Analysis Of Harper's 'Here Where Coltrane Is'

1278 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: American Negro Poetry

“So much of the great poetry of America is about the neighborhood, and my first neighborhood was Brooklyn New York and i was born in the same house my mother was born in and delivered by the same man”. Biographies are pointless in the art of poetry, poets need no introduction. Simply sitting and reading gives enough imagination to the reader to interpret meaning, feeling, theme and audience. Blending art forms together seems unmethodical much like jazz. However Michael S Harper, a poet known for his syncopation between the African American culture and the African American art form known to many as Jazz uses his abilities to unconsciously weld together these forms of art to state that the African American existence and culture is not and will never be metaphysical. while exploring Harper 's work one can see the argument of existence.
We hold forms of african american culture every day. Harper 's work while in the beginning of his career is told from a number of angles about his family, is able to allow you to grasp the real world understanding of his work. with this style harper uses …show more content…

Dividing soul and race draws attention to the question, why divide them? Harper attempts to show a division yet while this verse draws you away from the theme for a brief moment Harper will bait you back by showing a that a race can not be without soul when singing old slave hems. “Memories of modal songs”. Harper describes a young strong musician finding his or her soul while in the arms of oppression.
Using metaphors that bring every word to life, Harper shares remorse with the reader as he describes the expectation of three Idols in the African American community through a more relatable form that is music. As the reader you place yourself on a train which as to continue into the future gives hope until we remember the loss of our

Show More
Related

  • Summary Of Rachel M. Harper's The Myth Of Music

    393 Words  | 1 Pages

    Rachel M. Harper’s The Myth of Music intentionally weaves together 1960s era jazz music and a poor African American family via metaphor and allusion to show a deep familiar bond between father and daughter.

    Read More

  • Essay On Ernie Barnes

    1852 Words  | 4 Pages

    Although Barnes’ marriage was not a successful one, he adored his newborn baby girl, and was heartbroken when his wife left him, taking his daughter with her. At North Carolina College, Barnes majored in art, and developed his own style (Artist Vitae, 1999). When Barnes was a freshman in college he went on a field trip to the newly desegregated North Carolina Museum of Art. At the museum Barnes noticed that there weren’t any works by black artist displayed, and when he asked the guide where the black artists were exhibited, the guide responded, “your people don’t express themselves this way” (Artist Vitae, 1999). That negative response encouraged Barnes to work hard at becoming an artist.

    Read More

  • Maya Angelou

    955 Words  | 2 Pages

    This piece of auto biographical works is one of the greatest pieces of literature and will continue to inspire young and old black Americans to this day be cause of her hard and racially tense background is what produced an eloquent piece of work that feels at times more fiction than non fiction

    Read More

  • Music In Lawrence Levine's 'The Quest For Certainty'

    1535 Words  | 4 Pages

    Many people would argue that the most important, most significant part of any piece of literary, artistic, or vocal work is the title. The title often times resonates through the minds of an audience; simultaneously, this essential feature of any piece of work imprints specific emotions and thoughts in the psyche of an author’s captivators. In Lawrence Levine’s “The Quest for Certainty”, the title is used to address the motivation enslaved African-Americans of generations ago possessed that ultimately was utilized to create sacred music. Validation in one’s identity is not something everyone in this world can attribute to owning. Individuals from the inception of time to now have always questioned their existence and purpose, and the lives

    Read More

  • Sara Smolinsky and Cultural Pluralism in Jewish-American Culture

    1184 Words  | 3 Pages

    George Schuyler’s article “The Negro Art Hokum” argues that the notion of African-American culture as separate from national American culture is nonsense. To Schuyler, all seemingly distinct elements of African-American culture and artistic endeavors from such are influenced by the dominant white American culture, and therefore, only American. The merit of Schuyler’s argument stems from the fact that it is practically impossible for one culture to exist within the confines of another without absorbing certain characteristics. The problem with Schuyler’s argument that Langston Hughes notes in his response article, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” is that it assumes complete assimilation of African-Americans by a singular national culture. Fundamental to Hughes’ rebuttal is the allowance of a unique African-American culture extant of the standards of a singular American cultural identity. For Hughes, this unique culture lies within the working-class, out of sight of the American national culture. This culture, while neither completely African nor American, maintains the vibrant and unique roots of the African-American experience. Schuyler advocates cultural assimilation, while Hughes promotes cultural pluralism, in which minority cultures maintain their distinctive qualities in the face of a dominant national identity.

    Read More

  • Intersectionality Theory In Gwendolyn Brook's In The Waiting Room

    922 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sociologists often employ intersectionality theory to describe and explain facets of human interactions. This particular methodology operates on the notion that sociologically defining characteristics, such as that of race, gender, and class, are not independent of one another but function simultaneously to determine our individual social experiences. This is evident in poetry as well. The combination of one poet’s work that expresses issues on class with another poet’s work that voices issues on race, and so forth, can be analyzed through a literary lens, and collectively embody the sociological intersectionality theory.

