Poetry about struggle: The African-American experience
Poetry is a medium which naturally lends itself to dealing with the topic of oppression. It enables members of historically-marginalized groups, such as African-Americans, to express themselves in covert ways that challenge the dominant paradigms of the societies in which they live. Through the use of the techniques of metaphor and simile, symbolism, and other literary methods, authors such as Paul Lawrence Dunbar, the author of "We Wear the Mask: and Langston Hughes, the author of "A Dream Deferred" could speak the unspoken truths about the racial obstacles which they were forced to deal with on a daily basis. The modern African-American poet Rita Dove's work is more elliptical and less explicitly referential to politics in her works like "Persephone, Falling -- " than that of Dunbar's and Hughes' but still touches on common themes of struggle, namely how one 'fall' from purity can result in the ruin of a human being, particularly an African-American whose sexuality is demonized by society.
In Dunbar's poem "We wear the mask," Dunbar contrasts the inner torment of African-Americans living in a prejudiced society with that of the social facade they are forced to wear living with whites. "WE wear the mask that grins and lies, / It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, -- / This debt we pay to human guile; / With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, / And mouth with myriad subtleties." The smile is both a figurative and a literal mask. During the age in which Dunbar wrote -- in the post-Reconstruction Era but before the Harlem Renaissance -- most of the available jobs for African-Americans were in occupations such as bellhops and maids....
" (lines 20-21) the journalist, the activist... must be the observer and not make the news. Lastly the point-of-view of the unnamed dead, "enemy" whose ears were cut off to use an example of cruelty and to elicit fear, "Some of the ears on the floor/caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on / the floor were pressed to the ground." (lines 31-33) Perhaps the ears were
Poetry by Knight and Groddeck There are facets of Etheridge Knight's poem, "A Wasp Woman Visits a Black Junkie in Prison" that both participate in a dying tradition as posited by Groddeck and which also attest to a variation of the notion of democracy -- which is far from ideal. In that respect, one can successfully defend the notion that this work of the author actually embraces more of the former
The horse race that Bukowski remarks upon as meaningless acts as a metaphor for life in general. We are all racing to win, but against the light of eternity, what does any of it mean. Are there any winners in life? This defeatist thinking is something everyone does; it is something that I have done, but when I step back and see that for myself the horse race is
A common fear is incompetence, resulting in often-heard comments such as 'I can't draw,' 'I can't sing,' and 'I can't dance.' These fears are, to some extent, rooted in the mistaken belief that skills in the arts are innate and inherited rather than sets of component skills that can be learned and integrated into a whole skill" (p. 147). Notwithstanding the adage concerning old dogs and new tricks, though,
For this, I found it to be quite interesting. With hints of rhyme, the progression of the tale expresses something dark, which is constantly eluded after the depiction of undesired ash. This poem altered in mere few, subtle absences and additions with the revised edition. Both poems provoke an interest as to what the main issue and dilemma remains for the poet. It progresses smoothly without escaping the vestige
Gallaudet.edu/englishworks/literature/poetry.html). Other components which are very important in understanding poetry's power to express include "tone" (the poet's attitude toward the subject); "theme" (what statement is the poet making regarding the subject being embraced?); and "structure" (the format through which the poem is present). The Unknown Citizen: Wystan Hugh Auden, the author of the poem, was not at all an unknown citizen. He became a very well-known and highly respected poet, in fact.
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