City Eclogue

Okay, I have to say that when I first started reading this book I had the complete whale face on (-______-) I was thinking how in the World am I going to analyze this? It was very intimidating. I wasn't even sure what an eclogue was! But after reading through the first half a couple times I started to get the understand what he was trying to say. I was also really impressed by his creativity in how he used poetry to explain the problems going on in his city which I'm assuming is New York because he talked about Washington Square and Harlem. His language was very raw and descriptive, "what kind of bastard son wishes his son had won the election to eradicate his sister for the fuckers birthday?" is a good example. To me, he's just trying to evoke the anger or rather just compassion.

As we discussed in class, there are several key themes in his poems one of which I noticed was his use of history, specifically enough African American history. On page 43, "still in our habit Colored Only) and on page 45 he says, "that powerful level of segregationist the civil rights movement never reached." I truly believe what he is trying to stress here is that although these things happened, not much has changed. He doesn't speak of these movements in a way that conveys he believes that was the start of a revolution. It's like he's saying I know this happened, but there is still work to do. Also on page 50, the poem, there was no gun is used to explain a more current event relevant to African American history. He writes, "did he see forty one times the forty one shots end his life in forty one deaths in time to understand what he already knew about black people looking like to whites with guns." Amadou Diallo was shot 41 times by the NYPD with no weapon on him because he fit the description of a serial rapist. He introduces one of the problems of racism in the city by talking about White officers killing Black men based upon their preconceived notions about them.

There were two lines that I really liked enough to share with a few of my friends. I really enjoyed the there was no gun poem not just because I understood the history behind it. My favorite line out of the first half is in it. It reads, "we blink our eyes to erase what we see or to clear the eyes to see what we don't." It just really explains the beauty of perspective so well. It's amazing how powerful the eyes are if you really think about it. If we just open our eyes we can see what's really going on and try to fix it. Another line I really enjoyed was on page 31, "we are so fused with communication we all happen at once." I just thought that was so brilliant! Something I always talk to my Dad about is all the social networking and ways we have to communicate but talking to each other face to face is still difficult. Everyone is so busy tweeting or updating their facebook status or what have you that we don't really take the time to talk to each other or maybe that's just part of the city life, everyone is just too busy to care.