The speaker in the poem documents the experience of listening to a piano player in Harlem play the blues. ... The poem's last line, then, ignores the blues performer's ability to articulate pain and likewise to subsume it. ... Finally, at no point in time does the speaker in the poem insert himself into the lyrics. What this implies is that "The Weary Blues" can also be read as an anti-Jazz Age poem. That is, a case can be made in which we need not equate the speaker in the poem with Hughes at all. ...

• Word Count: 547
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Seamus Heaney's poem, Mid-Term Break, is a great example of how society's expectations can impact identity because the poem is about a young man who is away at school to obtain an education and establish his identity when he is called back home to deal with the death of his younger brother. From reading the poem, it's clear that the narrator left his family to pursue an identity of his own, and the first line of the poem suggests that he isn't happy about having to return home out of obligation as the oldest child. ... Another poem that touches on identity and social expect...

• Word Count: 2322
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

In the poem the landlord says that the man needs to pay him ten dollars. ... The poem is attempting to demonstrate the degree of social unfairness in America. ... This is a dissent poem. ... The poem intensely raises a powerful voice against racism in America. ... By utilizing the basic informal dialect of the Blacks, the poem passes on the profound emotions of the Negroes. ...

• Word Count: 1762
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

What was the Harlem Renaissance? What is a renaissance? A renaissance is a movement or period of vigorous artistic and intellectual activity. There was a famous renaissance in Europe during the transition from medieval times to modern times that is still taught today. The Harlem Renaissance was an African American cultural movement of the late 1920s and early 1930s that was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. ...

• Word Count: 2619
• Approx Pages: 10
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Many people may think there only the negative responses of whites in the Harlem Renaissance because according to Claude Mckay who was one of the most important poets and writers in the Harlem Renaissance, his poems If We Must Die and America both illustrated the negatives responses and whites in that time. ... Van Vechten recommended Langston Hughes's work to Knopf that which is a New York publishing house, Knopf Published Hughes' s first volume of poems, the Weary Blues, in 1920, and many other Hughes's works later. ...

• Word Count: 1512
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

In the early 1900s, particularly in the 1920s, African-American literature, art, music, dance, and social commentary began to flourish in Harlem, a section of New York City. During the mass migration of African Americans from the rural agricultural South to the urban industrial North (1914-18), many...

• Word Count: 783
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The Harlem Renaissance showed the unique culture of African Americans and redefined African American expression. It began in the early 1920's where African American literature, art, music, and dance began to flourish in Harlem, a neighboorhood in New York City. This African American cultural movemen...

• Word Count: 1369
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate