Irony In Ballad Of Birmingham

This book is made up of two cycles of poems, each confronting the same subject: the characterization of a black man in white America. In this book, I plan to focus mainly on the first cycle and touch briefly on the second. The first cycle includes four different sections. In section one of cycle one, Eady writes about Susan Smith and Charles Stuart, two murderers who blamed their crimes on nonexistent black attackers. The first poem is called “How I Got Born” (Eady 5), in this poem the fictional young African American man is conjured up. In the upper right-hand corner of the page, Eady writes a note that explains who and what the speaker is: “The speaker is the young black man Susan Smith claimed kidnapped her children” (Eady 5). In the first few lines of the poem he says, “Susan Smith willed me alive/ At the moment/ Her babies sank into the lake” (l. 1-40). So right away he gives us a pretty straightforward explanation for what this poem is about and what this section will be about. In the next few poems, the narrator discusses his “existence” and reason for being created. Eady uses a lot of metaphors, similes and imagery in his poems, and he does a phenomenal job with imagery.

Ballad of Birmingham, written by the poet Dudley Randall relives a tragic moment in time in which four little girls died when a church was purposefully exploded. This poem is based on the incident that occurred in Birmingham, Alabama. This poem vividly shows the perspective of a mother losing her child. Most of the poem includes a mother daughter discussion regarding the participation of the freedom march. The mother explains to her daughter that it is far too dangerous for her to be participate, therefore she sends her daughter to church, where she believes that she would be safe. The mother later hears of the explosion and runs over to find out that her daughter had been killed by noticing her daughter’s shoe on the ground. In Ballad of Birmingham, Dudley Randall uses voice, imagery, and sound to show how the tragic event revolves around a theme of racism/mother’s love, which most readers can empathize to.

From the nineteen twenties to even the two thousands African Americans were treated as outcasts in America’s everyday society. During the sixties several African Americans stood up against the altered laws that allowed segregation in their neighborhoods, providing them with more freedom and privileges. With these privileges came violence and hate from angry whites that went as far as attacking children in a religious setting. The poem, “Birmingham 1963” by Raymond R. Patterson explains how African American children were killed in the crossfire of this hate. The poem starts off with a mother preparing her young daughter for her day at Sunday school.

The 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing on September 15, 1963 has been one of the most historic bombing in the African American community. Since then, the Spike Lee’s Four Little Girls film and the poem, Ballad of Birmingham, have been created to commemorate the event and the loss of the four beautiful young girls. Both have received awards for their outstanding and thoughtful works that both artist put into their projects. The movie, Four Little Girls, was a very stimulating movie because it was not your typical scripted play. It was a documentary of all the family, friends, and community that were affected by this event. On the other hand, the poem, Ballad of Birmingham, was very eye opening because it put a new perspective of the church bombing.

Cullen utilizes imagery throughout the poem, to illuminate the racism African Americans endured and impact racism carries. The speaker in the poem is an eight year old in Baltimore. In the first stanza, Cullen describes the child as “heart-filled, head-filled with glee.” This image portrays the speaker as innocent and joyful. Then the speaker notices a boy staring at him, the speaker believes there’s little difference between them, that the kid “was no whit bigger.” The speaker gets a rude awakening after the boy “poked out his tongue.” A seemingly playful meaningless gesture is met with the boy calling the speaker “N****r.” Cullen contrasts these two experiences because it depicts how racism comes out of nowhere and effects those you wouldn’t expect. The last stanza, the speaker “saw the whole Baltimore. The image of seeing is not just visual, but a metaphor for the loss of innocence where the speaker now is exposed to the hate. Cullen masterfully uses imagery so that readers understand the incredible impact that words have, especially when used for hate.

In Incident, the overarching theme of the poem is how racism can ruin someone's day, week, month, year, or even life. This poem shows an innocent Black little kid walking down a street in Baltimore, when he sees another kid about his age, but white. The black kid smiles at the white kid, and the white kid, “poked out His tongue, and called me, ‘Nigger.’” This insult by the white kid completely kills the black kids

This poem focuses on the lynching of a African American male. The speaker of the poem appears to console a woman who appears to be distressed due to the events taking place. In the first four lines of stanza 1, the speaker says:

This example shows racial interaction by Countee Cullen writing about how it was not normal that the blacks and the whites could even be associated with each other in this time period; but, she still had hope that things will change. The tone for the poem “Incident” changes throughout the poem; first it is joyful, then towards the end, it becomes sad. An example of the turning point of these two tones is “...but he poked out [h]is tongue, and called me, 'Nigger.'” (Cullen 8). When the little white boy called the speaker this, he automatically because sad. This shows racial interaction because the little white boy ruined how the speaker viewed Baltimore. This quote represents the theme because before this, the speaker was happy; but after this, the speaker grew sad. Both poems tones may be different but they still compare because they relate to racial interaction.

There are clues throughout the poem that express the man’s past experiences, leading him to have a hostile tone. The speaker represents his past as “parched years” that he has lived through (7-8) and represents his daughter’s potential future as

It is apparent that after the first read through of the poem that on the surface Cullen tells the story of an adult African American male speaker recounting an experience he had as a child. Cullen plays with the lightness of childhood innocence in the first quatrain. The reader can feel the past version of the speaker’s juvenile excitement as he was riding in Baltimore, particularly when Cullen writes “...heart-filled, head-filled with glee,” (Cullen, Ln 2). But this is quickly stifled as he is confronted with the adult issue of racism when another child “...poked out his tongue and called me, “Nigger”” (Cullen Ln 7-8).

Dudley Randall’s “Ballad of Birmingham” is a look into the effects of racism on a personal level. The poem is set in Alabama during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. The tone of the title alludes to the city of Birmingham as a whole. The poem gives the reader, instead, a personal look into a tragic incident in the lives of a mother and her daughter. The denotation of the poem seems to simply tell of the sadness of a mother losing her child. The poem’s theme is one of guilt, irony, and the grief of losing a child. The mother feels responsible for the death of her child. The dramatic irony of the mother’s view of church as being a “safe haven” for her child is presented to the reader through the mother’s insistence that the young girl

The poem I chose to write about is called “Ballad of Birmingham,” by Dudley Randall, (Lit. Kirszner & Mandell, 2012 pg. 378 ). This poem is about one of the four little African-American girls that were killed in a church bombing that was orchestrated by white supremacists back in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama.

After telling her daughter she can go to the church, the mother gives her a bath in rose petal water, dresses her in her best clothes, and even gives her a pair of gloves to wear and little white shoes. This is the most ironic part of the intire poem because the mother believes she is sending her to a safe place, but is unaware of the fact, that she is doing the exact opposite

“But you may go to church instead” (Randall,15) a mother thought her child would be safer in such a sacred place rather than being a part of the march that just might have been safer. The poem “Ballad of Birmingham” by Dudley Randall, has multiple themes, but the one that sticks out is violence, which is because it is so powerful and brings the whole poem together. There is also a lot of imagery shown through this whole poem that can put a horrible picture in your head because of how sad the poem really is.

I am a big fan of poetry but it came as a bit of surprise to me how unexperienced I am with such deep sorrow in so few words. It isn’t that I haven’t read anything tragic, far from it, but I think as prettily moving as some of the words can be, they are still just words and they often lack such well known context behind them. After reading the page on Jim Crow I immediately opened the book and began this week’s readings. I did not know about the blackface that blacks themselves sometimes wore while performing in those humiliating plays.