Follow The Drinking Gourd Poem Analysis

Clint Smith is a writer, teacher, and doctoral candidate in Education at Harvard University with a concentration in Culture, Institutions, and Society. Smith Clint wrote a poem called “Something You should Know.” The poem is about an early job he had in a Petsmart. The poet allows the readers into his personal life, but before he had trouble opening up to people and his work. Moreover, Clint wrote an insight in the poem about relying in anything to feel safe and he says it is the most terrifying thing any person can do.

As huck and Jim move towards south, the duke and the prince invade the raft, and huck and Jim should pay longer on land. Although the stream continues to supply a refuge from bother, it usually just affects the exchange of 1 dangerous scenario for one more. Every escape exists within the larger context of a continuing drift southward, toward the geographic area and entrenched slavery. during this transition from idyllic go back to supply of peril, the stream mirrors the difficult state of the South. As huck and Jim’s journey progresses, the river, that once appeared a paradise and a supply of freedom, becomes just a short-run suggests that of escape that yet pushes huck and Jim ever additional toward danger and destruction.

Ever since slavery started slaves were running away and plantation owners need to find a way to get the slave back. There were a couple ways the owners dealt with this. The first thing they tried were slave hunters then they went to the Supreme court to pass the Fugitive Slave Act. Slave hunting worked as an outside job. If a slave ran away the plantation owner would contact his slave hunter. Once this happens, what they usually do is get the dogs out to trace the scent. Another way they would get the slaves is put up a bounty of the slave and a reward for whoever turns the slave in. Slaves most of the time would run North because they were not so harsh as they were in the South. Some slave went to Canada because slavery was illegal there (Ron).

In the music video/song “Strange Fruit”, the phrase strange fruit doesn’t really refer to a fruit that is strange. It actually refers to people being lynched and hanging from trees. More specifically, the term strange fruit applies to the lynching of African Americans. This song was performed by Billie Holiday in 1939 at the Cafe Society in New York. The music video was actually a recorded performance from 1959. The song was written and performed because the purpose of was to raise awareness and fight against African American lynching because during that time, African Americans were being discriminated and abused. Billie Holiday in the music video/song “Strange Fruit” displays logos through context and imagery, pathos through her sorrowful tone and facial expressions, and lastly, ethos because she won many awards during her career in singing, and Strange Fruit is one of them.

In the narrative, the slaves are said to be on their way to the Great House Farm for their monthly allowance while singing. This suggests that the slaves are walking on some pathway, in a group, and probably carrying sacks of some sort in order to carry the allowance back. Douglass also specifies that, “They would sometimes sing the most pathetic sentiment in the most rapturous tone, and the most rapturous sentiment in the most pathetic tone” (Douglass). With this line, Douglass in trying to paint a picture of the way slaves looked while singing. They sang sad songs in a happy way, which suggest there was laughter, cheering, and maybe dancing involved. They also sang happy songs in a sad way. This expresses that the slaves were probably walking more slowly during these songs and perhaps they were slouching. Douglass is emphasizing the importance of how slaves looked while singing their

After this Douglass explains the emotions that he feels looking back on the situation and the real meaning of the songs. Douglass uses words like “deep(26)” and “ineffable(26)” when explaining the emotions that the slaves are expressing through these songs. The word deep is showing how the slaves are stuck in their situation, when I hear this word it makes me think of a mile deep hole that the slaves are stuck in and they cannot get out. They were put in a situation where they are bred to make sure that they are not educated nor aware of what's really going on around them. By putting the slaves in this “ineffable” situation it gives them a loss of hope and a feeling of helplessness. Douglass is showing the reader the depressing feelings of the slaves and it makes the reader to feel for the slaves and repel from the thought of slavery and its affects on people.

