African American Poetry

Kevin Young sums it up

2009-04-29T08:36:00.000-07:00

The poetry of Kevin Young is very recent which makes it interesting to read, but also challenging to know how to interpret. His poetry seems to have a visual and an oral feel, and like others, seems to integrate and address both aspects of poetry. He also uses interesting wordplay in DEFACEMENT and other poems that challenge the reader to break down what he is saying, what it sounds like, the diction and accent, and also the organization.

In the Poetic Statement many of the common themes we have discussed throughout this course are unpacked from Young’s poetry. He uses blues and jazz forms that harkens back to times of oral poetry and tradition. The Statement also notes how Young uses differing poetic forms to mirror what his poetry is saying or commenting including the familiar topics of love and relationships. He also seems to speak about these topics with a vivid quality not unlike what Wanda Coleman did as well.

For all of these reasons, it seems holistic to finish with a poem who address so many of the themes and ideas we have explored throughout this course.

2009-04-29T07:57:00.000-07:00

Yes, I did a research paper freshman year about hip hop and whether it still contained a message about problems in urban communities and oppression. I found that over the years hip hop has changed, glorifying thug life instead of creating an awareness of the oppression and bad living conditions in urban areas. Many argue that hip hop began to target white suburban teenagers which sales records seemed to prove. Today there is hip hop that contains that message, but it is mainly underground and not being heard on the radio. Now people seem more interested in making money than really sending a message. But yes, as Sarah points out, that seems to be the case with all music. Protest(political and social) songs aren't really seen on the top 40 countdown... I always found it interesting though why such a large amount of suburban white teenagers would be obsessed with gangster rap. But then again, why not? I am pretty sure I remember one critic argued that they just wanted to piss off their parents/ feel bad ass. It is interesting to compare this situation to poetry though. There are poems that are merely candy, but I feel for the most part poems have a good amount of medicine, some kind of message. I just think that contrast between music and poetry is interesting...

mainstreem hip hop

2009-04-28T19:20:00.000-07:00

Saw an article while doing paper research that I found interesting, and thought I’d share the idea with y’all. The article was about hip-hop, and it asked the question: “[D]oes black art still play a role as a place of sustenance for an oppressed people’s spirit, as a site of resistance?”. The article argued that there are two types of hip-hop, the more mainstream type, which has become highly commercialized, and the less mainstream type which is more about politics. I guess I’m interested in why the more commercialized stuff is so popular. Looking at the slam poetry, I found most of those poems to be great. With hard rock fading out and hip-hop coming in style, it’s interesting that there is rarely more than one song per artist that speaks about politics. Usually when I turn on the radio, the music is light, or has somewhat offensive lyrics, but a good beat. I just found it interesting that the author of the article was arguing that most of the smaller hip-hop artists spoke about political issues, while the mainstream ones didn’t—the author argued that it is the smaller hip-hop voices that give oppressed people something to work for, while the main ones help stifle them. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is true for almost all music—not just hip-hop. I know it’s an extreme view, but I still found it something worth thinking about.

Prose Confusion too!

2009-04-22T06:10:00.000-07:00

What I found most intriguing about Nathaniel Mackey was his diversity in form. We read prose, poetry and an interview by him, and nearly all of them were equally baffling to me. Like last class, sometimes I found that if I read his poems faster I could make some sense of them, but as a whole I was left wondering about many of the poems. In particular, I cannot say that I as really able to make sense of the visual poems with odd indentations. I tried reading just the right justified words to see if it worked together, or also using the single word as a cue for the rest of the stanza, but still hound no definitive answer. Which left me wondering, what do these visual cues mean? What such discourse in presentation? What is he saying by the way he arranges the poem, not the words within it?

One of the most interesting things for me though was the interview. I thought that Mackey tied together and essentially summarized so many of the discussions and questions we had semester. He discussed the how poems can be both oral and visual simultaneously, how religion and music are often one and the same, how the audience can matter but also be irrelevant, and seemed to express consistent “integration” ideas as Harryette Mullen.

Proposition 209

2009-04-22T05:09:00.001-07:00

I got pretty interested in the idea that California (and polititians in general) word things in a difficult manner to make people vote differently than they normally would. I went to my friend Wiki, and looked up proposition 209:

The passage of proposition 209 amended the California Constitution to include a new section (Section 31 of Article I), which reads:

(a) The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.

(b) This section shall apply only to action taken after the section's effective date.

(c) Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as prohibiting bona fide qualifications based on sex which are reasonably necessary to the normal operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.

(d) Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as invalidating any court order or consent decree which is in force as of the effective date of this section.

(e) Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as prohibiting action which must be taken to establish or maintain eligibility for any federal program, where ineligibility would result in a loss of federal funds to the state.

(f) For the purposes of this section, "state" shall include, but not necessarily be limited to, the state itself, any city, county, city and county, public university system, including the University of California, community college district, school district, special district, or any other political subdivision or governmental instrumentality of or within the state.

(g) The remedies available for violations of this section shall be the same, regardless of the injured party's race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin, as are otherwise available for violations of then-existing California antidiscrimination law.

(h) This section shall be self-executing. If any part or parts of this section are found to be in conflict with federal law or the United States Constitution, the section shall be implemented to the maximum extent that federal law and the United States Constitution permit. Any provision held invalid shall be severable from the remaining portions of this section.

To me this sounds like the abolition of racism and sexism, but in reality (according to Wiki), it really is about doing away with affirmitive action.

California claims that abolishing affirmative action has helped California, "The African American graduation rate at the University of California, Berkeley increased by 6.5 percent,[2] and rose even more dramatically, from 26 percent to 52 percent, at the University of California, San Diego" (wiki. Graduation rates have improved, but enrollment has gone down: "Criticism was made of the fact that of the 4,422 students in UCLA's freshman class of 2006, only 100 (2.26%) were African American[2]. In fact, opponents of Proposition 209 note that there are greater disparities in elite education in the post-Proposition 209 era due to decreased African American and Latino enrollment. Proponents, on the other hand, note that Asian American enrollment rates dramatically increased at a majority of UC campuses" (wiki).

On a lighter note, since we are taking a poetry class, I wrote a poem on the way to class the other day, and because I can't make it to the poetry slam, I thought I'd post it here:

English Major

I majored in English,
But I minored in Gym,
That’s because there’s
three sets of stairs
in Richardson.

Sipping on my mocha-cola liquid-energy,
Running faster than an R.O.T.C.
And time seems to be running faster than me
All this for a college degree?!

But no, wait the door’s locked.
So I knock and I knock,
But the door itself seems to mock,
And the hands on my clock won’t stop.

So I need to go down the steps to go up some more
Another set of stairs!
Now I have to go up four!
All because of the stupid locked door.

So I step and I step and I step and I step,
And I sweat and I sweat and I sweat and I sweat,
And with every sweat step,
I begin to regret
Why I put on Dove deodorant, instead of
Super ultra mega platinum Secret.

So I swan-dive into my chair,
Pretending to be unaware
Of how everybody in my class begins to stare.
...maybe this time the teacher won’t care.

But of course she’s irate,
And I’m marked as ‘late’
But it doesn’t matter how I do in English,
Because in gym, I’m doing great!

George Lipsitz, "The Possessive Investment in Whiteness"

2009-04-16T15:25:00.000-07:00

You can find it here.

Epic Situation

2009-04-15T12:58:00.000-07:00

I am glad that i waited to enter my passage in our blog this week, as today's class was difficult for me to grapple with, in particular the assumption that the speaker of a performed piece is to be identified as the narrator. For the sake of qualification, I took performing poetry with Randy Hill and one of the devices we learned about was this notion of the Epic Situation. The epic situation as we defined it was the where and who of a performance. So if you are performing Maya Angelou's Phenomenal Woman, You would have to decide, where am I going to set this performance and who will I portray? In this case, you may go about the generic route personifying a woman in a public sphere, or you may attempt to portray a transgendered male, convincing himself of his womanhood in a private setting. The point is that unless specified otherwise, we need to contain the narrator to the person within the poem and not the deliverer/speaker. Do not assume that because a black woman is presenting a poem about a skinhead, the narrator of the piece is a black woman. Instead, listen and interpret her words. The opening line is: “They call me skinhead.” Thus with ample critical analysis it may be determined that the poems narrator is, indeed, a skinhead, and not the black woman speaking the poem, shall we relate the stage to the setting of the poem too? It is difficult to separate that which we are so used to trust, our sight, from poetic thought. I am not saying that I know everything there is to know about poetry – we all know that’s not true, but I am saying that I am certain that the speaker is not a black woman and to my knowledge it has nothing to do with the way she’s dressed. Maybe it has something to do with her skin color and the volumes of cultural history that’s bound within, but nothing is indicative that it is about or through the voice of Patricia Smith. I don’t like to generalize, but I do fancy myself to play with the evidence provided to me, and the opening line is enough for me.

2009-04-15T08:24:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed Liza Peterson’s poetry – especially “Ice Cream Cone.” She took a much more lighthearted approach to the problems faced by women and African Americans (and African American women). She managed to turn real issues – manifestations of racism and sexism – into pet peeves for the characters in her poems. But that transformation didn’t take away from the weight of the problems themselves, it just made the characters seem stronger. I got the impression, as an audience member, that both of the characters, from “Ice Cream Cone” and “Waitress,” had actually risen above their respective daily challenges – disgusting sexual suggestions and ignorant customers – and turned them into inside jokes. Nevertheless, I say the weight wasn’t lost because at the end of both poems, the implication was that the characters would deal with the same crap the next day, and the day after, and that there was a problem much bigger than the individual idiots set each woman off on the particular day after which the poems were modeled. The individuals are products of an American culture that okays their behavior, and no matter how many times they get corrected, they will never examine themselves for fault. So, even after I had laughed at “Ice Cream Cone,” I was straight-faced by the last line because it was clear that that wasn’t an isolated episode.

2009-04-15T08:08:00.000-07:00

I agree. The performances from Patricia Smith were very strong and intense, especially "Skinhead." I thought the way she performed it was amazing. I felt that her expressions and the way she handled every word was dead on. I also really liked her poems from Blood Dazzler. Hurricane Katrina has been an extremely big issue over the past few years and I thought it was really awesome that she put together an entire book with poems about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. I felt that her prologue depicted the atmosphere of New Orleans really well. I felt like she was describing the dark side of New Orleans and its toxicity. How visitors are consumed by the city. I also really liked the performances from Liza Peterson. I felt she was very animated and did a nice job at getting to what she wanted to say. I also felt her poems dealt with themes we haven't really seen yet: woman being objectified by men in "Ice Cream Cone" and an individual's origin in "Waitress." It seems ridiculous to think that a women can't even eat an ice cream cone without getting some sort of sexual comment. I think she did a nice job of getting the message across while being amusing as well. "Waitress" brought up a good point about origin. It is crazy to think that someone would ask what an individuals native tribe was when her family has been here for generations. She is American! I just think people have these romantic ideas about foreign countries. I am not going to lie. I am guilty of it too. I remember when I took African literature and our professor asked us about our presumptions of Africa. When I thought of Africa, I immediately thought of the savanna and all the wildlife, people living in huts. Of course after learning about Africa I knew otherwise, but it is really just amazing to think about how a lot of people are just ignorant. Education really is the key.

Smith vs. Coleman

2009-04-15T06:56:00.001-07:00

The oral poetry of Patricia Smith, whether watched on Youtube or read from the page, is extremely powerful in its raw emotion and stark imagery. The creative arrangement of her poetry to complement a written and oral form is also interesting. For me, the most enjoyable part is that she speaks sometimes about distant things like Medusa, in such a way that it seems real. At the same time, she is able to dissect real things, like Hurricane Katrina in ways that are real and made to be surreal at the same time.

The subject matter and diction of her poems is not unlike the power that we saw from Wanda Coleman, although for some reason it seems less jarring. Maybe it is because I have read Coleman first, or maybe it is the hearing of the poem in an oral form and imagining its spoken delivery that makes it less shocking but no less powerful. Her ability to deliver the poem adds character to it and makes it a story. She also explores a diverse subject matter which sheds light on a variety of social and cultural issues or minorities not normally seen, as seen in “Skinhead.”

Certainly, the era of slam poets and oral poetry is back, although I wonder how much of the residues of the jazz and blues can still be felt in the cadence and improvisational delivery?

Private Prisons

2009-04-14T10:42:00.000-07:00

As promised, I’m doing my blog on private prisons, brought to you by Wikipedia and a few other sites. Unfortunatly, I found that there are a few companies that own a bunch of prisons, but besides “contractual agreements”, I couldn’t find where they got their money.

Private prisons receive their money through contractual agreements with “local state or federal governments that commit priosoners and then pay a per diem or monthly rate for each prisoner confined in the facility” (Wikipedia). They began in England after the American Revolution. They could not ship criminals to the United States after the revolution, so “Great Britain began placing them on hulks moored in English ports” (Wikipedia). The first for-profit prison in the United States was in California in 1852. Private prisons did not become especially popular until the 1980s, where there was a war on drugs which made several prisons become overpopulated and new ones needed to be built.

This new “modern” private prison business first emerged publically in 1984 when Corrections Corporation of America received a contract to take over a facility in Hamilton County in Tenessee. By December 2000, the United States had 153 private correctional facilities (which includes prisons, jails, and detention centers). These private correctional facilities had over 119,000 people in them. Today, the United States has 264 correctional facilities, with almost 99,000 adult offenders. “7% of the 2 million adult prisoners in the United States are in private facilities.” (prisonpolicy.org)

Private prisons provide more jobs for local cities, are more cost-efficient for each local town as well as put pressure on the public prison systems. States save money if they have both public and private prison systems. There are several contradicting studies as to whether the private prison system actually saves each state money.

The poor economy has affected the stalk market for the private prisons, so there are not many new ones being built. I could not find how people gained profit from prisons, but “The cost of corrections-in cluding state, local, and federal corrections budgets-ran to more than $20 billion a year in the early 1990s. The cost of constructing enough cells just to keep up with the constant increase in prisoners is estimated at $6 billion a year” (mediafilter.org).

Sorry guys, although I found that there are three major companies that run private prisons, I really don’t know where the money comes from. Please let me know if you find anything.

