Poems
... Another poem in the Modern Temper unit is “A Black Man Talks of Reaping”. Reading the poem I understand where Arna Bontemps is coming from. This poem was written around the year 1927 and this era was still a difficult time for blacks in America. In the poem he discusses how wrong and unnatural it is for a man to not harvest what his own hands have sown. Bontemps gives various reasons throughout the poem that suggest this ideal that there is no balance between the efforts they make and the gain they finally get out of their work. I was disappointed with the poem only because I was expecting some form of acknowledgment of hope or justice for the black race, but unfortunately I didn’t find any. The last line undermines the harshness and severity of their lives and also shows that there was absolutely no visible hope or progress for his race at that time and even in the next few generations. I wonder if every black man in this condition at the time thought the same way this man in the poem did. The man in the poem obviously had no hope so therefore he had no interest in perusing his American Dream; that is if he even had one. However, I believe there is a very good chance that there were some African Americans living in that period of time that did indeed see hope for themselves in the near future. And for these men I wonder what there American Dream would be, and if they would ever receive the chance or opportunity to fulfill their Dream. Another poem that relates to its times during which occurred such things as the Great Depression, the stock market crash, and World War I is “Shine, Perishing Republic”. Pessimistically, Robinson Jeffers is basically saying that our civilization is doomed to destruction and decay. On the contrary, however, the ultimate perishing of the republic does not deny the sense of its values, but rather it emphasizes them. His odd pessimism to the good republic’s future merely glorifies the importance of the republic. I think this poem can be somewhat appropriate in times of desolation. Jeffers gives us an almost cold comfort in the fact that our blunders are inevitable, part of a greater cycle which is frequently referred to in the poem. I know the poem is filled with pessimistic ideals and statements, but I believe overall it is a humbling poem which reminds us to temper our love of human kind, not to extinguish it. Claude McKay, like Bon...