Political Context of Harlem

Dutch settlers founded Harlem, a 5 1/2 square mile area north of Central Park, in 1658. Central Harlem became a Black neighborhood between 1910 and 1920 when its real estate market collapsed, leaving scores of new apartment buildings empty. To find tenants, landlords opened up the area to African Americans, who were leaving the southern states in search of a better life. By 1914, Harlem's population reached 50,000, and between 1920 and 1930, the number quadrupled.

The Harlem Renaissance was an expression of African-American social thought and culture which took a place in newly-formed Black community in neighborhood of Harlem. Instead of using direct political means, African-American artists, writers, and musicians employed culture to work for goals of civil rights and equality. In the 1920's, Harlem became a mecca for Black artists, writers, and intellectuals, who launched the artistic and literary movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. Notable names included writer Langston Hughes, painter Aaron Douglas, and sculptor Augusta Savage.

In 1951–the year the poem “ Harlem” by Langston Hughes was written was a period of frustration for African Americans and in the poem Hughes characterized the mood of American blacks. The Civil War in the previous century had liberated them from slavery, and federal laws had granted them the right to vote, the right to own property, and so on. However, continuing prejudice against blacks, as well as laws passed since the Civil War, relegated them to second-class citizenship. By the mid-Twentieth Century, their frustration with inferior status became a powder keg, and the fuse was burning. Hughes well understood what the future held, as he indicates in the last line of his poem. Hughes believed that realistic portraits of actual people would counter negative caricatures of African Americans more effectively and so wrote about and for the common person.

Parody of This is Just to Say

You have eaten
The plums
I left in
The icebox

So I
have taken
Something
Of yours

Take that!
With your insincere
Apology.
I wont forgive you

"Harlem" by Langston Hughes

The poem “Harlem” is a lyrical poem, written by poet Langston Hughes. Through out the poem the poet uses literary devise ranging from rhetorical question to similes, metaphors, alliteration and also imagery to explain to the reader what happens to a dream deferred. In the poem, the dream is not just any dream it is about goals an individual has for themselves. The poem goes on to describe possible consequences that might come about if one lets their dream become deferred. The way the poem is structured is effective in showing the readers how the results of one dreams being deferred can go from bad to worst. The poem portrays the idea of a dream being postponed in a negative light.
The tone of this poem is persuading and commands attention. Throughout the poem the speaker asks the reader questions that not meant to be answered but to persuade the reader to getting to the obvious answers. The first stanza in the poem is a question “what happens to a dream deferred?” which is altogether the theme of the poem. The rhetorical questions in the poem commands the reader’s attention in that it makes one wonder about how these things truly do connect. The poet use of rhetorical question in the poem is effective in emphasizing his point on what happens to a dream when deferred.
In each line of the poem the poet uses rhetorical questions, simile and imagery to show how, when a dream is deferred it slowly starts out first to dry up like a raisin in the sun, then it goes on to fester like a sore, then on to stink like rotten meat, then sugar over like a syrupy sweet, then to sag like a heavy load, and finally does it explode. The poet using these similes is saying that a dream when is left postponed for too long first it becomes too difficult to fulfill.
Each simile the poet uses in the poem stands for the process that an individual will go through when they have not realized their dream. The consequences that occur when a dream has gone deferred seem to go through a period in time that shows how the more a dream is prolonged the harder it is to achieve. In the first stanza the speaker’s talks about the raisin in the sun, which is when the raisin has been left out in the sun and it gets hard and also becomes difficult to eat. This can be related to when a dream has only been just a dream for so long with no actual attempt to accomplish it, the longer it is left delayed the more difficult it is to achieve. The speaker’s also discusses about other results of a dream deferred when he states “or does it fester like a sore/And then run? /Does it stink like rotten meat?... / Or does it explodes?.” In this the speaker indicates that a dream postponed becomes a burden that one keeps wondering about and thinking about what ifs. A time will then come when holding on to a dream you cannot have becomes so burdensome that they cannot take it anymore.
The structure of the poem is effective in showing that the results of a dream deferred is one that at first might seem like a little thing but in fact it is more than that. It is something that can make an individual “explode” from it because of one constantly thinking about that dream of theirs that has not yet been realized. It also makes the reader realize that maybe it takes the destruction of the speakers dream for one to make sure that does not happen to their dream.