Here are the sites I went to:
http://www.prisonpolicy.org/prisonindex/overviewprivate.html
http://mediafilter.org/MFF/Prison.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison

Nick's Questions for Monday, April 13

2009-04-12T12:45:00.001-07:00

Nick Blaise
African American Poetry: 347
Theo Hummer
Questions

1. Saul Williams says, “The youth of today are using poetry slams and open mics as a means of calling our new world into order.” Explore the ways in which Williams employs his idea through his performance of “Amethyst Rock,” how does it speak to Davis’ article, what is it bringing to our attention?
In context in the film Slam, Saul Williams’s character uses his performance of “Amethyst Rock” to disrupt and defuse a brewing prisonyard gang fight (the YouTube clip cuts off the incipient fight at the beginning of the poem, but includes the gang members’ baffled yet awed responses at the end). What assumptions or hopes about poetry does this scene indicate?

2.”It is my hope that this book will encourage readers to question their own assumptions about the prison.” With respect to Davis, Williams, Bernstein, and Chomsky, have your opinions changed? “Are prisons obsolete?”

3. White Supremacy Capitalist Heterocentric Patriarchs. That’s what the United States seems to labeled as in Chomsky’s article, do you believe that this idea of social control is instated by these types of people (mentioned above)? How does this speak to the race relations we have already discussed through various other poets and essayists? Is it necessary to be an evil person with evil intentions in order to behave in ways that support white supremacist, capitalistic, heterocentric, and/or patriarchal structures in society? What forms of dissent are possible? How effective is literature as a means of dissent?

4.Drawing from earlier works like Dunbar’s “We Wear The Mask:” Is the mask voluntary or involuntary in this case? In which case? Where do we see the mask in play in Saul Williams’s work? In Angela Davis’s? In Nell Bernstein’s? In Noam Chomsky’s? What’s the relationship between strategic use of “the mask” and prison reform or abolition?

5. Williams describes the differences between an African drumbeat and an American drumbeat: “The indigenous drumming of continental Africa is known to be primarily dense and quite often up-tempo. The drumming of the indigenous Americas, on the other hand, in its most common representation is primarily sparse and down-tempo.” How do you suppose this metaphorical clash of drumming has been reflected and inquired in our readings up until now? How has it affected our ideas of culture?

6. “I remember learning of Ancient Egyptian dynasties and how, in some, the scribes were more popular, while in others the focus was on the illustrators.” How has slam poetry consolidated the two roles into an inventive uniform?

response to Sarah

2009-04-08T08:47:00.001-07:00

In response to Sarah:

The notion of separating things – histories, genders, classes – for the sake of profit hadn’t occurred to me, either until I read your post. My first impulse is to reject such a practice as thoughtless commercialism, but after mulling it over, I think there might actually be something to be gained from telling Black history as separate from [White] history.

In my opinion, there is no such thing as White history in America because “White” is running in the background of whatever historical account is at hand. Until fairly recently, accounts of slavery, segregation, the Civil Rights Movement, etc., were all told from a White perspective (with the exception of the occasional Frederick Douglass figure). This, to me, is the equivalent of an attempt to tell White and Black history in conjunction. However, such attempts fail because a single perspective cannot be avoided. I suppose if a Black committee and a White committee were to sit down and write a history of the US together, it would be viewed as a genuinely biracial account. But what would be lost in the process of trying to make facts fit? And if it came down to an irresolvable disagreement, what would wind up in the book? I think the separation of Black and White histories, especially in countries heavily influenced by the enslavement of Blacks, is actually beneficial to a complete understanding of the unified history.

Separate for Profit

2009-04-07T19:32:00.001-07:00

I know that we have spoken about this in the past, but I think that I've found a new way at looking at this idea: why is it that there are (at least) two separate histories in the United States? Why is the same history being written separately by the same company?

I know that we spoke about the "black history" vs. "white history" in the United States, but I never thought of the same company publishing books on both, instead of merging them together. How much of this is for the company to make a profit than actually believing that these histories should be told separately? Is it more profitable to separate people and advertise to each group separately?

I know that in marketing, women are seperate from men, the races are split up, and there are even different stores according to where a person lives in the United States, but I guess it never occured to me that profit could go as far as how we separate hisotry.

Some Commonality

2009-04-07T12:56:00.000-07:00

In thinking about our discussion about the reality of Wanda Coleman’s poetry and Houston Baker’s story of his childhood experience, our readings for today seem to support the use of personal stories. Yusef Komunyakaa also uses the poetic form as a way to provide commentary and stories based on his personal experience. Some of the most powerful stories he tells reflect his experiences in Vietnam. I found both “Tunnels,” “Facing it” and “Tu Do Streets” to be really interesting and pointed. I think the essay form of these poems also makes them somewhat easier to read. In addition, this is consistent witih some of the early challenges to formal conventions by other poets, including inconsistent line breaks, the use of “&” and a lack of stanzas are continued in his form.

It would also be an interesting topic to discuss how Rita Dove’s “Motherhood” ties into our discussion of the Wolf. The wolf from Coleman’s poem seems to reappear here and much of the imagery and story line actually seems quite similar.

Multiple Black Aesthetics & Experimental Poetry

2009-04-04T14:29:00.000-07:00

Hi, folks. The other day (when we were outdoors) I talked to you a bit about experimental poetry and the notion of "a" black aesthetic; I mentioned a guy named Ron Silliman and wished I had my dissertation chapter with me so I could read a couple quotes to you from it. I mentioned that Ron Silliman (a white experimental poet) had--in trying to come to grips, perhaps, with why he found more "traditional" poetry more interesting when it was written by black poets than when by white ones--possibly overly monolithized African-American poetic traditions. Here's the quote I wished I could read to you:

"Progressive poets who identify as members of groups that have been the subject of history--many white male heterosexuals, for example--are apt to challenge all that is supposedly “natural” about the formation of their own subjectivity. That their writing today is apt to call into question, if not actually explode, such conventions as narrative, persona and even reference can hardly be surprising. At the other end of this spectrum are poets who do not identify as members of groups that have been the subject of history, for they have been its objects. The narrative of history has led not to their self-actualization, but to their exclusion and domination. These writers and readers--women, people of color, sexual minorities, the entire spectrum of the 'marginal'--have a manifest political need to have their stories told. That their writing should often appear much more conventional, with the notable difference as to whom is the subject of those conventions, illuminates the relationship between form and audience."
--Ron Silliman, “Poetry and the Politics of the Subject” 63

In the introduction to his book Discrepant Engagement, Nathaniel Mackey counters, “There are, however, writers from socially marginalized groups who do both--tell their stories while calling such conventions into question, tell their stories by calling such conventions into question. The distinction between a formally experimental center and a formally conventional periphery distorts and grossly oversimplifies matters” (19). We have read and are about to read lots of poets whose work illustrates Mackey's point: Etheridge Knight, Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, Traci Morris, and Harryette Mullen, for just a few examples. Harryette Mullen sympathetically cites an account similar to Silliman’s--“You know, there was a joke that circulated among minority (and some women) graduate students: ‘It’s that white male subjectivity that needs to be put on hold . . . the rest of us . . . need our subjectivity’”--but she also questions it:

"Ron Silliman, in The New Sentence, talks about . . . I think the essay’s called 'The Political Economy of Poetry,' and he ends it by talking about this perceived division between what are called the 'Aesthetic Schools of writing' and the 'codes of oppressed peoples.' He says, of course, the aesthetic schools are not without their politics or their ideological stance, they just express it through aesthetic means and procedures. And I would want to add that--I don’t think he does but I would want to add--the codes of oppressed peoples also have their aesthetic basis." Mullen joins Mackey’s category of “writers . . . who do both” by asking herself, “Well, in what ways would I want to problematize my black female subjectivity,” acknowledging and rethinking the assumptions that underlie “the tradition of the ‘authentic voice’” (interview with Farah Griffin).

I hope you'll find some of this helpful and/or interesting!
Cheers,
Theo

Discussion Questions for April 1, 2009

2009-04-01T08:54:00.000-07:00

Discussion Questions for April 1, 2009

Quincy Troupe asks in his poem “Conversation Overheard”, “who made up this standard of beauty anyway?”. How is this a theme in the poems we have read so far, and how does this relate to the theme of “the mask?” How/ why have these become themes in African American poetry?

“It is Not” is a poem that is written in a way that is supposed to be read orally. Why did Quincy Troupe choose to write it this way, and how does this come back to the traditions of African American poetry? On the other hand, why do you think that “The Syntax of the Mind Grips” was not written in the same way? How do you think critics would see the two poems differently, and why do you think one type of writing is more likely to “the cannon”?

“Dualism” (Norton Anthology, 2058), a poem found in a book about racism and communism, speaks about being outside and inside a “hungry” history. This poem uses incorrect grammar, and ends with a misspelled word. Why do you think Ishmael Reed chose to write it this way?

Do you think that any musical artist today has Neo-HooDoo? How does this tie into the black aesthetic? Why does Ishmael Reed say that the Beatles were conjuring the music and ritual of a ‘Forgotten Faith” which is a “traditional enemy of Christianity”, but earlier says that Neo-HooDoo can be found in the “Pentecostal” and “Baptist”? What does the quote, “every man is an artist, and every artist is a priest” mean? (Neo-HooDoo Manifesto, 2063).

Why does Ishmael Reed continually speak about history in his poems? As discussed in previous classes, why do so many African American authors feel that they must speak about the history of “their people”?

poetry?

2009-04-01T08:31:00.000-07:00

Beginning with Monday’s readings, and including today’s, I have all of a sudden noticed several distinct changes in style that, to me, almost make these poems a different art form from “poetry.” For instance, it seems like the poets from Monday and today all meant for their poems to be read aloud; all of the strange punctuation and enjambment almost makes the poems make more sense out loud than on the page. Other signs of this change are the lack of rhyme scheme and meter. The presence of these in earlier poems, in my opinion, made reading them out loud feel a little unnatural. With both gone, poems sound closer to the way someone might speak in a conversation, which takes focus off of how the poem sounds and replaces it on what the poem is saying, especially via unique word choice (since it is no longer restricted by rhymes). The reason I say these new poems seem like a different art form from just plain “poetry” is because I feel like they lose something without a voice to read them. They’re like a cross between poetry and a play – or maybe a song. And by being called “poetry,” I bet they aren’t reaching the entirety of the audience they should reach.

2009-04-01T08:23:00.000-07:00

I think it is interesting to look at the change in form for the poems this week. While up until recently most poems had some form of structure. Obviously some had a more constrictive form, but this seems to be the first time that a number of the others are taking the form into their own hands. The words are not capitalized and there is some random punctuation as well. For example, in "In The Interest of Personal Appearance" two of the lines start with commas. Also when I was reading the poems to myself, they didn't seem to make a lot of sense. Then when I read them out loud, it made a world of difference. I am not saying I understood everything. But the poem did seem to become much clearer. I think this has a lot to do with the punctuation. A lot of the lines can be read continuously even when there are periods. I think the purpose of many of the periods is to just make a pause before the word in order to emphasize that word. Slashes are used to create the same effect, but I feel they are more obvious. It's like a line break within a line. I kinda of like this playful form because I feel like the authors have complete artistic control; however, I feel like it can be much harder to interpret what is going on in the poem or what the author is trying to say. At the same time though I think the meaning is more of what the reader takes from the poem which I like as well.

Discussion Questions 3/30

2009-03-29T07:22:00.000-07:00

Here are some questions to get you guys thinking for tomorrow...

Discussion Questions
1. The poetry we have read for the last few classes has become more creative, dramatic and jolting in its composition. World play gives the poems a list-like feel, but also conveys a different emotion and rhythm in their reading, that I’m not sure I know how to place or completely understand, but that I do think asks to read differently. What do you interpret from this style choice? Why do you think they wrote this way? Does it change or contribute to what they are saying?
2. In comparing and contrasting “Jail Poems” by Bob Kaufman and “A Journey to Auburn by Ken McClane, what commonalities to you see in the presentation of jail life? How do the continued references to jail reflect the feelings of African Americans about their place in society? What might jail imagery represent about non-literal jail experiences?
3. Both Kaufman and Major use a lot of imagery in their poems. “On watching a caterpillar become a butterfly” and “Would you wear my eyes” are two examples of poems with differing levels of reality, but poignant and strong images. How does the use of the imagery contribute to the poem and affect the reader? Why do you think they might have chosen these images or metaphors? Can you think of other examples?
4. There seem to be some common images in the poems we have recently read. Do you think there is any significance to the similar subjects in “The Glowworm” by Ken McClane and “On watching a caterpillar become a butterfly” by Major? What other pairings can you make? Or, what similar topics or subjects reoccur in these poems that we have seen before: for example “Bird with painted wings” by Kaufman and “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar.
5. “Would you wear my eyes” seems to ask the reader to put themselves in the shoes of the speaker in the poem. What types of commentary do we get about what life is like for African Americans during this time? Does it differ from the images we saw around emancipation, or the Harlem Renaissance? If so, how?

What We Don't Know

2009-03-25T10:29:00.001-07:00

When reading the articles for class today, the only thought that came to my mind is: “Why don’t we already know this?”

June Jordan pointed out that “California will spend 2.5 times more money on prisons than it will spend on education” (106). This fact makes we wonder why. Shouldn’t education be the priority of our country? How can we evolve without it? Why isn’t it public knowledge that there are more African American men in prison than college? Why didn’t I know before today that in 1997, “39.9 percent of black children [are] living in poverty and in 1993 the net worth of African-Americans averages $4,418 compared to $45,740 for whites”?

According to Mishra, Arnold, Oteino Cross, and Hong’s article (written in 2007), 1/8 children in sub-Saharan Africa are orphans. These children are also at a much higher risk of having HIV. A guest lecturer came in on Monday, and I was surprised to find that although the medicine for a pregnant HIV positive woman to take to ensure her child not to have HIV, many people refuse to, or don’t have the funds take it. Shouldn’t some issues be global? I know that it costs money to make medicine, but shouldn’t every person, no matter where they live, or how much money they make have access survival?

