"Theme for English B" has a little of that "jazz poetry" going on that I talked about yesterday in the introduction. You can
read it online here. It also touches on favorite subjects of Hughes's: race, America, personal identity.
Discussion Questions:
1. What poetic devices do you spot in this poem?
2. Share a section that makes you think of jazz music -- why does it remind you of jazz? (If you don't know much about jazz, try listening to
this song and
this song and
this song on YouTube to get a little taste of it.)
1. Enjambment - "the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
ReplyDeleteup to my room, sit down, and write this page:"
Assonance - "hear you, hear me—we two—you, me"
Personification - "Harlem, I hear you", Harlem is a city and he's talking to it as if it were a person, that would be personification, I think...
Narrator - I think, unless when it's clearly the poet himself speaking it doesn't count.
Also a few couplets!
DeleteGood job reading closely!
Delete2. "Being me, it will not be white.
ReplyDeleteBut it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white—
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That’s American.
Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that’s true!
As I learn from you,"
This part reminds me of jazz because it is randomly just not part of the rhyme scheme that he had going. The whole poem is kind of like that, but everything else is mostly the same, and then he does this, where nothings barely the same, and the rhythm is almost off. And I think that's kind of how jazz is. You'll almost be able to start picking up a tune, or at least an idea of what the music generally sounds like, and then one of the trumpeters will just completely pull out some crazy improvisation, in a completely different key. And that's kind of what this part specifically reminded me of.
Yes! It also has almost a call-and-response pattern to it, which jazz will have too.
Delete1. Assonance, like in 'if, it's, and simple'. Alliteration, too, like in 'hill' and 'Harlem'. Enjambment (my favorite ╰(￣ω￣ｏ)), like in 'I take the elevator
ReplyDeleteup to my room'. And a narrator, seeing as it's like someone talking directly to someone else.
Very good -- enjambment is always fun to find :-D
Delete2. All the parts with lots of repeated words and dashes, because it gives the impression of being fast, like all the complicated trumpeting and stuff in jazz music.
ReplyDeleteI definitely can see that.
Delete