January 24th Blog

Question 1: How does the use of imagery in "November Cotton Flower" help convey its message to the reader?

When I was reading this poem, one of the first major things that I realized that the language of this poem is extremely contrasting. It begins with bleak imagery of boll-weevils coming to eat the cotton, thus making cotton reaping very difficult. The poem continues on with bleak and dark imagery. The imagery makes the reader feel as though hope and any sign of productivity and life is gone. But all of a sudden, the poem seems to flow into a beautiful imagery of a slave(or what I believe is to be a slave) eye's and the slave is so beautiful that even the old white folk haven't seen such beauty. I like the way this poem "flows" as in I appreciate the effectiveness of how Toomer started bleak and turned the poem into something hopeful.

Question 2: What does the removing of the 'tape' signify in "Her Lips are Copper Wire?"

For the tape, I'm thinking that it represents removing the bonds of slavery. The tape represents a masking of the voice of the enslaved African-American people and the removing of tape the former slaves now receive freedom and freedom of speech. It could also represent African-American's being able to finally remove the barrier between a white and black person couple thus allowing love to shine on like an "incandescent" light bulb without any restrictions to worry about.

-Sean Song