I’m not saying that I know the answers, or believe in extreme solutions that only work on paper, but I do think that it is important that we know this, and I am upset that this is not common knowledge. If this was common knowledge, then people would be more willing (and able) to create solutions to the problems.

Roses and Revolutions

2009-03-25T09:44:00.001-07:00

Roses and Revolutions by Dudley Randall, spoke true to the time and place from which he hails. Dudley witnessed the race riots in Detroit, and his poem reflects the grievances of the time or that building up to it. He talks of the city as if it exists on the face as being just that, a city like every other, but he sees the dispair of the people living in the city and the injustices they deal with. I thought the line about the Negro man lying in the swamp with his face blown off, was a very strong line with gruesome imagery. He doesn’t just tell the reader the hardships that people deal with on a daily basis but instead the more brutal realities, of black people who step out of line and what (I assume, the police or white people will do to them). The line where he talks of being hunted down like a hair reminded me of the poems from the earlier poets before emancipation, when the poems talk about trying to run away from the slave owners who are trying to hunt them down and catch them. It is interesting that this theme of being hunted down continues on even into the 60’s, after so much time had passed since then. Then he talks of groping in darkness and feeling the pain of millions. This line speaks of how hard it is when, like I said so much time has passed and so little has changed. The riots that are talked about in New Thoughts of the Black Art Movement reflect the feelings in the poem. This shows that like the article said the poets and artists played a big role in speaking for the people and portraying the feelings of many as Randall says, I feel the pain of millions.

literary aesthetics

2009-03-24T20:40:00.001-07:00

Like I said in class, I’m intrigued by the notion of Black literature always having to play catch up, and how this notion ties into the “Black aesthetic.” I am caught between the necessity of creating a Black aesthetic by which to judge Black literature, and the implication of such a creation with respect to the division between _______. Without awareness of a Black aesthetic, essays about the brutality of slavery or Jim Crow would have little value outside of being intensely emotional historical accounts. Moreover, their stylistic departures from the [White] literary cannon would work against their value and acceptance. On the other hand, the availability of a Black aesthetic makes any literature to which it can be applied easy to dismiss as unworthy of the cannon by default. This is something I have a deep interest in, and honestly cannot come to a conclusion. I would love to discuss it in class, but I’m not sure if there will be time. Maybe we can get a little conversation going here? I also think about this in terms of a “Feminist aesthetic,” or even a “Female aesthetic.” As part of my honors thesis, I plan to write some fiction with a man as the narrator. When my advisor asked me why I didn’t decide to have a woman narrate, I realized that there has to be a reason for a woman to be the narrator; in other words, men are still the standard/model for a character. Is White still the standard of race for characters? Is White still the standard of race for authors? How is this tied to the necessity for a Black aesthetic? These aren’t rhetorical questions. I seriously want to know what everyone thinks.

Illustrative Essays

2009-03-24T17:50:00.000-07:00

We talked briefly last class about how the subject matter for the poetry we are reading has shifted slightly, focusing more on black power and black beauty. In reading the poems for today, I would say that the style has also shifted again. The poetry has become more creative, dramatic and jolting in its composition. World play gives the poems a list-like feel, but also conveys a different emotion in their reading, that I’m not sure I place or completely understand, but that I do think asks to read differently. I wonder how everyone else will respond to this type of writing. What do you interpret from this style choice? Why do you think they wrote this way?

In reference to the essays by Ken McClane, I was struck by the final questions of “The School” in which he was unsure whether his education actually benefited him or not. I think the questions in both essays ask a lot about society, human nature, and present such vivid pictures of his experiences that they only help contribute to our understanding of what these experience would be like. I found both essays extremely helpful, as they are much easier for me to digest than poetry, but also because they illustrated some of the key topic areas of the poetry we are reading. It would be interesting to see if any of his experiences in school or jail would be different if they were today?

Questions for Wednesday

2009-03-24T14:29:00.000-07:00

Sorry I didn't get these to you guys sooner. I will also print out copies so you don't need to.

1. In “Walls: A Journey to Auburn” and “The School,” Kenneth A. McClane compares both the Auburn prison and his experience at the Collegiate school to hell. What do you think of this comparison? Also, what do you make of McClane’s experience at Auburn? He describes his fear of the prison and its occupants, yet when he speaks with the men he realizes they are just like you and me.
2. In “The School,” McClane describes the Brearly dinner that he was ultimately dreading, but upon going had a good time. Afterwards, he feels that he would have probably had an even better time had he “not come in there wearing the wariness of color” (59). What do you think about McClane’s statement in relation to W.E.B DuBois’s theory of the double consciousness? Does this change your view about double consciousness and whether it is a gift or burden?
3. June Jordan speaks about the need for affirmative action in “An Angry Black Woman on the Subject of the Angry White Man”: “And neither the Emancipation Proclamation nor one constitutional amendment after another one nor one civil rights legislation after another could bring about a yielding of the followers of that gospel to the beauty of our human face. Justice don’t mean nothin’ to a hateful heart! And so we needed affirmative action” (101). What are your thoughts about Jordan’s statement? Do you agree?
4. Looking at Langston Hughes’s “A Negro Speaks of Rivers,” what are your thoughts on McClane’s “To Hear the River”? How are they similar and different? Do the poems share the same metaphorical use of the river?
5. Compare and contrast Jordan’s “I Must Become A Menace To my Enemies” and Brown’s “Transfer.” What themes do these poems share? Looking at the two poems, it is obvious that much has happened historically between the times the two poems were published? What does this say about the progress of African Americans?

Discussion Qs for Monday

2009-03-22T18:21:00.000-07:00

I will bring copies of this to class, so no one needs to print their own.

1. What do you think of the assertion that Black literature served more to perpetuate the negative differences between Blacks and Whites than to earn Black writers respect within the literary cannon of the time? Is there a catch-22 happening, between Black attempts at literary respect, and the claim that such attempts only highlighted their “Blackness”? (Mitchell 167)
2. Based on the poems and essays we have read, do you agree that “Negro writing was always ‘after the fact’”? That Black writers were always stuck writing with the tools of their White peers? What is the evidence? And if your answer is yes, is there evidence that this lag was detrimental to progress of Black literature? (169)
3. Based on what we have read, do you agree that Black writers “contented themselves with the imitation of the useless ugly inelegance of the stunted middle class mind”? Evidence one way or another? What are the implications of a statement like this? (171)
4. What do you think the “Black aesthetic” is? Can we determine one from the poems we’re read, which span 200 years? Should we be looking for a common thread aside from the Black experience? Why or why not?
5. Unpack Shange’s “Elegance in the Extreme,” especially with respect to the concept of a Black aesthetic. Does the poem address this concept? Confront it? Endorse it? What about her other poems?
6. Examine Randall’s “Coral Atoll.” With the claim that Black literature is always “after the fact” in mind, what does this poem tell us about the progress of the Black Arts Movement? How does it relate to earlier Black poetry?

The Tuskegee Experiment & Dr. Mengele

2009-03-19T06:31:00.000-07:00

Hi, folks. I just wanted to share information about a couple of topics that came up recently in class and whose details I wasn't able to supply:

The Tuskegee Experiment

Joseph Mengele's experiments on humans

A word about Wikipedia: I know I've used it quite a bit for sharing information here on the blog. I just want to make it clear that Wikipedia really isn't a trustworthy scholarly source--not one you should use for formal papers, for example. Why? Because anyone who wants to can edit it--that's the wiki format's great strength and also its great weakness.

In my experience, Wikipedia tends to be pretty good for finding out basic facts--but occasionally it's wrong. So in cases where the facts really matter, it's best to verify what you've found on Wikipedia using a vetted print source. I use Wikipedia a lot, though, simply because it's convenient (perhaps that's lazy of me?)--and also because I find that although it's not a good authority for the final word on things, it *is* a great starting point--particularly because the articles generally end with good bibliographies of more trustworthy sources. These bibliographies can be invaluable when you're doing research.

2009-03-11T10:10:00.000-07:00

Out of the poems we had to read for today, I really like Etheridge Knight's "Haiku," especially the lines "To write a blues song / is to regiment riots / and pluck gems from the grave." This goes back to the blues tradition and the fact that blues songs were about the hardships that people going through, essentially anything that got someone down. Obviously, thus, the genre is called blues. But really I just love the idea of using music as an outlet for emotions. Also, that music can be used to give a voice to problems that are going on that people wouldn't know about or choose to ignore. The line "is to regiment riots" made me think of this. Like making a purpose more clear to others. Or creating order out of chaos. This way the song is used as a healing process. This reminds me of of Harper's "Songs for the People." Creating music to heal the injustices of the world. The idea just seems so beautiful and lovely. Then this way individuals can "pluck gems from the grave." The idea of picking the good out of the bad. Turning what ultimately is a terrible experience and see some good out of it. I think its an important part of being able to move on or get through something. I think it shows how strong willed people can be and I find it rather amazing.

New Shift

2009-03-11T07:05:00.000-07:00

It is interesting to note the clear shift in the poetry that we have read for this class. Not only have the form of the poems taken a leap towards informal and artistic, with Audre Lord's "Sahara" as just one example, but the content has also shifted. While there is certainly a strong similarity in the commentary on social injustices, stereotypes and hardships faced by African American people despite the passage of time, there is a new focus on life, blackness and internal pride. The commentary on time spent in jail and run-ins with racist law have come to the forefront. In addition, the questionings of identity continue to wage on as seen in "Hard Rock" and "the Idea of Ancestry."

The language, like the form, also moves closer to the colloquial or vernacular including slang and the use of the "n" word while the arrangement and diction still carry an air of art. This seems to support the reading by Collins and Crawford about the Black Power and Black is Beautiful movements.

On a specific note I was struck by Etheridge Knight's "Belly Song" becuase I found the metaphor of the internal river to be so powerful, and thought the ending left a strong feeling in the mind of the reader. Not only did it bring about a kind of kinship, or commonality in the struggle of living life and persevering together, but the poem itself served as a summary of the difficulties of life, the honor of those who have died and the commitment to each other to continue to fight together. I would be interested to know how this poem was intended and how it was recieved by its audience.

Just a few thoughts from me! Hope class goes well today and sorry I cannot be there!

poverty, stereotypes, abuse, etc.

2009-03-04T10:26:00.001-08:00

I was really disturbed by Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “Merle ‘Uncle Seagram.’” We’ve read a lot up to this point about the injustices and abuses that blacks have faced, but this one disturbed me more than the others. It’s always troubling to hear of any crime of a sexual nature being perpetrated against children, but for a child to be harmed or inappropriately touched by a family member that’s supposed to care for them makes the behavior that much worse. The family appears to fit into the stereotype of a larger, impoverished black family, and the alcohol abuse adds to that stereotype. I guess I don’t really have anything else to say about this. It was just disturbing, but really, it was straightforward enough that I have nothing else to contribute.

I think the preceding poem, “Ulysses ‘Religion,’” also illustrates some effects of a likely impoverished lifestyle. It’s another stereotype—the poor, black kid bringing weapons to school—but it makes me think of self-fulfilling prophecies and missed opportunities. These kids go to school, spurn the knowledge their teachers try to impart on them, and go home at the end of the day, returning to the same situation they left that morning; there’s no improvement, and no foreseeable change.

2009-03-04T10:19:00.000-08:00

Out of the Gwendolyn Brooks poems that we had to read for today, I would have to say that "Merle 'Uncle Seagram'" hit me the most. Obviously the subject matter of the girl being molested by her uncle was disturbing. Also, I think that the speaker added a lot to the shock value and disturbance of the poem. The speaker is a young girl and she describes the situation from the standpoint of the little girl. She doesn't really know exactly what is going on, yet seems to know this is something that shouldn't be happening when she says, "I do not like my uncle anymore." The lines of the poem that really discussed me the most is when her uncle tells her, "We're Best Friends, and Family, and we know how to keep Secrets." Reading this really made my skin crawl. I could just imagine him whispering in her ear and licking her ear while no one was looking. I also think its insane to think no one has really noticed this is going on while there are a large number of people in the house. It just really made me sad. I thought that the poem was well executed and really got the situation across. I also liked that her poems contained a lot of subject matter. I found the poems really interesting, although I was confused by some.

Cruelty

2009-03-04T10:01:00.001-08:00

In Monday’s class, we discussed lynchings, as it applied to Richard Wright’s “Between the World and Me”, in this poem, the narrator lists several deaths that could occur during lynchings. We further discussed the idea of how the bodies of the people who were lynched were dessecrated and further mauled, even after the person had died. People would have picnics as they watched these people harmed for intertainment, and it made me begin to wonder how and why people can watch someone else get maimed for intertainment.

The more I thought about it, the more I wondered about the nature of people. Even outside of war, we take joy in another person’s pain.We laugh when someone falls down the stairs, there are television shows (America’s funniest home videos, almost all of the reality televisoin shows) dedicated to the humiliation of people, and there are television shows only comprised of people being hurt while trying to comlplete tricks for extreme sports, car crashes, etc. There are even six videos of Sadam Hussien’s hanging on youtube.

At first, I was at awe of the cruelty that people displayed towards eachother during the lynchings, but we still portray the same cruelty towards one-another today. I guess I’m trying to figure out why.

Third Grade was a Breeze

2009-03-04T07:02:00.000-08:00

Hey, I was set back by the description of the "Moloch". It is an extremely intense description, he was considered to be one of the generals in the battle against Heaven and he spoke out on the need for an immediate attack, who knew that such a gallant and fiery warrior's name would be used to symbolize this thing: http://www.outback-australia-travel-secrets.com/thorny-devil.html Ha ha, it does exist. It was interesting to see all of this history eluded to in Walker's poem, also it is interesting to see how it is eluded to in other profound literary works as it is an unbelievably strong character in biblical history. However, this is not what i want to talk about in this blog, no, i wish to address Richard Wright's insertion of communist hints in his poems. It is speculated that he is guilty of this subliminal messaging in many of the poems we read for Monday: "I Have Seen Black Hands", "Between the World and Me", and "Red Clay Blues". All of these poems are considered to be protest poems, politically, socially, and culturally. The things we speculated on Monday about the use of the word "red" and its ties to communism are reaffirmed by many scholars on line, thus he is accomplishing myriad things in his poetry: he is pushing the idea that communism will set everyone free of the burdens they carry and that Blacks should consider the conversion, as it would be particularly benefiting for them and their pursuit of equality. If you don't feel that i am speaking the truth please regard this section of "I have Seen Black Hands": "I am black and I have seen black hands/Raised in fists of revolt, side by side with the white fists/Of white workers,/And some day -- and it is only this which sustains me--/Some day there shall be millions and millions of them,/On some red day in a burst of fists on a new horizon!" All of the components of a protest poem are present here, it impossible not to acknowledge the fact. Every line in this section is aggressively set to impose a certain kind of emotion on its reader: Revolution.

