Count Cullen was born in New York city and was one of the most important voices of the Harlem Renaissance.

From the Dark Tower by Countee Cullen is an ominous yet hopeful poem. The first line of the poem, “We shall not always plant while others reap”, is the opposite of the infamous but well known saying, “You shall reap what you sow”. It can be assumed that the narrator is not speaking about any bad deeds or ill feelings but rather something else. Countee Cullen held African American sentiment close to his heart. Growing and prospering during the Harlem Renaissance in New York, he was exposed to and experienced the black condition in a manner many have not. With this in mind, the word “plant” could be taken literally or figuratively which would change the overall meaning of the poem. Figuratively “plant” could be in reference to African Americans embracing their culture and “giving” said culture to the American people. In other words, African American men and women of this time created art, poetry, songs, dances that paid homage to their African roots and ancestors while simultaneously teaching the World who they are and what they have been through and are going through. If we take this version of plant, then the rest of the sentence would suggest that someone or someones not of the African American culture took what they created and reaped the benefits. Literally, “plant” would reference the growing and caring for plants and food. This would be an allusion to slavery, tied in with the rest of the sentence. Slaves did not profit from the work that they did to plant crops. Their masters reaped all of the benefits while they were left with nothing.

Line four of the poem states, “That lesser men should hold their bothers cheap”. This line alone suggests someone being held captive by someone who is less powerful or less than themselves. This particular line could allude back to slavery also. African men and women were bought and sold cheaply, as if they were objects. And the white men that bought them, were in a sense, less than. Not only did they need someone else to do their work for them, but their moral and ethical obligations towards were null and void. These two facts would intern make them less than the people that they bought.

Line eight, the last line of the first stanza states, “We were not made eternally to weep”. This line in itself is one of the most powerful lines within this particular poem and it speaks volumes. As relating to slavery, slaves held onto the faith that soon they would be free. Soon the system that hurt and abused them would fall and they would suffer no more. Although that was not necessarily the case (Jim Crow, the Civil Right Movement, today), African Americans still always held hope. This poem transcends past just simply wishing for freedom from being it slave, it also delves into the fact the African American men and women are constantly abused. And its not like we, as an African American people, benefit from it. No, we suffer and we lose, constantly, over and over again. But we always keep the faith. We always have faith that one day things will change. One day we will be fully and completely free and not have to worry. We’ll again be the kings and queens that we once were.

Louise Bogan

Born in Maine on August 11, 1897 and died February 4, 1970. The daughter of a mill worker. Her parents’ marriage was not a happy one, due largely to her mother’s mental and emotional instability. Louise herself had a limited education due to her lower-middle-class Irish background.

Louise Bogan is one of the most accomplished American poet-critics of the mid-20th century. Her subtle, restrained style was partially influenced by writers such as Rilke and Henry James, and partially by the English metaphysical poets such as George Herbert, John Donne, and Henry Vaughan, though she distanced herself from her intellectually rigorous, metaphysical contemporaries. She has six poetry collections. Some critics have placed her in a category of brilliant minor poets described as the “reactionary generation. Bogan’s poetry contains a personal quality derived from personal experience, but it is not private or confessional. Her poems, most critics agree, are economical in words, masterpieces of crossed rhythms in which the meter opposes word groupings.

Louise was the fourth poet laureate to the library of congress in 1945 and was the first woman.

Bogan and her husband separated in 1919, and he died of pneumonia a year later. She moved to Vienna, where she lived a writer’s life of solitude for three years. When she returned to live in New York in 1923, she worked in a bookstore and with cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead.

May Bogan indulged in numerous extramarital affairs, which she flaunted. She also mystified her family with frequent and lengthy disappearances. Millier proposed that “the difficulties and instabilities of her childhood produced in Bogan a preoccupation with betrayal and a distrust of others, a highly romantic nature, and a preference for the arrangements of art over grim, workaday reality.”

