Dreams

This week in poetry class, we learned about the poetry of Nikki Giovanni. We discussed at length how similar Giovanni is to Langston Hughes. Both poets were part of the Black Arts Movement, which stood up to previous generations of artists who submitted to what the white people, and white culture. Giovanni and Hughes wrote poetry that was very prideful of the Black people and the black culture. They did not like that they were held back by white people, and hoped that one day they could be free from such restrictions. Giovanni had to worry doubly about this because not only is she black, but she is also a woman. She dreamt that one day she could be looked at as a strong woman and as a strong person. The thing to emphasize about these two is that in no way were they ashamed of the color of their skin, nor in Giovanni's case her sex.

Langston Hughes and Nikki Giovanni had these dreams that they would one day break free, and they both wrote about them.

Langston Hughes wrote his poem "Dream Variations" (below) to write about his ideal world.

To fling my arms wide

In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me-
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening...
A tall, slim tree...
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.

The first stanza of this poem represents Hughes's dream. His dream is one where blacks can "whirl and dance" out in the open, and do this easily. Blacks can do this without having to hide themselves in the night. Notice how he uses white and black in the poem. He says that basically the day is white, and the night is black, and how both colors are integral parts of everyone's day just like white people and black people are integral parts of society. He says blacks and whites can both live peacefully together, and do as they please.

The second stanza recognizes the reality of the situation. There are only a few changes in this poem. The first change comes when he says "In the face of the sun." What Hughes means here is that blacks must fight to practice their culture against the day time. The word white is not used in this stanza, however it is implied because the whites represent the sun, because it is the sun that prevents them from practicing their culture easily. They are restricted to the night time because the whites "own" the day time because it is like them, unlike night time which is like the black people.

Nikki Giovanni has a similar message in her poem Dreams (below).

in my younger years

before i learned

black people aren’t

suppose to dream

i wanted to be

a raelet

and say “dr o wn d in my youn tears”

or “tal kin bout tal kin bout”

or marjorie hendricks and grind

all up against the mic

and scream

“baaaaaby nightandday

baaaaaby nightandday”

then as i grew and matured

i became more sensible

and decided i would

settle down

and just become

a sweet inspiration

Nikki Giovanni had dreams however she was told she was not supposed to dream. This poem depicts a black woman who wants to rid the world of the hatred toward black people by showing what it has done to them. She wants to be able to bring about peace and reconciliation between the two races, however she realizes that being a normal, average woman she can't do much to change the social thinking and perception of women.

Both poets were part of the black arts movement, and wanted to break free from society's restrictions of the black people. They dreamt of a world where they could be free from restrictions, and where they could fully embrace their culture, and so could the rest of the world. This was the thinking of the blacks who wanted to break free from society's thinking that black entertainment was not acceptable, and that in order to be successful blacks needed to pander to white people's interests. They wanted to embrace their own style of art, and literature, and music and let society accept them as they are. This was their dream, but it was altered for reality.