Mass Media?

2009-03-04T06:57:00.000-08:00

I found much of Gwendolyn Brooks’ poetry to be extremely interesting in its varied form, content, and time. Her poem “the Mother” was particularly different than other ‘mother’ poems we have read so far and also connected with the piece we read by Hortense Spillers in a unique way. I also found her commentary on the Civil Rights movement, black pride and the leaders of this time period particularly interesting and felt that she covered an enormous amount of space and issues in very short, descriptive writing. Her form, diction and content choices seemed in particular parallel.

The final thing that struck me about Brooks was the mention in her bio about how she strove to keep her books short, small and cheap so as to be affordable to the black community. It was interesting to read this because while many of the poets we have read so far may have had similar goals (publishing in papers and other mass-media forms) we have yet to hear a literary author with similar considerations of her audience. I wonder then, how successful she was in this drive to appeal to a larger audience? Did they buy her stuff? Did they like it? How did the influence the world of African American thought and the future generations writing on similar issues?

Wikipedia links to elucidate some of the allusions . . .

2009-03-03T09:08:00.001-08:00

. . . in Monday's Margaret Walker poems. Check it out:

Moloch
Amos
Selma
Birmingham

As you prepare for the midterm and look back at Countee Cullen's work, this may also be of use:

The Scottsboro Boys

Here's something that seems really important to me. As a teacher of American poetry, I'm always talking about Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman as the two parents of the poetic tradition that's really American (not just English people writing in the Western Hemisphere) and as the two mid-19th-century poets who foreshadow the coming of Modernism. I talk about Dickinson the modest poet, the poet of the domestic, the intellectually rigorous poet, the poet of complicated diction and complicated philosophical questioning; and I talk about Whitman the poet-as-public-figure, the poet of the nation, the progressive, labor-affirming, diversity-affirming poet, the poet of inclusion, of long, ragged lines, of anaphora.

Then I talk about Allen Ginsberg as Whitman's great inheritor, using the same long raggy lines, the same bombastic I-am-America tone, the same attention to the oppressed and overlooked, the same anaphora. In poems like "A Supermarket in California" he even explicitly sets himself up as Whitman's inheritor.

But I want to point this out: Allen Ginsberg leapt to poetic prominence with the publication of Howl in 1956. But the Whitmanesque poems we read by Margaret Walker and Richard Wright were published in the mid-'30s and early '40s! What that says to me is that Ginsberg is probably indebted to Wright and Walker as well as to Whitman. The Beats were famous as a group of white poets who intentionally aligned themselves with underground political and artistic movements, with jazz, with black artists. Ginsberg may possibly not have been reading Walker, but I'd bet money he read Wright. I can't articulate everything I want to say about this right now, but it does seem really important to me that Wright and Walker were channeling Whitman well before Ginsberg was.

2009-02-25T10:19:00.000-08:00

I was very intrigued by our conversation about the mask in Monday's class as well. The whole idea that we could all possibly be wearing masks to hide our true identities to one another just seems rather sad and disappointing. Society just forms these restrictions of how you have to act and look or certain way which makes life just more difficult i think. Granted sometimes we choose to wear the masks and sometimes people might for their safety. I would hope that in this century we wouldn't have to think in that sense, but realistically i guess its not really a possibility. I also started to think of the Delany poem "The Mask" which was brought up. I saw it as someone observing the other individual that they might be acquainted with, but not really know. So the speaker sees this woman and doesn't really now what to think of her emotion: "Such baffled yearning in her eyes, / Such pain upon her face! / I turned aside until the mask / Was slipped once more in place." This is where i started to get confused I guess. I mean who exactly is wearing the mask? Is the speaker referring to a mask he/she is wearing or are they both wearing masks? I felt like the speaker might be trying to hide his/her emotion as well. It makes me think that they are both wearing masks. Everyone is just kind of hiding from each other.

"Heritage" and "Runagate Runagate"

2009-02-25T10:06:00.001-08:00

I was really struck by the last two stanzas of Countee Cullen’s poem “Heritage.” I think he hones in on a theme we’ve mentioned before: some blacks feel a certain level of falseness inherent in their Christian worship. The speaker of the poem seems to express a sense of remorse, misguidance, and disconnectedness. He wishes that he had a black God to worship so that he might feel more connected to his God. The speaker seems skeptical that his God’s plight is comparable to his own. The speaker also seems to privately worship his own “heathen” Gods. Perhaps this makes him feel more connected to his African past and the African landscape that he spent the first several stanzas describing.

I really liked the first stanza of Robert Hayden’s “Runagate Runagate.” The repetition of words like “darkness,” “pursuing,” “night,” “beckoning,” and “going” creates tension. This tension is also reflected in the lack of punctuation. It makes the reader feel breathless, nervous, and tense when reading the long, run-on description of a secret flight to freedom. It’s comparable to the way Sterling A. Brown’s “Southern Road” conjured images of a chain gang simply by the way the reader was forced to stop and say, “hunh.” I think that the way “Runagate Runagate” looks on the page also adds to the confusion and flightiness—it’s very scattered and frenzied.

The Mask: When does it matter?

2009-02-25T07:22:00.000-08:00

I was really set to thinking after our class on Monday, this whole idea of selves and the portrayal of facades was truly fascinating. It provides so many levels to the way we see people and the way we perceive that they see themselves. I began to wonder after class, is this self-defense mechanism a curse or a blessing, is it protective or is it deceiving? After much thought, i can to the conclusion that it depends on the motives behind the "mask" and maybe it depends on the level of awareness. Who knows if all of us are unconsciously wearing masks to shade the most gruesome aspects of our lives, who knows if who we display on a regular basis is not who we truly are. How would you know if you had never stepped out from behind this mask? Could it be something we are born into? It is amazing to look at the way people act when their lives are put on the line, or when they are forced into desperation and their instincts take hold. I know this may be a poor example of this, but look at Hitler's rise to power. He convinced the majority of his country that Jewish people were the cause of their misery, and they believed it. Now you must think about who these people were before Hitler came along. Remember that they were all distraught over the unimaginable inflation and the difficulty of living. They were desperate, but they were good people, and so are all people as we tend to think. However, if placed in a situation that could potentially lead to death, people take off their mask and bare their fangs full. So who is more domesticated? Cows or Man.

The Void

2009-02-24T16:20:00.001-08:00

In reading “What White Publishers Won’t Print,” not only was I captivated by the argument of the piece, something that I believe is true but have never noticed before, but I also couldn’t help but wonder: is it just that publishers won’t print the work in these “voids”? Or is it possible that the work of the voids is simply not there?
I don’t mean to imply that the work wasn’t being created or that it wasn’t good enough, because I think that we have read just a few of the multitudes of amazing and varied works created around and before this time. My point is more of a reference to the idea that literary works depicting “every day” upper to middle class black people might not have been as prolific among the African American communities themselves. We have seen some of the commentary and had class discussions about the view of these “free rich blacks” apparently abandoning their race by pretending to be white, which often created a hybrid racial barrier, if not, more literally, an economic barrier. This then could explain why maybe literary works that filled some of the void mentioned by Hurston went un-published, or even unwritten because this every-day successful group became another “other” as opposed to part of the same self.
Another thought that Hurston referenced was the idea that pieces that didn’t contain racial conflict or commentary were not entertaining enough to be published. The thing that struck me about this idea was its application to Countee Cullen’s bio in that it says he tried NOT to write about racial issues, and in so doing actually illustrated or manifested the racial conflict within himself. This idea is interesting as it begs the question about whether race can ever be forgotten or ignored, and also if there is such thing as an unbiased or un-colored (whether white, black or otherwise) piece of work? The same may go for religion, gender…etc.
I realize in re-reading this that both of my questions/comments are unclear and may imply questions/thoughts that I do not intend. But, I guess they are really trying to start the discussion about how this void came to exist in literary work and also to examine different assumptions at the root of the idea.

Discussion Questions for 2/25

2009-02-24T15:42:00.000-08:00

1. Zora Neal Hurston's article is a veritable call to arms for publishers to acknowledge the average and 'true' Negro; one that feels and loves like normal (white) people. Is there even a popular genre for the normal white in today's society? Will there ever be one for the normal black?

2. What does the structure and layout of 'Runagate' add to the meaning? Also word choice and punctuation

3. Why does Hayden see freedom as a 'beautiful and terrible thing' in 'Frederick Douglass? Have any other poems or readings given you this feel or understanding of freedom?

4. What does Cullen's 'Heritage' evoke? What emotions? feelings? beliefs? Is he right? Can this constitute as a mask? a double consciousness?

5. What do you make of Cullen's feelings toward Christianity in both 'Heritage' and 'From the Dark Tower? Does "From the Darl Tower" encourage meekness or action?

A Different Kind of Hate

2009-02-23T13:12:00.001-08:00

Okay, so I don’t want to get too excited by this, I mean, I could have been reading his writings wrong, but I think in class today we began to prove one of Nietzsche’s theories wrong! Wikipedia, Cliffsnotes, and Sparknotes doesn’t really go into much detail about this, so let me explain it really quickly: in Nietzsche’s book, On the Genealogy of Morals, he has a chapter called “Good and Evil, Good and Bad”. In one part of this chapter, he says that those in power one day looked at themselves, and said that they liked being themselves, and therefore they were good. They described themselves as anything that isn’t them as not good (so therefore bad). For example, if you’re not straight (good), then you’re gay (bad). If you’re not male (good), then you’re female (bad). Each of the lesser beings are merely defined as what the greater ones aren’t… I believed in this theory until today.

Today we discussed the idea that white people could not have any “black blood” in them. Aka, in order to be white, you can’t have any African Americans in your family tree, or in simpler terms: in order to be white (good), you can’t be black (bad). WAIT A MINUTE!!! This can’t be right according to the theory! His theory says the good define the bad as not themselves, not the good define themselves as not being bad! I know that this sounds like only a slight difference, but this small difference can determine how the “good” define themselves and see the world!

Okay, I know this isn’t a philosophy class, but still, it’s interesting how the hatred towards African Americans can be so different than any other hatred that I know.

Langston Hughes: The Negro Speaks of Rivers

2009-02-18T17:30:00.000-08:00

This was the poem that really stuck out to me. It is not due to the way it was written, nor is is a factor of content; i am baffled by who the possible speaker is, this "Ancient" narrator. I have been considering the possibility that it is a collection of things: black thought, spirit, and history from even prehistoric times. This singular characterization, suggests to me that it is quite possibly a melding of these ideas; but could it be something more. Is it a celestial body made up of all the souls of blacks, a sort of segregated heaven -- or is it God himself? This i am not conclusively positive about, but it is interesting to think about. When i read a poem i think about how it can be performed, this is just something that has become a part of my normal poetic interpretation, but it is something that i value very much as it provides me with another way to view poetry. So what is the epic situation here? I don't know, what do you think?

Another thing that was quite compelling to me, was the way that Sterling A Brown's poem, "Strong men" and Hughes' "Mother to Son". It is interesting to notice a vast difference between the two target audiences and the similarity of the two messages. Hughes seems to be targeting the black youth specifically, while leaving an opening for a more mature audience's interpretation. Brown seems to be targeting the white and mature audience while leaving a venue for the younger readers to participate in. It is curious enough, though, that the message seems to be the same, as if this common attitude was applicable to two different time periods. It is amazing to see that it has the same affect on its readers, one more dramatically than the other. Brown seems to be more ominous about his approach, and Hughes more encouraging. They are quite the juxtaposition. I like Brown's for the tone of determination and resilience, but i also like Hughes' for the nurturing situation it is placed in. The context seems genuine and approachable -- maybe more universal, whereas Brown is more race specific in his poem.

nick

Sterling A. Brown

2009-02-18T10:31:00.000-08:00

I found Brown’s poem “Southern Road” really interesting. I like the repetition of the word “hunh.” It forced me, when reading, to imagine the swing of the hammer, and the monotony of the work of the chain gang when I was reading. I think that was a very creative auditory device.

I also liked the progression of the poem “Strong Men.” The whole poem documents the things that black men have been subjected to by whites, but it has a hopeful tone in that it discusses the fear that the whites feel regarding their oppressed counterparts. To me there is a lot of pride in the fact that an oppressed people can frighten their oppressors. It makes the reader feel as though the blacks have something left, some defense. I also like how the poem uses some lines from other things we’ve read, i.e.: “walk togedder, chillen,/ Dontcha git weary….” That brings a sense of the history of the situation into the poem. The author notes the transportation of slaves, the work they did on roads and railroads, the poor living conditions blacks were forced into, and segregation. Throughout all this though, there’s a sense of the blacks getting the last laugh, so to speak, and I like that more than other optimistic poems we’ve read.

Not to be Anything

2009-02-18T07:12:00.001-08:00

Monday’s conversation about home and being a part of a specific culture was very interesting, and the idea of home still resonates in Sterling Brown’s poetry. In his poem, “Crossing”, he speaks about crossing several rivers, and the traveling will never bring him home. The search for a Utopia continues, even though he writes the poem knowing that it does not exist.

I guess this is the sad part with concrete definitions. Nobody can say that they are fully from one place or another. Everybody’s history is so mixed that it denies a part of their history to say that they are merely from one country. I know it does not bother everybody, but even with immigrant’s now, why do we have to have a set point when we decide that they are “American” according to the culture? Although speaking the language is a huge part of culture, it is not the only aspect of it, and by merely speaking the language, a person cannot say that they are “cultured”, one can easily take a Spanish class, but that does not mean that they are well adapted to either the South American nor the Spanish culture. Because the lines of when a person is a part of a culture or not is so hazy, maybe it is best not to define a specific place as home, and a specific person as a part of the culture.

