Harlem

I recently wrote an essay about a poem by Langston Hughes. Although I will not bore my readers to death by pasting my essay here, I want to share the poem, with the hope that it will lead to some introspection.


What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-
And then run?
Does it sting like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

The Discovery

do not imagine that the exploration
ends, that she has yielded all her mystery
or that the map you hold cancels further discovery

I tell you her uncovering takes years,
takes centuries, and when you find her naked,
look again,
admit there is something else you cannot name,
a veil, a coating just about the flesh
which you cannot remove by your mere wish

when you see the land naked, look again
(burn your maps, that is not what I mean),
I mean the moment when it seems most plain
is the moment when you must begin again.


by Gwendolyn MacEwen

The last all-nighter?

It is 5:48 and I have just typed the final period of my penultimate essay of this term. I compared the use of verbs in Langston Hughes's "Harlem" to the lack of verbs in Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro." So what? Well... the reason I had to pull an all-nighter (apart from the fact that I'm a master procrastinator) is that I couldn't get Lou Reed out of my head. Yesterday at 9 pm, when the essay was in its first page, I couldn't concentrate because "it's so cold in Alaska, it's so cold in Alaska" wouldn't stop ringing in my ears. So I grabbed my guitar and spent about an hour figuring out how to play it. Then, out of the goodness of my heart, I decided not to annoy the neighbors and resumed my writing. But as I was halfway through the second page (at around , 1 am), I was hit by some "Pale blue eeeeyes" on an incessant loop. Damn you Nico.