Juke Box Love Song
I could take the Harlem night
and wrap around you,
Take the neon lights and make a crown,
Take the Lenox Avenue busses,
Taxis, subways,
And for your love song tone their rumble down.
Take Harlem's heartbeat,
Make a drumbeat,
Put it on a record, let it whirl,
And while we listen to it play,
Dance with you till day--
Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl.
By: Langston Hughes
I love this poem, because Langston Hughes uses a literary point to explain the love he has for Harlem and a pass relationship. I love this poem, because it is basically Langston Hughes’s view of jazz and his environment in relation to Harlem, New York. The environment in which everything is represented makes it very clear that all of these elements are detailed very clearly through descriptive words and he still involves his acts against stereotyping in general in the poem by stating,” Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl.” To me this part talks about a pass relationship in Harlem that Langston Hughes had and this poem was a way for him to reminisce on the times they spent together.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
Lost "Free Verse"
I woke up this morning with something on my mind,
but it all was lost according to time.
I woke up this morning,
trying to grasp what I lost.
But time currputed my mind and
the thought was lost.
but it all was lost according to time.
I woke up this morning,
trying to grasp what I lost.
But time currputed my mind and
the thought was lost.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Coal
Coal
I
is the total black, being spoken
from the earth's inside.
There are many kinds of open
how a diamond comes into a knot of flame
how sound comes into a words, coloured
by who pays what for speaking.
Some words are open like a diamond
on glass windows
singing out within the crash of sun
Then there are words like stapled wagers
in a perforated book - buy and sign and tear apart -
and come whatever will all chances
the stub remains
an ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge.
Some words live in my throat
breeding like adders. Other know sun
seeking like gypsies over my tongue
to explode through my lips
like young sparrows bursting from shell.
Some words
bedevil me
Love is word, another kind of open.
As the diamond comes into a knot of flame
I am Black because I come from the earth's inside
Now take my word for jewel in the open light.
By: Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde was born in 1934 in New York to parents of West Indian heritage. She passed away in 1992, a victim of breast cancer. Her battle with the disease, which was chronicled in works like The Cancer Journals, was just one of many struggles she had to deal with in life. Audre Lorde was a black homosexual female in a world dominated by white heterosexual males. She fought for justice on each of these minority fronts. Her writings protest against the swallowing of black American culture by an indifferent white population, against the perpetuation of sex discrimination, and against the neglect of the movement for gay rights. Her poetry, however, is not entirely political in content. It is extremely romantic in nature and is described by Joan Martin as ringing with, "passion, sincerity, perception, and depth of feeling."
American writer Audre Lorde calls herself “a black feminist lesbian mother poet" because her identity is based on the relationship of many divergent perspectives once perceived as incompatible. Thematically, she expresses or explores pride, love, anger, fear, racial and sexual oppression, urban neglect, and personal survival. Moreover, she eschews a hope for a better humanity by revealing truth in her poetry. She states, "I feel have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and to share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigating pain." Lorde was a prolific writer who continually explored the marginalization’s experienced by individuals in a society fearful of differences.
In the poem “Coal," the controlling metaphor of coal, staple fuel, celebrates "the total black, being spoken/From the earth's inside," which becomes in its idealized form, the jewel, diamond. In the this reading, the poem's final visionary lines . . . claim their political identity precisely through an empowering biologism. . . . For Black American poets it meant a call to a poetics of Blackness which emphasized the role of poet as activist and leader and the role of poetry as expression of an intrinsically Black vision.
I
is the total black, being spoken
from the earth's inside.
There are many kinds of open
how a diamond comes into a knot of flame
how sound comes into a words, coloured
by who pays what for speaking.
Some words are open like a diamond
on glass windows
singing out within the crash of sun
Then there are words like stapled wagers
in a perforated book - buy and sign and tear apart -
and come whatever will all chances
the stub remains
an ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge.