Powerful Use Of Allusions

This week in Courtney Lewis's Poetry Class we read the poem "In Memory of Radio" by Amiri Baraka. In his poem Baraka talks about the death of radio, the uprising of the middle class, and the loss of imagination. In the poem, he uses many allusions that help him prove his point. He talks about "The Shadow," which was a character on a radio program. He says that "what evil lurks in the hearts of men, only the shadow knows." He uses his allusion to the shadow throughout the poem to allude to other things that show the death of imagination through the rise of the middle class. He says that while he was listening to the shadow everyone else was looking up to Broadway singer, and middle class hero Kate Smith. He alludes that as a society we have gone from priding ourselves on imagination to praising people who we aspire to be like. He says now we listen to televangelists, and we put linoleum in our living rooms. He uses references that people will easily recognize in order to exemplify that society has lost touch with our inner imaginations along with the rise of the middle class.
When I read this poem, the allusions reminded me of another poem that is filled with allusions: T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland."
T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland identifies the “thwarted fertility” existent in the world. Eliot specifically examines this “thwarted fertility” by specifically addressing fruitless love through a series of allusions throughout the poem. The section entitled “A Game of Chess,” describes a wealthy woman sitting in a “burnished throne” (77). The portrayal of the subject alludes to Queen Cleopatra and her first encounter with Marc Antony. The woman is fabulously wealthy because of the description of the “glitter of her jewels” (84), but her wealth cannot satisfy her because like Cleopatra her love has deserted her. Another pair of lovers Eliot describes is Queen Dido and Aeneas. One of the only direct mentions of their story references her funeral pyre. Like Cleopatra, Aeneas leaves Dido thus she commits suicide. Eliot also describes the love of Elizabeth and Leicester. Leicester is a reference to her lover Lord Robert Dudley, who was widely considered to be the only man Elizabeth would ever marry. She did not marry him because she was pressured not to for political reasons, and she was left alone only to see him marry another woman. Eliot writes The Waste Land in order to highlight the thwarted fertility in love by using examples of lovers whose relationships are unproductive rather than productive.
The three pairs of lovers Eliot writes about mirror the idea the poem presents about the infertility of nature. The conventional idea of love ideally involves the idea that a couple remains intimate for the rest of their lives and reproducing by having children. The Waste Land discredits the previously stated notion by providing numerous relationships that are destructive instead of productive. Eliot seems to suggest that most love is infertile because of the numerous examples of such occurrences. Cleopatra and Dido commit suicide, and Queen Elizabeth cannot marry because of political reason, and her lover leaves for another woman. None of the abandoned women in the story have children. In fact there is another story of a woman named Lil whose husband is in the war. Left alone and pregnant the woman has an abortion by taking a pill to “bring it off” (159). At the end of Lil’s story she repeats Ophelia’s farewell before her death of “Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night” (172). Lil’s repeating of Ophelia’s farewell seems to insinuate that Lil dies as well. These abandoned women’s deaths compare to the abandonment and the death of Eliot’s ex-wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot. After she and Eliot’s divorce Vivienne refused to accept the end of the relationship, and she became panicky and depressed. She attempted to contact Eliot inappropriately, which revealed to him and others that she was clearly mentally ill. Eliot alludes to his wife’s mental illness in the poem when he says “‘what is that noise?’ ‘The wind under the door’ ‘What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?’ ‘Nothing again nothing’” (116-119). Eliot’s wife was institutionalized until her death in 1947. By writing this poem, Eliot professes his frustrations with the fruitless outcome of his own relationship as well as famous relationships throughout history.
The Waste Land’s theme of thwarted fertility deals with many different elements of nature, including the unproductive relationships of humans. Eliot uses examples of courtships throughout history as well as in his own life that have led to a lack of offspring, which defines a successful, healthy relationship. Most of these relationships became unproductive because the man abandoned the woman. Perhaps Eliot is suggesting that he is at fault for his wife’s mental illness by writing about the way women reacts when their lovers leave them.
Eliot's poem would not be as successful without his allusions to the different elements in literature. His powerful allusions help prove his point in these poems. Allusions can seriously be helpful in proving an abstract idea through the relation of things throughout culture and history. Baraka does this too, which really helps point out to the reader his point about the loss of imagination in culture through the rise of the middle class.

Dance to the Beats!

Music is soulful, emotional, up beat, and get most people through their day. But, are you the type that just likes songs because the beat, or do you actually listen to the lyrics? For me, I listen to the lyrics and than the beat, because when I do so, the beat is like the icing on the cake. I first love the song for its amazing story its telling, than the beat just makes me want to jam on and on all day. Creative Arts allows a student to interact with their inner self. The creative side of themselves is all written and displayed on the page for a final project that will illuminate their minds and feelings. Poetry offers creativity to the poet and the reader. Childhoods, events, and stories are all within the lines of each stanza. Each line creates an image, which tells a story and gives the reader a sense of where the author is going with his or her poem. The Beat movement was encouraged by music such as jazz and blues. They formed the today’s “rap”. Many people may not know that the cursing and references in which rap is derived by, and that all came from the beat movement. The beats had to move around a lot because they were trying to find the right locations where people like them can collaborate and expand their ideas.

I love the beats because after leaning about them and their ideas and different language, they gave me a little hope to do as I please. Like the beats, they did not care as to what other people thought of them, all they did was expand and expand of their ideas and lyrics and songs and thoughts. I love how they could do that to give the world a change of reality. After everything they had gone through; to create the modern rap is surprising, but also amazing. I think about if the beats were never around and never got the chance do what they did, rap would not be here, and I would be very sad! Anyway, the beat movement inspired a lot of people to do as they please, so in my opinion, stop hoping and dreaming, and go DO!

Be Smart When Rebelling

This week in poetry class we talked about Gwendolyn Brooks and about her poem "We Real Cool." In her poem she uses simple language as well as complex poetic devices such as enjambment to illustrate her point. In the poem, she talks about a bunch of black high school graduates in Chicago who basically are looking to fulfill their instant desires and pleasures. They play pool, they drink, they lurk, they don't go to school, and they are promiscuous. Throughout the poem, the attitude is confident coming from the point of view of the dropouts. However at the end of the poem, there is a very forward fulcrum that does not mince words: "We / Die soon."

