Marilyn Hacker: Exiles

Exiles

Her brown falcon perches above the sink
as steaming water forks over my hands.
Below the wrists they shrivel and turn pink.
I am in exile in my own land.

Her half-grown cats scuffle across the floor
trailing a slime of blood from where they fed.
I lock the door. They claw under the door.
I am an exile in my own bed.

Her spotted mongrel, bristling with red mange,
sleeps on the threshold of the Third Street bar
where I drink brandy as the couples change.
I am in exile where my neighbors are.

On the pavement, cans of ashes burn.
Her green lizard scuttles from the light
around torn cardboard charred to glowing fern.
I am in exile in my own sight.

Her blond child sits on the stoop when I come
back at night. Cold hands, blue lids; we both
need sleep. She tells me she is going to die.
I am in exile in my own youth.

Lady of distances, this fire, this water,
this earth makes sanctuary where I stand.
Call of your animals and your blond daughter,
I am in exile in my own hands.


The poem "Exiles" by Marilyn Hacker discusses someone that lives and learns to relax when things tend to happen when she is surrounded by it. The lady that is involved in the story learns to take away and release everything that tends to create a stress to her a create a distraction towards her presence. She tries to to hide her feelings by saying i am in exile in my own hands. Exile means the thought of being away and or restricted from coming to a certain place.
     


 

Marilyn Hacker: Winter Numbers

“Lovely and unremarkable, the clutter
of mugs and books, the almost-empty Fig
Newtons box, thick dishes in a big
tin tray, the knife still standing in the butter,
change like the color of river water
in the delicate shift to day. Thin fog
veils the hedges, where a neighbor dog
makes rounds. 'Go to bed. It doesn't matter
about the washing-up. Take this book along.'
Whatever it was we said that night is gone,
framed like a photograph nobody took.
Stretched out on a camp cot with the book,
I think that we will talk all night again,
there, or another where, but I am wrong.”


Marilyn Hacker's Winter Number discusses things that seem to dissapear in a persons life. The line that says "Thin fog veils the hedges, where a neighbor dog makes rounds" shows a similarity between one another. It says that a dog could stay up for a long period of time and so does thin fog that veils the hedges.

Marilyn Hacker: Scars On Paper

Scars on Paper

An unwrapped icon, too potent to touch,
she freed my breasts from the camp Empire dress.
Now one of them's the shadow of a breast
with a lost object's half-life, with as much
life as an anecdotal photograph:
me, Kim and Iva, all stripped to the waist,
hiking near Russian River on June first
'79: Iva's five-and-a-half.
While she was almost twenty, wearing black
T-shirts in D.C., where we hadn't met.
You lay your palm, my love, on my flat chest.
In lines alive with what is not regret,
she takes her own path past, doesn't turn back.
Persistently, on paper, we exist.

Persistently, on paper, we exist.
You'd touch me if you could, but you're, in fact,
three thousand miles away. And my intact
body is eighteen months paper: the past
a fragile eighteen months regime of trust
in slash-and-burn, in vitamin pills, backed
by no statistics. Each day I enact
survivor's rituals, blessing the crust
I tear from the warm loaf, blessing the hours
in which I didn't or in which I did
consider my own death. I am not yet
statistically a survivor (that
is sixty months). On paper, someone flowers
and flares alive. I knew her. But she's dead.

She flares alive. I knew her. But she's dead.
I flirted with her, might have been her friend,
but transatlantic schedules intervened.
She wrote a book about her Freedom Ride,
the wary elders whom she taught to read,
— herself half-British, twenty-six, white-blonde,
with thirty years to live.
And I happened
to open up The Nation to that bad
news which I otherwise might not have known
(not breast cancer: cancer of the brain).
Words take the absent friend away again.
Alone, I think, she called, alone, upon
her courage, tried in ways she'd not have wished
by pain and fear: her courage, extinguished.

The pain and fear some courage extinguished
at disaster's denouement come back
daily, banal: is that brownish-black
mole the next chapter? Was the ache enmeshed
between my chest and armpit when I washed
rogue cells' new claw, or just a muscle ache?
I'm not yet desperate enough to take
comfort in being predeceased: the anguish
when the Harlem doctor, the Jewish dancer,
die of AIDS, the Boston seminary's
dean succumbs "after brief illness" to cancer.
I like mossed slabs in country cemeteries
with wide-paced dates, candles in jars, whose tallow
glows on summer evenings, desk-lamp yellow.

