Incident & Night, Death, Mississippi

Both Incident by Countee Cullen and Night, Death, Mississippi by Robert Hayden are poems written about African-Americans in the United States that experienced racism. Incident is a strong poem about an 8-year old child who was in Baltimore from May through December and all he could remember from his time there was an "incident" where a "Baltimorean" called him a "Nigger." I thought the word "keep" was a great word choice for Cullen to use because if he had said "I saw a Baltimorean looking straight at me" would mean that there was a person looking at him and that is all. But when he says, " I saw a Baltimorean keep looking straight at me" implies that the man was staring at him intently. This evokes an emotion of disgust or confussion or maybe some combination of the two, and after you find out what he say's to this young, innocent 8 year old child, you find out that he was probably staring at him with a look of disgust.



If that poem is not sad enough, the next one, Night, Death, Mississippi is even worse. This poem is about a man telling a boy about a black man being hung, assumably by the Klu Klux Klan. The first part of the poem (I) describes the scene of the hanging, but the 2nd part (II) begins with a terribly graphic sentence, "Then we beat them, he said, beat them till our arms was tired and the big old chains messy and red." That shows the true hate these people had for the African Americans. the poet also includes that the men felt it was better than beating a bear because a bear does not know why the hunter would want him dead, where as the black person would know. The saddest part in this poem is when a mother says to the children who would have been watching this event take place, "go fetch paw some water now so's he can wash that blood off him." That shows that at the time, this was accepted in Mississippi and that there was no remorse from anyone including the wives and children. The last line, which is italisized like 3 other lines in the poem which I do not understand why they are in italics, but it says, "O night betrayed by darkness not its own," and I am not sure what that means but I think it means that the African Americans may have been American, as night is darkness, however, the whites that were also Americans were not the same. Therefore, the blacks were betrayed by someone that was not themselves, meaning the whites. They make references to Jesus in this so I guess you could also say that Jesus was killed by people who were not his own because he was divine.

The Asians Dying

This poem spoke deeply to me. Although I am unsure of which war it was that is being spoken of, it reminded me of the Cambodian Genocide run by Pol Pot with the description of "rain falls into the open eyes of the dead", I have studied this Genocide and much of the photography from that era is extremely reminiscent of this particular line. Bodies of victims lay everywhere and so many villages were completely destroyed by the Pol Pot's regime. This poem captures the endless destruction brought on by war perfectly. It highlights the true pain that is felt by such massacre and the eternal effect which it has: "Pain the horizon/Remains/Overhead the seasons rock/ They are paper bells/Calling to nothing living". Events such as this are never forgotten and it takes years before rebuilding of a normal life can even begin. Despite each new day the pain still remains and with it comes the reminder that the world is completely altered and is a much darker and horrific place than once before. Two other lines which really stood out to me were "the dead go away like bruises/The blood vanishes into the poisoned farmland", I found this lines to be profound because they reflect the aftermath of war...the living must find their loved ones and their dead countrymen and bury them..a slow process quite like the disappearing of a bruise, and a dull pain emits after accepting the death of so many. The stolen lives of the victims have left their permanent mark on the land...their spilt blood has truly cursed and "poisoned" what was once prosperous country.

Heany's Poem

This poem has a frustrated and disappointed tone. The title of the poem, "From the Frontier of Writing" suggests that the speaker arrived at the frontier of writing and left unsatisfied with the procedure he was subject to. I believe he is speaking of the editing process and the criticism that comes with being a writer. The "tightness" in the first line refers to the writer’s confinement to the conventional way of writing and to the expectations of the editors and critics. Moving or driving in a car represents writing and rewriting while the checkpoints met along the way represent editors and critics. The process is painful and referred to as "pure interrogation." The writer is "a little emptier, a little spent" after the first round of criticism. However, he fears the critics and is subdued by them; he feels "that quiver in the self,/ subjugated, yes, and obedient." He does not even bother resisting because he knows that the critics and editors are the ones with the power represented by the soldiers with the guns. At the second check point, the soldiers are "repeating/ data about [him]." The word “data” is very impersonal and dehumanizes the writer. Everybody is waiting for him to mess up so they can jump in and mark him as a failure. The writer finally emerges "from behind the waterfall" where everything is obscured and blurry. He has been criticized and his work has been edited and now all is finished. The entire editing process is now only a fading memory as the soldiers are "receding/ like tree shadows into the polished windscreen."

From the Frontier of Writing

When I first read this poem I was caught by the immediate casual tone, with the first line containing the word "nilness" and "round", both words that are slightly different than their original root, making it feel like it is a real man behind the wheel of the car, with a certain dialect and background.