Diversity in Audience

2009-02-18T06:05:00.000-08:00

In reading the poems for today, I found that they worked in with some of our discussion last class. It is clear that as we move forward in time, the social commentary on the new-found complexities in free-black society have become more pointed. Last class we talked about the new economic wrinkle in social class as the distinction between rich Negros who wish to be white, and poor Negros who are proud of the black heritage. The readings for this class by Stearling Brown and Langston Hughes continue to speak of this new conflict and the challenging position of the black race as it reflects upon political protest, art, self-identification, nationalism etc.

Furthermore, the Mitchell reading, the bios and other historical information shed light on the complexities of artistic representation of the race. Langston Hughes mentions at length the division between the rich and poor blacks, and also the complexity of the art work as it is perceived by the audience. I found this particularly striking because of the feelings of racial inferiority and insecurity that was present in one perception, and the pride, power, and soul that could make the same art form sound like music to the ears of another audience. If the art is really only as good as its audience, it is no wonder that black artwork of the time was as diverse as the strata of the black society. And similarly, it is impressive to see the diversity arise despite the nay-saying from the other sides of black and white society.

finding "home"

2009-02-17T21:23:00.000-08:00

What Lawrence Hill said about how a person can never really go home stuck with me. Of course, I’d heard this turn of phrase many times before, but I think hearing it again within that context triggered a whole new reflective analysis of how I feel about my home and the prospect of it losing its familiarity. Then, Langston Hughes’s poem, The Negro Speaks of Rivers happened along and struck a chord. I don’t think this poem is necessarily about going home in either the literal sense, or in the figurative, death-related sense we’ve discussed in class. But it does attach comfort, familiarity, and depth of soul, even in the midst of the time’s turmoil and grief, to an element of nature that is symbolic of change, passing time, and perseverance. In turn, I found the poem itself to be comforting. I think one of the poem’s underlying messages was that the men and women who were uprooted from Africa had to find their homes in places that were foreign and unfriendly, but which could not help but to hold the essential familiarity of enduring nature. I was comforted not only because the speaker seemed to find peace in his “knowing” of rivers, but also because I learned a new way to think of “home,” which provides for the possibility of never leaving it to begin with, no matter how much distance I cover.

Last Weeks Post

2009-02-16T08:26:00.000-08:00

I really enjoyed Alice's discussion on Monday. The conversations that really stuck out to me were: the comparison between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois, and also the discussion about philanthropy and the importance for everyone to lend a hand to those less off than them. The idea of philanthropy is one that i am strongly familiar with, as i am the manager of SLU's soliciting firm, Calling All Saints (CAS). Through this job i have been able to have the opportunity to be educated on how important it is for alumni to give back to our school. Believe it or not, it costs a ridiculous amount of money to run this school, way more than the school gets from tuition. The money donated by our alum goes directly into a fund commonly known as the St. Lawrence Fund -- depending on who it is you are trying to persuade at the time, it may also be known as the Parents Fund or the Reunion Fund. From there this money is allocated to all the things that take precedent in the school's scope. That includes: professors and coaches salaries, heating, tuition, study abroad, and building maintenance. The difference is unbelieveable. Instead of paying $65,000 per year, we pay 47,000. So even if you do happen to pay full tuition, you aren't paying the true tuition, thanks to our Alumni we get a discount before we even get our scholarships and grants. Last year we made well over 500,000, our goal this year is to gross around 650,000, and i am happy to say that we are on schedule. It is this type of "lifting up" that improves our community, and eventually our world. This is sort of the same thing that W.E.B DuBois was talking about in his theory of the "Talented Tenth". He was saying that the blacks need to elevate their most talented people and when ready, it was the responsibility of these talented people to go back into the community and spread their wealth of knowledge. Whereas, Booker T. Washington, from what Prof. Bailey said, wanted to start from the poorest people and from there the knowledge would work its way up. I asked myself, these are both viable solutions, and why not do both? Instead of disagreeing about the proper method they should have employed both simultaneously, and maybe they did i dont know. If you want to know more about Booker T. Washington check out this link: . I think that at this point in our lives it is difficult for us to give back, but at least we may offer our kindness and extend the hand of friendship to others around us, we will succeed if we work together. It never fails, comraderie.

nick

Older Still

2009-02-16T08:25:00.002-08:00

I know this is late...but I wanted to riff off from what Adam was saying about the Nat Turner drawings. After looking at them i had to put them down, get a beer, and breathe; they are horrifically gruesome and to think that men have the capacity to not only allow this to happen but also participate in it perverts my perception of confidence in the human heart. Upon looking at them, I wondered to myself, I said, "Self, you don't believe in God or even a religion for that matter, but after this horrendous process these Africans are still able to find the courage to believe. How does that happen?" I have been pondering this question for a while now, and i don't understand it. I don't understand how, after all the killing and beating and crying, a person can believe in anything. My will would have been broken, but them i thought about why it would be broken; because i would have had nothing left. In this sense there is no where to go but up, and that may be one reason for why they believed. You must have some sort of hope that this nightmare will all end and i believe that is what they did. This promise of life after death in heaven, it is pretty enticing compared to their current position; however, it is still disheartening for one to read about a life that is worse than death.
Another thing that i found shocking and saddening was the youtube video that Theo provided for us. If you haven't watched it already i recommend that you do so immediately. I feel so naive when i see things like this. It is true that i know nothing of the black struggle in America, shit i grew up in a town with almost literally no other ethnicity than Caucasian. The first black person i have ever spoken to, is presently my girlfriend, and still i have not recognized these problems people are faced with everyday. I am oblivious and this video was an eye opener for me, to see children, children, picking out white babies and saying they wish they were white was heart-breaking. This class is definitely broadening my scope on the world, especially the social aspect of it. I hope that someday this changes permanently, i hope there is a reason for children to be proud of who they are. I wish this day was yesterday.

-nick-

Old Post

2009-02-16T08:25:00.001-08:00

The story about the two children dying because their father was accused of a crime is terrible. The text states “In the case of the boy and girl above referred to, their father, named Hastings, was accused of the murder of a white man, his fourteen year old daughter and sixteen year old son were hanged and their bodies fined with bullets, then the father was also lynched.” This description totally reflects the ideology held by the southern common values and completely illegitimated the other offenses charged to the blacks; if they are able to do something like this, they are definitely capable of framing or wrongfully committing someone to a crime. It’s like Frederick Douglass said: “if American moral sensibility were not hardened by persistent infliction of outrage and crime against colored people, a scream of horror, shame, and indignation would rise to Heaven...”
This kind of attention is still around today. I saw Carlos Cortez speak yesterday about the way that media affects diversity, and he talked about the Amanda Lynch incident and how the public eye was shifted to focus on her harrowing escape from a prison camp. Little did any of us know but there were two other people with her a Black woman and also a Native American woman who died in the process, however, we were not aware of their story as the media focused on Ms. Lynch. I’m not going to blatantly point any fingers, but Jessica Lynch is white, and her story was the only one to be publically acknowledged... you may draw the conclusions.
I wanted to know the rest of the story about the imbecile lynching on page 79 of the Ida B. Wells-Barnett handout. It is extremely interesting to the extent upon which the judiciary power of Alabama thought it could go. So I looked it up feel free to check it out if you have a strong emotional foundation: http://books.google.com/books?id=ilJKjn9NNW0C&pg=PA97&lpg=PA97&dq=Hamp+Biscoe&source=web&ots=STwVbkdLOW&sig=b14vcEdWh6tY_TT6yx79WpgqozA&hl=en&ei=lgyJSZ9qiKI1y8S81wc&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result

Angie's Questions for Monday

2009-02-15T18:23:00.000-08:00

1. The Blues People reading implies that Africans become American when speaking about life in America in English. How relevant is language to American culture?
2. What does Baraka have to say about enslavement being different when the owner and the slave are from the same culture, and do you agree?
3. Baraka says that life in the colonies was different from other societies because the foundation of the society was economical. How relevant is money and wealth to the formation and evolution of the Negro and jazz music?
4. "Harlem" seems to be darker and angrier than other poems we have read. How does the speaker view "successful" blacks--blacks with wealth and/ or some authority?
5. Is the speaker in "Uncle Rufus" finding fault with his son, or does he applaud him for his rebellion?
6. "Madame Alpha Devine" profits from making blacks more white. What is the tone of the poem in relation to Devine's business?

"Imprint for Rio Grande"

2009-02-11T10:33:00.000-08:00

I would also like to comment on Alice’s discussion leading. I think that the questions were very insightful, and I think the class as a whole—as always—did an excellent job of keeping the conversation moving. So well done! I found Jean Toomer’s poem “Imprint for Rio Grande” very interesting. It seems as though the first stanza captures so much about the African American movement. In saying, “to assert themselves as human beings (or to surrender themselves?),” Toomer seems to get at the issues we’ve been talking about with identity, defiance, pride, and surrender. I mentioned this in class, but it seems to me as though assimilating for the sake of “succeeding” within a culture would ultimately seem like failure to many. I find the above quote relevant because it’s the struggle between self-expression and assimilation. I’m not sure Toomer makes a judgment about which is ultimately the “right” choice, but I think that he just highlights the fact that there is a choice. I don’t even know where to start with the “Being” and “Exile” part of the poem. I know that there’s so much in there as far as meaning goes, but I can’t begin to unlock it without some help.

2009-02-11T10:14:00.000-08:00

When reading Du Bois, I was really interested in his take on the double consciousness and I really liked Alice's questions about whether double conciousness is still prevalent today. I would have to say a definite yes. It really reminds me of when I was in high school. One of my closest friends at the time was black and she would constantly complain about other black girls coming up to her. They would always ask he why she was "acting white." My friend was really annoyed by this. This just makes me think why our society associates certain activities with races. Hence the "acting white" and "acting black." I just really find all of it very ridiculous. After all, we are all human.
So I would have to agree with Adam's take on the poem White Witch. When I first read it though, I thought of the reading about the lynchings. How many black men had been accused of raping white women. It seemed that the poem was a warning to other black men. Then when I thought about it more, I saw the white witch as representing the white community. The white community gets you to trust them and then they turn on you when you least expect it. This also reminded me of the article we read about how African Americans were only considered people when they broke the law.

February 11

2009-02-11T09:47:00.000-08:00

First I feel compelled to comment on the plague that seems to be slowly decimating to St. Lawrence campus. It's apparently the flu, but my symptoms are not very flu-esque. I feel like I have been drinking sand, and the tapping of the keyboard makes my eyes water. A friend of mine went to the Health Center to get some medical aid and for his flu-like symptoms they prescribed him 'Tussin. I think I might need that extra kick from the Robo, but I'm not sure.
OK now that that's off my chest lets talk literature. I thought Alice's discussion questions and Professor Bailey's prompts facilitated a detailed and highly productive class. The parallel between White Witch and "On Lynchings" were chilling and eye opening. My own interpretation of the poem was that the witch represented white society--the epitome of freedom and privilege. The witch (white society) pretends to willingly invite blacks into their ranks and once blacks see or feel an opening white society crushes all dreams and hopes; throwing blacks back into a world of loss and pain.Nick brought up a play where a white woman seduces a black man on a train and than murders him in front of several people who do nothing to protect him.
The Du Bois section on double consciousness really hit home for me. I have found myself in different situations altering how I behave in order to fit in with the group around me. Professor Bailey told us that Dr. Bass once said to him that whenever she does something she always thinks about what it means to the black community. I identify as Black and Puerto Rican but I know I don't fit the a-typical persona; I always find myself acclimating minutely in order to feel like I fit in.

2009-02-11T08:25:00.001-08:00

Aspects of Evans’s article on Spiritual Empowerment in Afro-American Literature reminded me of the discussion we had in Monday’s class about Black authenticity. Evans writes, “The danger which stalks this second moment in religious affirmation is that the Afro-American self may have receded before full definition had been reached, and that the subsequent influence of the group may prevent any significant challenges to the collective will” (8). Evans goes on to note that the Afro-American “community” has actually come to be represented by the “functionally regulative” Afro-American male community, thereby excluding Afro-American women from the progress made, to some degree.

What interests me is the position this divide puts any “movement” in. No matter how specific the title of a movement is (The Queer Hispanic Women of America’s Movement, for instance), there will always be several someones who occupy the outskirts of norm. Is it more beneficial for those in the background to regroup and form their own movement? Or does that harm the goal of whatever the marginalized have in common with the mainstream? In context, should there now be a Black Women’s Movement and a Black Men’s Movement? Should there be a separate Just Plain Black Movement? Obviously, there is a reason that the QHWAM broke away from the Women’s Movement; so when does the reason for secession become not obvious? Moreover, what effect does secession have on the goals in common?

2009-02-11T07:07:00.000-08:00

The past few classes have shown me a lot about people’s prejudices, want for a good reputation, and how far people are willing to go to attain the reputations they desire. I have always wondered why groups of people who do not receive the respect they deserve do not form a larger group, and fight for their rights together, to climb the social latter. For example, in the past, why haven’t women and African Americans looked to each other as equals, and fought together for equal rights?

Today, after decades of trying to be equals in the work force, there are still several instances where both African Americans and women still do not receive equal pay to Caucasian men who hold the same job positions. It was not until a few of the most previous readings, that I understood why the two groups did not demand rights together.

There have been instances in the past where women would have relationships with African American men, but were afraid of being caught. Because they were so worried about their reputation, they would sometimes go as far as to say that they were raped. Several African American men were punished for crimes they did not commit, only because the women were afraid of their reputations being damaged.

In return, the African American community began to fear the white woman. James Weldon Johnson wrote a poem entitled “The White Witch” referring to white women, warning African American men to stay away from them, because although they may be beautiful, they were harm them.

I find the past relationship between the two groups of people sad. Both of these groups of people knew that they did not have as many rights as they should, but by condemning the other group, neither of them were able to help one another gain the rights they deserved, making it harder for each group of people to attain their rights.

Universal Blues

2009-02-11T05:51:00.000-08:00

In completing the readings for today, I found the final two readings on the black experience in literary work and the blues extremely interesting as a context for much of what we have been reading. I was struck by these pieces because of my observation about how today’s readings seemed to have a different feel than the poetry we have read so far. This time, there seemed to be more reflection, more hidden meaning and exploration aside from the common slavery-era and freedom/reconstruction themes we had seen so far. There seemed to be a much greater social commentary here, especially in consideration of the black race as a whole and the challenges faced by its fledgling cultural identity.
It was interesting to read about how the common or vernacular experience of the African American community transformed into a written form of exploration, identity, community, and culture simultaneously, and also how some of the specific indicators of the time, like railroads, made this exploration of identity present in the music scene as well. A final thought, was in the last section of the blues piece in which the author mentions how train imagery and feeling of excitement, hope, freedom, and future that it portrayed to many in this vernacular group, was also a feeling that crossed racial lines as white European Americans were able to tie these feelings into their history as well. While this universitality of the emotion of blues begs important consideration of the values instilled in the genre’s representation of black history, culture and struggle, it also prompts the question of American identity and commonality as echoed by Claude McKay…

Alice's Discussion on Monday

2009-02-08T13:25:00.000-08:00

Hi, all. I've given Alice's questions below in Roman type, and my own elaborations of them in italics. In particular, I'd very much like you to consider responses to these questions with reference to specific page numbers. Also, please do print this agenda out and bring it with you to class. See you tomorrow!

Discussion Questions

1) On page 11 in “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” Du Bois mentions what it feels like to live with this constant feeling of a double consciousness. “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” This article first appeared in 1903, do you think that the idea of having doubles in every aspect of life, as Du Bois says, is still as relevant today in the African American way life, or do you think seeing yourself through the eyes of others (constantly) is less prevalent?

Alice has homed in on an extremely famous and important passage from Du Bois here, one still widely discussed and debated today. Is double consciousness an impediment to one who experiences it, or a gift, or both? What does it mean to be able to and/or to be forced to mentally exchange places with other people? Do Joan Dayan's notions of haunting (from "Legal Slaves and Civil Bodies") resonate with this notion of a mobile subjectivity? Can groups other than African Americans experience double consciousness?

2) What do you think of James Weldon Johnson’s first poem “The Creation?” While it is very similar to the traditional Genesis creation tale, what differences strike you as odd, especially the part about creating man?

3) On page 12 Du Bois talks about poems and songs where African Americans talk of the promise land, and he equates it back to a place that is promised by God and even better than that promised to the Israelites. But he says that the promise land has not been found. What do you think about the past dreams of the promised land and how they have changed for people in Du Bois’ time (meaning around 1900s to current)?

Also, do you see any changes between images of the promised land we saw pre-emancipation and images of the promised land we see in Du Bois and Johnson?

4) What do you think of Du Bois’ ideas of the African American realizing that he must be himself in order to make a place for himself in this world? Assimilation has constantly been a tactic whites have used to try to convince other peoples it is the best way to put their foot in the door of their world, for example the Native Americans. But instead Du Bois says that African Americans want to start out without assimilating even if they must start at the bottom, which ultimately means starting from intense poverty.

What evidence have we seen in this class that whites have been interested in, or even willing to consider, black assimilation into white ranks? What’s the relationship between the idea of assimilation and the idea of separate but equal or Booker T Washington’s famous analogy, "separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand"?

5) Johnson’s poem “The White Witch” is on the face a poem about a white witch, but what or whom do you think the white witch really is, who does she stand for, and what did he mean when he says he has kissed the white witch?

How simple is this poem’s relationship to the lynching practices we read about in Wells-Barnett? Is Johnson talking literally and only about white sexual temptresses? How are we to interpret the femininity of this personification of the evils of the white hegemony?

On Being "Black Enough"

2009-02-04T20:33:00.001-08:00

Our discussion of notions of ethnic authenticity made me think about Percival Everett's novel Erasure, so I wanted to share with you some very short excerpts from it--I'd be curious to hear what you think.

From Douglass, To Wells

2009-02-04T10:22:00.000-08:00

Frederick Douglass, in his letter to Miss Ida B. Wells, wrote about the “horror, shame, and indignation” that everyone should be feeling if the American public wasn’t hardened by persistent crimes against colored people and if the “American church and clergy were only half Christianized.” This statement got me thinking, how does a society accept this kind of injustice? He raises a good point though, because it’s easy to get complacent when you hear about atrocities daily. I know, for me at least, when all I see on the news every night is murder in the cities and genocides in Africa, it gets to a point where I’m saying to myself, yeah, I know, but what else is happening in the world? It seems so cold when you think about it, but unless you’re experiencing these things first hand, I think it’s easy to forget how terrible things are. I think Douglass was recognizing this in his statement to Miss Wells; he was thanking her for portraying these horrible events in a brutally honest light.
I’m not going to go into the religion piece in depth right now, but I think it is worth noting the inconsistency in the preaching vs. practice of religious figures in all cultures across all times. I refuse to believe that any “God” wants his followers to practice any sort of hateful behavior, and I think that the self-proclaimed religious leaders and followers should learn to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. I think that’s where Douglass’s frustrations arose from.

2009-02-04T10:08:00.000-08:00

Yes, I really did enjoy Lawrence Hill as well. He answered so many questions about Someone Knows My Name and I really felt that I got to know him as a person sitting there. One thing that I thought was beautiful was when he was talking about the novel and how it was autobiographical in the sense that it was part of him. I never really though about the relationship between an author and their work that way, but I think it is very true. What you produce is really your ideas or how you want to express something. I thought a lot about the writing I have done. There really is so much of a person in their writing. I think about all the poems I wrote for Theo last semester. Basically each one had the mention of water in it. I didn't always intend to include water, but it happened a lot. And yes, I love water. Just kind of amazing how much you can really know about someone without knowing them at all. I also really enjoyed reading the excerpt from Black Berry, Sweet Juice. His style of writing just flowed really well and it was a lot of fun to read. Also, a very interesting topic and how he saw himself identifying as a black person. I find it interesting that people pay so much attention to skin color. I remember reading an article about people in Brazil and how they skin color really had nothing to do with what their nationality was. Most people who had darker skin actually had more heritage from European countries. I really liked the idea of not being able to tell what you really were. Just thought that was interesting...

2009-02-04T07:42:00.000-08:00

I genuinely enjoyed going to Lawrence Hill’s Q&A session on Monday. He, obviously, answered a lot of questions about Someone Knows My Name in particular, but he also touched on the writing process, and answered more general questions about being the author of books. I found those answers to be really enlightening. I think no matter how many times someone reads a book, he or she will never get everything out of it that the author intended; maybe the same goes for poetry. But when an author offers to explain everything that went into the book (or poem), – the inspiration, the research, the challenges, the fun and disheartening parts, etc. – it brings the book into sharper focus. The reader might have speculated on all the “whys” of plot twists, character choices, settings, etc., but all along knowing he couldn’t presume to know exactly what was going on in the author’s mind. To use a cheesy analogy, it’s like giving glasses (or binoculars?) to a bird watcher with sub-par vision. I also imagine that the opportunity for an author to meet his readers must be enlightening in a similar way. It would mean meeting the people who not only found your book somehow, but took enough of an interest in what you wrote to go to that meeting. What I think I’m trying to articulate is the difference between writing an academic paper, when I know who my audience is, and writing a book, which sort of picks its own audience.

Stark Truth

2009-02-04T06:09:00.000-08:00

In completing the readings for today’s class I was struck by Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s examination of the facts and stories surrounding the lynchings in the south during the post-civil war period. In combining the sheer number of lynchings and the inconsistency of the treatment based on color, I found the stories horrifying to read. It was also shocking to see the variety of “crimes” for which capital punishment could be applied, or to which hanging was the result of a mob that would settle for no less, including murder for alleged, attempted, or self-defense crimes, not to mention those with no proof whatsoever. I was also shocked by the lack of names in lines such as “three unknown negros” which only add to what appears to be a complete lack of law and order in the south, both formal and moral.

This reading was brought into context our second reading by Saidiya Hartman which while dense, helped to discuss the idea that in the post-war era the freedom of slaves was actually worth less than their lives during slavery. This idea, as manifested in the law, actions and words of society, is exemplified in the examples presented by Wells-Barnett where law if nothing else appears to turn its back on the now free slave community. The combination of these works brings to light the human suffering, immorality and violence that seems unimaginably fierce today; although perhaps it will help us to better look at some of the residues in law, speech and action that may still exist in our lives and society today.

On a final note, I wanted to mention how impressed I was with Lawrence Hill. Not only did I feel like he answered our questions very effectively, but he also brought to life the story of “Someone Knows My Name” in a way that helped to give more meaning to the discussions within it. What an awesome class!

Lawrence Hill

2009-02-03T20:12:00.000-08:00

I was struck by Lawrence Hill— I am so glad that I was able to hear him speak. I have so much respect for him because he writes for a living, writes about subjects he has not experienced himself, and most of all, he was able to clarify ideas that I have heard before, but never understood.

Lawrence Hill addressed the idea of being the other—he spoke about how his daughters read one book in school about the struggle with race. They read this book four times. To Kill a Mockingbird is a great literary work, but it should by no means be the only book a person reads about race. He spoke about how he was raised in a mostly Caucasian neighborhood, and how hard it was to define himself growing up. Even though he could have called himself “mixed”, other people did not see him that way. He was forced to define himself as “black”, even though his mother is white.

The forced definition made me think of those bubbles people are forced to fill in during exams, I never really thought much about filling in a bubble to state the color of a person’s skin, until he pointed out that if he were to fill in a bubble, he would have denied half of his heritage. Because of the color of his skin, he is forced to claim that he is black. If he wanted to side with his mother’s side of the family tree, he would not be able to, because other people would refuse to believe that he is something different than the color of his skin.

On Lynching

2009-02-03T14:39:00.000-08:00

This summer I took a course at Stamford UConn to make up for some credits that I needed. In this English course I read a short story about a woman who accused a black man of raping her. When I read the handout on Ida B. Wells-Barnett, I instantly was reminded of that story. I can’t remember what it was called or who it was by, which is very unfortunate, but I remember at the time being particularly drawn to the story for some reason. I think what interested me the most and brought out my fascination finally dawned on me when I read the section in the Ida handout, about the woman who accused a black man of raping her because she was afraid of bringing shame to her marriage since she had had a consensual relationship with the black man she accused of rape.
In the story I read this past summer the woman accusing the man of rape was described and purposefully kept, by the author, to seem mysterious. In the beginning the reader is told that she is upset because none of the men or boys look at her anymore, so the reader thinks she is upset that she has lost her charm and beauty. Then not much else is mentioned of the woman until we hear that she accuses the man of rape, and that the men in the town are getting together to go after the black man, and obviously lynch him. After the long scene leading up to and the eventual lynching, the reader is left wondering if the man ever raped her at all. There is no evidence that he did or didn’t, but it seems very likely that the woman was just bored or vain and wanted some sort of attention. However, when I read the excerpt from the Ida handout I began wondering if maybe, the woman from my earlier story was like the woman Ida talks about, if she had had a relationship with the black man and was ashamed and so accused him of rape. I think the main reason that story has stuck with me for so long, was because I always felt like I needed some type of explanation, that too many things were left uncertain for me. Was the woman just that cruel to accuse the man for no reason, or was there a relationship before and she now was ashamed, or is it possible (unlikely this was the case) that he raped her? I always wanted to know the answer, and felt I needed some justification for the man’s death, just how Ida felt and the reason for her writings on lynching.

Sincerity

2009-01-28T10:37:00.001-08:00

To me there is something disingenuous about the meter of Daniel Payne’s “The Mournful Lute or the Preceptor’s Farewell.” Knowing the historical traditions that iambic pentameter stems from, it seems as though the author is trying too hard to impress instead of convey a feeling. There was something really raw about the slave songs we read before, and it is possible that this is just related to the form. Perhaps the shorter lines and simpler lyrics are better for singing than for reading. I just can’t feel the same level of pain and sincerity when I’m being swayed by the gentle rhythm of iamb after iamb.
I suppose that it is a distinct possibility that the author and other sufferers of adverse conditions have just found more eloquent ways to express themselves. I think part of my problem is that the imagery and the diction are the stars of the poem. Payne uses the following image: “As when a deer does in the pasture graze,/ The lion roars—she’s filled with wild amaze.” To me, such images detract from the pain of what Payne should be feeling. I would be more inclined to believe him if he at least used more relevant images.

Nat Turner and Mournful Lute

2009-01-28T10:30:00.000-08:00

Having looked at the pictures I fond myself astonished by the graphic nature of the pictures and the shear brutality of the slave trade. I have read a lot of narratives and reports of the slave trade and the evil and total dehumanization of the entire organization but it never hit as hard until I saw it. Seeing the baby with the umbilical cord still attached and the slaves being beaten and dying all over the ship made it real and tangible. I read a “True Story” by Mark Twain in which he recounts a story of a woman who had her seven children and husband ripped from her and sold away. That is a touching and moving story but it did not come close to touching me as the pictures did.
The poem for today that interested me most was Payne’s “The Mournful Lute.” Since the first class I have realized the importance of religion and the promise of salvation in the afterlife. The opening couplet speaks exactly to that. It really strikes me as terribly morbid and a sad, sad life. The idea of living to die and only to die is beyond depressing. I am starting to realize how unhappy and relentless and resilient the slaves must have been in order to wake up each morning. I hope that the reading become a little less depressing and a little more uplifting. I doubt it will happen because the African American life is one filled with strive and unhappiness still to this day.

Legal vs. Religious Excuses

2009-01-28T08:35:00.000-08:00

In Joan Dayan’s Legal Slaves and Civil Bodies I found it interesting how she maps out the reasons for why people in history felt that they had the right to enslave people, under the law. According to her theory blacks were considered tainted because of the color of their skin, via their blood. Being tainted is something that cannot continue, and should not, under the law, be allowed to hold land and pass their tainted blood onto the heirs. While disallowing African’s blood to pass along to their children would ultimately mean killing them, instead more legally it meant not allowing them to hold any position or own any land, thus giving the right to whites to make them slaves.
Dayan’s essay maps out the legal justifications and thought process for whites and why they enslaved blacks but that is only the legal justification, not the root cause. The racism is much more deep seeded and the legality of the problem is only an excuse for why the whites did what they did, much like using the Bible as an excuse to have slaves. I think that in actuality the real excuse that was used was Christianity, because during the time I doubt many whites had to legally justify their actions; however, they did feel the need to justify themselves with God. Thus we have many of the slave poems, which reflect the idea of being saved, and that the reason they were brought to America was to be saved and made into a good Christian.