Some words live in my throat
breeding like adders. Other know sun
seeking like gypsies over my tongue
to explode through my lips
like young sparrows bursting from shell.
Some words
bedevil me
Love is word, another kind of open.
As the diamond comes into a knot of flame
I am Black because I come from the earth's inside
Now take my word for jewel in the open light.
By: Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde was born in 1934 in New York to parents of West Indian heritage. She passed away in 1992, a victim of breast cancer. Her battle with the disease, which was chronicled in works like The Cancer Journals, was just one of many struggles she had to deal with in life. Audre Lorde was a black homosexual female in a world dominated by white heterosexual males. She fought for justice on each of these minority fronts. Her writings protest against the swallowing of black American culture by an indifferent white population, against the perpetuation of sex discrimination, and against the neglect of the movement for gay rights. Her poetry, however, is not entirely political in content. It is extremely romantic in nature and is described by Joan Martin as ringing with, "passion, sincerity, perception, and depth of feeling."
American writer Audre Lorde calls herself “a black feminist lesbian mother poet" because her identity is based on the relationship of many divergent perspectives once perceived as incompatible. Thematically, she expresses or explores pride, love, anger, fear, racial and sexual oppression, urban neglect, and personal survival. Moreover, she eschews a hope for a better humanity by revealing truth in her poetry. She states, "I feel have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and to share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigating pain." Lorde was a prolific writer who continually explored the marginalization’s experienced by individuals in a society fearful of differences.
In the poem “Coal," the controlling metaphor of coal, staple fuel, celebrates "the total black, being spoken/From the earth's inside," which becomes in its idealized form, the jewel, diamond. In the this reading, the poem's final visionary lines . . . claim their political identity precisely through an empowering biologism. . . . For Black American poets it meant a call to a poetics of Blackness which emphasized the role of poet as activist and leader and the role of poetry as expression of an intrinsically Black vision.
Monday, March 15, 2010
"Wise I"
Wise I
WHY's (Nobody Know
The Trouble I Seen)
Trad.
If you ever find
yourself, some where
lost and surrounded
by enemies
who won't let you
speak in your own language
who destroy your statues
& instruments, who ban
your oom boom ba boom
then you are in trouble
deep trouble
they ban your
oom boom ba boom
you in deep deep
trouble
humph!
probably take you several hundred years
to get
out!
By: Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka was born in Newark, New Jersey, where his father worked as a postman and lift operator. He studied at Rutgers, Columbia, and Howard Universities, leaving without a degree, and at the New School for Social Research. His major fields of study were philosophy and religion. Baraka also served three years in the U.S. Air Force as a gunner. Baraka continued his studies of comparative literature at Columbia University. He has taught at a number of universities, including the State University of New York at Buffalo.
In 1956 Baraka began his career as a writer, activist, and advocate of black culture and political power. In 1958 he founded Totem Press. In Harlem he established the Black Arts Repertory Theatre, which presented poetry readings, concerts, and produced a number of plays. The theatre was disbanded in 1966 and Baraka set up in Newark the Spirit House, a black community theatre (also known as the Heckalu Community Centre). In 1968 Baraka founded the Black Community Development and Defense Organization. He has also been Secretary-General of the National Black Political Assembly and Chairman of the Congress of African People. Doing his life time, Baraka published over 40 books of essays, poems, drama, and music history and criticism, a poet icon and revolutionary political activist novels.
I love the poem “Wise” by Baraka, because creatively and critically explores issues of racism, national oppression and colonialism.
WHY's (Nobody Know
The Trouble I Seen)
Trad.
If you ever find
yourself, some where
lost and surrounded
by enemies
who won't let you
speak in your own language
who destroy your statues
& instruments, who ban
your oom boom ba boom
then you are in trouble
deep trouble
they ban your
oom boom ba boom
you in deep deep
trouble
humph!
probably take you several hundred years
to get
out!
