Just a wild guess, but I feel like there wasn't much of this kind of writing in the poetry sector before this poem. We haven't read anything with blatant sexual references yet from this period.

This reminds me of the Portland bar scene circa 5 years years ago. Tons of people talking about the issues of the country, humanity, etc. at length and with no real action plan. People so upset with the state of the nation but getting so caught up in talking about it that nothing gets done. The whole scene is so vivid, I feel like I've seen it a million times.

These lines almost have a what's called in rap "the free-association style", especially "teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light" and "mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance". Words and constructs that don't seem like they would be associated are drawn together to disorient the reader, but also they don't seem terribly out of place. Ginsberg uses alliteration throughout, as well as anaphora with the "who" lead in line, to keep the reader somewhat grounded. Also, the different kinds of light mentioned in the lines leaves a feeling of familiarity for the reader to offset the seemingly wild references.

I can understand her hesitancy to have a child. She doesn't want her child to have to go through any of the pain that she has felt in life. I can relate to this and don't plan on having kids at least partially for that reason.

Most of of these couplets have 9 syllables leaving the whole poem with a lyrical quality, the words fall easily in speech. There is a lot of alliteration in this first bar which gives the speaker a kind of guide for how the poem should be read.

Each line here is made vivid by the color choice, everything is bright even in Inez's dusk eyes. This is an ode for Inez, the lines building towards the ending declaration of "You!" Also, i like the speaker's use of "athwart "instead of the more common "across". All of the word choices seem very lofty or dreamlike.

It seems like the speaker would rather be at war, like she idealizes or values the soldier's life over her life at home. She is stuck sitting, the feeling is that there bigger forces at play outside of her house and she wishes she was there. It's interesting that Dunbar-Nelson writes "lesser souls" for those that "have not seen Death", which implies that greater souls have seen Death. I wonder if shes implying that the soul becomes larger once it encounters Death.

Like the sand, the Black man was brought to America from Africa. Johnson writes about the "bottling" of the African in America. Things that are in bottles are both stuck and on display, both themes are present throughout this poem.

It's interesting that Johnson places over there in parenthesis. I've heard "over there" used to describe many wars, but here it's probably related to WW1. A theme of this poem seems to be the difference between "here" and "there", with Johnson referencing the streets of Harlem and the Sahara.

This part seems almost like Bennet is talking about mindfulness or meditation. The stillness here is meant to be one of personal contemplation, not strictly lack of movement. It's like she is saying "we" need to be aware of ourselves by not self-absorbed.

These lines all function more like song verse, which brings the tempo of the poem up through their cadence. I bet when she read this portion of the poem it was sped up. The apostrophes in place of the "g" at the word endings work to move forward the pacing.

Each stanza that starts with "You sang" builds throughout the poem. These stanza's work like a refrain or a chorus, giving the poem a haunting musical quality. They also follow descriptions of the hardships that Black Americans were fighting through. So in that way I feel like the the refrain stanzas are meant to be empowering. An example of this is that "The strong men git stronger" despite the fact that "they tried to guarantee happiness to themselves By shunting dirt and misery to you."

This seems like St. Peter is saying that hell is the South and that everyone should know that, it should be common knowledge. This poem stays in the same rhyme scheme of ABAB throughout and has a natural bounce when spoken aloud. Both of the Sterling Brown poems have this stylized colloquial speech pattern. There is a clear voice that reminds me of my friends from New Orleans.

This stanza makes me think about control systems placed by White Americans on Black Americans. The tone of the stanza is almost "what next?" It seems like after each directive from White America there is another. The feeling here is of being stuck, "hemmed in." People now say "hemmed up" as a kind of slang for being thrown in jail. The speaker is trying to draw awareness that Black Americans are being forced into spaces through commands, and after every command there is another.

This whole poem runs a rhyme scheme, with this stanza really sounding like a song. Each bar has about the same pacing, except the final line, which still rhymes with the bar before it. I found this video of Hughes almost singing it at times:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyqwvC5s4n8

The poem/lyrics really work with the music accompanying him. It kind of reminds me of some of the artsier hip-hop artists coming out of Chicago right now.

In this Douglass painting the over-layed stars reminded me of the stars on the American flag. The city off in the distance seems like it could be representative of the "American Dream", or even the industry of America, with what looks like factories in front of the towers. Below we see African-Americans holding a beaker, a book, and a ruler, with a globe on the stage beside them. Then below the stage are the chained hands of a crowd. These men and women on the stage could easily be saying "I, too, am America." This poem shows that the speaker is no longer content to be consigned to the background, but is confident in their beauty and desires to move forward. The speaker remembers the past, thinks that White America should be ashamed of their prejudice, an asserts that he is just as American as anyone else.

Here Hughes uses anaphora twice, with both "I've known rivers" and "My soul has grown deep like the rivers." These lines bookend the more specific rivers mentioned in the central stanza, acting almost like a refrain or a chorus. This painting by Aaron Douglas speaks to the African rivers that Hughes mentions-- there is a river in the center of all of the movement. It acts as a background to the multiple scenes taking place in the foreground layers.