I think that Gwendolyn Brooks is giving us words of wisdom through this poem. She breaks away from beat poets, and other poets who call for reform and the questioning of social practices by writing this poem. I think that Brooks basically is saying in this poem that dropping out of school is going too far. Beat poets and others have said through their poems that we should not restrict ourselves due to what society expects of us, and you can almost say that these high school dropouts were following their advice. They don't want to go to school, they just want to "be cool," and do their own thing by playing pool rather than following what is expected of them: to go to school. Gwendolyn Brooks is almost mocking them when she entitles her poem about them "We Real Cool" because she's making an example of how they need to understand that school is something you need to go to for the betterment of yourself through learning and knowledge. She is not necessarily against the beat movement, or the questioning of society, however she wants these dropouts and people like them to understand that what they are doing is not the best way to embody the ideas of the poets who have preached about questioning society. At the end of the poem Brooks issues the dropouts a dire warning that if they continue to live a life that follows their pleasures that do not better themselves or society, they will end up dying.

Reading this poem reminds me of something I read in my English class last year, and that has to do with some of the same arguments that Brooks and these dropouts have. This reminds me of the ideas of Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman. Thoreau was aggressively non-conformist. He preached that a man should "live deliberately" and decide what kind of life he (or she) wants to live. He said in his work "Walden" that everyone should have freedom for American ideals such as capitalism, and that everyone should live authentically by not doing anything a person does not want to do. He says that there ought to be no inherited principles, and a person should only follow what he or she values. He also believes that a person should fight for what they believe in, and that in an ideal world there should be no government, and because there is a government a person should break the law in order to make a statement in favor of what he or she believes in. Thoreau actually built his own cabin and lived in it for 2 years without interacting with society in order to prove that a person can live deliberately. He did not work in that time period, and he basically did what he wanted in order to prove in his book "Walden" that anyone could ignore society and live on their own. While in theory his idea is a good one, it is far from practical.

Walt Whitman, on the other hand, is more in line with Brooks' argument. Whitman writes in his poem "Song of Myself" that a person should be free from constraint. He believes that a person must ignore the hardships of life, and live the good things ourselves. He says that we must live up to our own interpretation of life and not look at it through the eyes of the dead or in the second or third hand. Whitman himself wants to enjoy life for himself as well while he is living. However, Whitman differs from Thoreau in the sense that he says that everyone has something to contribute to society. He talks in his poem about how everyone should be able to contribute something to society through their chosen professions. Whitman is very pro American and believes that everyone in society has something to give, however it should be what they are passionate about, and do what they like. Thoreau argues on the other hand that a person should not have to work, and that he should be able to do whatever he wants, and that a person can live on his own without society or government.

Brooks and Whitman argue that the argument of Thoreau and the high school dropouts are fundamentally flawed because in a perfect world, they would be able to do what they want, however a person cannot just do what they want for the benefit of themselves and not society. Brooks and Whitman want these dropouts to know that they can live a life of self determination, however they need to better themselves in order to be able to better live that live of self determination by doing things like going to school. Only then when they are educated can they make judgments on how to live their life the way they want to live them. Whitman and Brooks argue that once they are bettered through with regard to education in Brooks' poem, that they can live a life that they want to live, however they must be educated enough to make those decisions, so that they can successfully live their own life without dying, as Brooks shows what the end result would be if they did not do this.

Blurred Lines between two movements

This week in poetry class we talked about the issue of conformity in Allen Ginsberg's "Supermarket in California." Ginsberg was part of a larger movement of the beat generation who are self described "beaten down" artists from cheap neighborhoods in New York City and San Francisco. They were people who had different spiritual traditions, rejected organized religion that encouraged conformity. They pushed for spontaneity, and a stream of consciousness. They were known for swearing, and use of drug references in their literature, and in their lives.

The poets of the beat generation inspired people to question society's motives, and to not be afraid of it. During the beat generation, poets and artists tried out liberate themselves from censorship, they wanted to decriminalize drug use, and they were opposed to the military industrial complex as well as other things. The poets actions during the beat generation era opened the door for the tumultuous time period of the 1960's.

The members of the beat generation experimented with drugs, sexuality, and music. They questioned old customs and traditions, and they had a newfound sense of freedom. They wanted to completely turn old customs upside down. Their efforts did not go unnoticed either. Even though poets like Ginsberg and Kerouac were often censored and one of Ginsberg's most meaningful and most defining poems of the era, Howl, is actually still to this day censored.

I have talked about Bob Dylan in this blog before, but one of his songs called "The Times They Are A-Changing" really emphasizes some of the ideals of the beat movement.

