Modernism Assignment 3: Modernist Poetry

1. Richard Corey

The poem describes the admiration of the workers for the life of Richard Corey,
"We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown" while expressing displeasure with their own; "So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread". They wished that they were in Richard Corey's place, because what he had was what they had been told would equivocate to happiness. This is proved untrue, "And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head." No one, was in fact, happy. This reflects themes of disillusionment, as they were disillusioned from the idea that unhappiness could be overcome by material advancement.

2. Mending Wall

I like the lines " Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast" The idea of ownership is discussed here, particularly of the land and imaginary boundaries. These are ingrained in civilized society, Frost asks what we are trying to keep out. We have a country chopped up into millions of shrinking imaginary squares, boundaries of polite society. This expresses disillusionment, perhaps asking how free are we within the cell blocks of our private property?

3. A Dream Deferred

Hughes contemplates what happens when people are given a dream that the society in they live in has no intention of fulfilling. While they may "dry up like a raisin in the sun" or "crust and sugar over" for a time,, they do eventually erupt. The term explode is very open ended, probably intentionally. The cumulative of all these explosions probably equivocates into change and reformation, as when an old star explodes and a new one is slowly formed from its remnants. The most obvious and immediate target here is the American dream, expressing disillusionment.

4. The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Hughes compares his soul to the deep rivers. The river flows by with seeming impermanence, loose and fluid, as the solid structures of societies rose and fell around it. "I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it." The soul is similar in comparison to the physical; the soul is ultimately the more permanent of the two. We look at a forest and say it has been there for hundreds of years, though the old trees have died and new ones grown. It isn't the physical things themselves that remains, but the idea and spirit of them. This is part of the writing that came from the Harlem Renaissance, it also contains themes of self exploration which came about in the psychological movement.

5. Incident

Its interesting that this is all he remembers from his time in Baltimore, negative events in childhood seem to be remembered more distinctly. His reaction at this point would probably be more confusion than anger, and would have a larger influence. This reflects the inequality in America at the time that was being exposed in the Harlem Rennasiance. The idea of one child looking down on another "Now I was eight and very small, And he was no whit bigger,And so I smiled, but he poked out His tongue, and called me, "Nigger." shows them both to be very much the same in the simplicity of childhood, and displays the unjustification of racism.