"Ballad"

"Ballad" – Sonia Sanchez writes mostly in the voice of Black women [and women in general]. The poem could be talking from the mouths of older women to the ears of younger women – younger women who think they are feeling love – the love of life. I think what the older women are suggesting is that they have lived through the dreams of youth only to come out the other side of a naked dream (time passing) – a dream unfulfilled. The words of the older women seem to be a lament of those dreams. The poem is meant to be spoken or sung as a folklore.

THERE IT IS Jayne Cortez

At the outset this poem strikes the leftist cord in me. The poem seems to start in the middle of a thought since it starts with "And". I get a feel that I entered a room in the middle of a conversation. She speaks poignantly and her statements are thought provoking. The poem begins telling the listener that: If we don't… resist, organize and unify, get the power to control then we will… she tells of the consequences. The 'ifs' are quite matter of fact, while the 'thens' are emphasized by the use of strong adjectives such as exaggerated, bizarre, dehumanized, decomposed to describe captivity, submission, suicide, fear, repression. She uses repetition to further exaggerate her point, "if we, if we, if we"' and, "the, the, the, and the" and towards the conclusion, forever and ever and ever. She then repeats the last sentence with the same start of the first sentence of the poem "And".

Harlem

This poem speaks to the Black person's dreams of desegregation. It saddens me to think what it must have been like for anyone who was black to be told they are equal yet remain segregated from white society. So what does happen to a dream deferred? Whose deference? Not the Black person's. The poem through metaphors and similes tells of the pain of people whose dream has wilted. In no uncertain terms does Hughes sugarcoat any of the emotions that come along when a dream is pulled out from under a [Black] people. I can appreciate the ambiguity of the last three lines because I think it spells out two extremes of a possible outcome. Do the people sit and accept their fate and become victims or do they ban together to let the judicial system they are not going to sit and take it. Separate is not equal. I think we all know the answer to that question.