Aglow in summer evening, a desk-lamp's yellow
moonlight peruses notebooks, houseplants, texts,
while an aging woman thinks of sex
in the present tense. Desire may follow,
urgent or elegant, cut raw or mellow
with wine and ripe black figs: a proof, the next
course, a simple question, the complex
response, a burning sweetness she will swallow.
The opening mind is sexual and ready
to embrace, incarnate in its prime.
Rippling concentrically from summer's gold
disc, desire's iris expands, steady
with blood beat. Each time implies the next time.
The aging woman hopes she will grow old.

The aging woman hopes she will grow old.
A younger woman has a dazzling vision
of bleeding wrists, her own, the clean incisions
suddenly there, two open mouths. They told
their speechless secrets, witnesses not called
to what occurred with as little volition
of hers as these phantom wounds.
Intense precision
of scars, in flesh, in spirit. I'm enrolled
by mine in ranks where now I'm "being brave"
if I take off my shirt in a hot crowd
sunbathing, or demonstrating for Dyke Pride.
Her bravery counters the kitchen knives'
insinuation that the scars be made.
With, or despite our scars, we stay alive.

"With, or despite our scars, we stayed alive
until the Contras or the Government
or rebel troops came, until we were sent
to 'relocation camps' until the archives
burned, until we dug the ditch, the grave
beside the aspen grove where adolescent
boys used to cut class, until we went
to the precinct house, eager to behave
like citizens..."
I count my hours and days,
finger for luck the word-scarred table which
is not my witness, shares all innocent
objects' silence: a tin plate, a basement
door, a spade, barbed wire, a ring of keys,
an unwrapped icon, too potent to touch.


In this poem it's very heartbroken, and it talks about how people around her is dying from cancer. Her life is very sad and it's to much going on in her life. She's going through struggles dealing with both her friends and family. While trying to cope with her daily life she tries to handle what had happen in the past. She tells about her past about how she was sent to relocation camps and escaped when it caught on fire.



 

Marilyn Hacker: Nearly A Valediction

Nearly A Valediction

You happened to me. I was happened to
like an abandoned building by a bull-
dozer, like the van that missed my skull
happened a two-inch gash across my chin.
You were as deep down as I've ever been.
You were inside me like my pulse. A new-
born flailing toward maternal heartbeat through
the shock of cold and glare: when you were gone,
swaddled in strange air I was that alone
again, inventing life left after you.

I don't want to remember you as that
four o'clock in the morning eight months long
after you happened to me like a wrong
number at midnight that blew up the phone
bill to an astronomical unknown
quantity in a foreign currency.
The U.S. dollar dived since you happened to me.
You've grown into your skin since then; you've grown
into the space you measure with someone
you can love back without a caveat.

While I love somebody I learn to live
with through the downpulled winter days' routine
wakings and sleepings, half-and-half caffeine-
assisted mornings, laundry, stock-pots, dust-
balls in the hallway, lists instead of longing, trust
that what comes next comes after what came first.
She'll never be a story I make up.
You were the one I didn't know where to stop.
If I had blamed you, now I could forgive
you, but what made my cold hand, back in prox-
imity to your hair, your mouth, your mind,
want where it no way ought to be, defined
by where it was, and was and was until
the whole globed swelling liquefied and spilled
through one cheek's nap, a syllable, a tear,
was never blame, whatever I wished it were.
You were the weather in my neighborhood.
You were the epic in the episode.
You were the year poised on the equinox.

In this poem  I found that nearly every line consisted of ten syllables, nearly. Of course, there are breaks in this pattern and they are used to change the tone of the poem or escalate an emotional phrase. The first break in this pattern occurs in the first stanza when the poem reads: "dozer, like the van that missed my skull". Here, the line is filled with nine syllables as compared to the surrounding lines composed of ten. Because the reader has  found the ten-syallable rhythm prior to reading this line, a slight pause in inserted after the word "skull" . It seemed like there was a need to fill the gap. "like the van that missed my skull" is a really powerful and visual phrase and that added pause works to further illustrate this portrait inside your head. It furthers the tone of loss of control in the stanza.
In the second stanza, "The U.S. dollar dived since you happened to me" is an eleven-syallable break from the ten-syllable pattern. The emotional tone of this complete thought stands out in the stanza as a result. The line is a complete thought, a full sentence, and it feels like something that you would throw at someone if you were in an argument, something that you would just blurt out...and this is how it comes across in the poem. It's a break, of some kind of emotion anger and passion. And then, the stanza returns to it's ten-syllable pattern.

