Choose any 10 poems from pages 107-153 that catch your interest and read them 2 or 3 times. The more you read them, the more you will understand/relate to them. Then answer TWO of the following as a Comment below:
1. Discuss the title of one of the poems: how does the title become more meaningful as you read the poem, and/or how does the title help make the poem meaningful? Is the title literal or metaphorical? If the connection between title and poem doesn't seem obvious, try to figure out the connection. (sometimes, poets spend more time on the title than the poem itself, so you know it's important!)
2. Some of these poems use humor or irony to satirize Harlem and American life in general. Where do you see this? What, specifically, is Hughes satirizing and how does humor help us 'see' his point? Use a specific poem in your discussion.
3. How do some of these poems imitate the sound of popular music--jazz, the blues, etc.? Where do we see/hear music in the rhythms and intonations of the poem? In other words, how do you make a poem sound like music in other ways besides rhymes?
4. Reading these poems as a whole, what impression of Harlem does Hughes want the reader to come away with? Is he hopeful about the people/spirit of Harlem? Or does he feel it is too beaten and desperate to have a happy ending? Use a specific poem to help illustrate your ideas.
Kendall Dobbs:
ReplyDelete1. In Hughes’s “Widow Woman” I believe the title is used to give us context on who is speaking and/or thinking. This title is meaningful because it allows the reader to immediately change his/her way of thinking in order to understand how this woman is feeling after the death of her husband. This title is literal since the poem clearly discusses the death of the husband. I don’t think that this title took too long for Hughes to come up with, but who knows?
3. While I am not too familiar with the popular music of the time, I did pick up one aspect that I thought was trying to imitate songs. In multiple poems that I read, there was repetition of multiple lines and thoughts. An example being “Hard Daddy.” I don’t know how to explain it, but the repetition in the stanzas makes me read the poem in a different way? It makes the poem have a different ‘flow’ which is similar to what I have heard in music.
Josh Coats
ReplyDelete1. Hughes's "Ennui" made no sense until I looked up the definition of ennui...I didn't know it was an actual word. Knowing that it means boredom, I now know the title fits the poem beautifully. The title is literal, but it kind of takes on a metaphorical feel because of not knowing that ennui meant.
4. Little Old Letter makes me feel as if Hughes' impression of Harlem is dark. I think the letter is a metaphor for living life in general, that the small things are hard to accomplish as a black person.
1.Midnight Raffle. A gamble in the night.
ReplyDelete2. Mama and Daughter. discuss the meeting of a man they admire and how they wished it would be but the wish and turn out aren't always what they seem. The mom gets upset at the daughters reaction.
Casey Bear
The poem "Little Lyric (Of Great Importance)" is so true, it caught my eye right after I got off the phone with my landlord who was yelling about the rent!
ReplyDeleteNumber four: In the poem "Final Curve" , which I reread several times, I feel Langston is saying that to most people, Harlem is a dead end. You turn and turn and look and look and run right back into yourself without finding a way out. BUT, he is also saying yourself is the way out...YOU are the only one that can change things.
ReplyDelete2 Summer junek
ReplyDeleteHe writes of humor and hope of one day attaining success or simply finding humor in simple life as being poor. A lot of people were struggling to survive yet he accomplished a laugh using this in his poem To Be Poor. Hughes is quite the funny person at times we can see the joy inside his writings, he finds joy in all themes.
4 Summer Junek
ReplyDeleteHe is simply pointing out what mankind has done to each other or more specifically his ancestors then and now and how this affect has followed and continues to shape the present this is a fact and he is saying hope and joy, as well as, education is theirs for the taking let the past give you fire to overcome that depression.
Nesha Pickens
ReplyDelete3) when you read the poem and you picture it, you cant help but hear the music also. When you read the stanzas you try to put the words together along with trying to hear the music. Its like in a Tv show when there is a sad scene and then you hear the music that goes along with that scene. Very similar to reading a poem and hearing and imagining the music in the background.
4) I think the impression of Harlem that Hughes wants us to get is that Harlem is not always sunny. Being black in Harlem was not easy but they did what they could with what they had. I believe Hughes knows Harlem is a dead end. I think the poem "Night Funeral in Harlem" gives a perfect example that there were hard times.
