Sign up to get unlimited songs and podcasts with occasional ads. 2006 eNotes.com The repeated I, beginning seven of the ten lines, focuses the reader on the narrator, the black person who speaks of rivers, and on the effects of the tie between his history and the rivers. "Jazz is very important," he says. For the poet, it is to conquer their stiffness one after another and bring them under control or subdue. It's all about knowing the basics. Students scored exceptionally well on questions asking them to analyze character or setting (Big Ideas 1 and 2), or to recognize the function of a particular character (Skill category 1). Ai, who has described herself as Japanese, Choctaw-Chickasaw, Black, Irish, Southern Cheyenne, and Comanche, was born in Albany, Texas in 1947, and she grew up in Tucson . The first round of tests, which started on May 3, is in-school only, and extends until May 17. if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'englishsummary_com-large-leaderboard-2','ezslot_5',658,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-englishsummary_com-large-leaderboard-2-0'); The life becomes very hard at times like ones face is burning and tickling with the cobwebs broken across it. Several of the poems repeated lines, such as He did a lazy sway and I got the Weary Blues, then capture the motion and rhythm of the music. In the second, Hughes tells the story of a mixed-blood boy who greets the ship as it harbors in Africa. Stay up-to-date with the politics team. The voice in the poem is that of the black mothers through the ages. [GnglLh B*nlAiQ{hazma)AGP,p;z{zMZ3mUqz:xFFGz>rpg2aW$9 {l(lIZJ:VG~K%{{5F5s+hWkTPDoevN Preview of Spotify. Hughes, whose writing career spanned more than half a century, was diverse in his themes, which included connectedness, transitoriness, racism, integration, poverty, myth, history, and universal freedom. if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'englishsummary_com-medrectangle-3','ezslot_1',654,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-englishsummary_com-medrectangle-3-0'); The poet minutely observes how the rising breeze cracks the glazed surface made over the birches by snow. 2008 eNotes.com Don't tell me, I say. The night is warm. -Problem to be resolved? As Hughes himself realized, most of the early critics were middle-class white men whose views were restricted by their own expectations. The very realistic description of losing amidst the wood and climbing a birch becomes metaphorical. Ai explained her use of the dramatic monologue as an early realization that "first person voice was always the stronger voice to use when writing." Her poems depict individuals that Duane Ackerson characterized in Contemporary Women Poets as "people seeking transformation, a rough sort of salvation, through violent acts."