Marilyn Hacker:The Bus Driver

What has gotten into the bus driver
Who has left his bus, who has sat down
On a curb on the Place de l'Opéra
Where he slips into the ease of being
Nothing more than his own tears? The passers-by
Who bend over such a shared and
Presentable sorrow would like him
To tell them that the wind used to know
How to come out of the woods towards a woman's dress,
Or that one day his brother said to him
Even your shadow wants nothing to do with you.
His feet in a puddle, the bus driver
Can only repeat This work is hard
And people aren't kind.


Marilyn Hacker's the bus driver, seems depressing it walks about a bus driver that is on a curve that is having a bad day. he is sad becaue of how hard it is to be a driver. the imagery is that the bus driver doesn't feel like people doesn't appreciate what he does. Then he runs to sit on a curb and cry his eyes out. He gets frustrated about how hard is job is and he thinks people don't care about him.

Marilyn Hacker: Cancer Winter

 

I woke up, and the surgeon said, ‘You’re cured.’ Strapped to the gurney, in the cotton gown and pants I was wearing when they slid me down onto the table, made news straps secure while I stared at the hydra-headed O.R. lamp, I took in the tall, confident, brown-skinned man, and the ache I couldn’t quite call pain from where my right breast wasn’t anymore to my armpit. A not-yet-talking head, I bit dry my lips. What else could he have said? And then my love was there in a hospital coat; then my old love, still young and very scared. Then I, alone, graphed clock hands’ asymptote to noon, when I would be wheeled back upstairs. (...)

The hand that held the cup next was my daughter’s – who would be holding shirts for me to wear, sleeve out, for my bum arm. She’d wash my hair (not falling yet), strew teenager’s disorder in the kitchen, help me out of the bathwater. A dozen times, she looked at the long scar studded with staples, where I’d suckled her, and didn’t turn. She took me / I brought her to the surgeon’s office, where she’d hold my hand, while his sure hand, with its neat tool, snipped the steel, as on a revised manuscript radically rewritten since my star turn nursing her without a ‘nursing bra’ from small, firm breasts, a twenty-five-year-old’s.

These fourteen sonnets interweave themselves to form a unified work, just as lines are repeated or echoed to interweave in the individual poems, providing an account of the author’s experience of breast cancer, radical mastectomy, and recovery. The medical details appear more prominently in the early sonnets, but gradually, other themes take precedence: suffering and how to compare relative degrees of suffering among individuals and groups; the reaction of oneself and one’s lovers to a disfigured body; and the search for affirmation, for a reason to want to live and be rid of the horror of disease and death.  
The theme of comparative suffering recurs in the twelfth sonnet, as Hacker remembers friends who died, or strangers whose death she read of, all of whose requiems she feels inadequate to sing. Hacker even acknowledges in the fifth sonnet that this recurring issue has its limits, "a form of gallows humor," but her poems are nevertheless her effort to "do what I can." Given that so many sufferers find these things nearly unspeakable--whether war crimes or diseases--the sequence of sonnets is a powerful achievement.

Gwendolyn Brooks: The Bean Eaters

They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.
Dinner is a casual affair.
Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood,
Tin flatware.

Two who are Mostly Good.
Two who have lived their day,
But keep on putting on their clothes
And putting things away.

And remembering . . .
Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,
As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that
          is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths,
          tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.


The poem is about a couple who eat beans. It's a sufficiently important characteristic that Brooks makes it the title. It's the opening words "They eat beans mostly..." Hardly a riveting choice of meal. It's rather bland and unappetising. Difficult to believe that the old pair eat beans so often by choice. There's also a regularity and routine to their meals. This is the characteristic which, given the title choice, apparently defines the old pair. What else do we know about them? They're old, yellow and, given that very long list of objects that closes the poem, hoarders.

Gwendolyn Brooks: A Song In The front Yard

I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.

I want a peek at the back

Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.

A girl gets sick of a rose.

I want to go in the back yard now

And maybe down the alley,

To where the charity children play.

I want a good time today.

They do some wonderful things.

