4th post p. 1-25

Cane by jean toomer

I definetly have enjoyed this book so far. I dont believe I have ever enjoyed poetry or been refreshed by it so much as to when it is coupled with a story. There is still much to be analyzed and broke down but the story really gives the poem more reading to the reader as i always saw poetry as a more selfish thing which was reserved for the writer and the people close to him/her. I enjoy throwing together words myself and even constructing some symetry, rhyming and such to make them have the look or feel to a poem but i always felt that someone reading it... especially someone whom i did not know would have no idea exactly what i was talking about or feeling even with the use of words to paint them pictures. How would they know exactly what shades and colors to use? Colored pencils, crayons or markers?

These stories are great as well. I feel brought into the story and the descriptives are clear to give the painter of the pictures (reader) the right colors to use. Ifeel these poems by Toomer deliver a clearer picture of what he is truly trying to convey because he is subtler and more reader friendly than J.Weldon Jojhnson or C. Mckay.

Karintha is painted a beautiful girl. There is a sense that she is a prostitute with the mention of money and such... but i dont know if this is true. Maybe there are men that are just trying to win her over still. Her innoence was lost at an early age (men do not know that her soul was ripened too soon) and she was passed from husband to husband because of this? she is perhaps a permiscous and has learned to use her looks, but because she was ripened too early she doesnt quite have the taste of what one maybe was looking for. Her beauty is intact but her personality, virtues and morale apparently have flaws.

In the poem Cotton Song i have never been brought to cotton field like i have here. The subtleness is what does it for me i think. some people are more affected by something more in your face or vulgar some people somthing subtler and less tense, i am with the latter. I always believed that you need both for a change to come. I supported both Booker T washington and his beliefs and WEB dubois who had vastly different views on the way black equality would be won, because i think both ways are needed as people have different ways of learning and accepting. Similiar to the different views of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X... Back to the poem here... The acceptance of their work just to get through the day the beliefs and hopes into religion that a judgement day will come. They are doing what they have to do to survive and are making their qualms into music so they dont feel down. There is no violence here and they are shouting out to me with no blood on their toungues. As i was reading this poem for the first time i was very affected because i was brought right into it. by the third line i was no longer reading but listening to the people in the poem shout. i heard the pain in their voice, but it was subtle. I began to wonder to myself... how did we actually hold these people in slavery and make them work for nothing more than meager rations and a house to live in? how did we explain it to them and were they all really treated as bad as they have been depicted throughout history?