Poetry and Poetics–Lit 204

“We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks is a short, simple poem about a group of rebellious teenagers hanging out and playing pool at some place called the Golden Shovel. The lines, in my opinion, illustrate an idea of each teenager saying each line in a circle. The poem has no real speaker, as it just subtitled the “pool players”. There’s 8 total lines and 8 total sentences starting with ‘we’, and only 7 teenagers, so perhaps Brooks intended for the readers to visualize all seven of them saying “we / die soon” (7-8) at the end. 

It’s hard to predict whether this poem is an appreciation, warning, or criticism for rebellious behavior. The teenagers leave school early, stay out late, throw punches, promote bad behavior, drink alcohol,  and listen to jazz– all pretty stereotypical young, delinquent behavior. This poem is easy to write up as a criticism for this behavior due to the final line and its implication that it results in an early death; however, given the historical context of the situation, I might argue that the poem is simultaneously a pessimistic and appreciative poem. 

Brooks wrote this poem in the height of the Civil Rights Movement, a movement that would not have occured if not for those who “strike straight” (4) and “sing sin” (5), so it’s necessary for the world to progress and change. And yet, Brooks also knows that engaging in that behavior in this time period is certainly a death sentence, whether it’s literally or figuratively. She might argue that some people have to engage in rebellion despite the sacrifice, and so she encourages people to keep making a stand, but to be careful.  

I really enjoyed reading Anne Sexton’s poem “And One for My Dame.” I thought that it sent a sad, but beautiful message in a satisfying way. Her father seemed to be a great business man and he had a lot of passion for it. But as readers know, his job was consuming and that took his presence away from Sexton’s life and quality time spent with her. While reading the poem, I couldn’t help but wonder if her father was a selfish man who was driven by his ambitions caring more for his work than for his own daughter. Or, through his perspective, was he blinded by his success from Sexton’s true feelings. As Sexton wrote in line 11, her father was “the man who filled [her] plate” and I wondered if his mindset was that as long as he was successful, making money, and providing for his family, everyone would be happy as he was supposed to do all those things as the father of the household, when really everyone was not happy. His lack of attention, love, and presence in Sexton’s life is really evident in line 15 as she doesn’t even describe him as a father. She says he is  “a peddler, a hawker, a merchant and an Indian chief;” everything but a father. Also, readers can notice that all these descriptions she uses are work related which just shows how he was so caught up in his business that that is what defined him in her eyes. I think Sexton really brings attention to the idea that money is not everything and cannot buy your happiness as she talks about her relationship with her father and his relationship with his work.

The transition as she starts to speak about her husband was very smooth and satisfying as I read it. By understanding how she felt lonely and upset by the lack of her father’s presence and by his drunken behavior as we are taken through her childhood with him, we can empathize with her. Fathers are very important figures in one’s life. They are supposed to proved unconditional love and there is a special bond between a father and daughter.  Sexton has missed out on this type of love and attention from her father but now that she is married, she has the chance to create a special bond again with another important male figure in her life. Readers can now understand the panic and fear she feels as it is revealed that her husband is following in similar footsteps. She attempts to warn him saying, “[Y]our itinerary open, / its tolls ticking and greedy” (lines 46-47). Readers can also get a sense of the idea that becoming obsessed with working and money can lead to greed. She seems to be addressing her husband and we can understand this through the form of the poem. This poem is a confessional poem, so there is no separation between the speaker and the poet. Therefore, we know that when she says “my husband,” she is actually talking about her husband in real life rather than some arbitrary husband of some arbitrary speaker. 

I also found it interest that she refers to herself as a “dame” when referring to how the father and husband are providing for their “dame,” or doing what they do for their “dame.” This term usually refers to a woman who is of equal ranks of a knight, and in this time period, that woman would be considered highly ranked, especially as a female. However, when you look at where a knight stands in terms of nobility, they are usually at the bottom. I think this irony perfectly describes how she feels she is being treated by her father and husband versus how they feel they are treating her. In their eyes they are doing all this work for her so that they can provide and make her happy; she is “highly ranked” from their perspective and they feel they are doing everything and more for her. However, from her perspective, she is ranked at the bottom of their domain, just as knights are ranked at the bottom of nobility. She feels she is treated poorly as she lacks their attention and love. Their passion for their work is ranked above her so she feels she is less important to them in her eyes. 

The last thing I found interesting was how it is noted in the footnotes that this poem is supposed to be reference to “Baa Baa Black Sheep.” Sheep are typically white, so the idea of a sheep being black seems to represent some kind of bad omen. In this case, both the father and the husband sell wool. There seems to be a connection implying that their business and passion for selling wool has ruined her relationship with her father and has the potential to also ruin it with her husband so this could be the result of the bad omen. 