James Mercer Langston Hughes, or known by multiple as Langston Hughes was a poet, social activist, novelist, columnist, and playwright. His playwrights include: “Simply Heaven,” “Soul Gone Home,” “Street Scene,” “Tambourines to Glory,” and “Black Nativity” which was later, in 2013, turned into a movie. A source (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/langston-hughes) titles Langston Hughes as a “central figure in the Harlem Renaissance.” Along with poems and plays, Hughes authored novels, short stories, and essays. An essay written by Langston Hughes, entitled, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” is an example of what Langston Hughes favored to display in his poems. He portrayed the “joys and hardships of working-class black lives” trying to avoid idealization and negative stereotypes.
Langston Hughes, born in Joplin, Missouri on February 1, 1902. Sources claim, his father, James Hughes abandoned him and his mother, Carolina (Carrie) Mercer Langston, and moved to Mexico due to his dislike of American racism and black American culture at the time. Also, a specific source claims, his father, Langston Hughes’ father, departed to Mexico also because of his desire to practice law and wanted to escape the racial prejudice in America(http://edwardchrisproject.weebly.com/hardships.html). His mother moved around searching for steady employment after “elder Hughes” left. After a while, Langston Hughes lived with his grandmother, Mary Patterson Langston, in Lawrence, Kansas until her death in 1915. He also worked while living with his grandmother because his grandmother was making enough. She did have a traditional occupation. After the death of his grandmother he went to live with friends of the family, James and Mary Reed and that coming summer, he moved with his mother and her husband, Homer Clark, in Lincoln, Illinois before they settled in Cleveland, Ohio.
During high school, Langston Hughes began to write poetry. Hughes’ first pieces of verse was published in his high school’s magazine, Monthly. It is claimed, his first piece of jazz poetry, “When Sue Wears Red,” was written while he was in high school. His talents were recognized by peers and teachers; Hughes’ poetic influence came from poets he was introduced to by an English teacher, at his high school, who were: Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman, and, in some sources, Paul Laurence Dunbar. After high school, Langston Hughes spent the summers of 1919 and 1920 with his father in Mexico. In fact, while traveling on the train to visit his father again in Mexico, during the summer of 1920, he wrote his first “mature poem” entitled “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” It is stated, in a source, Langston Hughes was inspired to write this poem when the train crossed the Mississippi River, and years after its publication, dedicated the poem to W.E.B. Dubois and also was read at Hughes’ funeral service.
While in Mexico, Hughes explained to his father his desires of being a writer even though his father’s desires for him did not match. Langston Hughes’ father became impressed with his son’s poetry, he decided to pay Langston Hughes’ college tuition at Columbia University for one year as long as Langston Hughes studies engineering. After a year at Columbia University, Langston Hughes dropped out because of “racial prejudice,” or racism, on the campus, describes sources. After Columbia University, Langston Hughes taken multiple jobs. He was a cook, a waiter, a truck farmer, a seaman as he was aboard on the S.S. Malone, a doorman at a nightclub in Paris, where he stayed for six months, and then was working as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC. Hughes’ break happened when Langston decided to slip three of his poems “into the satchel,” written by one source, of Vachel Lindsay. Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, who is an American poet, the founder modern of singing poetry, and famous for his performances of poetry, was enthused by Langston Hughes, which, down the line, resulted in a scholarship to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania where he earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1929. Also, Langston Hughes was classmates with Thurgood Marshall and pledge Omega Psi Phi.
Langston Hughes’ first poetry collection, The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926 and his second, Fine Clothes to the Jew, in 1927. Hughes’ first novel, Not Without Laughter, was published in 1930 and in 1932, Langston Hughes traveled to work on a film, never completed, with African-Americans to the Soviet Union about the black experience in America(https://www.shmoop.com/langston-hughes/timeline.html). Langston Hughes received the Guggenheim Fellowship award, in 1935, as well as, opening his first play, The Mulatto, on Broadway in the same year. Hughes, throughout the years opens theaters, one in New York City, The Harlem Suitcase Theater in 1938, the New Negro Theater in Los Angeles in 1939, where he co-writes the screenplay for his first film, Way Down South, and the Skyloft Players in Chicago in 1942. Also, Langston Hughes began to win multiple awards for his works, for the instance, the Rosenwald Fellowship (1941), his book, Simple Takes a Wife, (1954), wins the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, “which honors writing that tackles racism and diversity.” In addition to his awards, he won the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP in 1960 for “outstanding achievement by a black American.”
Joseph McCarthy, a Republican U.S. Senator, better known for his list of 205 names of known communists in the U.S. state department in 1950. His “aggressive anticommunist pursuits” made him the namesake for McCarthyism. On March 24, 1953, Langston Hughes testified before Joseph McCarthy and the Subcommittee. African Americans who voiced objections towards the treatment of blacks at the time, were suspect to McCarthy. Langston Hughes, being a radical poet, was questioned by McCarthy but then was dismissed, because the Subcommittee sensed they were better without attacking him. Possibly, after hearing his statement to defend himself.
Conclusively, besides being questioned about communism, Langston Hughes was, agreed by biographers, a homosexual. It was claimed, by a source, Langston Hughes used gay codes in his writings, similar to Walt Whitman(https://www.uis.edu/gendersexualitystudentservices/langstonhughes/). The source restated a statement voiced by Hughes’ principle biographer Arnold Rampersad, “Hughes found some young men, especially dark-skinned men, appealing and sexually fascinating.” Langston Hughes wrote unpublished love poems, stated by the source, to a man he called “Beauty and also wrote poems “To F.S.” who is thought to be a sailor from Jamaica, by the name of Ferdinand Smith, whom Langston Hughes met in the 1920’s and kept in touch with for over 30 years.