By: Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka was born in Newark, New Jersey, where his father worked as a postman and lift operator. He studied at Rutgers, Columbia, and Howard Universities, leaving without a degree, and at the New School for Social Research. His major fields of study were philosophy and religion. Baraka also served three years in the U.S. Air Force as a gunner. Baraka continued his studies of comparative literature at Columbia University. He has taught at a number of universities, including the State University of New York at Buffalo.
In 1956 Baraka began his career as a writer, activist, and advocate of black culture and political power. In 1958 he founded Totem Press. In Harlem he established the Black Arts Repertory Theatre, which presented poetry readings, concerts, and produced a number of plays. The theatre was disbanded in 1966 and Baraka set up in Newark the Spirit House, a black community theatre (also known as the Heckalu Community Centre). In 1968 Baraka founded the Black Community Development and Defense Organization. He has also been Secretary-General of the National Black Political Assembly and Chairman of the Congress of African People. Doing his life time, Baraka published over 40 books of essays, poems, drama, and music history and criticism, a poet icon and revolutionary political activist novels.
I love the poem “Wise” by Baraka, because creatively and critically explores issues of racism, national oppression and colonialism.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
I Sit and Sew
I Sit and Sew
I sit and sew-- a useless task it seems,
My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams--
The panoply of war, the martial tread of men,
Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken
Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death
Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath--
But-- I must sit and sew.
I sit and sew-- my heart aches with desire--
That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire
On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things
Once men. My soul in pity flings
Appealing cries, yearning only to go
There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe--
But-- I must sit and sew.
The little useless seam, the idle patch;
Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch,
When there they lie in sodden mud and rain,
Pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain?
You need me, Christ! It is no roseate dream
That beckons me-- this pretty futile seam,
It stifles me-- God, must I sit and sew?
By: Alice Dunbar-Nelson
Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on 19 July 1875, Alice Ruth Moore was the daughter of Patricia Wright, a seamstress, and Joseph Moore, a merchant marine, and, due to her middle-class social status and racially mixed appearance, she enjoyed the diverse culture of the city. She graduated Straight University (now Dillard University) in 1892 and began her career as a teacher in the public school system of New Orleans. In 1895, Dunbar-Nelson published her first collection of short stories and poems, Violets and Other Tales. Although many of the pieces were obviously marked by her inexperience, I Sit and Sew reveal her gift for capturing the language, setting, and pathos peculiar to New Orleans life at the turn of the century. I love Dunbar-Nelson poetry, because her message addresses the issues that confronted African-Americans and women of her time. In this poem, Dunbar-Nelson challenges the period's stereotypical leftist image of the proletarian as a burly, half-naked industrial worker. Her proletarian is a woman, an office worker whose daily confinement is painfully at odds with her yearning for "beautiful things"--the consolations of art and the sensual pleasures of a middle-class dream-life. Like her poetry, Dunbar-Nelson's political activism encompassed many forms
I sit and sew-- a useless task it seems,
My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams--
The panoply of war, the martial tread of men,
Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken
Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death
Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath--
But-- I must sit and sew.
I sit and sew-- my heart aches with desire--
That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire
On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things
Once men. My soul in pity flings
Appealing cries, yearning only to go
There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe--
But-- I must sit and sew.
The little useless seam, the idle patch;
Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch,
When there they lie in sodden mud and rain,
Pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain?
You need me, Christ! It is no roseate dream
That beckons me-- this pretty futile seam,
It stifles me-- God, must I sit and sew?
