Wakoski

"The Red Bandana"

Consider the ambiguity of the red bandanna as a symbol; it helps characterize the speaker's sense of herself, as distinguished from the male addressee (the red takes on different meanings in these contexts) and also helps characterize their relationship (the nexus/pattern--red bandanna, bull fight, blood sport,etc, you are noticing --what other images fall into this pattern and how, specifically, do they characterize the addressee and the relationship between him and the speaker? The imagery of stanza 5 takes us beyond that relationship). Note the image contrasts, and difference in tone/attitude, in the speaker's descriptions of herself and the addressee, and how that tempers the final stanza

"The Hitchhikers"

Stanzas 2 and 3 provide the personal/emotional foregrounding for the what the hitchhikers--it's really their heads that is the focus--and the berries "mean"; what role they play in the speaker's psychology. The imagery of the long stanzas 2 & 4 should also help explain why these berries, and the ash, can be at once beautiful and painful(stanza 6)--"ash" (the name of the tree) is suggestive as well. Note these various image patterns: the color red, the it's connection go flame/burning, the hitchhikers' sun-burned heads, the berries, ash, blood, the Phoenix (an allusion that suggests a psychological movement contrary to what the speaker is going through); the different senses of "burning"; the contrasting imagery of diamonds and gold (stanza 4); how all this leads to the imagery of the emotional sacrifice of the second-to-last stanza--how stanzas 2 & 4 ground all this, as I say--and the irony and humor of the last stanza--i.e., the berries, the ash tree, the hitchhikers have a deeply psychological, rather than simply objective, existence for the speaker--someone getting in the car with her would certainly not know what he was getting into... also, see the exercise on BB

The hitchhikers suggest the speaker's own needs and feelings of failure, as well as whatever caused that relationship to fail, which the speaker blames herself for, and not being able to understand that--the hitchhikers, then, as representing the unknown she fears in herself, and not wanting to inflict that on someone else, could be read in the final lines...the berries again are certainly ambiguous, since they suggest both the beauty and pain that is the emotional remnant of that relationship (note the contrasting images of the diamonds and gold).

Why she doesn't pick up the hitchhikers is really all about the role they play, unwittingly (the humor of the last 2 lines), in her own psycho-drama--what lies beneath all those superficial "excuses." The car, of course, at 60, 70, etc. mph--no matter how fast--is no escape--she carries the sacrificial alter with her... (can't run away from your self...can't out run the hitchhikers who are, of course, always still--psychologically, imaginatively--there).

"The Photos"

The intriguing line "I have killed my children" refers to the myth of Medea, which has a rather complex relation to the poem, somewhat flipping the reality of the mother's situation, but then, there is always this dissociation, dis-parity, between reality and art--consider looking into the myth a bit more. The relationship of mother-daughter is the thing, how it haunts, and the emptiness which is a "destiny" for us all.

Harjo, Sanders, Sanchez, Baca

Since any of the poets we have been reading the last two weeks (including Baraka and Cortez, as well as this week's writers) often perform their poems, and since the urge toward oral performance often partly shapes the poems' forms (use of a public address rhetorical mode in Cortez's "There It Is," from last week selections, for eg)--or, we might say, an urge toward performance is embedded in the poems' forms and structures--since, that is, the poems exist both on the page and off the page in live performances--it could be insightful, as part of your analyses, to consider some of the performance versions of these poems. Check YouTube for videos...also PennSound for sound recordings...




Harjo:

"she Had Some Horses"

Certainly, the horses can be seen to represent her personal life, but also the cultural history of a people (Native American), and human nature generally, so you 'd want to notice how the horses symbolize human desire, fear, spiritual need--the good, the bad, the ugly, and even the humorous--the full range of human experience--but also a particular (native American) world view rooted in involvement with the (natural) other--ie., a self that can incorporate the personal, transpersonal, and the nonhuman as well as the human; the prehistorical, myth and dream, as well as the earth in its deep (geologic) time. The poem is trans-historical, trans-temporal, in this way, and brings to mind both Waldman and Snyder.

"Equinox"

Note how the speaker turns the suffering of the history of people and a culture into song--i.e., poetry; much of the imagery is Native American, Harjo's cultural roots.  This poem, pubished in 2002, was performed as a tribute to the jazz singer Leana Horne. Though not written for Horne, the personal and cultural history of strife the poem images, and the need to finally bury those dead and move on, as the crocuses pushing through the "frozen [i.e, psychologically/emotionally paralyzing circumstances] earth" (an earth stunned by that suffering) teaches us, can apply to Horne and African-Americans as well as Harjo and Native Americans. You can view Harjo's tribute performance of this poem and others on YouTube.

Sanders

"The Cutting Prow"

The painter is Henri Matisse (check out some of his works on Google images); what is the significance of the image constellation scissor-scepter-cutting prow? think about the compiling of metaphoric suggestions. How do they interrelate, as images, and why "cutting prow" (the scissor of course becomes the cutting prow, but in what sense)? This poem, like Ferlinghetti's "Don't Let That Horse," has something to say about the value of poetry.

Also, check out this video of Sanders performing the poem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hkreT3J2h

Sanchez:

"Ballad"

There is both defiance/challenge and sadness in the speaker's tone; Sanchez uses the ballad form, with the repetition at the end, to effectively express this ambiguity. Both the young and old are, or will be, "jilted," so to speak, from this "love"; "love" in quotes since, note, there are really at least two different types of love, here. One is the more obvious, human/sexual/"romantic" (though nothing stereotypically romantic in this imagery) love between couples, which often involves on partner sacrificing "Her" identity to the other (this is the typically, male-dominant type of relationship heterosexual "love" relationship. The second stanza, though, provides a different sort of imagery, and suggests perhaps a broader, or at least not so narrowly focused definition of "love"--and the imagery there is full of sexual passion and earthiness, as well...
The wisdom of the elder speaker, with her more comprehensive grasp of love and experience, and the overly self-confident attitude of the "young" is also relevant... the speaker  finds that love is at once perhaps more fulfilling and complex, and also more lonely, than the youthful veresion may allow

Baca:

"Into Death Bravely"

Note the use of an extended metaphor of warfare to comment on the struggle for survival in a tough environment.  If you're from an agrarian cultural context like Baca's, your people depend upon the land--closely tied to natural cycles; so the "war," from one perspective, really is between "man and nature": the winter makes things hard on plants and animals. What "defeats" winter, of course, is the spring; nothing we can do. So, yes, there's a lesson there for us humans, and a respect for they way things are.