Amy Lowell was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1874, into Modern Britain family. Her brother, Percival Lowell, was a well-known cosmologist, whereas another brother, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, got to be president of Harvard College. Growing up Lowell went to private schools in between visits to Europe with her family and, at the age of 17, started a tireless process of teaching herself in the seven thousand-volume library at Sevenels, which was said to be the Lowell family seat in Brookline where she would too live as a grown-up. In the summer of 1910, at the age of 36, Lowell saw her first poem published in the Atlantic. The poems name was, “Fixed Idea,” other sonnets and poems of hers showed up frequently in different periods of her life span.

“Fixed Idea,” was a 14 lined poem where Lowell spoke of letting someone go. A few lines of the poem showed that the poem is about a close connection between herself and another being.

“You lie upon my heart as on a nest,

Folded in peace, for you can never know

How crushed I am with having you at rest”

Her poem set the tone for the rest of her poetic career. Having published well over 150 bodies of work she is deemed as a very vocal poet of her time. After landing her fist published body of work and beginning her career as a poet when she was well into her 30s and Lowell became an enthusiastic and aimed gain disciple of the art. In 1913, Lowell adapted a new style of poetry that we learn about today called, “Imagism” which was dominated by Ezra Pound. Imagism is defined as being borrowed from both English and American verse styles. The use of imagism created a new Anglo-American literary movement that captured the pure expression of poetry in the most direct way. The primary Imagists were said to be Pound, Ford Madox Ford, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), and Richard Aldington

 When asked others in the movement they spoke highly and believed in Lowell’s words and talents. “Concentration is of the very essence of poetry” and strove to “produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite,” Lowell said. She worked and fought for the success of Imagist poetry in America and even added embraced its principles in her own work. She acted as a publicity agent for the movement, editing and contributing to an anthology of Imagist poets in 1915. As Lowell continued to explore the Imagist style, she pioneered the use of “polyphonic prose” in English, mixing formal verse and free forms.

Lowell, is described as a vivacious and outspoken businesswoman, tended to excite controversy. Her enthusiastic involvement and influence contributed to Pound’s separation from the imagism movement. Later in her poetic career she was drawn to and heavily influenced by Chinese and Japanese poetry. This interest led her to collaborate with translator Florence Ayscough on Fir-Flower Tablets in 1921.

Amongst many poems of hers that stood out to me like, “The End,” “Fragment,” “At Night,” “Apology,” “Hero-Worship,” “A Japanese Wood-Carving,” and “A Blockhead” her very fist poem stood out to me because it showed her raw talents with little to other influence.

After reading The Harlem Dancer by Claude McKay I almost immediately felt an emotional connection to the poem and the way it described the dancer. The way the dancer entertained others and the way they were reacting to her reminded me how in life people often set aside their dreams and admirations to simply satisfy the needs and wants of others. Sometimes when this happens it by choice. We as people are likely to try to please people as we go through life. I know because I personally experienced this myself. For a long time, I ignored my dreams to help others accomplish their dreams. This came with so many emotional difficulties in my early adulthood. It wasn’t until I decided to put myself first and do something that was going to benefit me, then I started to feel better about my life. Other times, much like the dancer described in the poem people are forced to do things they would not normally do in order to survive. In the poem, the last line says, “I know her self was not in that strange place.” To me, that is supporting the idea that the dancer may have been there physically but mentally and emotionally may have not been there. It reminds me of the way mothers often sacrifice and do whatever they have to do to take care of their children. Throughout the poem, McKay refers to the audience watching the dancer as boys and girls so that made me think of parents putting themselves in uncomfortable positions to be the role model they feel they need to be for their families. Another line in the poem says the dancer had a falsely smiling face. Again, I feel the dancer does not want to be in the place she is in. Since McKay was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance I also imagined he could have been targeting the mistreatment of black people during those times. I remembered the way black people would often entertain white people as a way to express their art while trying to make it. This may not have been the ideal platform for them but at that time options were few and the chances of them taking on an actual gig were slim. McKay invoked several emotions and experiences with this poem. So much so that after reading it I wanted to know more about the way prostitutes and other related people influenced the world during the times of his work. Learning that it was very similar to the way they do now surprised me. Of course the advancements of the world today made a significant difference but the root of their lives was much like it is today. They faced many addictions and other issues which to me is a metaphor for the different ways people handle challenges and hardships in life.

