Poem

Out of towner hits the big city. Remember The Cutting of a Drink? The protagonist is assailed by sounds, experiences, sights, odors.  He is challenged to process all of this “newness.”

Two students from last term submitted Special Projects that were original musical compositions that they played as a backdrop to the poem being read aloud.  Did you really read the line below the title?

Now, grasp a wide view. Quickly now, how many stanzas are there? 

· On what does each focus? 

· How do they reveal the protagonist’s acclimation to the city?

· How do they reflect his origins? Origins form the words we use until we change.

For him, New York is a personification of energies.  Notice his use of exclamation marks. It is like being dropped into really cold water.  Stark. Shocking. Aware. Delicious. Painful, too.

In this poem, New York City is capsulized by two areas: Manhattan, a major commerce and wide-world culture center and Harlem, a sub section of Manhattan with its more intimate core of African American culture. Both have their own distinct energies.  Remember The Ballad of the Two Grandfathers?

Look at the imagery!  What does the poet celebrate? How does he celebrate it?

And then the poet concludes with some very beloved lines:

            And the ears, above all the ears to God who with a burst of

                  saxophone laughter created the heavens and the earth in six days

           And on the seventh day, he slept his great negro sleep.