Langston Hughe’s work was key to the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural and intellectual revival of black music, art, politics, and scholarship. This poem is set in Lenox Avenue in New York City, capturing the music of a Black blues musician and its profound impact on the speaker. For the speaker, blues music conveys not only the power and beauty of black art, but also the enduring struggles and injustices faced by the black community. In this way, while the poem provides almost no information on the speaker, I think it’s safe to assume the speaker is Black based on how the blues music resonance with them so much. The tone of the poem is full of pain, evident in the lines, “He made that poor piano moan with melody,” “played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool,” “Ain’t got nobody but ma self.” This expresses the historical injustice embedded in the blues music. Yet, the poem also infused with a kind of relief and freedom through the blues music as the speaker cries “O Blues!” “Sweet Blues!” suggesting that this painful music elicits both anguish but is also a powerful way to resist and endure racism. 

This poem struck me with how it seamlessly incorporates black music intro its poetic form and and message on racism and art. Hughes not only describes the blues music, but also infuses it into his poetic form. Black Americans brought blues music from South Africa to urban centers in America. During the Harlem Renaissance, leaders invented new artistic and literary forms, much like how this poem doesn’t follow a traditional form as a way to express the black experience in America. While it doesn’t have an established meter or a predictable rhyme scheme, it is still able to recreate the rhythms and sounds of blues music. “Thump, thump, thump, went his food on the floor. / He played a few chords then he sand some more” uses onomatopoeia and a strong rhythm, reminiscent the blues. Most of the poem is written in rhyming couplets but lines 19-22 uses ballad stanza and lines 25-30 rhyme ABABCB, which are forms and rhyme schemes that blues singers often use in their music. This deliberate incorporation and subsequent deconstruction of blues forms within the poem mirror the intricate, improvisational essence of blues music. 

Langston Hughes offers a really insightful discussion on the impact that different aspects of life have on an individual through first person perspective of a speaker discussing and writing a take-home assignment. He discusses many relationships, including white vs black, teacher vs student, and reader vs poet. The structure of this poem is really unique, and creates contextual clarity that is sometimes omitted in poetry. It is shared that a student has an assignment from a teacher to “write true”. Yet, the speaker argues that the teacher doesn’t recognize the true difficulty of that assignment as there are unavoidable biases that mold everyone’s outlook on the world. The word choice of this poem allows readers to recognize the struggles the speaker has when trying to answer this question, as he writes down open-ended statements like “I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I can hear you; hear you, hear me — we too — you, me, talk on this page. (I hear New York, too.) Me — who?” He asks who he is, and starts to discuss the physical things that he likes (eating, sleeping, being in love). But then, he goes back on his previous statement and questions if his racial identity affects the things he likes and the things that white people don’t like. He even wonders if the page he is writing will be “colored”, insinuating that his writing will always be tainted with the experiences and stereotypes of a black person. A slight tone shift appears after this, as he seems to gain clarity on his understanding of the impact that humans and works of literature have on the world. He writes that the writing will be a part of the instructor (since the instructor influenced him), and because of this he will be a part of his white professor and his white professor will be a part of him. While some may frown at the thought of having a part of a black person in their being, it is inevitable to leave parts of yourself in the people that you interact with. He ends with saying that the teacher will learn from him even though the teacher is “more free” which hints at the hypocrisy a racist society has for claiming to be a “superior” race while also learning from marginalized groups.

For this week’s blog post I chose to write about the poem “Incident” by Countee Cullen. I found that this poem carried themes of racism and messages regarding its negative and lasting impact. However, considering that this was my take away from the poem I found the structure of the poem and way one reads it to be very interesting. In the poem there is no mention of racism or even a suggestion that the significance of the interaction is related to race until line 8 when the child is called a racial slur. In addition, the poem begins in a very light hearted tone mentioning the child’s “glee” and “smile”. I also found it significant that when the child first sees the Baltimorean he only acknowledges his size and age (nothing about race). I found that these details in the beginning of the poem effectively capture the child’s innocence and reveal that at the start of the poem the child does not live everyday in a world where racism is present. However, this dramatically shifts when the child is called a racist slur in line 8.

In the final stanza of the poem the child mentions how during his 7 month visit he saw the “whole of Baltimore”. Both the length of this stay and the size of the city emphasize how big and eventful this experience must have been. However this feeling of largeness and weight is juxtaposed with the smallness of the moment when the child reveals that being called the slur was “all I remember”. Well to some it may seem that this moment was such a small detail as the juxtaposition insinuates, the comparison to the large city actually reveals how big this moment was for the child. I found there to be a dramatic shift in the final 5 lines of the poem. As I mentioned earlier the poem begins with a tone of innocence and joy but after the mention of the slur shifts to depressing and painful. I found this shift to be revealing of the gravity of this situation for the child. Well initially the child did not live everyday experiencing racism, this small moment has opened his eyes to the sad reality of racism’s presence. I found that this dramatic shift for a child so young is revealing of the heavy and long lasting impact of racism and how much it can alter one’s everyday life.