In the song Dylan often sings about how things are going to be reversed. He says in a few different occasions that "The slow one now with soon be fast," and "The first one now will later be last." Throughout the song he complains about customs of the past, and how people who advocate for change need to "keep your (their) eyes wide, the chance won't come again." He says the time to change is now. He also criticizes those standing in the way of change when he calls on Senators and Congressmen to "not block up the hall." He also says that if they don't "heed the call" then they will literally feel the calls for change because "There's a battle outside ragin' that will soon shake your (their) windows and rattle your (their) walls." He says that change is loud and that's the only way things can change. The last stanza of the song is really important for the entire meaning of the song when Dylan says:

"The line it is drawn

The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'."

Dylan is saying that we need to adapt for the future and move on beyond our past. And if we remain in the past, we will be stuck in the past, and we will be a backward society.

What's interesting about this song is that not only does it have connotations that relate back to the beat movement of the 50's, but also because Bob Dylan served as a bridge for people like Allen Ginsberg to bring the ideas of the beat generation into the generation of the hippies. The beat movement can definitely be related to the hippie movement in several different ways. Both movements questioned traditional ideas, experimented with drug use, and sexuality as well as many other things. Dylan frequently said that he admired Ginsberg, and he and Ginsberg developed a close personal relationship over the years.

All I Want to be...

Who do you look up too? Who would you want to be? Maybe a famous musician, it may be a famous football player, or even a talented dancer. No matter who it is we look up to them and strive to be like them or even better. As a little kids we always dream to be on the big stage, make the big play on the football field, and earn that award for dancing. This all starts with the impression we get from all of these talented people. The feeling we get from all these poets and what has happened in their lives, shows how much emotion and effort they truly put into each individual poem. I love the creativity they put into every poem they create. Because each poem is different, some poems give the reader multiple perspectives of just one poem.

Looking up to someone may give you the encouragement you have been looking for your entire life. When I think about the commitment each of these poets have. It connects me to them because I have the same commitment to my music. They are great poets, but when they were first starting out they looked up to someone. For example I’m looking at all these new artists and watching videos of how they write songs, how they make their music, just like Allen Ginsberg looked up to Walt Whitman.

Like Ginsberg I look up to musicians to help me strive and better my music and the way I perform. Artist such as Mike Poser, John Mayer, and Lil Wayne, are just three of many artists I love. I listen to their lyrics, their beats, and their stories. Some artist write about their feelings and what happens throughout their lives, just like poets do in their poetry. One thing I love about poetry and music is the creative aspect in each one. Each allows you to put your thoughts and emotions into and nobody can tell you how to do it. Why? Because there are no rules in poetry and the same goes for music. Like poetry music has rhyming, messages, and rhythm to each song.

This week I learned it doesn’t matter your race, sex, or your thoughts. All that matters is how you present yourself, and how much you commit yourself just like all these poets and musicians do everyday.

diePods - A Brief History of Ball Turrets

The Sperry Ball Turret is a defense weapon used on B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator bombers during World War II. Randall Jarrell's poem "Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" famously features these weapons.

The turret was used to protect the vulnerable underside of the airplane. It had to be very small in order to create the least amount of drag feasible. This made the interior of the ball extremely cramped, and indeed, the RAF considered it impossible to stay in the ball turret for an entire mission when they were first analyzing the plane, but gunners regularly spent 8-10 hours in the ball. The turret gunner was the smallest man on the bomber crew, and surprisingly, post-war analysis of crew fatality records indicate that the turret gunner was the safest job on the aircraft (the pilot's job was the most dangerous.)

The turret was built by the Sperry Corporation, and it had 2 .50 machine guns with 250 rounds of ammunition apiece. The ball was electrically powered, but also had a hand crank to rotate the ball to get out without power. Inside the ball was a first aid kit, a gunsight, the turret controls, interior lighting, breathing oxygen regulators, and a radio. There was also a plug to plug in an electrically heated flightsuit, because the inside of the ball turret was freezing at high altitudes, especially in the winter.

The gunner usually did not enter the ball until the plane was in flight, because of the possibility of landing gear failure, and the possibility of being crushed. On the ground, the ball was only 15 inches from the ground. The ball was inaccessible from the inside of the airplane while on the ground, because the hatch to get in was on the opposite side from where the guns were, and they would hit the ground first. It was possible to enter from outside the plane by rotating the hatch toward the outside, but then the gunner would have to stay there during takeoff.

Two post handles worked to control the ball like joysticks, and each stick had a button to fire the guns. and the left foot controlled the gunsight, while the right foot operated a push-to-talk intercom switch to communicate with the rest of the crew.