

I feel like the poet might be trying to highlight as he does throughout the poem, how nature is poetry and vice versa. The "breeze" awakens the poetry inside him.

such a beautiful line, and I have to have heard this before somewhere. Love is beautiful and delicate like roses, but like everything fades with time unless cared for.

I think he is keeping her in this room to make her go even crazier and continue a cycle of abuse and control. The fact that the room is a nursey, making her feel weak and unintelligent, and that it has an iron gate and bars on the windows.

Acknowledging that this could be an unreliable narrator, yet I have a feeling this condition started much less severe, and all the "medication" she is being given is merely used just to control her. However, which the use of this medication and the narrator feeling such a lack of control in her life- I feel like her "madness" has just been a reaction of her circumstances.

This text is so emotionally frustrating to read because it is so heavy in gender roles and the patriarchy, while also being extremely manipulative. Telling her to not think about her condition is an attempt to limit her freedom and choices.

I completely agree with what @jennamichaella said, it was my first thought as soon as I read the line. Women were (and sometimes still at present day) declared "crazy" for simply having human emotion. Or it could be the complete opposite, where nobody, not even a doctor, takes your feelings seriously and writes it off as being "feminine emotion" or something similar.

Even in instances of "care" and "compassion," the author is still only given the identify of being the "problem."

There are a lot of recurring uses of the word "double" which is really highlighting the author's struggle of being constantly in battle with himself, and society's cruel perception of himself.

the trauma and the suffering this individual has gone through is heartbreaking, especially when he can track it back to a certain day in childhood, "when the shadow swept across me."

This reminds me of the Paleolithic Era, where women were worshiped and seen as equals. Women were looked at as powerful by being able to reproduce, and therefore were leaders of their communities. When Adams remarks about reproduction being "the greatest and most mysterious of all energies," it further reinstates the correlation between science and religion in this text. Reproduction is a scientific process that humans perform, however the act of creating life is also arguably divine capability.

I think this line comments on how tangled the relationship between science and religion is, as does the text before it. For centuries, science could only go so far before religion had to become a part of the narrative. Much of science was religion, especially in "terms of medieval science."

Comments on how different people interpret things in contrast with each other. Each person "measures" their thinking differently but one isn't necessarily better than the other. Could also relate to the frustration Adams might feel that there are so many clashing ideas, specifically with the dynamo and science.

This line highlights the themes of rebellion and strength among these workers who now inspire much bravery and power. It also describes the transformation to a lion, a lion who rises up against the oppressor.

This line seems to emphasize how the working class gets trapped and loses the ability to break free due to systemic enforcement and oppression. Yet through these generations, they have taken plain oak and made a wall, a wall united together in strength.

The entirety of the poem, and this line specifically seems to highlight to struggles of the working class leading towards rebellion. How more than physically possible is expected, and through that turmoil and physical labor breeds a lion.

sounds like food was scarce and not of good quality?