A Work Of Artifice (Poetry Blog #8)

I really enjoyed this poem. I noticed that this poem was written in 1936, so it was when woman barely had any rights. It is funny, because my dad was just talking about a book he was reading about woman's suffrage and how crazy it was.

I thought that the bonsai tree to women was such a cool comparison. I know that this poem was written in the 1930's, but I still can relate to it a lot.

The poem is about women having to look groomed and pretty and "perfect" and only do domestic things, while their full potential is not being reached. The bonsai tree "could have grown eighty feet tall but a gardener carefully pruned it."

Women are always seen as the domestic caretakers of a family and I think that it is cool that a woman realized that this doesn't always have to be the case in 1936 when woman had less rights than men.

I, Too, Sing America (Poetry Blog #7)

I really enjoyed this poem because of how hopeful it was and how it was a response to Walt Whitman's poem.

I like how Hughes asserted that he is an American also, even if he is discriminated against and not allowed to be with company because of the color of his skin; also, he does not think he is second class to anyone, he is just a normal person. I love how secure he is with himself and I think that is what provokes change. Also, the fact that he was so confident in his third stanza that this oppression would change.

My favorite line of the poem is "They'll see how beautiful I am and be ashamed."

Langston Hughes is such an amazing poet because his words are simple, but they are deep and so impactful.

A Gray Haze Over The Rice Fields (Poetry Blog #6)

I really enjoyed this poem when reading it as a piece of history. I think that it is about a kid being forced to lose his childhood and innocence because of events coinciding with his life.

I noticed that the first stanza is a description of what is going on and the second is more metaphorical.

The first couple of lines in stanza one are about the hard times, for example, "trucks going past the high road" and "kisses on my cheeks my long-dead grandmother gave me." I am a little unclear what the last two lines mean that says, "my mother didn't...closed door of her youth." I think that this means that his mother is confused on how the narrator is so different from her when she was a child and confused why he is not child-like anymore.

This is a stretch, but the second stanza kind of leads me to believe that he escapes suppression after he says "not that I wait for judgment..." and "a shadow freed from the past..." The second stanza also explains the title and "the shadow."

I know that when the author says, "...contains the footsteps of that childhood so light that I could only think of squirrels..." he means the lost childhood because of the rough times the narrator had to endure, that the only sweet part of his childhood was "squirrels slipping in and out of the mango trees."

I enjoyed this poem because it was bittersweet and sad but had great descriptions and images.

After interpreting this poem, I looked up background on the author and learned that he is Indian-American and was born in 1928. I think that this poem may have something to do with the British rule over India in the early 1900's.