engine of souls | forum 2

CONTINUATION

4. Po' Boy Blues
In this peom you have a young man who is in love. He is inlove but sad and miserable.
He said he fell in love with a gal, how ever this gal didnt mean no good. This gal took all his money and he was left so weary. He said he was a good boy and repeats that he was a good boy, when repeating lines it tyres to emphasize it and that he means it. He repeats i was a very good boy meaning i fell in love with a gal and she took all my money he was a good boy and he did not deserve this this from the gal. The title says it all Po' Boy Blues, PO' means POOR and the boy has the blues meaning he is in love and poor him.He never did anything worg he was a good boy but he fell in love with a gal and she took all his money and he was so inlove he did not see it comming he lost his mind over this gal and in the end he is left all weary wishing he was never born.

5.Theme For English B
this was the most dificult to understand yet the easiest to relate to. In this poem my grandfather talks about how he likes to to do this and do that he wanted this and he goes here and goes there, he lives here and he thinks like this. He is saying he likes what any other person likes meaning you dont have to be white to like the same stuff the whites like. He doesnt know what true means but he talks about what he knows is true in his life. He also says he is like the instructor the only difference is that he is older, white and more free.
He wonders if likeing the same stuff as whites would make him seem like he is a white person when you read his paper and does that mean his paper is white ?
the end is more confusing and im not sure i can translate it but he says that he is part of his instructor and his instructor is a part of him and sometimes we do not want to have part or be part of others but its true that we are part of others. I think that last lines mean that he is in the world with everyone else weather they are black or white and there for that means that he is part of your life and mine.

3. Harlem Renaissance
Assignment: Imagine yourself discovering that you're related to the great African-American poet of the Harlem Renaissance period in America's 1920's: Langston Hughes. You've been given an assignment in English class, in high school, to analyze 5 of his poems, but you want to go beyond just what the teacher says... you want to know what was in your great grandfather's head while he was writing those poems. Pick 5 from the site above and write down your thoughts in your daily journal/diary. (use other sites if you want as well...)


Dreams

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.


Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.


Dear Journal,
I often wonder what my great-grandfather was truly thinking as the ink flowed from his pen. However, the meaning of this poem is evident to me. I remember one story in particular that my grandmother used to tell me about her father: when he was a young man, he wanted to go to Columbia University and study to be a writer. His father (with whom he had a shaky relationship already), urged him to study abroad to become an engineer. Not wanting to lose the opportunity to attend Columbia, my great-grandfather compromised with his dad: he would go to Columbia, and his father would finance it, but engineering would be his main course of study. After a year of attending college, and doing fairly well, he dropped out to pursue his writing career (obviously that went well). I think in this poem, the dream hes referring to is his to become a poet. Having to go to school for a dream that wasnt his made his life a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.



I, Too, Sing America.

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.



Dear Journal,
My great-grandfather grew up in a time of great racism. However, he, and other black Harlem Renaissance poets like him (Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, etc.) wrote of the black experience: the struggle for freedom, rights, acceptance. I think this poem addresses my great-grandfathers own personal experiences working as an assistant cook and a launderer, and a busboy, among other things; always working, always serving, never acknowledged. He writes in this poem that a day will come when hell be accepted as a citizen of America instead of a subservient, subhuman Negro.



WILL V-DAY BE ME-DAY, TOO?

Over There,
World War II.

Dear Fellow Americans,
I write this letter
Hoping times will be better
When this war
Is through.
I'm a Tan-skinned Yank
Driving a tank.
I ask, WILL V-DAY
BE ME-DAY, TOO?

I wear a U. S. uniform.
I've done the enemy much harm,
I've driven back
The Germans and the Japs,
From Burma to the Rhine.
On every battle line,
I've dropped defeat
Into the Fascists' laps.

I am a Negro American
Out to defend my land
Army, Navy, Air Corps--
I am there.
I take munitions through,
I fight--or stevedore, too.
I face death the same as you do
Everywhere.

I've seen my buddy lying
Where he fell.
I've watched him dying
I promised him that I would try
To make our land a land
Where his son could be a man--
And there'd be no Jim Crow birds
Left in our sky.

So this is what I want to know:
When we see Victory's glow,
Will you still let old Jim Crow
Hold me back?
When all those foreign folks who've waited--
Italians, Chinese, Danes--are liberated.
Will I still be ill-fated
Because I'm black?

Here in my own, my native land,
Will the Jim Crow laws still stand?
Will Dixie lynch me still
When I return?
Or will you comrades in arms
From the factories and the farms,
Have learned what this war
Was fought for us to learn?

When I take off my uniform,
Will I be safe from harm--
Or will you do me
As the Germans did the Jews?
When I've helped this world to save,
Shall I still be color's slave?
Or will Victory change
Your antiquated views?

You can't say I didn't fight
To smash the Fascists' might.
You can't say I wasn't with you
in each battle.
As a soldier, and a friend.
When this war comes to an end,
Will you herd me in a Jim Crow car
Like cattle?

Or will you stand up like a man
At home and take your stand
For Democracy?
That's all I ask of you.
When we lay the guns away
To celebrate
Our Victory Day
WILL V-DAY BE ME-DAY, TOO?
That's what I want to know.

Sincerely,
GI Joe.


Dear Journal,
Another poem about the Negro experience. In this poem, my great-grandfather writes from the point of view of an African-American soldier, fighting in a war for the U.S.A. He questions why hes fighting to liberate oppressed races in foreign nations when his people are being oppressed back at home.He wonders if these overseas victories will mean victories for his race here. He asks Will V-DAY be ME-DAY too?; he wants to know if when the U.S. wins, will he win as well.


Let America Be America again.

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!


O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Dear Journal,
Im starting to notice a trend here. This time, great-ole-grampa is talking about the oppression of not only himself or his race, but all the races being treated as such here in America. He writes of the Irish, the Polish, the English, Indian, and black people here; without whose hardwork, this country would crumble; and how they are being tread upon, despite to the glorious utopia America holds itself to be. He also writes of the hope that he has in America, hope that we can move on from such contradiction and get back to the founding principles that this nation was built on, hope that we can make America again.


Life Is fine

I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.

I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn't a-been so cold
I might've sunk and died.

But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!

I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.

I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn't a-been so high
I might've jumped and died.

But it was High up there! It was high!

So since I'm still here livin',
I guess I will live on.
I could've died for love--
But for livin' I was born

Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry--
I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.

Life is fine! Fine as wine! Life is fine!


Dear Journal,
In this one, I think great-gramps is discussing his tenacity, using something as morbid as suicide as a metaphor. However hard he tries to kill himself in this poem, something seemingly insignificant prevents him; the waters too cold, the buildings too high. Its a vague metaphor to his life, meaning that no matter what tries to come his way and knock him down, he will prevail.