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"Woolworth Building" by John Marin has the feeling of the Unreal City. While not based in London, the painting could still be an example of modernity in the metropolis. There is also brown fog flowing throughout the air around the buildings in the painting. The foreground of the painting seems like a representation industry and the huge tower in the back reminds of the emerald city in the Wizard of Oz.

This reminded me of "The Clerks" by Edwin Arlington Robinson" "Poets and kings are but the clerks of Time, Tiering the same dull webs of discontent, Clipping the same sad alnage of the years"

The Wheel card is symbolic of the cyclical nature of Time. I also feel like Robinson sees poets and kings as the kind of stock characters/archetypes that most tarot cards are filled with. The structure of both excerpts is also very similar.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J52NoUR9SnA&list=PLF7D2307A526BA09A&index=8)

This song "The Dead Tree Gives No Shelter" is from Blue Sky Black Death's album "A Heap Of Broken Images."

These guys are a largely sample-based crew from the Pacific Northwest that I liked a lot when I lived in Portland.

I think sampling really relates to this poem. If you listen to any of the BSBD albums they have an eerie, broken television tone and too much reverb. This song could easily be used as montage music for a dystopian, wasteland movie.

This reminds me of those "jesus was walking with me" on the beach posters where there are two sets of foot prints in the sand.

One of my favorite weird electronic albums of the year

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GFw7N2BjEc

Maybe this means that he isn't interested in hearing other people's prophecy because he plans to give his own.

These all seem to be references to Tarot cards, which Eliot mentions earlier in the stanza. I think the Wheel card indicates change in the world, or turning the of the world. The Hanged Man is symbolic in that humanity has causes it's destruction.

Dried tubers are basically dead and wouldn't be able to feed or sustain life. All the nutrients in the earth are gone or dissipating.

I take this to mean, it doesn't matter what color the coral is. It's still coral.

Of all the one liners this was the most relatable. It's a greeting with open arms, meeting someone and assuming the best of them.

Williams use of the dash gives the reader the instruction to stop short while reading. This effects the pacing of the stanza as whole. When reading the next line, the colon functions to speed up the reading.

Seems like he's saying: No god here folks.

This line implies that on Sunday the "devil-may-care men" and "young slatterns" took a break, presumedly because of Christianity.

Couplets like this remind me of bars in a rap verse. The form is: 2 lines that work well alone or together as a whole.

I bet putting out a poem of this length/structure was subversive

If the rose is a person than her armour is probably meant to be symbolic, it is whatever boundaries that the rose has put up, it is her thorns.

The name of the deceased person is not included, this makes me think that "Man" in the poem might refer to humanity as a whole.

These first lines establish that the speaker believes that love can't solve all the issues that afflict us. If you are thirsty, love can't quench that thirst.

Stuntman Mike quotes this in Deathproof.

This line resonates with all the unfinished tasks/issues/problems/goals that we might have. Or they relate specifically to the narrator: the woods are representative of some kind of issue Frost has encountered in his life with the solution laying still off in the distance.

It's interesting that first line and last line begin with homonyms. This is a stretch buuuuut: The repetition of the word "and" at the beginning of each middle line functions like the word "too", another homonym, but one that wouldn't have made sense with the cadence of the stanza.

Each of these aspects of life that Masters' deems important are made to come together like a tapestry. The word "patterns" here works in two ways: oh look at that pretty pattern, or, pattern as in layout of circumstance.

The first two lines and the second two lines have a repetitive structure and cadence. They seem to work around the the two middle lines like a buffer. A clerk's job is fairly repetitive in nature so it feels like the beginning and end are supposed to reinforce that idea.

John is imposing control over the narrator, taking away her ability to think for herself. As a result she second guesses her every thought. John boxes the narrator in, restricting both physical movement and mental exercise. It seems with each additional restriction John imposes the narrator gets "worse".

Here Du Bois uses the metaphor of warriors or soldiers paving the way forward, the struggles that they faced. This shows the reader the depth of the struggle of the then recently emancipated Africa Americans. The style of these lines (and really the entire piece) is poetic and has a story-telling quality.

We were talking about Du Bois and these lines in particular in another class last week and I have been stuck on this idea. The weight of having to carry two forms of self-awareness at all times seems very heavy. This idea of imposed duality continues throughout the excerpt.

This excerpt is mainly concerned with two symbolic sources of power, the Dynamo (machine/science) and the Virgin (religion/faith).The Virgin here represents the power of Puritan ideals/morals in "the Western world" and Adams is interested in chronicling the movement, or growth, of those ideals into the systems of society in the early 1900s.

Adams sees science and technology as being replacements for religion and gods. The dynamos (machines) showing such a representation of force that he "began to pray to it". Imagine if he saw the level of tech incorporated into daily life now?

These lines continue the theme of building, builders, construction, labor. The repetition of the "they Lion" feels like a chant or a chorus, giving the the lines that include "they Lion" a musical, lyrical element.

Here the language applies human emotional attributes to a couple natural chaotic elements. These lines describe a construction site on the side of a volcano. They work to create a dismal setting or tone, which the poem carries through to the end.