They have some wonderful fun.

My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine

How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.

My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae

Will grow up to be a bad woman.

That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late

(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).

But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.

And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,

And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace

And strut down the streets with paint on my face.

This poem is about a girl who wants to do her own thing and follow her own rules. The girl wants to experience the other side of life and be adventurous. It is also the voice of a woman remembering how her mother kept her from her backyard. She now wishes she could go to her backyard and experience the backyard life.

Gwendolyn Brooks: The Crazy Woman

I shall not sing a May song.
A May song should be gay.
I'll wait until November
And sing a song of gray.

I'll wait until November
That is the time for me.
I'll go out in the frosty dark
And sing most terribly.
And all the little people
Will stare at me and say,
"That is the Crazy Woman
Who would not sing in May."

Gwendolyn Brooks "The Crazy Woman" is about a woman that waits to a sing a song that is sad... but she is unwilling to sing it in a happy month, May. In November, a sad month, she will sing it most terribly. This poem also describes how she does not care what others think of her. She knows that people think she is crazy, but brushes that fact off to the side. She knows that if she loves to do it it wouldnt really matter about everything else that is going on.

Marilyn Hacker: Morning News

Spring wafts up the smell of bus exhaust, of bread
and fried potatoes, tips green on the branches,
repeats old news: arrogance, ignorance, war.
A cinder-block wall shared by two houses
is new rubble. On one side was a kitchen
sink and a cupboard, on the other was
a bed, a bookshelf, three framed photographs.
Glass is shattered across the photographs;
two half-circles of hardened pocket bread
sit on the cupboard. There provisionally was
shelter, a plastic truck under the branches
of a fig tree. A knife flashed in the kitchen,
merely dicing garlic. Engines of war
move inexorably toward certain houses
while citizens sit safe in other houses
reading the newspaper, whose photographs
make sanitized excuses for the war.
There are innumerable kinds of bread
brought up from bakeries, baked in the kitchen:
the date, the latitude, tell which one was
dropped by a child beneath the bloodied branches.
The uncontrolled and multifurcate branches
of possibility infiltrate houses'
walls, windowframes, ceilings. Where there was
a tower, a town: ash and burnt wires, a graph
on a distant computer screen. Elsewhere, a kitchen
table's setting gapes, where children bred
to branch into new lives were culled for war.
Who wore this starched smocked cotton dress? Who wore
this jersey blazoned for the local branch
of the district soccer team? Who left this black bread
and this flat gold bread in their abandoned houses?
Whose father begged for mercy in the kitchen?
Whose memory will frame the photograph
and use the memory for what it was
never meant for by this girl, that old man, who was
caught on a ball field, near a window: war,
exhorted through the grief a photograph
revives. (Or was the team a covert branch
of a banned group; were maps drawn in the kitchen,
a bomb thrust in a hollowed loaf of bread?)
What did the old men pray for in their houses
of prayer, the teachers teach in schoolhouses
between blackouts and blasts, when each word was
flensed by new censure, books exchanged for bread,
both hostage to the happenstance of war?
Sometimes the only schoolroom is a kitchen.
Outside the window, black strokes on a graph
of broken glass, birds line up on bare branches.
"This letter curves, this one spreads its branches
like friends holding hands outside their houses."
Was the lesson stopped by gunfire? Was
there panic, silence? Does a torn photograph
still gather children in the teacher's kitchen?
Are they there meticulously learning war-
time lessons with the signs for house, book, bread?


Marilyn Hacker's poem "Morning News," tells of a town during a time of war. The story deals with what's left of americans after they get back from defending their country. The line
"Outside the window, black strokes on a graph of broken glass, birds line up on bare branches."line 50-51 states the struggles that the people in the community have to deal with in order to survive. The line deals with imagery because it describes one tragedy that ended up happening upon their return. The scenic describes the scenery between the soldies and what they deal with when they were participating in the war.

Marilyn Hacker:Villanelle

"Every day our bodies separate,

exploded torn and dazed.

Not understanding what we celebrate


we grope through languages and hesitate

and touch each other, speechless and amazed;

and every day our bodies separate


us farther from our planned, deliberate

ironic lives. I am afraid, disphased,

not understanding what we celebrate


when our fused limbs and lips communicate

the unlettered power we have raised.

Every day our bodies' separate


routines are harder to perpetuate.