By: Alice Dunbar-Nelson
Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on 19 July 1875, Alice Ruth Moore was the daughter of Patricia Wright, a seamstress, and Joseph Moore, a merchant marine, and, due to her middle-class social status and racially mixed appearance, she enjoyed the diverse culture of the city. She graduated Straight University (now Dillard University) in 1892 and began her career as a teacher in the public school system of New Orleans. In 1895, Dunbar-Nelson published her first collection of short stories and poems, Violets and Other Tales. Although many of the pieces were obviously marked by her inexperience, I Sit and Sew reveal her gift for capturing the language, setting, and pathos peculiar to New Orleans life at the turn of the century. I love Dunbar-Nelson poetry, because her message addresses the issues that confronted African-Americans and women of her time. In this poem, Dunbar-Nelson challenges the period's stereotypical leftist image of the proletarian as a burly, half-naked industrial worker. Her proletarian is a woman, an office worker whose daily confinement is painfully at odds with her yearning for "beautiful things"--the consolations of art and the sensual pleasures of a middle-class dream-life. Like her poetry, Dunbar-Nelson's political activism encompassed many forms
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
On Stripping Bark From Myself
On Stripping Bark From Myself
By: Alice Walker
Because women are expected to keep silent about
their close escapes I will not keep silent
and if I am destroyed (naked tree) someone will
please
mark the spot
where I fall and know I could not live
hearing their "how nice she is!"
whose adoration of the retouched image
I so despise.
No. I am finished with living
for what my mother believes
for what my brother and father defend
for what my lover elevates
for what my sister, blushing, denies or rushes
to embrace.
I find my own
small person
a standing self
against the world
an equality of wills
I have lived to understand.
Besides:
My struggle was always against
an inner darkness: I carry within myself
the only known keys
to my death - to unlock life, or close it shut
forever. A woman who loves wood grains, the colour
yellow
and the sun, I am happy to fight
all outside murderers
as I see I must.
Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia, the eighth and last child of Willie Lee and Minnie Lou Grant Walker, who were sharecroppers. When Alice Walker was eight years old, she lost sight of one eye when one of her older brothers shot her with a BB gun by accident. In high school, Alice Walker was valedictorian of her class, and that achievement, coupled with a "rehabilitation scholarship" made it possible for her to go to Spelman, a college for black women in Atlanta, Georgia. After spending two years at Spelman, she transferred to Sarah Lawrence College in New York, and during her junior year traveled to Africa as an exchange student. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College in 1965. Alice Walker was active in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's, and in the 1990's she is still an involved activist. Alice Walker is most known for her novel "The Color Purple," which she received a Pulitzer Prize in 1983.
This poem embrace the pain of being in relationships between women and men. This poem speaks to women who sacrifice themselves in order to maintain relationships with their men. I love this poem, because it allows women to define themselves for themselves despite their environments or situation.
By: Alice Walker
Because women are expected to keep silent about
their close escapes I will not keep silent
and if I am destroyed (naked tree) someone will
please
mark the spot
where I fall and know I could not live
hearing their "how nice she is!"
whose adoration of the retouched image
I so despise.
No. I am finished with living
for what my mother believes
for what my brother and father defend
for what my lover elevates
for what my sister, blushing, denies or rushes
to embrace.
I find my own
small person
a standing self
against the world
an equality of wills
I have lived to understand.
Besides:
My struggle was always against
an inner darkness: I carry within myself
the only known keys
to my death - to unlock life, or close it shut
forever. A woman who loves wood grains, the colour
yellow
and the sun, I am happy to fight
all outside murderers
as I see I must.
Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia, the eighth and last child of Willie Lee and Minnie Lou Grant Walker, who were sharecroppers. When Alice Walker was eight years old, she lost sight of one eye when one of her older brothers shot her with a BB gun by accident. In high school, Alice Walker was valedictorian of her class, and that achievement, coupled with a "rehabilitation scholarship" made it possible for her to go to Spelman, a college for black women in Atlanta, Georgia. After spending two years at Spelman, she transferred to Sarah Lawrence College in New York, and during her junior year traveled to Africa as an exchange student. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College in 1965. Alice Walker was active in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's, and in the 1990's she is still an involved activist. Alice Walker is most known for her novel "The Color Purple," which she received a Pulitzer Prize in 1983.
This poem embrace the pain of being in relationships between women and men. This poem speaks to women who sacrifice themselves in order to maintain relationships with their men. I love this poem, because it allows women to define themselves for themselves despite their environments or situation.
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