I may just not be good at understanding poetry, but to me "Yet Do I Marvel" is out there. It opens up by stating that they do not doubt God and that he is well-meaning, and kind. It then goes on to say how a man quibbled and than moles continued blind. I've heard the stories of Tantalus and Sisyphus before but for some reason they just don't fit in the story to me. Is the poem about their punishments? That is just something I can not figure out.
In "From The Dark Tower" the rhyming scheme throws me off a bit. The first section goes ABBA 2 times and the second part of the poem goes AABBCC. Like previously stated I'm not to good at poetry so that took me a few times to figure out. It sounds like when someone passes away we should take a moment and tend to ourselves. "tend our agonizing seed" could mean a lot but it sounds like its talking about a broken heart.
"Uncle Jim" seems to make the most sense out of the 3. It's a boy with his uncle who appears to be African American and has something against White people. "Young fool you'll soon be ripe" to me sounds like hes saying that hes going to grow into his color soon and realize what he does. It says that he turns away from his poem that hes reading and sits and thinks with his uncle, shows that he really does care for him but maybe not his opinions.
In "Yet Do I Marvel", I think he is referencing Tantalus and Sisyphus to show how overcoming black oppression is similar to rolling a stone up a hill repeatedly or hardships in Hades. I think the poem is about their hardships in overcoming black oppression, but Countee knows that it is what it is.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with you about his the poem "Yet Do I Marvel" being out there and somewhat hard to understand. The poem is very interesting to read, and a bit tricky to try to interpret what he means but, I feel as though blackness is the main point to focus on in the poem. I personally really didn't enjoy this reading too much; it didn't find me really interested. It was very hard to understand what was going on and I was a bit confused.
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