Project Blog 1

Our group is working with the poem, "We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar. Evan, Kyle, and Kristine are in my group. We are making a video that incorporates our own voices reading the poem. We have already recorded the poem, and we read certain words all together, but other than that we switch off speaking lines. We have all looked up pictures that correspond to certain lines in the poem, so we are making the poem reading match up with pictures. We are planning on having a speech video clip at the end of the poem, as well as incorporate a few lines of spirituals over some of the pictures in the video. The words on the screen will always be white over a black background, symbolizing the "white" covering of the mask over a black person (background of the screen). We are going to have some music in the background, but very quietly.

As it pertains to specific roles, we all are working on getting pictures to go behind the poetry reading, but Evan is working with the sound and video-editing process more than the content of the video. He is in charge of working with the recorded poem and the music to make it flow together. Kristine is working on the flyer with Evan, but because he will be editing more, she will do a lot of the flyer. Kyle and I are the writers and more analytical-less creative people in the group. So, we are paying attention to the details in the poem and finding ways to make sure that our rendition of the poem properly highlights the tones, figurative language, and other literary devices in the poem. So, we are working together to write the artist statement. Overall, we have a detailed plan and all have an assignment to begin working on this weekend. When we get together next, we plan on making a detailed outline of the video so that Evan can put it all together. We will write the artist statement together Tuesday after we both brainstorm ideas this weekend. Kristine will be brainstorming ideas for the flyer this weekend and will begin making that Tuesday as well.

Def Poetry Response

I think that the most effective Def poetry video I watched was Julian Curry's "Niggers Niggas & Niggaz." I felt as if the topic was extremely relatable today, especially because he was calling people out on a socially controversial topic. He was pulling them out of a state of complacency. He was calling them out on something that has gotten out of hand and needs to be stopped out of self-respect. The way he used his hand motions to portray the scenes he was talking about, such as the 3:00 train where the word "nigger" is heard often, helped you envision the scene. He throws his hands around, which is a powerful outward display of emotion. His voice sounds determined and yet also frustrated, which compels people to listen to him. He also brings the poem around from putting everyone down who says "nigger" to asking for a response. He asks that they work together to create a new "dream song, a theme song" called "those who used to be called niggers." The poem draws on so many emotions, from surprise, to guilt, to determination and sadness, and finally to a state of action. It is a pump-up poem, a poem to raise awareness and break down barriers. He does not want people to simply leave when they hear that word. He doesn't want people to look at the ground when they hear that word. He wants them to be proud of their ancestors who for so long labored and were labeled under that degrading term, and he wants them to defeat that word once and for all. It is a moving and compelling poem, especially with his in-your-face, call-you-out type of presentation.

Baraka's Poems and Essays

After reading the essays, it was clear that Baraka is a black nationalist who wanted nothing more than to see his people stand up for themselves in a way that was outspoken and decisive. He was unhappy with the black attitude, with the black artists (other than the jazz and blues musicians), and with the manner in which  they were attempting to gain equality. He also was anti-semitic. When reading the poems, I saw a lot of the same themes. He wrote in "Ka'Ba" about how the black people are beautiful, but they need to "return, destroy, and create." He wants them to embrace black nationalism, as seen again in "A Poem Some People Will Have to Understand" when he mentions that they cannot be complacent any more. They need to be people of action. This relates back to when he was saying in his essays that people complain about their situation, yet they remain unable to read and do not attempt to educate themselves. They are lazy, yet through these poems he is trying to inspire them to action. Again, in "Black Art," Baraka directly addresses his feelings about the black art's mediocrity. He articulates his feelings about how the "black" poems have been complacent in their nature. He wants poems about killing, assassination, and action. It is in this poem that his anti-semitism is revealed yet again when he uses examples of killing Jewish people in telling the blacks what types of poems to write. Therefore, Baraka's essays ideas reflect directly into his poems.

Favorite Poem

My favorite poem from today was "God works in a mysterious way." I really enjoyed it because it was at a level of difficulty that allowed me to ponder and analyze, but also at a level where I felt I could grasp the meaning of it. Some of the poems that we read for today were very interesting, but I found myself distracted from the reading because I kept turning around possible meanings in my head. "God works in mysterious ways" is so interesting because it has many subtle allusions, such as "veiling" and submitting "to winds," that refer to the Bible. I love finding subtle similarities in word choices such as this. I also like this type of poem because it is powerful in its ending. It does not end in a confusing way or a vague way like several other poems do. It ends with a command, a clear exertion of what the narrator is asking or even demanding from God. It is interesting that the narrator is almost pleading for God to take over and "mortify [their] wolves" and then ending with a statement that if He does not do so, they will assume their own sovereignty. This poem speaks a lot about human nature, faith, and the struggle with faith. I think it is interesting to read poems that are real, ones that are not sugar-coated, and this poem does just that. It takes a real-life issue that is so universal even now and turns it into a readable, yet still analyzable, poem. After re-reading what I wrote, I feel as if it boils down to the idea that I love poems that I can relate to, yet they still reflect on the time period we are learning about. I enjoy poems that are understandable, yet leave much room for reflection and analysis.

Gwendolyn Brooks' Poetry

Writing styles and themes varies significantly between every individual, but in Brooks' poems, a new view and a new perspective is offered into the war against racism. She provides the perspective of women during this time, whether they be white or black. It seems that sympathy and apathy is a much more common theme in her writing than in any of the previous poets that we have read. In the poem about Emmett Till's incident, Brooks seems to sympathize with the white woman's helplessness in her situation. It seems that the women are portrayed as the object that causes several racist fights and deaths, but that they are victims at the same time because their experiences are exaggerated to provide an excuse to kill black boys and men.  Also, rather than focusing on inequality in jobs or in general, the poems tended to focus on home life and domestic metaphors. This can be seen in the poem "kitchenette building" when Brooks writes about the realistic, tangible scene of chores and housework versus the loftiness of dreaming. Women had dreams, yet they were often set to the side and not allowed to have a say in what their husband or significant men in their race wanted to do. The poems of Brooks often allude to realistic conditions and state simple truths about their lives rather than display a desire to fight or to use violence to change the state of the country. They are simply more informative and anecdotal than they are used to rally people for a common cause, like the past poets we have read.

Blues and Jazz and Hughes

I listened to Ma Rainey's "Black Bottom," Louis Armstrong and Ma Rainey's "Countin' the Blues," and Jelly Roll Morton's "Honky Tonk Blues." I listened to the songs, then I read the poems by Hughes before listening to the songs again briefly. Hughes' poetry definitely exhibits blues-like rhythm as well as jazz in some poems. The poems are highly repetitive, which is characteristic of the songs at the time. Also, many of the poems are written in common terms and are not crisp sounding at the ends of lines, but rather give the reader a feeling of rhythm that is similar to that in the blues songs. The lines flow onto each other nicely, as do the lines in blues and jazz. The lines seem simple, yet when you imagine them sung in the blues style, they seem powerful and emotional, which is exactly what the blues and jazz music was capable of expressing, raw emotion and lament. As we talked about in class, blues and jazz involved a lot of improvisation, and this lines up with poems such as "Lament over Love." In this particular poem, it seems as if the speaker is talking to himself, deciding what he will do and his opinion over whether love is like wine or whiskey, as he writes. It gives the reader the feeling that the poem itself is improvisation. Other poems speak directly about the musical phenomena of the time, mentioning the musical style in "Trumpet Player." Hughes' style is very much in alignment with the blues and jazz rhythms, themes, and sound of improvisation, making it clear that he was inspired and influenced by the cultural music of his time.

Discussion Questions

1. What do the descriptions given in Toomer's "Portrait in Georgia" paint a portrait of? Why do you think he chose the imagery that he did- does it allude to anything of cultural importance or is it simply painting a picture of a person?

2. In Tolson's "Lambda," how does the use of historical references and biblical allusions affect the meaning and significance of the poem?

Writing Style- Blog 1

Writing is a form of art and it can be done in a large variety of styles. One such style is a very informal form of writing, writing in the vernacular or common language of a group or culture. This is seen very often in poems such as "Slim Greer." Using simple, common terms to tell a story in a poem is easy to read and to understand- it often expresses raw emotion better than lofty sounding poems because formal works seem more scripted in a way. Brown writes his poems, especially his Slim Greer series, in informal language. It seems as if his primary audience would be African Americans who feel torn between being "white" and maintaining their culture. They long to do normal things and to be themselves fully, such as having the ability to laugh aloud, but they are prohibited. Brown puts this law into an almost humorous anecdote and relays it through his poem "Slim in Atlanta." Since blacks were not allowed to laugh out loud, it is somewhat ironic that he wrote about not being able to laugh in a humorous way. Informal writing's advantage is that you can relate to your culture in a real way- laying it all on the table without "sugar-coating" anything. The focus can be on content rather than in formality. However, the disadvantage is that in the past, it especially limited who would be willing to take the writing seriously or consider it worthy of being read. White people would dismiss the bad grammar as lacking intelligence, rather than lacking education that was withheld from the black people. The advantage of formal writing is that it would be read by whites and would be in a language that caught their eye, one that would be considered intelligent. They would be shocked as to how well it was written, so they would read on and inevitably absorb the content as well. This can be seen in the poem "Sympathy," by Dunbar. He uses beautiful, sophisticated figurative language to express the African American's pleas for freedom and hope for freedom. This could be seen as a cry for sympathy from the whites who read it. The language would make them read on, and hopefully the message would be understood. By sounding very formal, it would appeal to the whites as a worthy cause to help because it shows blacks have untapped potential and intelligence. The disadvantages to formal writing are that they mask the emotions and cries of the blacks for freedom- it puts their struggle in beautiful sounding words, which seems to contradict the idea of struggle and suffering itself.