The White Boy Shuffle

While I was researching poems for my poetry presentation, one that I came across and liked very much is “If We Must Die” by Claude McKay.  Unfortunately, someone already did it and apparently I was gone that day, which is sad because it would have been an interesting discussion.  To refresh people’s memory, here it is:

If we must die, let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,

Making their mock at our accursèd lot.

If we must die, O let us nobly die,

So that our precious blood may not be shed

In vain; then even the monsters we defy

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!

Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,

And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!

What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

Now that we’ve finished White Boy Shuffle, I’m curious how the speaker in this poem would get along with the Gunnar at the end of the book.  Both are similar in the way that they both think about death. Also sidenote, I feel like in the end, there are two versions of Gunnar: one version is his thoughts and the other is the way the public sees him as a messiah of some sort.  So Messiah Gunnar is pretty similar to the speaker. He is speaking to a crowd and talking about his own suicide, but the crowd takes it to mean that he believes that people should commit suicide to protest society. The speaker is also accepting death by fighting back and saying that if we have to die, it should be for a good reason and fighting an enemy.  Messiah Gunnar’s believers are in a way doing the same thing, but their enemy is not physically in front of them, which changes the whole situation, because they have a choice, whereas the speaker is saying if we have no other choice. But these people do have a choice. There’s also Gunnar’s thoughts that he keeps to himself. With these he just wants out of this life and he is thinking why bother to fight if it won’t change anything.  The speaker in the poem does not agree, and because of that, even though he is talking about death, it gives the poem a more hopeful outlook, which is a much better way to look at things.

Nexus

For Friday, we read “Nexus” by Rita Dove, which Olivia did a great job of reading.  At first glance, I had no clue what this poem was about, but found it vaguely sinister with the “giant praying mantis” that was “begging vacantly” with “his ragged jaws opening onto formlessness.”  As someone who is not a huge fan of bugs, this seemed very nightmarish. But in class we discussed the title and how it fit into the poem and for me, that made the poem lose its ominous feeling.

According to the OED, one definition is “A central point or point of convergence; a focus; a meeting-place.”  We discussed how in the poem the window mentioned in the second line could be a nexus for the speaker, who is a poet or a writer of some sort.  Itcan be seen as a point of convergence between the real world and the world that is being written about. From the second line on in the poem, the things being described are surreal and fantastical.  To me, it seems like in the first and second stanzas, the speaker is separated from the world she is writing about; she is inside writing “stubbornly” while the world of writing is trying to draw her in.  Unfortunately, she is separated by the glass, but in the third stanza, she is fully drawn into the work and is immersed when she finally walks outside into the “lapping darkness,” where she is met with an “absurdly green brontosaurus.”  

I wish writing was like this for me, where I can be drawn in and lose track of all time and reality, but unfortunately I still see it as something I am forced to do.  Luckily, reading is not the same, and that is when I can experience what the speaker is describing and be immersed into this incredible world.