"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.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
"Ballad"
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right about the unfulfilled dream, though the dream itself is the problem (since this dream is a represented as a "sleep" in which "All trace" of self is "wiped away"); it seems the speaker does not so much lament the loss of--or realization that--this dream is a "naked dream," but finds that love is at once perhaps more fulfilling and complex, and also more lonely, than this youthful "dream" may allow(see my comments on Jennifer's blog)
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