In wordless darkness we learn wordless praise,

not understanding what we celebrate;


wake to ourselves, exhausted, in the late

morning as the wind tears off the haze,

not understanding how we celebrate
our bodies. Every day we separate."


Marilyn Hacker uses the structure of a villanelle to give her poem a different quality. The frequent repetition of the same words and sounds throughout the poem gives a sense of déjà vu, which is frustrating,and appealing. The cycle created by the sounds of the poem echoes one of the poem's major themes, the cycle of celebration and separation. Marilyn Hacker explores the idea that lovers alternate between celebration of sexual relations and physical and emotional separation, creating an ever-changing but repetitive pattern that never resolves.
Marilyn Hacker uses a poetic device called enjambment to further reinforce the themes of her poem. Enjambment means that sentences are not broken up neatly into lines or stanzas, but cut across stanzas and end and begin in the middle of lines. This gives the poem a sense of speed. The reader wants to rush on to the next period. It allows Marilyn Hacker to fit long, and complex sentences into a poem with short lines. This creates the sense that the poem is struggling to break free of its bonds.
  Although its structure is repetitive, Marilyn Hacker's villanelle is dynamic because each time something reappears it has gained a layer of meaning. Far from repeating the same idea over and over, Marilyn Hacker creates sonmething that increases in significance as it progresses. The poem ends in much the same way as it begins, but by the end, the two simple phrases have become filled with meaning. This mimics the progress of human relationship, which grows and deepens as two partners become more in tune with each other's bodies, more emotionally committed, and more comfortable expressing their relations.

Marilyn Hacker: The Boy

It is the boy in me who's looking out
the window, while someone across the street
mends a pillowcase, clouds shift, the gutter spout
pours rain, someone else lights a cigarette?

(Because he flinched, because he didn't whirl
around, face them, because he didn't hurl
the challenge back—"Fascists?"—not "Faggots"—Swine!
he briefly wonders—if he were a girl . . .)
He writes a line. He crosses out a line.

I'll never be a man, but there's a boy
crossing out words: the rain, the linen-mender,
are all the homework he will do today.
The absence and the priviledge of gender

confound in him, soprano, clumsy, frail.
Not neuter—neutral human, and unmarked,
the younger brother in the fairy tale
except, boys shouted "Jew!" across the park

at him when he was coming home from school.
The book that he just read, about the war,
the partisans, is less a terrible
and thrilling story, more a warning, more

a code, and he must puzzle out the code.
He has short hair, a red sweatshirt. They know
something about him—that he should be proud
of? That's shameful if it shows?

That got you killed in 1942.
In his story, do the partisans
have sons? Have grandparents? Is he a Jew
more than he is a boy, who'll be a man

someday? Someone who'll never be a man
looks out the window at the rain he thought
might stop. He reads the sentence he began.
He writes down something that he crosses out.

While analyzing this poem, it comes across that this person is using his life as a metaphor that his ways inside of him indicates that he will always be a boy instead of a man. The fact that the poem is addressing gender, it looks like he is questioning his sexuality because he was maybe teased and didn’t fight back. Because he flinched and didn’t stand up for himself, he wonders if it would have been different if he were a girl. This was a very painful memory of an experience that he had in his past but he then he ‘writes a line, then crosses out a line. He feels that he will never be a man but theres a boy inside of him that is very frail.  He had just read a book about war that embarked on something similar and made him wonder if the boys could sense something about him inside that made them want to taunt and tease him and how ‘shameful if it shows’ he says. In the story he wonders about different things about the partisans like is the character more of a Jew than a boy who will someday be a man? He feels that he will never actually be a man as he looks out the window. But then he begins to write another sentence, but then crosses it out. He cannot focus.

Gwendolyn Brooks:To Be In Love

To be in love
Is to touch with a lighter hand.
In yourself you stretch, you are well.
You look at things
Through his eyes.
A cardinal is red.
A sky is blue.
Suddenly you know he knows too.
He is not there but
You know you are tasting together
The winter, or a light spring weather.
His hand to take your hand is overmuch.
Too much to bear.
You cannot look in his eyes
Because your pulse must not say
What must not be said.
When he
Shuts a door-
Is not there_
Your arms are water.
And you are free
With a ghastly freedom.
You are the beautiful half
Of a golden hurt.
You remember and covet his mouth
To touch, to whisper on.
Oh when to declare
Is certain Death!
Oh when to apprize
Is to mesmerize,
To see fall down, the Column of Gold,
Into the commonest ash.