Elizabeth Bishop is a Massachusetts native who happened to be independently wealthy to travel and dedicate her life to poetry. At the age of one, Bishop’s father passed away leaving her mother a widow who then suffered from mental illness. The poem, Sestina, is a reflection of Bishop’s life at this time of her father’s passing. In reality, Bishop was forced to live with her relatives knowing that she would never see her mother again. 

Sestina is defined as, “a poem with six stanzas of six lines and a final triplet, all stanzas having the same six words at the line-ends in six different sequences that follow a fixed pattern, and with all six words appearing in the closing three-line envoi.” Elizabeth Bishop uses this title and also performs this kind of poem to describe a scene of family uncertainty to concentrate on the relationship between the old grandmother, the child and the irresistible continuity of time by using the same six words at the line-ends in six different sequences resulting in the themes of this poem: house, grandmother, child, stove, almanac, and tears. 

There is a feeling of sadness and something has happened that is fateful and mysterious. It’s September and it’s raining: “September rain falls on the house” and the grandmother and child sit in the kitchen of their house as the light fades: “In the failing light, the old grandmother / sits in the kitchen with the child” a simple start to this poem but as the poem progress, this cozy domestic scene begins to alter in shape and tone.

An addition to Rita Dove’s choice of poems in her anthropology, are selections from an acknowledgeable divorced couple: Ms. Sonia Sanchez, and Mr. Etheridge Knight. The couple are acknowledgeable because of their awards, their works, and their activism in the Black Arts Movement. The couple was married after Mr. Knight’s release, in 1968, from an 8-year sentence he served for robbery. The couple took care of three children during their marriage: Anita, who, as it is cited, to be conceived when Sonia was with her first husband, Albert Sanchez, and two children she conceived with Etheridge Knight, Morani and Mungu. Also, the reason for Sonia and Etheridge’s divorce, as cited, is to be the effect of Etheridge Knight’s drug addiction. I have seen a cite or two making this claim, however, few cites do put out inaccurate information, and similar to Wikipedia, are not one hundred percent trustworthy.

                Sonia Sanchez, born Wilsonia Benita Driver on September 9, 1934 in Birmingham, Alabama, is a poet, playwright, professor, activist, and one out of numerous foremost leaders of the Black Studies. Poems of Sonia Sanchez were included in the movie Love Jones, one being a poem Nina, a character in the movie played by Nia Long, recited entitled “I am Remembering Love.” Due to the death of Sonia’s mother, in 1935, while giving birth to twins a year after Sonia was born, Sonia went to live with her grandmother and other relatives. Her grandmother taught her to read to at age four, and to write age six. After the death of her grandmother, in 1943, her and her sister, moved to live with their father, a schoolteacher, and his third wife in Harlem. It is cited, she spent three decades in Harlem.

                Though Sonia took creative writing courses at Hunter College in New York, she graduated with a B.A. in political science. She attended graduate school at New York University in 1955 where she studied and focused on poetry alongside of “one of the most accomplished American poet critics of the mid-20^th century,” and the first woman to hold the title of Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress in 1945 for four years, Ms. Louise Bogan. Sanchez was a part of CORE, Congress of Racial Equality, and Nation of Islam, but left after three years in protest of their mistreatment of women. She began teaching in 1965, first at the Downtown Community School in New York, later at San Francisco State University teaching on the literature of African Americans from 1968-69, and, additionally, at other Universities. Sanchez also attended workshops in Greenwich Village in New York City. Here she met and formed the “Broadside Quartets” with poets, Amiri Baraka (a.k.a. Leroi Jones), Haki R. Madhubuti, and Sonia’s soon-to-be husband, Etheridge Knight.

                Etheridge Knight, born in Corinth, Mississippi in 1931 on April 19^th. Different cites inaccurately mention the number of his siblings. One writes he was one of six, another writes he was one of seven, but another writes he was one of eight. However, he mentions the number sisters he has in his poem, “The Idea of Ancestry,” but not the number of his brothers. Anyhow, Etheridge was raised in Paducah, Kentucky, where dropped out of high school and spent his teenage years working in pool halls, bars, and juke joints, introducing him to drugs and aided to his “toast” telling art. Toasts are long narrative poems coming from an oral tradition which is performed from memory involving “sexual exploits, drug activities, and violent aggressive conflicts…” using street slang as well.

