A Cogs Fate

Outcast and The Tired Worker by Claude McKay are two strong and intricate poems that stand perfectly on their own, however, when the two are read together we can uncover a strengthened main theme and a heavy correlation between the two literary works. With the historical context of both works being written within the 1920s, we see the story of exploited and overworked employees, victims of the situation around them, and the people in power above them. 

The Tired Worker revolves around the speaker, as he waits till the final hours of the day so that he may be able to return back home to rest. Allowing him the opportunity of momentary peace, as he recovers from the back-breaking and overly demanding daily work. As he begins to regain himself and appreciate the joy in his rest he is rudely awakened by the morning sun as it rises again, and is filled with dread at knowing he has to return to the grueling work cycle he’s destined for. The speaker notes the difference between the two settings and notably points out the lack of autonomy he has over the work he does “The wretched day was theirs, the night is mine” with his time off the clock being the only time he has over himself, as during the day he is nothing more than another cog in the machine kept running by those in power. 

While Outcast holds a more somber tone with a main emphasis on the inescapable fate of death, it can be argued that it’s a much more positive work. As the speaker talks about his body and soul eventually departing from the living world he notes that there is peace in this process, as he returns to the darkness, but in doing so is able to rest eternally. More importantly, however, the speaker notes that his death removes him from the chains placed onto him by the “great western world” as he’s forced to work, and liberated from “the white man’s menace” as he escapes through death. 

Together the poems tell the story of an abusive and exploitative system, one that takes in workers and uses them to their fullest extent for the sake of maximizing productivity with no care for the burden this has on its employees. We get a closer view of this system from the perspective of one of its victims, constantly haunted by the daily work cycle, even through the little time he gets to rest, knowing that he’s doomed to return back the next day. Destined to this cycle until the day of his death, when he will finally be freed of his daily torment and separated from his overseers and be met with the peace that’s been robbed from him his whole life. 

– Eduardo Ojeda Jr

Unfortunate Truth

To be quite honest whilst reading these poems I felt that all of these poems were intriguing to me as they talk about his struggles and hardships. The two poems I chose to write about from Claude McKay’s poems were, “Outcast” and “The Tired Worker”. While reading the two poems, I noticed how they both express the want for freedom and the different ways to express this. 

In the sonnet for, “The Tired Worker”, the poem demonstrates the difficulties of the working class as well as his experiences. Mckay emphasizes the importance of the evening time as this is where they receive their free time away from work, as well as this is where they can be at peace. “O dawn! O dreaded dawn! O let me rest” (Line 12), the poet describes his dread for the beginning of a new day as this is where their freedom ends and they will need to start working once more. 

Although, In the poem “Outcast” it seems as if the poet focuses more on the feeling of loneliness just simply due to their skin color. As well as focusing on the fact that he is an immigrant, which wasn’t all that welcomed, “And I must walk the way of life a ghost” (Line 11). I felt that throughout the poem it focused around the idea of racial profiling as well as how they’re in a white world. Additionally to all of this, I noticed the alliteration throughout the poem of “I”, this appears to be the poet referring actually to the general working class rather than just himself. 

These poems are quite heartbreaking but they are also unfortunately the truth and something that people to this day still struggle with, race.

Yue Wu-Jamison

Window of Hope

“From the window of despair

May sky

there is always tomorrow”

~ NEIJI OZAWA

Imagery has been invoked in haiku poems for centuries, portraying an experience captured by the poet. Imagery invokes a concise and vivid description that appeals to the senses, making the haiku almost audiovisual.  Haiku typically focuses on nature and the changes in seasons. Therefore, the juxtaposition and the choice of diction create powerful visual and sensory images that capture events or emotions. Which creates a mood or tone that invites the readers to engage their imagination to experience the moment that the poet is portraying.

Neiji Ozawa wrote this haiku based on his previous life experiences, mostly being hardships here in America. Since there was some much segregation and discrimination towards Japanese Americans, in healthcare. Pushing Ozawa to open his own pharmacy to help that cause since white physicians were unacceptable due to the language barrier and expensive cost. This haiku was written on the Gila River reservation where Ozawa along with many other citizens were put in due to the executive order being sent out by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Further, these reservations detained these citizens, labeling them as a threat to the country. “From the window of despair”, provides the readers with the timeline that this was written at a time of hardships for Japanese citizens. “May sky” can then be symbolized for hope and the promise of a new beginning. May being associated with the arrival of spring, renewal, and growth. Sky in May signifies the transition from the coolness of spring to the warmth of summer. Therefore, this haiku follows the typical structure of focusing on nature and the changes in seasons. Yet, this may sky symbolizes hope for the citizens in this camp, to regain their previous lives and more. “There is always tomorrow” gives this poem the tone of hope, since it describes that tomorrow there is always hope that they will be displaced from those camps. Ultimately creating a visual of Japanese citizens looking up at the May sky and hoping for their freedom to come tomorrow.