1. Life is Fine is a title that was at first misleading. In the first section, the speaker is considering suicide, but is thwarted by an invigorating life force. At first I thought the title was meant a little forlornly, as in life is no better than the bland 'fine.' However, the invigorating forces seem to motivate the speaker to make a solid stand for living, even celebrating life. By the end of the poem, life is "Fine as wine!" (121), and the speaker takes control of it instead of sadly accepting its existence.
ReplyDelete3. I identified strongly with Young Gal's Blues on page 148 because Hughes understands so many womens' blues. I imagine a female Robert Johnson (kind of scary) lamenting behind the guitar, singing about the fate of aged women and wishing for time to stop. The lines of each verse are repeated twice, and the third set ties up the verse both rhythmically and in story, which was an immediate blues-story-song tip-off. In a way it celebrates (or warns you that you need to be celebrating) beauty, youth, and love by giving us a glimpse into the impending misery.
Ashley Barnes
ReplyDelete1) In the poem "What" (108) the title at first doesn't make sense, then after reading it I figured out that the title is a question, it is asking what would you give up when the money got tight in the fall. It shows the hard times that everyone had with each changing season.
3) In a lot of the poems they obviously had a rhythm but in some you could hear the movement and flow like music, especially with the repeating stanzas that you encountered. in "Kid Sleepy" to me it just seemed more rhythmic I guess and there was more than one voice in it so it reminded me more of music.
Amory Morgan
ReplyDelete1. Mother to Son on page 187. It's used literally. Hughes wants you to know that the mother is telling her son this, i feel like he does this so that you know it's being passed on from generation to generation. Not necessarily that the poem is just a conversation. I think that the title really makes this poem, without it you wouldn't know for sure who was talking to who. Just the fact that you know this is a mother talking to her son telling him to never give up and never settle hits you harder.
4.I think Harlem was half and half for Hughes. Like we talked about in class, he could see that Harlem was a great place to be when you are black, compared to living in the "real world". I think he felt like it was a false facade that you put on. It was fake and only temporary. Like in the poem Puzzled on page 191 he uses hell as a metaphor for Harlem.
1. "Ku Klux" on page 163 is kind of obvious but it also reminded me of the Freedom Riders and the "Freedom Bus" that was intentionally burned by the Ku Klux in 1961. The title is obvious to what the poem could possibly be about. It is important because this was a big problem in this time.
ReplyDelete4. He wants u to understand that of course Harlem is dark. It is filled with anger and sadness. He wants us to understand that it is not a wonderful place. He doesn't give up hope but he surely does not expect a happy ending. I think "Ku Klux" on 176 also gives us another example of how he feels about it because he is wanting a one way ticket out.
Weston Haynes:
ReplyDelete3.) The poems display a certain kind of rhythm and a flow that seems relatable to the popular music at the time which was jazz and swing. It feels like your singing a song especially in "kid sleepy." It conveys a feeling and a message that you could typically find in a song of that time.
4.) Langston Hughes shows that Harlem isn't all glamour and exciting on the outside looking in. But foe people, especially blacks, it is a safe haven from the outside world. People look down upon it from the outside, but inside its a different story, especially for colored people. It wasn't that great of a place to live, but it was sure better than living on the outside. It was a more secure place, and that's what made it better to live. For colored people, this was their place. It wasn't pretty, but it was theirs, and even though it was bound to not get any better, it was better than be discriminated against.
Stormee Chestra.
ReplyDelete1.I liked the poem "What" honestly, because it made me think what I would sacrifice to get something I really wanted. It was a deep poem that had a simple title to it.
4. I think he wanted us to get that Harlem isn't as beautiful as it seems, especially for black people. But at night the black people could do as they please and associate with white people without getting in trouble or anything
Cristian C. Nazario Cruz
ReplyDelete1. The first time that I saw the title “What” was a little bit confusing For me because it doesn’t make sense. When you reed the poem you figure out that title is a question, asking what we or you would give up when you are having hard time in your life. “What” is the more realistic poem, because it make people think what they would sacrifice to get something they really wanted.
3. For me every poems have at least a little bit of rhythm and flow, that seems like the popular music at the time which was Jazz the best kind of music. If you read the stanzas and you try to put the words together it’s like music. Because of his rhythm and his flow every time when you are reading his poems it seem like you have music in the background.