Eng 42 Poetry

  H ughes ' "Harlem": For some help unpacking this condensed piece, see the study sheets/exercises (the comments on "Harlem" and "Theme for English B." Understanding how socio-cultural conditions for African Americans in America post WW II relate to the "dream" of the Harlem Renaissance will help explain the ambiguous, disillusioned tone of this poem; it's mixture of militancy and hope. What was that dream, and how did it change? How do you see this tension and ambiguity in the poem's images? it's structure and line breaks? Look closely at contrasting/conflicting details... The introductory essay on Hughes on PF can also be helpful in dealing with the question of dialect in his earlier poems: Is he stereotyping, or challenging the academic, Anglified verse of other African American poets in the 20s and 30s (when many of these dialect poems were written)--see Countee Cullen's poetry as an eg)--and representing a more "aut...

  For Piercy, you may want to check Meredith Jones article, "Makeover Culture's Dark Side,"  posted to my Eng 12 course on Blackboard this semester (Sp 2021, section  56, CUNYFirst code 17888, respectively--guest access should be allowed, but let me know if problems): go to "course documents," scroll down to "Articles: Media, Cosmetic Surgery (Meredith Jones)," and select the PDF file titled "cossurgmakeover"; read esp the section headed "What A Lovely Corpse," beginning p 96, and esp the highlighted sections on pp 98 and 100--a very interesting discussion of the Snow White fairy tale as it relates to gender issues and cosmetic surgery.  This is support material, but does not replace a secondary source on Piercy's work. Both Plath's and Piercy's poems explore/explode various stereotypes associated with femininity: Piercy esp body image and gender; Plath conventional notions of motherhood and pregnancy. Posted by  tl at  ...

For r AG and Kaufman, check the exercises/study sheets on Bb, which give some pointers and point to some secondary sources (full articles in the Lit. Resource Center and excerpts in MAP, as usual; Poets.org also has some articles on AG). Formally speaking, one interesting thing to observe about Ginsberg (esp. Howl), is how he uses image juxtapositions and ellipsis to bring worlds/world views/socio-cultural realities normally separated or cordoned off into dynamic confrontation ("hydrogen jukebox," for eg., "Mohammedan angels / staggering on tenement roofs," "supernatural darkness of cold-water flats," "teahead joyride / neon blinking traffic light," "submarine light of Bickford’s," etc.; "hydrogen jukebox," for example, as an image condenses--and brings into direct confrontation-- references to the military-industrial complex and 1950's escapist, pop youth culture ); Ginsberg also uses ellipsis and image juxtapositions to ...