As you read for our class on Thursday, think about how these writers reposition and rethink African-American identity during the 1920s and 1930s.
Here's some sites to explore as you progress through the readings:
The Kennedy Center: http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/exploring/harlem
Library of Congress Website:www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/harlem/harlem.html
Post below on ANY aspect of the texts.
My favorite text to read was “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes. I liked that when you read this aloud, it sounds like a blues song. My favorite lines are, “With his ebony hands on each ivory key./ He made that poor piano moan with melody./ O Blues!” Hughes’ choices in words painted a clear picture in my head. I also liked his text “Theme for English B” because instead of just having the page he had to write for the class, he gave us a little introduction so we know why this is even significant.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite piece from this selection of works was "The Harlem Dancer" by Claude McKay. I am a big fan of imagery and I think McKay paints a beautiful picture here. My favorite line is "The light gauze hanging loose about her form;/To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm/Grown lovlier for passing through a storm." I find these lines to be very dirty sweet and if there is one thing in the world I love its dirty sweet. I also really enjoyed Zora Neale Hurston's selection. I found it interesting the way she spoke of herself and especially how she related feeling music to color.
ReplyDeleteI also love "The Weary Blues", and I know how we talked in class about how the piano player must have been inferring to all of the Harlem nightclubs, but I have a different take on it. While Lenox avenue might have been a hot spot full of clubs, it also merely represents the heart of Harlem, a place known for renaissance type activity. And when the poet says that he was playing under "an old gas light", i feel as though there is just an old man playing piano on a street corner, wailing the blues for all of Harlem to hear. He is flooding the streets with a universal song, giving those African Americans a unified identity. He says he plays until "the stars went out and so did the moon", relating this song to the cycle of everyday life in Harlem. The weary blues, a song quoted from the poem, was sung, metaphorically, by everyone that lived in Harlem. Even though that cultural hotspot was a great place for African Americans to get an opportunity at work or expression, there was still a feeling of oppresion felt by Harlemites.
ReplyDeleteTyler Sudderth
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI believe the poem I liked the most in this selection is "The Lynching". Never does he actually say things directly or say "what is going on", no; it is like a picture he is describing, where nothing is moving but somethi ng is happening. We don't know if this man is innocent or not (but very few people deserve that anyway) and actually we don't really think about it. I believe my favorite line of what I believe is a strong poem is: "His spirit in smoke ascended to high heaven".
ReplyDeleteThis is the first line of the poem, and I find it veryy powerful: His spirit in smoke, well.. no need for much explanation: he was burnt alive and the smoke coming out is his spirit, which is going up towards the sky. Didn't something like that happened to Jesus at some point? being sacrificed by the folly of men and his spirit "ascended to high heaven?"
He iis comparing this blackman to the christ here and just like for the christ, nobody said anything against it: "The women thronged to look, but never a one showed sorrow in her eyes of steely blue."
Benjamin Bertrand
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteClaude McKay's poem "The Lynching" initially stood out to me because of its title. The title of this poem is such an incredible understatement, which i believe to be McKay's intention. It does not at all prepare the reader for the rest of the poem. The straightforwardness of the title is quickly tossed aside for deep and humanistic descriptions of a man dying in vain. It never mentions the reasons for this man's execution, and in this exclusion invokes the unnecessary and unjust nature of the man's death. The beginning of the poem is uplifting in a depressing way; although the man is joining his father in heaven, it did not have to be through such painful and irrational means. The poem then turns from sour and slightly sweet to sour and extremely bitter, as the aftermath of the crime is hung on display for the passerby. The way in which the individuals watch without emotion the dead man, echo their inaction to prevent such an awful thing from happening. the final lines: "and the little lads, lynchers that were to be/ danced around the dreadful thing in fiendish glee", are to me the most powerful lines in the entire poem. The reader is presented with an immense problem and then told that such a problem will not be resolved. The violence perpetuates itself, as the children are instilled with a twisted sense of justice, misinterpreting the scene before them. This poem speaks not only of the unnecessary and immoral violence of lynching, but it also speaks of the sin of inaction and the perversion of youth. This is far from a pleasant and enjoyable poem, but i think that it is one of great importance; even though such crimes are now illegal and no longer publicly accepted, racism and hate still linger on. The idea that this poem leaves me with is that inaction is perhaps just as worse as the hate crime itself, and one must always fight to overcome such a luxury.
ReplyDeleteStuart Kinley
After reading aloud "Theme for English B" by Langston Hughes, I thought it was great. He is able to express his thoughts about being from Harlem and being the only black person in this class through this simple one-page paper. A couple of things I would like to note is that he repeats Harlem a lot in this poem. I think he does this so that we don't forget he is from Harlem. Also, there is a lot of alliteration. Line 23 demonstrates this well: "or records- Bessie, bop, or Bach." There is a noticeable rhyme scheme from lines 27-40. A lot of the lines end with the same sounds, like white/write, be/me, you/true, and free/B.
ReplyDeleteThis poem was one of the easiest to read thus far which made me like it even more. A poem resembling a story is much easier to visualize rather than some of the previous works we have covered. Thanks, Candi M
It is enlightening to go from "The Wasteland" to the writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Such a shift helps one to keep in mind that the intimidating grumbling of Eliot's elegy for Western history is only one stand to take towards modernism. (Elias Cannetti's offhand apothegm, "What was said was incomprehensible, and therefore held despotic sway over him," sums up the rationalist take on obscurity within art and intellection generally, but also expresses my personal hunch about the 'true' reasons behind the Pound/Eliot influence.) That is, while Eliot's description of historical malaise is the generally agreed-upon diagnosis of what is particularly modern about Modern Spirit(lessness), his total condemnation of it is far from the norm. Even other severe critics of modernity found some saving grace in the new "ungroundedness" or nihilism of the West -- Nietzsche saw the opportunity for self-creation, Kierkegaard saw an opportunity to become genuinely religious outside of Christendom, Baudelaire and others felt freed-up to pursue absolute aesthetic freedom and so on. With the Harlem figures we get a sense of emergence, a sense of "rebirth" whic implies hope even when venting despair.
ReplyDeleteWhy would black folks seek uplift if they knew they were being lifted towards a psychotic wasteland? That's simply not the way they saw it... Black intellectuals and artists were trying to thicken and add historical weight to the African American psyche ("The Negro Speaks of Rivers," etc.) at the same time that the white psyche seemed to be collapsing under its own weight. That it's odd and interesting to go back and forth between these two collective moods is, I guess, all I'm really saying. And that, in so doing, we come to see modernity as multiple rather than monolithic.