To analyze this poem is like trying to define love while we already know what love is and each and every person will always their own or a different meaning. In this poem, it is saying that love makes you no longer look at life through your eyes but also through your lover’s eyes. What you feel he feels, what he feels, you feel; that is love. This is the message when the author says “You look at things through his eyes. A cardinal is red. A sky is blue. Suddenly you know he knows too. He is not there but you know you are tasting together.  Not only that, but a sense of respect is gained when one falls in love also. So, when something bad happens to break up the relationship,  it truly hurts her. She suffered really bad but tries to overlook all the bad thoughts she is having but the thoughts keep coming back over and over again. Even though the feelings she is having are still inside of her, she still cannot accept the fact that it is over because it becomes like a certain “death” to her. The poem is saying that love is very easy to come across but not always an easy thing to forget. It really makes a person hurt inside when they get hurt  and may look a certain way on the outside but painful on the inside.

Gwendolyn Brooks:Truth

And if sun comes
How shall we greet him?
Shall we not dread him,
Shall we not fear him
After so lengthy a
Session with shade?

Though we have wept for him,
Though we have prayed
All through the night-years—
What if we wake one shimmering morning to
Hear the fierce hammering
Of his firm knuckles
Hard on the door?

Shall we not shudder?—
Shall we not flee
Into the shelter, the dear thick shelter
Of the familiar
Propitious haze?

Sweet is it, sweet is it
To sleep in the coolness
Of snug unawareness.

The dark hangs heavily
Over the eyes.

This poem is saying that we have always long for the truth to be told for a long time for all different types of situations.  For if the truth comes,  how shall we handle it, how will we handle it?  It makes me wonder since we are always asking people to tell the truth , do we really want the truth? I say this because once it comes, it sometimes makes people unhappy and after they have not know the truth for such a long time. We even have times that we are praying that the truth is revealed  but when it comes it comes so hard making a person uncomfortable or even sad.  When it mentions  “Shall we not shudder?- Shall we not flee, it is saying that we probably should not always go looking for the truth because it can really drain you.  This poem uses a whole lot of metaphors and connotations to describe how the truth can not be so pleasant all the time causing a lot of dismay in peoples lives.

 

           

 

 

 

Gwendolyn Brooks: The Ballad of Rudolph Reed

Rudolph Reed was oaken.
His wife was oaken too.
And his two good girls and his good little man
Oakened as they grew.

"I am not hungry for berries.
I am not hungry for bread.
But hungry hungry for a house
Where at night a man in bed

"May never hear the plaster
Stir as if in pain.
May never hear the roaches
Falling like fat rain.

"Where never wife and children need
Go blinking through the gloom.
Where every room of many rooms
Will be full of room.

"Oh my home may have its east or west
Or north or south behind it.
All I know is I shall know it,
And fight for it when I find it."

The agent's steep and steady stare
Corroded to a grin.
Why you black old, tough old hell of a man,
Move your family in!

Nary a grin grinned Rudolph Reed,
Nary a curse cursed he,
But moved in his House. With his dark little wife,
And his dark little children three.

A neighbor would look, with a yawning eye
That squeezed into a slit.
But the Rudolph Reeds and children three
Were too joyous to notice it.

For were they not firm in a home of their own
With windows everywhere
And a beautiful banistered stair
And a front yard for flowers and a back for grass?

 

The first night, a rock, big as two fists.
The second, a rock big as three.
But nary a curse cursed Rudolph Reed.
(Though oaken as man could be.)

The third night, a silvery ring of glass.
Patience arched to endure,
But he looked, and lo! small Mabel's blood
Was staining her gaze so pure.

Then up did rise our Roodoplh Reed
And pressed the hand of his wife,
And went to the door with a thirty-four
And a beastly butcher knife.

He ran like a mad thing into the night
And the words in his mouth were stinking

By the time he had hurt his first white man
He was no longer thinking.

By the time he had hurt his fourth white man
Rudolph Reed was dead.
His neighbors gathered and kicked his corpse.
"Nigger--" his neighbors said.

Small Mabel whimpered all night long,
For calling herself the cause.
Her oak-eyed mother did no thing
But change the bloody gauze.

