The first poem that I would like to discuss from this weeks assigned reading is Susan Howe’s Gabion Parapet (I think that’s the title?). This was the first poem after the Sonnet’s that I decided to read not only because it was the first poem after the Sonnet’s, but because of the presentation of this poem. The layout of it caught my attention right away. It is made up of sentences and words that are overlaying each other, some are turned upside down, and some are even staggered sideways. I will admit it took me a couple of minutes to figure out the correct way to read it. This one had me lost. On the left side of the page, she starts out the poem with “Parted with the Otterware at the three Rivers, & are Gone to have a Treaty with the French at Oswego & singing their war song The French Hatchet Message’s.” I have no idea how to interpret this. On the right side of the page, she has what looks like the “same” poem only upside-down. However, it starts with “Of the far nations over the lakes Messengers say The War Belt & singing their war song The French Hatchet Messages.” So she changed it up a little bit. I also notice that compared to her first poem (on the left side) the right sides “title” is the same way on the page, whereas the left side has Gabion right-side up and Parapet upside-down. I can only come to the conclusion that she placed her words and sentences on the page this way for a reason. Now only if I knew what it was….
The next poems that I would like to discuss are the set of poems in our packet by American poet and social activist Langston Hughes. I thought that his poems where the easiest for me to understand. He has a similar topic in all of the poems that we have read; that topic being African Americans and activism. He was a social activist and played a big role in the Harlem Renaissance. Knowing this about him, I found it very easy to pick up on the subtle hints in his poems for example: In the poem Parade, he says, “Motorcycle cops, white …” As soon as he brought the color of their skin into it, it dawned on me that this is a parade of activist marching for their rights; of African Americans marching to have the same rights as White Americans. The poem Dream Boggie also has subtle hints in it, which I found very easy to identify. For example the first stanza says, “Good morning, daddy! Ain’t you heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred?” A dream deferred… when I read this line, I immediately thought of Martin Luther King’s famous speech, “I have a dream.” A dream deferred it truly was. I also liked the second stanza of the poem Dream Boggie that says, “Listen closely: You’ll hear their feet Beating out and beating out a- You think It’s a happy beat?” I think that this is referring to the steady beat of all of the activists marching on the streets. The third and final poem by Langston Hughes that stood out to me was Children’s Rhymes. It has the same theme to it as the others, however I think it could be from an elder white person’s point of view. The poem starts out by saying, “When I was a child we used to play, “One-two-buckle my shoe!” and things like that. But now, Lord, listen at them little varmints! By what sends the white kids I ain’t sent: I know I can’t be President.” I interpreted this as an elder white person saying this about the little African American kids in the community shortly after the civil rights movement. The kids are saying that they know there is not equality for them. They then proceed to chant, “What don’t bug them white kids sure bugs me: We know everybody ain’t free!” I think another reason this particular poem stood out to me is because it is kids saying it. It just goes to show how they were affected by the things that happened during that time, and it also represents how long after the civil rights movement it actually took to get true equality.
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