Sounds of a Poem (Blog 8/8)

McKay and Hughes both have poems with distinct sounds. In McKay’s poem, the wind is trying to escape to freedom, and I can hear the sounds of the children along with squeals and screams that would add to another level of sound. The poem is building quietly, and then the poem crescendos in line 7.  Then as if slowly driving through the country, the sound of the wind moans, and then it turns sleepy and slow….drawing out its sound in the end with “the Trades float above them fresh and free” (16). 

Hughes’s poem Dream Boogie, starts out slow, but quickly builds to an exciting level “I’m happy! /Take it away!/Hey, pop!/Re-bop!/Mop!/Y-e-a-h!” (16-21). This poem seems more straightforward with a rush of excitement at the end. It has a low and slow build and then it quickly builds and then it is over.

North says that “a black voice informs much of what we identify as “American” in modernist literature and carefully shows that modernism owes much of its shape and quality to its engagement with black dialect” (11) and this is reflected in the Dream Boogie poem. I agree with this tone of literature and the volume that it gives to the poem by making it unique.