Pictures worth one poem

These pictures are a symbolic representation of the poem “In a Station of The Metro” by Ezra Pound. The poem was written during the modernism period, and consists of only two lines. Through out the poem Pound used of imagery, diction, and metaphor to portray the speaker’s experience at the station.
This photo of blurred people walking pass and of a flower hanging on a tree branch, produces the illusion that Pound creates in his poem. In line 1 of the poem, Pounds expresses “The apparition of these faces in a crowd”, while in line 2 he says “petals on a wet, black bough.” Both pictures are a relative representation of what the speaker might be experiencing.

The poet’s choice of words in those two lines conveyed just how important very word in the line is to the meaning behind the poem. The word “apparition” means the appearance of something at the precise moment in which it is perceived. The word evokes the reader to the poem immediately and gives the line a deeper meaning. The picture is an image of what one would see when picturing an “apparition of faces.” The poet use of apparition in his poem was effective in relating that in this crowd of people that turns in a blur of ghostly figures as they walk pass he was able to see petals. People usually go on with life not noticing the beautiful things around them not just the beauty of nature but also other things we take fore granted.

The flower is a metaphoric representation of the second line of the poem “petals on a wet, black bough,” not only because it talks about flowers in the concrete sense, but also because in the abstract sense in that it represent the beauty of life. The beauty of nature is one of the things that surround us that most people take for granted. I picked this flower as my representation of the second line of this poem because the flower is on a tree branch and stands brightly on a gloomy rainy day. The single flower in the picture sits alone on a bough surrounded by the dull atmosphere caused by the rain. This can be related to the poem because the speaker looks past the ghostly figures around him and see the beauty that outside.

When first reading the poem the first thing that comes to mind is that this is a very short poem and also the two lines do not make sense together. They appear as a contrast to each other. Only after rereading the poem and fully understanding what the poem is talking about can one realize just how much the two lines put together make the poem a very strong poem. The poet using imagery, metaphors and diction was able to create a great poem

Thesis: Mirror by Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike
I am not cruel, only truthful –
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me.
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.


In the poem “Mirror” by Sylvia Plath, the speaker conveys her fear about not being able to find herself anymore. The mirror and the lake reflect the old woman she has turned into, who acts the way people expect her to behave. Using a free verse style the poet was able to convey the speaker feelings about the person she has turned into and regrets being.

Comparsion of Shakespare and Thomas

In the poems by Shakespeare and Thomas Dylan, "Sonnet 73", and “ Dot Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" , the main focus is death. Each poem has a different approach of how the subject death should be taken. Using metaphors Shakespeare relates death to Fall, Night, and fire. Whereas Thomas using form relates his feelings of death.

In the first quatrain of "Sonnet 73" death is presented along with the season of late Fall and early winter. He speaks of the how it is damp, cold and bare; how the leaves change color and late birds sang. In the second quatrain the speaker speaks about Twilight and how that shows the how ones life can go from being bright to dark in a moment. In the third he discuss how the fire in his life is being put out by its own ashes. He describes how the end of his has come and all that is left is the deathbed and awaits.

Shakespeare approach to death in the poem is that the addressee must accept his impending death and realize that he must live what’s left of his time. Using metaphors Shakespeare talks about death’s second self sleep, in this he relates to the addressee that death is inevitable and he is soon approaching the long sleep.

While on the other hand Thomas Dylan poem Do No Go Gentle Into That Good Night, is a completely different perspective of death to that of Shakespeare approach to death. Thomas writes his poem about his father approaching death in the form of a villanelle, which consist of a very specific rhyme scheme. In this poem he sticks to the specific rhyme scheme of aba, aba,… abaa, through out the poem repeating the fist and last line, which shows his frustrations of his father’s impending death.

In Thomas Dylan’s poem he feels that he father should fight against death. He discuss how wise, good, wild, and grave men have fought against “ that good night“, not because they didn’t know its was coming but because they were not readying to go and still had things to do here on earth. Which to him these people are what he has always believed his father to be until now. His is distraught at the thought that his own father is just laying there not fight to stay alive. He believes that if his father just fought against death maybe he could live a little longer. Through out the poem he is constantly pleading with his father to “ rage, rage against the dying of the light”.