    Read More

  • Nathan Irvin Huggins: Culture And Identity Crisis In The Harlem Renaissance

    1665 Words  | 4 Pages

    In fact, it is clear to the reader that Huggins makes a concerted effort to bring light to both ethnicities’ perspectives. Huggins even argues that their culture is one and the same, “such a seamless web that it is impossible to calibrate the Negro within it or to ravel him from it” (Huggins, 309). Huggins argument is really brought to life through his use of historical evidence found in influential poetry from the time period. When analyzing why African Americans were having an identity crisis he looked to a common place that African American looked to. Africa was a common identifier among the black community for obvious reasons and was where Authors and Artists looked for inspiration. African American artists adopted the simple black silhouette and angular art found in original African pieces. Authors looked to Africa in their poetry. In The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes, the names of rivers in Africa such as the Euphrates, the Congo and the Nile were all used and then the scene switches to the Mississippi river found in America showing that blacks have “seen”, or experienced both. Huggins looks deeply into Countee Cullen’s Heritage discussing “what is Africa to me?” a common identifier that united black artistry in the Harlem Renaissance, “Africa? A book one thumbs listlessly, till slumber comes” (Countee). The black community craved to be a separate society from white Americans so they were forced to go back to the past to find their heritage, before America and white oppression. Huggins finds an amazing variety of evidence within literature of this time period, exposing the raw feelings and emotion behind this intellectual movement. The connections he makes within these pieces of poetry are accurate and strong, supporting his initial thesis

    Read More

  • An Analysis of Jean Toomer's Cane

    1695 Words  | 4 Pages

      Critic Robert Bone writes: He attained a universal vision by ignoring race as a local tr... ... middle of paper ... ... if this balance between the past and the ideas for the future can be achieved then there will come about a stronger more identifiable modern Black culture that does not add to segregation, but adds to American culture.   This hope is clear in his poem

    Read More

  • The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: The Formation of Identity

    2136 Words  | 5 Pages

    Stone, Albert. “Identity and Art in Frederick Douglass’s ‘Narrative’.” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism: Volume 7. Ed. Paula Kepos. Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1990. 134-137.

    Read More

  • Gwendolyn Brooks

    1064 Words  | 3 Pages

    It is important to not that the direction of Brooks’s literary career shifted dramatically in the late 1960’s. While attending a black writers’ conference she was struck by the passion of the young poets. Before this happened, she had regarded herself as essentially a universalist, who happened to be black. After the conference, she shifted from writing about her poems about black people and life to writing for the black population.

    Read More

  • Biography of Langston Hughes

    1369 Words  | 3 Pages

    Langston Hughes was probably the most well-known literary force during the Harlem Renaissance. He was one of the first known black artists to stress a need for his contemporaries to embrace the black jazz culture of the 1920s, as well as the cultural roots in Africa and not-so-distant memory of enslavement in the United States. In formal aspects, Hughes was innovative in that other writers of the Harlem Renaissance stuck with existing literary conventions, while Hughes wrote several poems and stories inspired by the improvised, oral traditions of black culture (Baym, 2221). Proud of his cultural identity, but saddened and angry about racial injustice, the content of much of Hughes’ work is filled with conflict between simply doing as one is told as a black member of society and standing up for injustice and being proud of one’s identity. This relates to a common theme in many of Hughes’ poems: that dignity is something that has to be fought for by those who are held back by segregation, poverty, and racial bigotry.

    Read More

  • T.S. Eliot, Langston Hughes and Modern Poetry

    840 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the early 20th century, many writers such as T.S. Eliot (Thomas Stearns Eliot) and Langston Hughes wrote what scholars of today consider, modern poetry. Writers in that time period had their own ideas of what modern poetry should be and many of them claimed that they wrote modern work. According to T.S. Eliot’s essay, “From Tradition”, modern poetry must consist of a “tradition[al] matter of much wider significance . . . if [one] want[s] it [he] must obtain it by great labour . . . no poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists’ (550). In another term, tradition only comes within the artist or the art itself; therefore, it should be universally monumental to the past. And, Langston Hughes argues that African-Americans should embrace and appreciate their own artistic virtues; he wishes to break away from the Euro-centric tradition and in hopes of creating a new blueprint for the African-American-Negro.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Remembering Nat Turner By Sterling Allen Brown

    318 Words  | 1 Pages

    The author was born in Washington D.C. on May 1, 1901. Later, he received a bachelor’s degree from Williams College where he studied traditional literature and explored music like Jazz and the Blues; then had gotten his masters at Harvard. The author is a professor of African American English at Harvard University. The author’s writing

    Read More

  • Black Poetry

    2173 Words  | 5 Pages

    Over the course of the century chronicling the helm of slavery, the emancipation, and the push for civil, equal, and human rights, black literary scholars have pressed to have their voice heard in the midst a country that would dare classify a black as a second class citizen. Often, literary modes of communication were employed to accomplish just that. Black scholars used the often little education they received to produce a body of works that would seek to beckon the cause of freedom and help blacks tarry through the cruelties, inadequacies, and inconveniences of their oppressed condition. To capture the black experience in America was one of the sole aims of black literature. However, we as scholars of these bodies of works today are often unsure as to whether or not we can indeed coin the phrase “Black Literature” or, in this case, “Black poetry”. Is there such a thing? If so, how do we define the term, and what body of writing can we use to determine the validity of the definition. Such is the aim of this essay because we can indeed call a poem “Black”. We can define “Black poetry” as a body of writing written by an African-American in the United States that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of an experience or set of experiences inextricably linked to black people, characterizes a furious call or pursuit of freedom, and attempts to capture the black condition in a language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm. An examination of several works of poetry by various Black scholars should suffice to prove that the definition does hold and that “Black Poetry” is a term that we can use.

    Read More

  • The Dilemma Of A Ghost By Ama Ata Aidoo

    693 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout the story, the writer uses the different lives of an African family and their union with an African American to show the cultural rift that occurs. Their daily lives show how people of different cultures strive to live together under the same roof. The clash of cultures is portrayed in the way they react to each other in the different circumstances.

    Read More

More about Analysis Of Harper's 'Here Where Coltrane Is'

Open Document