~Jeshua Rocha

The Desire for Freedom

“ Moonlit summer sky

same black houses

standing in rows”

– Yotenshi Agari

The poet, Yotenshi Agari, wrote a poem that caught my attention. I initially read the biography and found it very intriguing. When reading this poem I learned a lot about the life at the internment camp in Stockton Assembly Center. I felt that even though there weren’t many words physically on the paper, the haiku painted a picture using a thousand words. 

The imagery used throughout the haiku creates a horrendous image of how they had no freedom. “Moonlit summer sky”, provides the readers with a timeline of when this was written as well as “moonlit” can be seen as a glimpse of hope. This specific scene appears to take place during the nighttime and in the summer as if he is star gazing. The moonlight can also suggest a sense of warmth and peacefulness, potentially dreaming of what freedom would be. When I heard “same black houses” I thought of the color black and it can mean multiple things such as death, mourning, and darkness. I looked up the definition of black and I found that it means “lacking hue and brightness; absorbing light without reflecting any of the rays.”. The juxtaposition of “black houses” against the “moonlit summer sky” creates a visual contrast and emphasizes the visibility of the houses in the moonlight. “Standing in rows” adds a sense of order and structure to the scene, this can also imply how organized everything is. I also noticed that the mention of the houses can add a sense of order, structure, and organization. 

There appears to be repetition by using the word “same” twice which can suggest a lack of individuality or uniqueness throughout the houses. Essentially stating that the houses are all bland and the same as one another, it also draws attention to the uniformity going on. The haiku focuses a lot on the imagery as well as the want for freedom. 

-Yue Wu-Jamison

The Reiko Gomyo’s way: how to endure the internment period

To understand this poem, I first attempted to draw a picture. In the picture I drew, I sensed the loneliness and hope. The imagery of grass, newly sprouting buds, and the green hues of spring. How do these represent the experience of daily life at the internment camp?

The author was born in Japan and later immigrated to California, USA. While the author and the speaker are not explicitly the same, it can be inferred that the author likely experienced loneliness during the internment period imposed by the US government. Detainment in a country where rights to freedom are ensured creates a gap that would have brought significant loneliness to the author. It is definitely likely that the speaker in the poem shares this feeling. However, the speaker does not give up. The grass that grew by the ditch last year must be moved elsewhere. Everyone who sees the grass there will think so. The ditch is not where grass is supposed to grow. The speaker clearly feels oppressed and lonely, akin to the withering grass. But the grass that grew by the ditch will grow again next year. And someday, ‘firm’ buds will bloom abundantly. Ultimately, it means that oppression will not go forever, and the speaker’s steadfast determination shines through, indicating that liberation will come, allowing her and other Japanese to enjoy freedom like those trees, like American citizens.

Jisoo Jang

I am not a rose. I am a free poppy.

‘The Rose and The Poppy’ by Adrianna Puente is most effective in challenging the traditional symbol of the rose. To understand this poem, we need to start with the title. The Rose traditionally symbolizes ‘love’ itself, with its thorns representing ‘pain.’ However, alongside it, The Poppy is traditionally a symbol of ‘Remembrance and hope for a peaceful future.’ Yet, in this poem, The Poppy seems to focus more on the efficacy of the flower rather than its traditional meanings. As we know, The Poppy is sometimes associated with a type of narcotic, but it can also be used as a medical remedy. Depending on its use, The Poppy can either harm or heal individuals.

Throughout the poem, the speaker insists that the speaker is not The Rose but The Poppy. The speaker rejects all the symbols associated with The Rose, such as love, friendship, comfort, romance, etc., and claims herself to be a kind of natural flower, The Poppy. Why does the speaker keep asserting that she is not The Rose? While The Rose traditionally symbolizes not only love but also alluring women, the speaker asserts that she is not a captivating woman like The Rose, but rather a flower in nature, inartificial, just one among many people, like The Poppy. As mentioned earlier, The Poppy can be both a remedy and a poison. The speaker states that she may be chosen like The Rose on Valentine’s Day, but she never forgets who she truly is in any situation. The speaker chose The Poppy, which can eventually turn brown like a wildflower in a field, rather than conforming to the traditional symbols of love, friendship, and pain associated with The Rose. And that woman, the speaker, strongly asserts her desire not to play the typical role associated with The Poppy as either poison or remedy, but rather to live freely like the Poppy blooming in the field. By doing so, the speaker effectively rejects the traditional symbols of The Rose. A captivating woman like The Rose is just one among the common 8 billion people, much like The Poppy.