                Etheridge attempted to enlist in the army at age 17. After forging his parent’s signature to enlist, he was removed for being too young. He later enlisted again, most likely at age 18, and served in the Korean war as a medical technician. He was later discharged from the army because of a shrapnel wound, allegedly, leading to his drug addiction. Though, it is cited on other sources, his drug addiction began while in Korea. For a second, I thought his robbery conviction in 1960 was the effect of his drug addiction because, in “The Idea of Ancestry,” he writes, “The next day in Memphis I cracked a croaker’s crib for a fix.” I depicted, he robbed and stole money for a house for drugs, however, it is cited, he was arrested and sentenced to 8 years in the Indiana State Prison for robbery in Indianapolis. Though it does not mean his case was not moved elsewhere.

                While in prison he told toasts, wrote poems, and received visits from Dudley Randall and Gwendolyn Brooks. His first poem, “To Dinah Washington” – an American blues singer and pianist and dabbled in R&B and pop music – was published in the magazine for the African American market, the Negro Digest. The same magazine Sonia Sanchez was influenced by Bogan to begin to write in. After his release from prison, in 1968, Knight’s Poems from Prison, was published by Dudley Randall’s Broadside Press. After the success of his book, he joined poets Amiri Baraka, Haki Madhubuti, and Sonia Sanchez which then came the Black Arts Movement including Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, etc. This movement was a response to “socio-political landscape of the time…” meaning the prejudice period and the movement was a defense mechanism to protect the rights of African Americans.

                 Though Etheridge Knight and Sonia Sanchez would later divorce in 1972 they both were ventured and lived their lives. Etheridge, winning both Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award nominations for Belly Song and other poems, winning prizes such as the Guggenheim Foundation and earning a Bachelor’s Degree in American Poetry and Criminal Justice from Martin Center University in Indianapolis. As well as Sanchez, winning the National Academy of Arts Award, in 1978, and the National Education Association Award, 1977-1988, also lecturing in over 500 colleges and Universities

https://poets.org/poet/sonia-sanchez

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/sonia-sanchez

https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/sonia-sanchez-39

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/etheridge-knight

https://poets.org/poet/etheridge-knight

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Etheridge-Knight

-Jacqui Paige

“The Death of the Hired man” is a long poem in form of a conversation happening between two characters, Warren and his wife Mary, talking about possible options on what to do with Silas, a former worker of Warren’s who left after being offered pocket money, but made his way back in the wintertime. Silas decided to come back in poor health but made it his mission to help Warren and Mary with the farm once again. Mary is all for more than second chances, but Warren does not want any parts of Silas because he feels as though he did right by him by all means: “When was I ever anything but kind to him? / But I’ll not have the fellow back.” Mary mentions how Silas talked about making a great team which he then includes another character in the mix by the name of Harold Wilson: “Silas declares you’ll have to get him back. / He says they two will make a team for work: / Between them they will lay this farm as smooth!” She also mentions that Silas says he would teach the boy more about haymaking: “He thinks if he could teach him that, he’d be / Some good perhaps to someone in the world.” This shows that Silas is not much of a worthless person because he has concerns for other folks and not himself. 

Tension is built in the poem not only because he leaves Warren, but he has a brother that is a couple more miles away from them: “Silas has better claim on us you think/ Than his brother? Thirteen little miles / As the road winds would bring him to his door. / Silas has walked that far no doubt today. / What doesn’t he go there? His brother’s rich, / A somebody – director in the bank.” As Warren still feuds over the presence of Silas being inside of his house, Mary states: “Worthless though he is, / He won’t be made ashamed to please his brother.” She urges Warren to sit down and chat with Silas and hash out their differences, but it was too late: Warren returned — too soon, it seemed to her — / Slipped to her side, caught up in her hand and waited. / ‘Warren?’ she questioned. / ‘Dead’ was all he answered.”

The main theme interpreted in this poem is home. Although Silas has a brother who he should have gone to because he was his blood relative, Silas chose Warren and Mary to go home to and die. At the beginning of the poem, Warren was bitter and upset. Sarcastically, Warren states: “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, / They have to take you in.” Silas came back to what he considered his home to get a reaffirmation for the meaning of his life before he dies by helping with the farm for the next season. Towards the end of the poem, Warren lightens up and fights himself to accept his responsibility of providing a home for Silas. Mary warns Warren: “He’s worn out. He’s asleep beside the stove. / When I came up from Rowe’s I found him there, / Huddled against the barn-door fast asleep, / A miserable sight, and frightening, too– / You needn’t smile — I didn’t recognise him — / I wasn’t looking for him — and he’s changed. / Wait till you see.” She later states: “he has come home to die: / You needn’t be afraid he’ll leave you this time.” At that point, Warren tried to make amends, but it was too late.

After reading Scars by Ruth Stone I immediately thought about how she uses scars as different symbols throughout the poem. While I first got the impression that scars were the overall theme for the poem I did some research and discovered Stone uses her personal experiences to influence her poetry. I then learned that her second husband, poet, and writer Walter Stone committed suicide leaving her to raise three children. From this point on this incident marked her poetry for the rest of her life. She also uses colors and textures throughout to poem Scars which to me signifies her love and taste for everyday things the average person overlooks or takes for granted. This detail showed a great sense of her creativity and how to advance her skills were. She is able to grasp the attention of her audience without over-using popular or familiar dialogue in her poetry. I also have seen some traditional ceremonial usage in Scars. By including these types of practices Stone reaches a certain target audience without openly excluding those who may not participate in those types of things. Again, we see such a clever way she uses her work in multiple ways giving different messages and reaching different types of audiences. Although the death of her husband was tragic, it may be seen as something that impacted her work in a positive way. At times people experiences tragic things in their life which brings out emotions they may not have used or knew they had in them. These emotions often allows individuals to tap into a layer within their creativity that could not be used in an ordinary situation.

Theodore Roethke was a high-minded poet-intellectual of the 1940s through the 1960s. During his adolescent years, his father passed away from cancer and his uncle committed suicide, leaving Roethke abandoned and lost. In the poem, “My Papa’s Waltz” the author places his audience in the form of a young boy waltzing with his father; or are they waltzing hypothetically speaking? In lines 1-2, “The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy;” gives a visual picture of a drunk father and son up close to one another in either a waltz defined as a dance in triple time performed by a couple or metaphorically speaking, could waltzing also mean an altercation? The poem could be interpreted in two ways: a positive aspect or a negative aspect. 

For the positive aspect, the author concluded in lines 15-16, “Then waltzed me off to bed / Still clinging to your shirt” which could indicate the admiration of a son for his father. In the sense, imagine a child playing with their parent for a while until they are tired and then imagining the parent getting ready to tuck them into bed for the night. In lines 3-4, “ But I hung on like death: / Such waltzing was not easy” indicated that although the young boy knew his father was drunk, he still interacted with him no matter the circumstance. 

From the negative point of view, before ending the poem at the beginning of the last stanza, in lines 13-14, “You beat time on my head / With a palm caked hard by dirt,” and then including the last two lines (15-16), gave a sense of abuse from the father. Starting at the beginning of the poem, the author describes the father as drunk and may have started an altercation with his son. In lines 7-8, the mother is added to the poem stating that she is upset with a frown upon her face. During the time frame of Roethke’s life span, women were not able to have a voice against the man in charge. She probably could not do plenty to protect her son, so instead, she stood and watched.        

Elizabeth Bishop was a painter and poet who used her painting skills to display the vivid imagery in her poetry. Plenty of her poetry celebrated the settings of busy-factories, farms, and fishing. Bishop was a perfectionist whose verses marked the precise descriptions of the physical world used to include the struggle to find a sense of belonging and the human experiences of grief and longing as she did in her poem “The Fish”.

In the poem, “The Fish”, Bishop keeps her scenery in one place with the use of impressive descriptions of a fish and her surroundings. In lines 10-15, she begins describing the appearance of the fish she caught while fishing and creating an allusion based off appearance, “…his brown skin hung in strips / like ancient wallpaper, / and its pattern of darker-brown / was like wallpaper: / shapes like full-blown roses / stained and lost through age.” Before describing the fish, the author included that the fish did not fight the urge of being caught. Bishop then understands the reasoning of the fish as the fish has fought its battles by being caught a few plenties of times before. She refers the fish to a medal by using a simile in lines 61-64 to draw the comparison, “Like medals with their ribbons / frayed and wavering, / a five-haired beard of wisdom, / trailing from his aching jaw.” Then comes a highly descriptive rainbow which gave the character in Bishop’s poem the quality for victory to enable the fish to be free.