This poem is making  a point about the way discrimination took place a long time ago. A man by the name of Rudolph Reed wanted to make a life for his family the same as whites so he moved them to somewhere that they could live life the same as others and be happy. He said he did not need food and he did not need bread, all he wanted was a place that him and his family could comfortably lay their head.  It was a dream of his to one day be able to provide this way for his family and he was not going to let anything get in his way, even it is was a “white only” neighborhood.  But once he got where he thought they would be able to enjoy their living standards, a big rock as big as two fists came through the window. Rudolph Reed and his family really just ignored it in a way until around the third night there. This is when his wife’s blood was seen and his patience was really gone by then. He had to come to his wife’s side to help her and by the end of the night, he was at the door with a butcher knife. He ran outside taking it out on the white man causing him harm and he was no longer thinking straight. Each time it continued to happen, all he thought about was defending his family. By the time he had hurt the fourth white man that attempted to attack him and his family, he was dead. The neighbors showed no remorse as his wife cried in the night blaming herself. Her mother did nothing at all but change the bloody gauze.

Gwendolyn Brooks:Sadie and Maud

Maud went to college.
Sadie stayed home.
Sadie scraped life
With a fine toothed comb.

She didn't leave a tangle in
Her comb found every strand.
Sadie was one of the livingest chicks
In all the land.

Sadie bore two babies
Under her maiden name.
Maud and Ma and Papa
Nearly died of shame.

When Sadie said her last so-long
Her girls struck out from home.
(Sadie left as heritage
Her fine-toothed comb.)

Maud, who went to college,
Is a thin brown mouse.
She is living all alone
In this old house.

This poem is comparing the lives of Sadie to Maud and how it landed them in very different places in life. It starts off by saying how Maud was the one that went to college and I know everyone thinks that the one who goes to college will probably be the one that will always come out on top in life. In this case, Sadie was the one in this poem that made the most out of life because of how she lived her life. It is saying that she is one of the most “livingest” chicks which probably means that she really enjoying and enhancing what life is giving her. She is “scraping life with a fine tooth comb” by celebrating and making the most of what everything around is offering her. She made sure that she did not miss a thing around even though she did not go to college. She wanted to make sure that she was happy and content with what it was offering. Although she made a life for herself, she went on to have two kids while she was unwed that really embarrassed Maud and Ma and Papa and made them ashamed. So eventually she left home but left a reputation behind also. However, Maud, the one who went to college, was the one that really missed out on life because she is now living all alone in the old house.

 

Gwendolyn Brooks:Of Robert Frost

There is a little lightning in his eyes.
Iron at the mouth.
His brows ride neither too far up nor down.

He is splendid. With a place to stand.

Some glowing in the common blood.
Some specialness within.

This poem is saying that Robert Frost was just an ordinary guy. There was nothing spectacular about him starting from the way his eyes look to the way his mouth was made. Even the way his eyebrows formed, being that they were not too far up or too far down on his face. Even though there was nothing original about him, he was stated to be a very superb person that held a huge place in the community or world. The fact that he had some glowing in the common blood and some specialness within lets me know that a person does not have to look a certain way in life to be special or have a special place in the world. There could be things that they are doing around us that makes them stand out as a person and making a mark that will be around for a very long time. It sorta makes me think about how we can judge a book by its cover and miss out on a lot of things and people around us that we take for granted. You don’t have to look the part to be an individual that makes a mark in this world.

Gwendolyn Brooks: My Dreams, My Works, Must Wait Till After Hell

I hold my honey and I store my bread
In little jars and cabinets of my will.
I label clearly, and each latch and lid
I bid, Be firm till I return from hell.
I am very hungry. I am incomplete.
And none can give me any word but Wait,
The puny light. I keep my eyes pointed in;
Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt
Drag out to their last dregs and I resume
On such legs as are left me, in such heart
As I can manage, remember to go home,
My taste will not have turned insensitive
To honey and bread old purity could love.