A spiritual journey dominates these songs, but the concern for physical freedom is there as well. The most pervasive image in the spirituals is that of the chosen people for the slaves believed that they had been chosen by God just as the Israelites had. They also believed that they understood better than anyone what freedom truly meant in both a spiritual and physical sense. The Old Testament characters that the slaves referred to in their songs experienced deliverance by God. The slaves believed that the same God that had granted them spiritual freedom would someday loose the chains of slavery. The wonderful flexibility of the spirituals allowed for that double meaning of freedom. For example, Frederick Douglass claimed that the line” I am bound for Canaan” in one of the songs he frequently sang meant that he was going North, not just that he would experience the freedom of the promised land in a spiritual sense. The flexibility and multiplicity of meanings also allowed for slaves to use these sacred songs as secret communication. Some songs, such as “Steal Away to Jesus,” were used to call a secret meeting where the people could worship without the supervision of the whites. Other songs, such as “Wade in the Water” served as coded directions for runaway slaves. With the eventual emancipation of the slaves, religious music of African Americans became prominently

Runaway slaves needed to be dressed in better clothes, food had to be bought to feed them, even train tickets needed to be bought every once and a while. For the slave, running away was not an easy task. To begin with, a slave had to escape from their owner, sometimes very difficult due to dogs or fences. The runaway slaves had to travel ten to twenty miles each night to reach the next “station”. Each night was a night filled with fear because of slave hunters and spies. Lots of money could be made for turning in a runaway slave. Depending on your own luck and cunning, you either made it to freedom, or you didn’t. Some slaves were caught multiple times but continued to try to run for freedom. Conditions were not great either. The “passengers” often had to travel through rain, mud, washed out roads, bogs, rivers, and streams. Gaining freedom was not easy.

When delving into the song and trying to grasp the meaning, it can be understood that the author really desires to be free and go back home to where he belongs and desires. The author or writer of the song does not like the idea of slavery, nor does he like being a slave himself, his perspective on the topic shows that he is not happy about the current situation and no one should because of how cruel slavery is. The author also uses certain rhetorical strategies, one of them being metaphors. They can be used to explain his sadness and other feelings he has about the topic of slavery. An example of this is,

The two short stories “Black Swan Green” written by David Mitchell and “Letters To A Young Poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke both share a common central idea. In both stories, there is a mentee looking for advice from their mentors. The mentees have a passion for poetry and are aspiring poets. The mentors inform their mentees that someone who wants to be a poet should get their motivation from natural aspects. For one thing, It’s your natural beauty that makes you who you are as a person and a poet. Poetry is for yourself, your thoughts and ideas, not an audience.

While work songs dealt only with their daily life, spirituals were inspired by the message of Jesus Christ and his Good News (Gospel) of the Bible, “You can be saved”. They are different from hymns and psalms, because they were a way of sharing the hard condition of being a slave. Many slaves in town and in plantations tried to run to a “free country”, that they called “my home” or “Sweet Canaan, the Promised Land”. This country was on the Northern side of Ohio River, that they called “Jordan”. Some negro spirituals refer to the Underground Railroad, an organization for helping slaves to run away.

Douglass also explains that the songs were arduous to perceive apparently incongruous to the outsiders, but that the slaves themselves understood the literal meaning of the words they were singing. However, the true meaning of the songs is not apparent to Douglass until he becomes a foreigner to the group. “I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I myself within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear’’ (401). Douglass now understands the significance behind those songs that the slaves sang but it only becomes clear to him with distance. This distance clarifies Douglass’s immediate presence of authority in the Narrative. Which signifies his mind is now present in what those songs actually meant when away from the other slaves, which as an outsider who has experienced the same afflictions can now really decipher the meaning of

In the poem “Eating Poetry” the author writes weird behaviors that happen to “him.” One behavior the speaker does is barks and licks the librarians hand. On line fourteen the author writes, “When I get on my knees and lick her hand,” this is an example of the behaviors in the poem.

Poetry can be divided up into different forms, more easily expressing an author’s emotions and intent with their poetry. For analyzing purposes I chose the poems Self-Help by Michael Ryan, Ghazal by Agha Shahid Ali, Psalm 150 by Jericho Brown, and Emergency by Michael Dylan Welch.

The Poem “Introduction to Poetry” is by Billy Collins, an English poet, and it is about how teachers often force students to over-analyze poetry and to try decipher every possible meaning portrayed throughout the poem rather than allowing the students to form their own interpretation of the poem based on their own experiences.