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Recommended: history of the blues
Blues is one of the most captivating genres of music. The genre was originated in the late 1800’s as a method used by African American slaves to express the circumstances as well as to put emphasis on their feelings and emotions. In order to create these feelings in this music, blues artists incorporate many of the same techniques used to write poetry. One of the most easily identifiable songs in which it is easy to see the relation between poetic elements and blues music is the song “Empty Bed Blues” by Bessie Smith.
The lyrics to “Empty Bed Blues”, when not being sung, appear to be a regular poem. But when performed, the lyrics are transformed into a powerful and meaningful blues song. Bessie Smith is one of the most well-known and influential blues singers of the 1920’s. By incorporating poetic devices into the lyrics of her song, Bessie is able to better able to portray her attitudes and emotions to the audience By using the elements of imagery, rhyme, repetition and word choice normally found in the blues allows the audience is given more insight into her present circumstanc...
When I read poetry, I often tend to look first at its meaning and second at how it is written, or its form. The mistake I make when I do this is in assuming that the two are separate, when, in fact, often the meaning of poetry is supported or even defined by its form. I will discuss two poems that embody this close connection between meaning and form in their central use of imagery and repetition. One is a tribute to Janis Joplin, written in 1983 by Alice Fulton, entitled “You Can’t Rhumboogie in a Ball and Chain.” The second is a section from Walt Whitman’s 1,336-line masterpiece, “Song of Myself,” first published in 1855. The imagery in each poem differs in purpose and effect, and the rhythms, though created through repetition in both poems, are quite different as well. As I reach the end of each poem, however, I am left with a powerful human presence lingering in the words. In Fulton’s poem, that presence is the live-hard-and-die-young Janis Joplin; in Whitman’s poem, the presence created is an aspect of the poet himself.
While not true for everyone, people are a product of their environment. The surroundings that a person is exposed to, may have a direct influence on the decisions they make in life. Even if someone is smart and has great aspirations, the environment they are brought up in may be holding them back. People who make terrible choices and then are shocked by the consequences are simply coming from a context in which those weren't as bad a choices as they turned out to be. This is the case for Sonny of James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues.” Although Sonny was an aspiring musician, the surroundings of Harlem would provide opportunities to make poor decisions that may not have been presented to him had he been in a different environment. For this reason,
Sonny’s Blues written by James Baldwin appears to suggest that family and faith are important aspects in someone’s life and that each person has a different way of dealing with their own demons. The author writes with an expressive purpose and narrative pattern to convey his message and by analyzing the main characters, the point of view of the narration, the conflict in the story and the literary devices Baldwin utilizes throughout his tale, his central idea can be better understood.
A.Freewrite: I am going to write about the point of view used in Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues.” In James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” Baldwin does not use Sonny as the narrator but instead uses his brother. I believe Baldwin used the brother as the narrator to give to give readers the idea that Sonny and his brother do not communicate well with each other. While Sonny listens but does not speak, his brother speaks but does not listen. Baldwin uses the brother as the narrator to highlight the idea that Sonny’s addiction to heroin, love of jazz music, and his melancholy are associated to Sonny’s lack of voice as well as control over his own life.
The interpretations of what comes after death may vary greatly across literature, but one component remains constant: there will always be movement. In her collection Native Guard, Natasha Trethewey discusses the significance, permanence and meaning of death often. The topic is intimate and personal in her life, and inescapable in the general human experience. Part I of Native Guard hosts many of the most personal poems in the collection, and those very closely related to the death of Trethewey’s mother, and the exit of her mother’s presence from her life. In “Graveyard Blues”, Trethewey examines the definition of “home” as a place of lament, in contrast to the comforting meaning in the epitaph beginning Part I, and the significance
In this essay James Baldwin’s world renowned story “Sonny’s Blues” will be analysed in detail, including Baldwin’s background, the artistic quality, thematic meanings, a plot summary, and the role this story plays in world literature. James Baldwin was born on August 2, 1924, in New York’s Harlem. At the time the center of black culture, Harlem was once a culturally vibrant community of artists of all kinds, but it was also a neighborhood deeply afflicted by poverty and violence. Baldwin’s mother was eventually left by Baldwin’s biological father, and assumed a job as a domestic servant and married the preacher David Baldwin, whose strong influence on Baldwin was evident not only in Baldwin’s writing but in his religious faith as well. Baldwin’s religious faith had its follies. He had a difficult relationship with his stepfather, and while attending High School in the Bronx, he began to accept his homosexuality, which further complicated his role in the church. During his highschool years, Baldwin’s literary talent took off. He began spending time in Greenwich Village, which was widely considered the heart of the post–World War II artistic community.
For Stanley, the blues tell the stories of the African-American community. Some of the stories talk about the harshness of their lives, but they also talk about the good times they had. [People] play the blues to get rid of the blues not to get them." (Lamb, 1). When people play or even listen to the blues, they are letting all of their worries go. They are not worrying about their job, the bills, or their kids. They are just trying to enjoy the moment when the blues are playing. The blues are some people's release from the stresses of their lives.
It highlights the luxurious lifestyle of the rich man and about the rich man’s lack of knowledge regarding the struggles of the poor man. “Washwoman’s Blues” is a parallel song, also performed by smith, speaks about the financial environments of many African American women. These are social protests because “Poor Man’s Blues” openly indicts and upper classes for the increasing manipulation and poverty of the poor and “Washwoman’s Blue” critiques the oppressive conditions that most African-American women were forced to work. Bessie smith wrote and recorded many songs that invoked the black experience in America, notably “Blackwater Blues”, “Workhouse Blues”, and “Send Me to The Lectric Chair” all were subtle protests against the treatment of blacks. They touched on topics ranging from black imprisonment to the disregarding of African Americans and
James Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues tells the story of the narrator and his brother and the hardships that they must endure. As Kahlil Gibran States “Out of suffering have emerged the strangest souls, the most massive characters are seared with scars.” (Gibran). In that very quote the real light is shown as it informs the reader that with suffering comes growth and once the person whomever it may be emerges out of the darkness they may have scars but it has made them stronger. The theme of light and darkness as well as suffering play a vital part in this story. For both men there are times in which they have the blues and suffer in the darkness of their lives but music takes the suffering from them.
“Most things I write, I do for the sheer love of the music in them. Somehow or other, however, I find my poetry of itself treating of the Negro, of hi...
Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin tells the story of a man growing up in Harlem in the early 1950s along with his brother. These two brothers grew up in poverty and have seemingly chosen different paths in their lives, Sonny being a drug addict and our narrator a school teacher but they struggle with very similar problems. Both brothers use different methods of escapism to cope with not only their childhood but the struggles they face. Sonny Blues has many examples showing us that although drinking, smoking, drugs, music, and work can supply us temporary fixes to our problems, they won't fix them in the long run and we must ultimately face our demons.
The short story Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin is written in first person through the narrator. This story focuses on the narrator’s brother sonny and their relationship throughout the years. This story is taken place in Harlem, New York in the 1950s. The narrator is a high school algebra teacher and just discovered his brother in the newspaper. This story includes the traditional elements to every story, which consist of the exposition, conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, and the resolution.
All of humanity suffers at one point or another during the course of their lives. It is in this suffering, this inevitable pain, that one truly experiences life. While suffering unites humankind, it is how we choose to cope with this pain that defines us as individuals. The question becomes do we let suffering consume us, or do we let it define our lives? Through James Baldwin’s story, “Sonny’s Blues”, the manner by which one confronts the light and darkness of suffering determines whether one is consumed by it, or embraces it in order to “survive.” Viewing a collection of these motifs, James Baldwin’s unique perspective on suffering as a crucial component of human development becomes apparent. It is through his compassionate portrayal of life’s inescapable hardships that one finds the ability to connect with humankind’s general pool of hardship. James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” makes use of the motifs of darkness and light to illuminate the universal human condition of suffering and its coping mechanisms.
At first glance, "Sonny's Blues" seems ambiguous about the relationship between music and drugs. After all, the worlds of jazz and drug addiction are historically intertwined; it could be possible that Sonny's passion for jazz is merely an excuse for his lifestyle and addiction, as the narrator believes for a time. Or perhaps the world that Sonny has entered by becoming involved in jazz is the danger- if he had not encountered jazz he wouldn't have encountered drugs either. But the clues given by the portrayals of music and what it does for other figures in the story demonstrate music's beneficial nature; music and drugs are not interdependent for Sonny. By studying the moments of music interwoven throughout the story, it can be determined that the author portrays music as a good thing, the preserver and sustainer of hope and life, and Sonny's only way out of the "deep and funky hole" of his life in Harlem, with its attendant peril of drugs (414).
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.