                The analysis of the poem seems very simple to begin with. My opinion on the poem appears to sound like a person who has discovered they have a serious illness and they are about to undergo an intensive round of therapies in order to attempt to beat it. In the poem written above the author uses the terms honey and bread as a metaphor meaning dreams. The poem is involving of course the author in her lifetime situations. This poem seems very differently from her other ones. It's dark, it's short, and it has a more personal subject from these previously stated poems. The poems also seem different from other ones ive read because of the ambition it has in its meaning. The meaning of this poem describes the times she has been through hell and she cant come to reality with her dreams. This poem is about tough times and hurt and hopelessness and depression. Of course the author wants to wait until her tough times of hell and depression to go away so she would be able to overcome it and go back to the way things are suppose to be. Gwendolyn Brooks has the feeling of being lost in the world. Having her dreams and work materialized into extremely humble, and maybe cheap, foods, shows how helpless she feels. The poem identifies that she did something horrible in her past and all of her mistakes is a result of sin. She seems punished for her mistakes and she cant obtain her "honey" which is a characteristic of her dreams that she has. She also states "My taste will not have turned insensitive." which means everything will go back correctly when she is done suffering through whatever she is going through. Gwendolyn Brooks seems like a very passionate woman but her studies for sin seems to really bother her and she hopes to overcome her fear so everything can go back to normal with her future.

Marilyn Hacker:Fourteen

We shopped for dresses which were always wrong:

sweatshop approximations of the lean-

lines girls' wear I studied in Seventeen

The armholes pinched, the belt didn't belong,

the skirt drooped forward (I'd be told at school).

Our odd-lot bargains deformed the image,

but she and I loved Saturday rummage.

One day she listed Loehmann's. Drool

wet her chin. Stumbling, she screamed at me. Dropping

our parcels on the pavement, she fell in

what looked like a fit. I guessed: insulin.

The cop said, "Drunk," and called an ambulance

while she cursed me and slapped away my hands.

When I need a mother, I still go shopping.

 

 

 

 

After i read the poem i realized that it seems more depressed than exciting. The title is what I believe the girl's age and how she is still being influenced by society. A girl at the age of fourteen is still trying to find herself, but she is still dependent like how she goes shopping Also when i read the poem i realized that she seems very insecure about her body and the way that she dresses. My personal opinion on the poem is that it is very understandable. Most teens always feel insecure at a point of time. Most of them feel insecure about the clothes that they wear and how others may look better than them at some point. After reading line 6 which says ''Our odd-lot bargains deformed the image,"that states that the speaker appreciates the time she and her mom spent. Even though this ideal image is being "deformed" she enjoys it. The speaker also struggles with insecurities dealing with her mom actually being a drunk and can't really provide for her child. The text on line 12 it states that "The cop said, "Drunk," and called an ambulance." The speaker seems to not be able to move forward without her mom to provide guidance in her life. The 17 year old discusses her daily problems and discusses her problems like her belts dont fit, her skirts fall forward and she can't shop for the right things that she needs. I would describe the theme as dependency and insecurity by the way the speaker describes her home life and how even though her mom is a drunk, she still has to live with her to survive in the world. She is insecure about herself through the clothes she has, but she also accepts herself that way because that's all her mother and her can buy to begin with. The speaker seems to have a rough lifestyle, but she deals with it and looks at the positive like at the end. The last line states "When I need a mother, I still go ahopping." The line states that even though she has a rough lifestyle she still feels happy even though she lives in a very broken life.

Gwendolyn Brooks: We Real Cool

The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We

Left school. We

Lurk late. We

Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We

Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We

Die soon.

 

 

My initial response on the poem is it involves many problems that you often see high school students go through. My personal response on the poem is it seems to react with more of slavery. The text seems as if there are high school boys that trys to search for freedom in order to get respect out of everything that they deserve. The text shows that the students are more of boys than girls. My perspective relates to girls because most wome wouldnnt seem to appear in a bar and play pool in order to recieve there rights. The text is involving maybe high or middle school students that always left school. The setting includes an appearance at a place called Seven at the Golden Shovel. The place is a very prestigous and a place that seems to only involving pool, jazz singing, and dancing. The first line is book-ended by the word "We," which makes the boys sound both arrogant and self-conscious. They left school and decided to lurk late. Lurk late is a alliteration and it means they would go out and have some fun. The term "strike straight" means means they would do what ever they would want without any problem. We thin gin,” they are deciding to break the rules and have a but of freedom by drinking alcohol. By having freedom they decided to sing sin in order to stand up for themselves. If the students tried to recieve freedom they would end up dying if they searched for freedom. This is what the text means at the end when it says we die soon. Although the text seems to appear to be very plain it involves a lot more. The text seems to relate more to freedom and justice instead of skipping school and hanging out with friends.