Jisoo Jang

Momentum and Freedom

As Walt Whitman talks about the self-love for the human body, its nature and its action in I Sing the Body Electric, Luis Alberto Ambroggio uses We are all Whitman to talk about race, human nature, immigration, discrimination, authoritarianism, rebellious freedom, being silenced, and amplifying the people’s voices. These topics are amplified by the used of commas to create rhythm, while Whitman uses a lot more cacophony creating a constant need to clear your throat, Ambroggio had a less cacophony, I felt I could read it fast without many mistakes with a few times needing to catch my breath. However, whenever there was cacophony within Ambroggio’s poem, it indicated importance,

This Self is Puerto Rican, Chicano,

from Cuba free dancer of merengues,

from Santo Domingo and all the Caribbean,

from El Salvador and Nicaragua.

It comes from Mexico, Central America,

from Costa Rica, Tikal, Guatemala,

from their rainforests, lakes of salt and honey,

from Panama, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela,

the corn crops of the Argentine pampas,

Chile’s veins of grapes, Bolivia’s reed flute,

from the Mayas, Quechuas, Aztecs, Incas,

from the Guaranís, from the Amazon, Ecuador,

from the Uruguay of the Charrúas and its shores,

gauchos, criollos, Europeans, mestizos,

mulattos, the fair-skinned, Turks, Asians, Syrian or Lebanese,

waifs, streetwalkers, huddled masses of Latin America

with their many names.

(Ambroggio, Lines 43-59)

In this excerpt, we can see that Ambroggio mentions that “The Self” is all of these people, I take it to mean that everyone can share the sense of being life, that by having a soul, no matter who you are or where you are from, you can have freedom, freedom from oppression, discrimination, society even. In the same excerpt, we can see the commas in play. In the way I read the poem, they act as yellow signals at a traffic light, don’t read too fast but don’t pause, to keep momentum, and as I keep momentum, I can feel the emotions a rebel would have, I sound like I am demanding for change and that everyone is free. I say that “I am large, I contain multitudes. / They will not manage to deny me or ignore me or declare me undocumented:” (Ambroggio, Lines 92-93) and it makes me feel representative of a people who do not want to back down. The inspiration from Whitman doesn’t make you feel electric in Ambroggio’s poem, but it does make you feel anger, or perhaps, frustration, and in turn it makes you feel life you demand change in how you are treated. “I am written in you, in all / as all are in me,” (Ambroggio, 94-95) adds on to make us feel like we are a people and that we are together. The style Whitman and Ambroggio use makes your body have a reaction to words on a page, it makes you feel involved, it makes the poem alive, it makes you the poem. Whitman uses body parts to convey a reaction toward the body, of ourselves or of others, it allows for unfiltered freedom of expression, just like Whitman was in I Sing the Body Electric, he talks about womanhood, manhood, expressing love to the body, intimate or sexual. I think that Ambroggio translated the reaction towards the poem from Whitman, the key difference is that instead of causing appreciation and self-love towards the body and its nature, he rallies the reader, makes them take center stage to lead a cause towards a freedom everyone can have.

Roman Arroyo

Running through time

To school I went, everyday 1

with the fear that that was the day. 2

The day my parents wouldn’t come home. 3

While others expected their parents, 4

to pick them up while I wondered if i’d see them  5

One day my father was at work, 6

Under the heat of the summer sun, 7

He heard chaos when he turned around, 8

he saw the I.C.E vans pulling up. 9

His boss telling him to run away, 10

drifting through the fields, 11

Same way as time drifts away from you. 12

The adrenaline coursing through his body made him look like a blur, 13

 A blur running away through the fields 14

From I.C.E who have been after him. 15

No matter how far you run or how long you run, 16

They can always catch up to you 17

No matter what 18

The only thing to say is, 19

F*** I.C.E  20

Review : 

To whom this may concern:

The poem that I chose to make a parody out of is “Mexicans begin Jogging” by the author Gary Soto. This poem is from our Border Crossing unit and it’s is a short freestyle poem about a group of undocumented Mexicans that were at work at a factory to which then homeland security (ICE) shows up so they have to run away before getting caught. In this poem we can feel the adrenaline that they must have felt when running away trying to save themselves from being caught and deported. Many of the people who decide to cross the border and come to America risk it all for the so-called “American Dream” where they believe that there are more opportunities for a better life/future for them here than back home where they are originally from. 

