Great Works of Literature II, Fall 2019 (hybrid) HTA

In the poem, “God Has Pity on Kindergarten Children”, Amichai tries to convey that as you grow older you will suffer more, thus bearing more burden. The title and the first sentence reveals that God has pity on the younger children who are ignorant of the world and the surroundings, possibly alluding to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. God, however, pities people less and less as they grow older, even to the point of abandoning them. As a result of the increasing difficulties people face as they grow older, and as the war progresses, people also begin to abandon God by losing faith in him. People begin to lose faith and hope, believing that God has failed to protect them, even when people, “crawl on all fours in the scorching sand to reach the dressing station, streaming with blood.” God is not there for them during the time of war and destruction, but is there to protect the innocence of the younger (Kindergarten) children. Amichai may have written this poem to demonstrate the loss of faith in religion as a result of a tragedy, especially the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which was based on religion.

In the poem, “Try to Remember Some Details”, Amichai expresses how to bear witness to tragedy. He urges the reader to try to remember some details about people so when they die, it makes it more bearable. When death arrives, people are often forgotten and the world moves on; in order to keep their spirits alive, it is the duty of the living to remember details about them, from how they dressed, looked, and acted. This was especially important in the time of war/conflict when countless people died and are forgotten on the battlefield. Death has no preferences, it will swallow everyone on the battlefield, so it is the job of the living to carry on their legacy.

How do these love poems, “Bleecker Street, Summer” and “The Fist,” compare with other love poems you’ve read?

Walcott’s poems “Bleecker Street, Summer” and “The Fist” compare to other love poems I’ve read because it revolved around the literary device of imagery.  Edith Wharton’s “Terminus ” also included imagery, you could imagine how the person looks, what’s going on, you could have a daydream about the setting. It seems like a common theme among all these romantic poems deal with the lovers being distant from each other. The speaker is always reciting the lovely moments in the past tense and reminiscing on those great times. The speaker is always dreaming of the past, in “The Fist”, the speaker says, ” But this has moved past love to mania” to convey that this romance has happened in the past.

The voice in the first poem is very sincere. Its basically a mother giving her son advice and telling him how difficult life was for her. She’s trying to encourage him and remind him to persevere through the difficult times. If she can still continue to “climb” then so can he. From the perspective of the poem and language, especially the short lines, you can visualize an older woman in an oppressed society who’s genuinely tired from what she has been through. She shares her toils with a young boy, being her son, in hopes times will be better. She personifies her life to physically have these imperfections from hard work and struggle. In the next poem, “Motto”, although Hughes seems sincere, it still is rhetorical. He expresses his feelings and message in an informal manner. Hughes uses slang such as “dig” as well as speaking colloquially to possibly relate to the reader. His concluding message could be interpreted to treat others the way you’d want to be treated in return. If you think deep enough you could say “Motto” and “Mother to Son” can relate to each other being that “Motto” is a message in response to society that put the struggle on the speaker of “Mother to Son”.

 

In the poem “Harlem Shadows” the audience get a peak at urban life but only as outside viewers, observing people in their natural habitat. In the poem the events are not happening to the speaker rather it is things “I hear” and things “I see”. The poem depicts urban life as rather dark and it’s not just the setting. Sure it takes place at a time when “night lets fall / its veil” and that adds to it’s unpleasant feeling but it’s really the fact that the poem artistically points out things like prostitution when it states, “shapes of girls who pass / to bend and barter at desire’s call”. Harlem was a place of poverty, where women sold themselves and children ran around in “summer jackets” even when the wind was strong and cold. McKay’s word choice in general really emphasizes the negative perspective of Harlem as he writes, “sick and heavy air”, “swallowed in the deafening roar”, & “captive winds”. Words such as “sick”, “swallowed”, “deafening” & “captive” all have rather harsh and negative connotations and she creates this strong contrast between the dark and sinful Harlem and “islands of lofty palm trees blooming”. By concluding the poem with beautiful description of an island with a calming night, fresh and free the negativity of the always moving Harlem night filled with footsteps, crowds, desired calls, and deafening roaring winds is highlighted even more. McKay doesn’t seem to view urban life pleasantly and he almost makes it seem as though it is not where he belongs. That in Harlem he simply observes and his heart lies in the fresh, free fields, with palm trees and tropic seas. 

The voices of the speakers in the poems Mother to Son and Motto are significantly from one another. The poem, Mother to Son expresses the struggles and obstacles a mother had to face and overcome in order to establish the life she had for herself and her son. She wants her son to continue to push past the barriers that may try to suppress him by saying, “Don’t you set down on those steps”(15). Hence there is a very encouraging tone in which the mother addresses that life had not been easy for her, nor will it be easy for her son, but he needs to overcome the difficulties and never second-guess himself. However, Motto seems to be much more nonchalant. It seems as if the narrator is saying to just go with the flow. The narrator is essentially saying you only get to live one life so live it to the fullest. The narrator doesn’t seem to ponder too much on the struggles and hardships like the narrator in the poem Mother To Son. There distinct perspectives on life can definitely be a potential reason for tension between the speakers of both poems.

 

“The Second Coming” is arguably an apocalyptic poem, but people tend to get confused about apocalypses not always having to be bad; they could simply be times of great change (one world ending and another beginning and so on and so forth). It could be interesting to consider apocalypses as a genre and whether you think this is an apocalyptic poem and if so, how and why or not?

“The Second Coming” was definitely an apocalyptic themed poem in my opinion.  William Butler Yeats employed lines like “things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”, “The ceremony of innocence is drowned”, and “Surely the Second Coming is at hand”. Yeats contributed a sense of “the world is coming to an end” vibe and leaves his audiences to question what we would do during a time of crisis. He constructed his poem through a pessimistic approach of how our society would look like if “The Second Coming” were to actually occur. I wouldn’t say I completely agree with Yeats, but I wouldn’t say I completely disagree with Yeats’ approach of the apocalyptic. Yeats made great points of how our society would drown under an apocalyptic. This can be connected back to the spread of diseases like the Swine Flu and Ebola. The public was in a panic when treatments were not invented and people who were infected were roaming around the streets. Yeats also mentions “Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born”, which translates to people’s desire/pray hoping for someone/something to save them all. He wasn’t completely off about that line, but I feel like the public would actually make the effort to do what’s best to prevent any natural disaster, massive incidents, and even shootings. I just don’t think people are that desperate to the point where they think that magic would suddenly happen overnight.

~ Neo

Consider the potential tension between the voices of the speakers in the two poems “Mother to Son” and “Motto.”

The narrators of Langston Hughes’s poems “Mother to Son” and “Motto” can generate tension because the narrator of “Mother to Son” talks about the mother’s hardships and all that she has sacrificed to get to her current stage of life. Despite the hardships, the mother continues to fight on. Unliked the mother in “Mother and Son”, the narrator of “Motto” does not go through any hardships. “Dig and be dug in return. ” the narrator sees life and death as a system and only wants to live through life painlessly. His way of survival is to “dig all jive” which means to enjoy everything. The stark differences between both narrators represent two different ways of living life.

This poem’s first line is “One must have a mind of winter” and I thought Stevens was going to explain how one can survive the cold, harsh winter instead he describes the scenes one would see in the winter. And these scenes can only be noticed and seen when one is still like a snowman or only a snowman would be able to notice these little things. Although the title already gave away that the poem would be about a snowman I thought the poem would be about a man that lived through long, cold winters since the snow and man were separated instead of being together as one word. It also becomes clearer that the poem is about a snowman when it mentions one is “not to think of any misery in the sound of the wind”. The irony is it is not that the snowman is not thinking about the misery it is the snowman is unable to think about January’s sun because the snowman is nonliving. But Steven treats the snowman as a living object it is able to see, to think, and to hear. And this is the beauty of Stevens’ poem giving a nonliving object a reality.

Throughout this poem, the theme of romantics is quite evident, “But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face.” The man genuinely loved this person, not only for their beauty, but their emotions and spirit also. In addition to the theme of romantics, the theme of aging is clear throughout, “And loved the sorrows of your changing face.” This suggests that there’s a certain attractiveness to youthfulness, but as they age their face loses this attractiveness and a certain sadness slowly replaces it. The poem, as a whole, has a nostalgic feel to it as if the author is of old age and writing back to a loved like his daughter or son. The poem also suggests that as you continue to grow, the more sadness and sorrow you feel, which of course is subjective.

Does the voice in either of the two poems seem to represent Hughes’s sincere voice? Or are they both rhetorical in some way? Which aspects of the poems seem more sincere and/or rhetorical? Which literary devices does he choose to use in each poem? How? Why?

The voice in the first poem “Mother to Son” seems to represent Hughe’s sincere voice. It’s as if Hughes is the one speaking to the audience and giving his honest advice. In this poem, a mother tells his son that life is not easy. There were times when she was lost and struggled to live, but she kept going. She encourages her son to do the same because if she can, he can do so too. Hughes uses African accent so we can tell it’s the story of an African family who do not live easy lives. Hughes also uses repetition of “And” and keeps the lines short to mimic a sincere voice, making it sound like the poem is speaking to you in real life and in that accent. Hughes also starts and ends with “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair”, emphasizing that your life may not be easy but so many other people’s lives are also not easy but they are still thriving.

Although Hughes’ second poem “Motto” includes some sincere voice, it seems to be more rhetorical. In this poem, Hughes says that he stays alive for all the fun that he enjoys in life like singing and dancing to swing music. He uses informal language to express his thoughts, “I play it cool”. In addition, he says “dig” as a slang for “like”. Through his informal language and use of slang, he is able to communicate his feelings or his “motto” in a way that is memorable. In the end, he says “dig and be dug/in return”, meaning if you like others and treat others well, they will like you and treat you well too. Thus, he communicates his message through a poem, in a unique way.