I also like how he puts the speaker of the poem onto the reader, starting in the second stanza with "towards your window, you catch sight of more...". But stepping back from the concept of the poem, there is a certain sadness that exists - with the military being side-by-side by ordinary every day people. Having them coexisting shouldn't happen, it's like it should only happen in a war zone. This sadness came through in certain words, like "cradled". The instant you hear that word, you think of cradling a baby and but that innocent image is immediately taken away when the next word is spoken: "guns". But the sadness is taken away by the relief of getting through the roadblock. The relief that leaves you with the feeling of being "a little emptier, a little spnet/ as always by the quiver in the self,/ subjugated, yes, and obedient."

Hayden's poem

I like Hayden’s poem a lot because it is very different from the other poems we have been reading. After all, the meaning of the poem is conveyed through dialogue and point of view. The speaker of the poem shifts to make the poem feel like a conversation. For example, the first line “A quavering cry. Screech owl?” reveals a change in perspective. “A quavering cry” sounds like the narrator of the poem speaking but with the “screech owl?” with the question mark, makes me ask who is talking? Now I am pulled further into the scene because as a reader I am experiencing different perspective of this night in Mississippi. This shift in speaker continues throughout the poem and is apparent through “Time was. A cry? A cry all right” The first part again sounds like the narrator but “A cry” “A cry all right” sets the tone for either an inner dialogue where the person reaffirms their first observation that there is indeed a cry or perhaps a third person is in the scene that answers the question of whether the strange sound is a “cry” and not the presupposed “screech owl.” I think there are at least two people in the scene as Hayden says, “ beat them till our arms was tired.” The “our” suggests that there is more than one person partaking in the killing of a black man. The short line format of the poem adds to the idea that there is a dialogue going on. Also, the terse line breaks convey the sense that the slaughter of the black man is not uncommon. The staccato feeling of the words and sudden line breaks go along with the tone of the poem as the murders have no feeling or emotion towards their actions.

Rhyme Scheme in Lycidas

After the first read of Milton's poem, after I was bombarded with images and references that I slowly cleared up, I was caught by the rhyme scheme of the work. The differences between the last two stanzas alone are quite major. At first, there seems to a pattern two the second to last stanza, beginning with "Weep no more" - it's a typical ABAB, but then it veers off from there.

A/ B/ A/ B/ B/ A/ C/ C/ D/ E/ D/ E/ G/ F/ G /H/ I/ A/ A/ J/ K

While I found that the repetition of certain end rhymes, like the two 'A's at the end of the stanza sort of pull the stanza together, at the same time it made it even more difficult to process. But I feel that this is a bard's song, and when one listens to a song you don't sit there and pick out and write down the end rhymes, but you listen to the story and the imagery.

The last stanza was more easily identified.

A/ B/ A/ B/ A/ B/ C/ C

When I read aloud the last two stanzas, focusing on the end rhymes (probably a bit too much), I found that the bard-like quality of the poem ended with the second to last stanza. The last one almost forces the reader back into the lilt that it's best to stay away from. Conceptually, the interpretation of the last stanza allows for hope, something absent in a story of a tragic drowning. "At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:/ Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new." The three words in the last line: 'tomorrow', 'fresh' and 'new', can only imply a brighter future, one brighter than the sad past.

I also really enjoyed the images in the second to last stanza. Starting from line 168 specifically, there is a feeling of hidden strength in the lines and rhythm that Milton creates. Each line becomes progressively more powerful. "...yet anon repairs", then "...and with new-spangled ore", then "Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:" and it continues with the image of Lycidas "mounted high", perhaps next to Apollo on his chariot. It ends with the hope that Lycidas is now among other talented like he, and even though he is lost to mortal mankind, he has become immortal through his afterlife. It reminds me of the theme from Yeats' Sailing to Byzantium; the theme of the conflict of the immortality of the sou and the mortality of the human flesh.

I thought this poem was interesting because the author seems to have strong beliefs, but there is a distinct difference between what he thinks and what he does. He could have demeaned her history but comparing it to his much longer history, one that was in place long before hers, but he does not “because she smiled so much and seemed delighted that I thought to bring her an orange juice back from the food car.” This reasoning is also in direct contrast to his next statement where he says, “I respect elders of every color,” because clearly he does not respect her in the way he describes her as a naïve and uninformed woman. He spends most of the poem wanting to tell her off, but in the end he can only muster to make “plans for what I would do and say the next time/somebody from the enemy thought I was one of them.”