To begin with, this project was one of the hardest for me. Being creative was never one of my strong skills which is why it was difficult for me to get all my ideas together and make it into something coherent. Finding a poem I liked was not the hard part, what I found difficult was the imitation or parody part of the project. I wasn’t sure of what I wanted to do just yet so I tried two different methods, one of them being an illustration of the imagery that the poem portrayed with the specific diction chosen by the author. However, I didn’t really know how that could be imitating the original poem so, then I instead chose to write my own poem with similar guidelines as to the ones seen in the original piece. With my piece I stayed on the theme of I.C.E and the fear that many who choose to cross over feel everyday. My imitation is different to the original poem because it also draws attention and focus to the fear that one as an undocumented worker may feel when found in that situation. It ties to the feelings in the original poem with similar themes and depictions however its not completely the same since I am talking about someone else’s experience not my own in the original piece the author is talking about a personal experience. My piece is also implied to the modern audience since immigration and deportation relating to I.C.E is still something prevalent to this day.

by Sandra Landa-Sanchez  

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The Soldier Who Shot The Child

The skies are colored with Red, White, Green, and Black.

Palestinian men are most men, while the Israeli men are free  

Crying over the stolen land

                They stole the green from the land

The olive trees weeping over the stolen land

The Soldier stands tall, wearing his uniform

The soldier picks up his black weapon and aims it

Laughs with other soldiers when pulling the trigger

Complaining about the holocaust while creating a new one

                Painting the poppy flower red

Dying the floors and streets with the blood of the Palestinians

Who knew it was his last day breathing.

The life a Palestinian child going to waste

Shot by the blurring red muzzle of a soldier

                Hammering bodies into the earth like nails

The olive tree turns brown

Personal experience is the motivation to start life events, it also inspires poets. The poem “The Soldier Who Shot The Child,” is inspired from my personal experience. As a person that grew up in Palestine, life has never been easy.  Palestine is an occupied country, where segregation, and genocide is present. Throughout the history, Palestinians have been murdered and treated with racism. This motivated me to write this poem. The poem I wrote was first written in Arabic and then I translated it to English. When the poem was translated it caused to it to lack some context as some words in Arabic are more descriptive.

                The poem I wrote is an imitation of the poem “White Things” both poems correlate with the topic of mass murder, segregation and human genocide. White Things discusses the segregation between the blacks and whites. It also discusses how a black kid was murdered and it was considered as a sense of humor in the eyes of the murderer. This is similar to child’s situation where he was shot while the soldiers where laughing. Yeah that’s the ugly truth behind it! The poem “White Things” uses poppy flowers and a ruby rose to signify for the murder, which challenges their controversial meaning. This is similar to my poem as the use of the symbols of olive trees and red poppy flower (the national flower of Palestine) stand for bloodshed and murder. Both poems are similar in the use of colors. In the first line of my poem, the colors red, white, green and black are the colors for the Palestinians flag. These colors stand for the resistance of the Palestinians to the Israeli forces. The emphasis on dark colors in the rest of the poem signifies for human genocide and violence that Palestinians go through. Also, both poems have indentations in the lines. “White Things” has indentations when discussing the murder of the black person. This is similar to the “The Soldier Who Shot The Child” as indentations are present to signify for the human genocide of Palestinians.

No Voice of The Working Class

McKay’s poem “The Tired Worker” describes the difficulties of the working class of the harsh  treatment and long hours of work, and the only thing that powers through the terrible conditions  is the waiting for nightfall to come. However, as “The Tired Worker” demonstrates the difficulty of working class, but comparing the poem to McKay’s other work “Outcast” that show the sense of unworthiness and hopelessness, but through analyzing the work, the main idea does not really transition to the working class depicted in “The Tired Worker.”

 McKay utilizes the sonnet form of the 14 lines with ending the Volta of the poem that depicts the people’s treatment of work within the city that allows them to be abused shown through the blood in their vein, brain and life of the speaker. With also the use of the rhyme scheme, McKay emphasizes the importance of night for the working class as it is their time to be freed through the difficult work and long hours where night allows them to be at peace. By looking at the end rhyme which could pick out a few significant words, from “moon” symbolizing the night after a stressful work to which is the one thing they look forward to. The speaker continues to explain, “the night is mine / Come, tender sleep, and fold me to my breast” (Line 9-10), as the speaker  describes the importance of night and the should be close to their chest. 

On the other side, taking a close look and analyzing McKay’s poem “Outcast” proceeds with having the sense of unworthiness and hopelessness, but it does not demonstrate the voice of the working class from the other poem. McKay continues to use the sonnet form, but the end rhyme is not significant compared to the other poem. Through simple aspects, you can pull out different ideas that could relate to the other poem. The speaker begins, “For the dim regions whence my fathers came” (Line 1), to which describing the “dim regions” that could be shown as the late hours of work as the speaker’s father comes back home. The poem continues, “I would go back to darkness and to peace” (Line 5), as the connotation of darkness would define it as the dark of night which finally allows the speaker peace. However, the poem does not represent the working class through working struggles and economics, but McKay presents a more racial idea of the community. The speaker mentions, “For I was born, far from may native clime, / Under the white man’s menace, out of time” (line 13-14), as it includes the “white man’s menace” as the idea of the racial impact of being disregard and them being the burden to the rest. 

Naraint Catalan Rios