2009-01-28T08:18:00.000-08:00

Firstly, I wanted to comment on Kyle Barker's "Nat Turner." The pictures were very graphic and extremely shocking. I think the most horrifying images revolved around the baby. Seeing the child on the floor still connected to the umbilical cord was very disturbing. I can't imagine people being treated that way. Then the parent throwing his child overboard so he/she wouldn't have to live that kind of life. Its so disturbing. I can't imagine being treated as an object and not a as person. The handout for today was intense as well. Talking about what rights a slave had and where they stood in the law. And what mixed individuals were considered. It was just insane to see people arguing about this.
Out of the poems we read for today, my favorite was "Songs For The People." I just really like the idea of using music to unify others and to heal the pain caused by horrible events or times. I also thought the poem was very powerful and hopeful which doesn't seem to be present in many of the poems.
Also I was thinking about class the other day. I think someone mentioned Disney and I was thinking about how racist the movies really are. Majority of the time, the villains have dark features, while the heroes and heroines have light hair and eyes. I just think its crazy how darker skin is associated with evil and light skin associated with purity and good. Its all brainwashing really.

Continuity?

2009-01-28T07:48:00.000-08:00

As I read Harper’s poem, “Songs for the People,” I thought, without having read the post with Alexander’s inaugural poem yet, how fitting “Songs” might have been for Obama’s campaign. Granted, there is a good chance that Obama would never have been elected had he at any point suggested that all this country needs is a little “music to sooth all its sorrow.” Nevertheless, I couldn’t ignore the hopeful tone of Harper’s “Songs,” nor when I revisited the text of “Praise Song for the Day,” could I ignore Alexander's matching tone and complimentary subject. Harper’s first verse even likens her Song for the people to a battle-cry; and how many times has one or another of Obama’s speeches been called “a call to arms”? And, of course, Obama is ever the every man’s man, which is reflected in Alexander’s poem with those several verses at the beginning, spotlighting moments of necessity in any layperson’s day or life, while Harper sings to the old and young, the weary, the poor, the children and the hearts of men.

The point I’m making here is that there seems to be an endurance of theme, or perhaps consciousness, that goes beyond the persistent struggle for social and civil justice, to inspiration. Harper strove to inspire “with more abundant life” a world she saw as worn down by wrong and war; Alexander wrote of “today’s sharp sparkle” that sits on the brink, brim and cusp of a presidency whose catch phrase, “yes, we can,” is nothing if not inspiring. And, of course, the most remarkable thing has been said before: the greater global community, consisting of many races, is now [finally] being inspired.

-Lisa

2009-01-28T07:36:00.001-08:00

Thus far, this class has been nothing short of shocking. Sometimes history is glossed over— many times in middle school, it is a class that can come in between two fiction classes. It is hard for me to think about what people have done.

Our first class, we discussed our own prejudices. For some reason, I made myself believe that they did not exist in the North. I thought that maybe it would be a few people, but it would not be everybody. I am glad we talked about it. It is funny how everybody has some sort of prejudice caught in their mind, but because it is never talked about, some people believe that they are the only ones who have racist thoughts. I wonder if the elephant in the room ceased to be ignored, if it would go away. Why do we try to ignore these things anyway?

The reading was just as shocking as the class:

I have never read a story by Fredrick Douglass before, and although I knew he could read and write, it never occurred to me that he could write so poetically. I don’t know how he was taught to read and write, but it must have been hard to keep writing so well, when people expected so little out of him, and it is unlikely that he had time to practice. The way how he expressed himself was almost surreal. Because the story was called “The Last Flogging”, I assumed that he would run away by the end of the story, it never even occurred to me that he would go back to his master until he actually did.

What also struck me, was the cartoon we saw for homework. It is one thing to read about the middle passage, but it is quite another to have to see it. I’ve never seen a cartoon about the middle passage before, and it was disgusting! When reading something, the pages can somehow be glossed over, and the reader does not have to picture the words on the page as real. Once seen, it is a different matter.

This class made me wonder why we try to gloss over so many things. Even when we were discussing how words change to mean better ideas, we forget their original meaning, and the suffering of our past. When forgetting our past, we gloss over the present, pretending that large prejudices don’t exist.

Why do we pretend?

2009-01-28T07:34:00.000-08:00

Response to Class 1/26

2009-01-28T06:38:00.000-08:00

A few things that struck me about our discussion at the end of last class including our allusion to the struggles of getting an African American poet published and the sense of community that this may have created.

First, it is interesting, if not shocking, to think that a group of white people would have to vouch for the talents and skills of another person solely because of their race, and the believed inferiority of their mental capacity. (Although it is not unique in this setting as this has also occurred for women, Native Americans and other minority groups.)

Second, the dynamics of an education African American slave are important to consider. Frederick Douglass mentioned in “The Last Flogging” the respect that he was given because of his ability to read. The presence of this division in the slave community, over those who read and those who couldn’t would have been further divided by the success of a small minority of these individuals including Phillis Wheatley and Jupiter Hammon. This minority of individuals then faced another rift as they were slowly brought into the fold of white culture, yet seemed to face an eternal wall against them as well. The formation of a support system, as illustrated in Hammon’s “Address to Phillis Wheatley,” may have been a way to share common experience and advice. The communication and camaraderie may also have been a way to make sure that each new member, each rising star of the slave community, was committed to the positive representation of their race. It may have been felt, or even may have been the case, that the success of each of them was crucial to the successful acceptance of the race as a whole. My exploration of this idea is because of the class division in whether or not Hammon may have been praising Wheatley, or cautioning/guiding her: and this explanation could address both camps.

Finally, it is interesting to think about whether this “social hierarchy” of race, education, success, and white acceptance is still around today as race may become a spectrum that can be influenced by a variety of factors: not just color. This comes to mind because of the short video posted on the last entry about the levels of beauty based on lightness of skin as well as commentary I have read/heard about Obama not being "black enough" to be the first president of color...

Following up on our conversation

2009-01-22T13:16:00.000-08:00

I wanted to follow up on a few threads from our conversation and you blog entries, and to share some links and other background info with you.

In our discussion of how we come to internalize our culture's ideas about race, someone wondered whether xenophobia might be natural, a kind of instinct. I would encourage all of us to be very suspicious of the word "natural," as well as the phrase "common sense." Both frequently cover for hegemonic ideology--for ideas the mainstream of our culture takes as given, but which are in fact historically produced, and which we can destabilize by examining them. Race is an excellent example of such a category, so central to our culture that it feels natural and obvious to us--and yet the concept of "race" was invented sometime during the beginning of Europe's colonial age, in the 16th and 17th centuries. (Why and how? This is a topic we'll be reading some about as the semester progresses, but I can also always point you towards more material on the subject if you'd like.) Race is a construct, created by people and subject to historical change. Obviously the fact that race is a fiction doesn't make it any less powerful, or its material and economic effects any less real.

I believe someone also pointed out how early in childhood we begin to be conscious of racial categories and stereotypes. That's certainly true. Check out this incredible short film (7 minutes), A Girl Like Me. Black teenaged girls talk about race and beauty issues, and then one does an experiment, talking to black children as young as three about their preferences for a black or a white doll.

I really enjoyed our discussion of how meaning is made and transmitted, and how the things we say have a way of carrying more information than we might intend. I was struck when Nick said, "Obviously, communication is receiver-oriented." It struck me at that moment that since this is a poetry class, it will be very important for us to talk about how language works as a medium of communication. We'll need to talk about signifiers (the noises we make with our mouths, the marks we make with pens on paper or with pixels on screens) and signifieds (the shared cultural ideas that those noises and marks refer to). In everyday language--say, when I say to you, "Please get out a sheet of paper"--the signifieds are the important part. I'm not worried about how aesthetically pleasing my utterance is--what I care about is getting you to do what I've asked. But in literary language, the signifiers start to matter more. Prose novelists shape sentences to have rhythm and flow, to sound good to the ear. Poets work even more closely with signifiers, creating patterns of rhyme, repetition, assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia--all effects based upon signifiers. In his essay "Disappearance of the Word, Appearance of the World," Ron Silliman traces how the rise of industrial capitalism has been accompanied by an increased focus on signifieds in the way we use language, and a decreased focus on what he refers to as "the gestural"--that is, to the pleasure of using language, the pleasures of nonsense syllables ("hickory dickory dock," "hey nonny nonny," "de doo run run run de doo run run") and repetition. I find it interesting that so many of the slave songs we read rely so heavily upon repetition in their structures. I think this has partly to do with the fact that they're oral creations, and thus rely on rhyme, rhythm, and repetition as mnemonic devices. I also think this has to do with the fact that many of these songs were also likely used while working, to keep teams of workers in rhythm with one another (as you can see in the chain gang scene at the very beginning of O Brother, Where Art Thou?). But I also think that the repetition in these songs, like the repetitions in lots of poetry from all over the world and in all kinds of historical moments, has to do with the sheer pleasure of repetition--the fact that the human mouth enjoys the sensation of it, and the human ear is satisfied and soothed by it.

The last thread I wanted to pick up on was the persistent imagery of death that Nick and Vic mentioned in their blog posts, accompanied by the imagery of flying that Sarah noticed. If you've read Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, you're probably familiar with the myth of the flying African (and if you haven't read it, I recommend it highly!). Naomi Van Tol discusses it succinctly in the "All God's Children Got Wings" section here. Thus, in familiar spirituals like "I'll Fly Away," singers are singing in part about the legend of slaves who literally could fly home to Africa. A related concept is the African-American euphemism "going home" for dying. ("Sister Margaret went home last Tuesday, and she will be sorely missed.") At least some slaves believed that the souls of the dead went not to some fluffy-cloud Heaven in the sky, but back to their beloved homelands; thus, a slave born in African could hope to return there after death. This hope was particularly important to captured Africans who committed suicide or infanticide during the Middle Passage, a practice you'll see illustrated in the Kyle Baker text for next week. Finally, I'll point out that a perusal of the Old and New Testaments will reveal that enslaved African Americans were by no means the first oppressed people in the Judeo-Christian tradition to ascribe a kind of moral virtue to suffering, or to accept earthly existence full of misery in the belief that patience and martyrdom would be rewarded in the afterlife.

Elizabeth Alexander Links

2009-01-22T12:48:00.000-08:00

Hi!
It seemed to me like our class might be particularly interested in Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem, only the fourth such poem in the history of the United States (the first three were Robert Frost's "The Gift Outright" at Kennedy's inauguration, Maya Angelou's "On the Pulse of Morning" at Clinton's first inauguration, and Miller Williams's "Of History and Hope" at Clinton's second inauguration).

the text of Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem

Elizabeth Alexander reads her inaugural poem

the text of Obama's inaugural speech

Elizabeth Alexander's website, with thoughts about Obama's inauguration

an interview with Elizabeth Alexander

Elizabeth Alexander on the Colbert Report

Assignment 0

2009-01-21T12:34:00.001-08:00

I am majoring in English Literature. When I first got to SLU, I was very unsure of what I wanted to study. Then I took an African lit class and I decided that I wanted to be an English major. I really like learning about cultures and time periods through reading novels based on events. I also like the creative side, being able to say so much about something in only a few words.
I am from Los Angeles and it is kind of an insane place. There are so many different types of people there. I mean you could create some character in your mind and chances are that person exists in LA. There are lots of things to do which is pretty awesome. The down side is many people tend to be superficial. Some people concentrate more on the way you look rather than what kind of person you are, but there are also many nice people as well.
I really like singing and I spend much of my time singing. My dad is a musician and he would perform in clubs around town or hit the road and go on tour. Also, my mother was a night club manager for many years. Basically, I’ve spent most of my childhood in clubs surrounded by music. I think that probably why I love it so much. I also really love swimming. I was always intrigued by water as a kid and I would always be the first to take off towards a swimming pool or the ocean. When I was really little I jumped off a yacht into Long Beach harbor. That was when my mother decided that I needed to learn how to swim. Eventually, I ended up on a swim team and swam competitively for 10 years. I don’t really swim that much now though…
I found it interesting that many of the slave songs revolved around religion. Many of them spoke about reaching the promised land and life after death. This emphasis on the after life really caught my attention. I fell like the songs are very hopless. Its hard to see a group of people suffer, especially when they seem to feel nothing can be done about it. Also, since the songs concentrate on the after life, there is a lot about salvation and finding religion before death. In “Soon One Mawnin,” one line is “I’m so glad I got religion in time.” Another line in that same song is “Oh my Lawd, Oh my Lawd, what shall I do to be saved?” I think this is where many people became trapped in a sense by religion. Maybe the slaves felt they had to obey their masters or they would not be able to go to heaven in the afterlife.
I hope to learn more about historical events and African American culture, to have a better understanding of earlier time periods and what life was/is like for an African American. How views have changed or not changed with time. I think it will be interesting to see how the poerty has changed and what the subjects of the poems are.

Angie - Assignment 0

2009-01-21T10:28:00.001-08:00

I’m Angie Christie, and I’m a junior. I am from scenic White River Junction, Vermont. White River Junction is a village in the town of Hartford, and the whole town is about 10,000 people. My high school was 800 students. It’s the kind of town where everyone knows everyone, and gossip spreads like wildfire. My father, who used to teach automotive classes and coach football and track at my school, has taught or coached half the town, I swear. When I was younger, we would go out for a quick trip to the store, and Dad would always take 20 minutes longer than was necessary just because he was chatting. I suppose that’s part of the appeal of a small town, though… if a small town can be said to have appeal. The weather there is quite similar to Canton, though we tend to get a little more snow and a lot less wind.
I’m an English literature major, and I suppose I’m doing it because I’ve always enjoyed reading. I feel good when I’m expanding my literary horizons. It makes me feel like I’ve done something when I can say, “Why yes, I have read Eliot and Thackeray.” I have had mostly positive experiences in my English classes, though sometimes the amount of reading we have to do in a short period of time overwhelms me. The audiences reading these novels the first time read them in installments over years! How can I be expected to read the same thing in a matter of days? When the amount is reasonable, though, I also find reading to be a nice escape from my daily life.
That said, one of my biggest interests is The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. The man was a genius. I am absolutely captivated by the detail he used in his works. He invented 14 languages for use in Middle-Earth. And what’s more, all of these languages have the same linguistic developments and patterns that real languages have. I just think it’s so amazing. And I don’t care what people say—Peter Jackson’s adaptation was excellent. You can’t compare movies to books without ruining both, so I choose to appreciate them separately as the distinct art forms they are.
For our first paper, I think I’m going to write about the line from “Motherless Child” that reads, “Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone.” I find this line intriguing because “gone” is such an ambiguous term. Where does the speaker feel that he/ she is gone to? I think the poem as a whole is just relating the emptiness of the life of a slave. I like this poem for its repetition, ambiguity, and hint of uplifting themes at the end.
From this class, I hope to gain a better understanding of my roots. As an African American, I know what I have been through, and I’m obviously familiar with the historical difficulties, but I look forward to having a more personal insight into what others have experienced.

Alice's Assignment 0

2009-01-21T10:11:00.000-08:00

My name is Alice Holtermann, and I decided to become an English major my Sophmore year. After having the opportunity to take a wide variety of classes I found that English was something that I understood and really enjoyed. I told myself I could pick a major that was more specific towards a career I might want after school, but instead I wanted to learn and study in a subject that really interested me, and besides I could always pick up the necessary skills I need for a job later if that’s even what I want.
Originally I am from New York but for most of my life I have been living in Wilton, Connecticut. When I was younger I don’t think I really appreciated my town, but once I got to high school I enjoyed it much more. It is nice area and I can see why a lot of people would move to Wilton and the towns around it to get out of the city and into the suburbs. The area is very pretty and my town is right in the middle of the woods it seems like.
For most of my life my hobbies have been sports from lacrosse to track and hockey, however my main focus since I was very young has been ice hockey. My mother put me in a figure skating class, after I passed all the levels I decided that figure skating was not for me and I decided to see what hockey was all about, since we shared the other half of the rink with a hockey introductory course.
For the most part I have had good experiences with English courses, I mean some can be dull but what I really enjoy is when I am assigned books to read that I wouldn’t typically but have always wanted to read. I also enjoyed the writing classes I have taken in the past, they made me really branch out and try to be a better creative writer, something that I wasn’t willing to attempt for quite some time.
As for right now I think I want to look into some more of the poems until I decide which I will pick for my paper. So far they look interesting.
I think this class will be interesting because I’ve already taken an Africana philosophy class which jumped into the philosophy and thinking of Africans and African Americans. Taking my experience and what I have learned in that class, the class was really enjoyable too, and using it to look at African American poetry could be really fun and interesting. Also I don’t know much about poetry and often times don’t fully understand it so I think this class will be a good learning experience for me.

First Blog

2009-01-21T10:06:00.000-08:00

My name is Sarah Friedman, and I am an English major with a Philosophy minor. I like the two because they fit together so well. I like English, because it’s the best way to learn about people, history, and other parts of the world; if written correctly, it can sound beautiful.
I’m from Durham North Carolina. It snowed three inches there yesterday, and all of the schools shut down. We play to the stereotypes down there… all of my friends like sweet tea and sitting outside.
I like scuba diving and snowboarding. I also work at the crisis hotline, and I am an EMT. I like to sing and dance even though my attempts at either makes people laugh.
All the English courses I’ve ever taken were great; the English professors here are some of the best teachers I’ve ever had. Because of Margret Kent Bass’s Caribbean Literature course, I decided to go abroad to Trinidad. In Trinidad, I took an African Literature course from a man who used to live in Nigeria. I love the way how English intertwines with history, and how writing can really change the world around you.
My favorite poem that we read thus far is: When-a Mah Blood Runs Chilly an Col. In my FYP, we studied “black churches in a white America”. It was a very interesting course, and one of the ideas that our teacher placed in our heads is the idea that religion helped suppress the African Americans. Not only did forcing them to switch religions take away their history and culture, but they were told that if they were good in this life, then they’d have a good afterlife. Many of them prayed to Jesus to help them serve their masters, because they were told that was how to get into heaven. To some people, revolting was bad behavior, and they did not do it because they wanted to go to heaven. This idea can be seen in the line, “ Ef you cain’t bear no crosses, you cain’t wear no crown” (5).
Another line in the song that struck me as interesting is the line: “Do, Lord, do Lord, do remember me.”(5). This line is heartbreaking, because the people felt as if they had to sing to their lord to have themselves remembered. This line is begging their God not to forget about them. The reader can see how low self-esteem they must have, if they are worried about an all-seeing, all-knowing God remembering them.
In this class, I hope to learn more about the African American movement, and how to read and write poetry. Most poems do not have very many words to convey a complex situation, so I know that each word must be chosen carefully, but I would like to look closely at how the writer chooses to write.

And so, it begins…

2009-01-20T20:05:00.000-08:00

While it took me some time to declare a major, and even longer to really embrace it, I am now content to say that I am an economics major. I was attracted to economics because of the logical, and arguably cold-hearted, way it explores the actions of others and the world we live in. I have found though, that economics is not only a complex and complicated field of study, but that it is best understood in a liberal arts setting where global studies, English courses, psychology theories and other diverse considerations all work together to paint a picture of the past, the present and today.
My minor in English, with a specialization in creative non-fiction writing, came as the result of a distribution requirement that led me to rediscover my love for the challenge and power of writing. I have found comfort and excitement in writing my stories, experiences and observations for an audience, sometimes, but also for myself. In both fields, I have discovered that not only do I love learning, but that there is always more to know.
I’m from Essex, Vermont, which is a three hour drive, and almost seven hour bike east of St. Lawrence. The climate is similar, and its description really depends on where you come from. It is a land of four seasons: cold and snowy (the longest season), muddy and wet, muggy and lush, and crisp and colorful. I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Appropriately, the longest season in Vermont coincides with my many hobbies. I Nordic ski on the team here at SLU, and love to be outside any time of the year whether I am skiing, snowshoeing, biking, running, swimming, hiking…etc. I also love to read, listen to music and do nothing, although I only last a few hours. I lead a very busy life and I like it. More than anything else, I love to laugh.
So far (fingers crossed!) I have had great experiences in all of my English classes. Like all classes each provided a different challenge. From American to later-British literature, expository to creative writing, and journalism to my current internship in communications, each professor and experience has led me down a new path of thinking, that I hope is culminating into a variety of skills.
For the first essay I would like to work with Motherless Child. We sang this song, although didn’t really analyze it, in my FYP to be mentioned later, and I actually have a recording of Hootie and the Blowfish singing/performing the first verse that I really like. Aside from those details, the line I find most interesting is “sometimes I feel like a feather in the air.” This line strikes me for a variety of reasons. Firstly, a feather when floating in the air moves with the current of the wind/air itself, and like the slaves has largely now effect on its own path. The use of the word “floating” and the feather itself, adds lightness to the line despite the otherwise very somber poem of loneliness and loss. This lightness in weight also gives way to a feeling of acceptance of the situation, and seemed to transition predictably into the line depicting the flying that followed. The floating feather can also be akin to idle thought, not in the sense of free time, as much as the time spent doing repetitive tasks during which the mind can wander, moving from one topic to a next like a feather dips to the wind…but, just some thoughts…hopefully the class will help more. Adam, I feel the same sense of insecurity with the assignment and class, but I guess we’re all in this together!
This class serves many purposes for me. I have always been intrigued by the overlap between psychology, sociology and history, especially as found in the written and oral word. I hope to learn about the emotions of the various eras of history, as seen through African American eyes, and the many creative and complex ways they are expressed. This class is also a “full-circle” experience for me: as I started my first semester in an FYP titled “Amazing Grace: The Black Church in White America” which consisted of hymns, poetry, and political movements, and will now finish my senior year with a similar course. Like all classes I take, I am especially interested in the many viewpoints and considerations that we as a class will explore that I never may have thought of alone.
And so, it begins…

Lisa's assignment 0

2009-01-20T17:59:00.001-08:00

I am Lisa Manoogian, and I grew up in part of Greater Boston, Watertown, MA., which I never tell people because they inevitably ignore the ‘MA’ part and ask how I like Watertown, NY. Boston gets a healthy dose of all four seasons, so that by the end of each one it’s inhabitants reinstate the appropriate wardrobe, and pack away the previous season’s ungrudgingly. Forty minutes outside of Boston, the buildings shrink and are replaced by fields and woods. In one such fieldy and woodsy town, Harvard, I have been horseback riding for almost my whole life. Because horses are an expensive hobby, I have spent the past couple of summers teaching riding lessons at a camp in North Carolina, so that teaching itself has become a sort of hobby.

Last spring, I planned to study abroad in Kenya. When the program was canceled, I refused to return to campus and instead took my life’s savings on a whirlwind tour of Europe. Afterward, not only did I promptly add ‘travel’ to my list of interests, but, after struggling to communicate with native speakers of every language I didn’t know, I realized how much I appreciate English. English is my first language, and is by far the one I am most fluent in, which makes it familiar, pliable, and full of possibilities that a stunted vocabulary and poor grasp on foreign grammar do not afford. Having said that, I have had fairly good experiences with English courses so far. My only frustrations arise out of a lack of depth in a course, as in a survey of literature class, for example.

I would like to work with Do, Lawd in my first paper. It is more cryptic than the other poems; I am not sure if the speaker is asking to die, or asking to live one more year, what role his/her father plays, or how literally ‘father’ is being used. I also like that death is addressed in am ambivalent light, especially in the second verse, ending with “and die wid a free good will.” The speaker paints one of the most brutal, painful, unjustified deaths imaginable as one that can be recreated, or re-experienced, at least on some level, by dying peacefully by choice. And, of course, ‘dying by choice’ inevitably brings up the question of suicide, frowned upon in the Bible, but, understandably, an attractive option for someone bound by slavery. Moreover, if suicide is not what the speaker had in mind with ‘die wid a free good will,’ what are the other possibilities? I have a lot of questions about this particular poem, and I think after discussing it in class I will have a clearer idea of how to focus my paper.

By the end of this course, I would like to feel confident about the technical analysis of poems in general, as well as have enough knowledge of the African-American poetry genre to make intelligent arguments about poems’ content, historical influences, and intended message.

Assignment 0

2009-01-20T16:43:00.001-08:00

My name is Adam Baitsell and I am a junior majoring in English, with a focus on Creative Non-Fiction. I enjoy writing non-fiction because it allows me to be as honest as possible while tapping into my creativity and my abilities to paint powerful and moving images or scenes with specific words and sentence structure. I live in a suburb of New York City called White Plains; it’s about a forty-five minute drive north of the city. Although it is technically a suburb it is slowly becoming more and more of a metropolis with high-rise buildings and an inexcusable increase in traffic and parking tickets. The town itself has a fairly defined line between the houses and apartments and I happen to live right on the line, I like to think I am the first house outside of “downtown” White Plains even though I know I’m not.
I don’t have many hobbies, but I used to collect postcards and those moist towellettes (sp) when I was younger. Now I enjoy playing rugby and the rush of the full contact sport and its utter brutality is probably what draws me most to the game. As I said early I enjoy Creative Non-Fiction writing, so one of my interests/hobbies has to be reading and writing it. My favorite authors right now are Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris, and I also really enjoy Ellison and Wright. I have been writing non-fiction since high school and it is something that means a lot to me and I have set a goal to be published by the end of my senior year.
My overall experience within the SLU English department has been great, some have been negative during class sessions but the lessons I learned from the classes have taught me countless lessons for both academia and life. One class in particular sticks out in my mind as the most effective and helpful class and that was my Advanced Creative Non-Fiction with Paul Graham. Before that class I rarely did concrete or cohesive rewrites of my work, maybe a few verb and word changes here and there but never a complete reworking of an essay and from that class and the workshops that gave me my peers feedback I have become an avid rewriter and find that I almost enjoy editing and rewriting more than just writing.
After having read the syllabus I hope to gain a much, much deeper understanding of the African American struggle and be more informed on the historical and social settings of each author and each poem. The first essay assignment seems daunting because I have never taken a poetry class here and I feel like I might be behind in my abilities to close-read and tease out important or necessary information like some of the others in the class but I hope that by May I will be as close to an expert as I can get.
After having read the assignment for Wednesday and trying to give the paper for Monday some thought I think I will write about “When-a Mah blood Runs Chilly an Col.” What I have found interesting about slavery for a long time is the grotesque misuse of religion to pigeon hole and manipulate slaves into “obeying their masters” and being “good servants of God.” And even with this misuse religion becomes a gigantic focal point in the lives of slaves, and heaven becomes their only escape. The ‘Beulah land’ was confusing but after a quick Google search I learned that it is a metaphor for heaven. The poem as a whole conveys an importance of religion and heaven, and the absolute necessity for slaves to go to heaven. Heaven and religion become escapes for slaves while it is a major reason for their oppression. The irony behind it is what really makes my head spin.

First Blog Entry

2009-01-19T09:11:00.000-08:00

To be completed before class, Wednesday, January 21

Length: at least 450 words

• Go to our class blog, http://english347.blogspot.com/ . If it doesn’t want to let you post to the blog, email me and remind me to add you as a contributor!

• Make your first blog entry. In that entry, please spend at least 450 words answering the following questions:
• What are you studying, and why do you like it?
• Where are you from, and what’s it like there?
• What are your interests and hobbies?
• Have you had good or bad experiences in English courses? What were they?
• Which poem are you thinking of writing about in Paper #1? Why does that poem appeal to you? What issues does it raise that strike you as important? What’s strange or non-obvious about this poem? What assumptions or beliefs does it convey (possibly without meaning to)?
• What do you hope to learn in this class? (Don’t be lame and say, “I want to learn about African American poetry.” Be more specific than that.)