Showing posts with label symbolism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label symbolism. Show all posts

25.9.20

Street Photography: 74th Street in Jackson Heights, Queens (Plus Some Creative Writing)

     What was supposed to be a walk to increase my daily steps turned into a journey. People pop out. Restaurants offer outside seating. The night is crisp. Saturn and Jupiter are still visible in the sky — on the way to convergence. I wanted to get more faces in my photographs. But the moments passed by too quickly. I saw a masked guy in a cab. He was balefully looking out a window. The Q49 bus runs along 74th Street. Wear your mask. 

     Today in class an adolescent pupil couldn’t answer a question — so she said to me, “This question makes me feel unsafe.” I was taken aback by her statement. It’s the Covid. I imagined her shrieking out of class. By an unsafe question. I’m teaching a course on mythology. And one characteristic of myth is the unknown. So I get it, girl. Stuff gets real. From chaos to calm. From the womb to the tomb.

Selfie

The Q49 bus in Jackson Heights rolls down 74th Street on a Friday night.

Lit up trees dot 74th Street in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens.

A bagger at a grocery store on 74th Street in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens checks his back-pocket.

A cat peers out from beneath a car.

A shop window on 74th Street in Jackson Heights features South Asian fashion.

20.3.18

"Rest at pale evening . . ." - Excerpt from Langston Hughes's "Dream Variations"

A view from the field house in Sunset Park in South Brooklyn, New York.
Rest at pale evening . . .
A tall slim tree . . .
Night coming tenderly
Black like me

- from Dream Variations, Langston Hughes
Personal Story
I like to collect quotes from poetry, from various sources, and whatnot. I have always liked this passage from Langston Hughes's poem "Dream Variations." Why do I like it? I like it because it is a relevant example of a poet exhorting darkness - extolling the color of blackness - rather than relegating "black" to a tired, and debilitating symbol of evil. So. That is why I like the poem. Hughes is resurrecting "black" as a symbol of beauty, not as a symbol of moral darkness.

Going Further
The poem imagines a speaker coming upon nature at the moment the sun is going down. Looking at the landscape, there is a moment when day turns to night, and the beauty of the oncoming dark sky fills the viewer with a sense of the sublime, of beauty.

Making Connections
Interestingly, the last line from this passage, "Black like me" is used as the title of a book, by John Howard Griffiths - about a white man who changes the color of his skin to experience what it feels like to be black in the rural South during the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. The book is strange because I do not think this kind of experiment would carry over well in today's political terms.

Epilogue
Do you have any poems that you've read that turn the tables on symbolism and imagery? I'd love to hear your examples - you can leave a comment in the box below.
Works Cited
Hughes, Langston. "Dream Variations" The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright © 1994.
Image Source: "Sunset Park" © 2018 Greig Roselli

23.12.15

Tombstone at Trinity Churchyard on Wall St.

Detail of a tombstone at Trinity Church in New York City
Not too far from Alexander Hamilton's grave in Lower Manhattan, one can find detailed grave markers like this one.  How many symbols can you find on this tomb?
Possible Answers:
 htaerw; soroboruo; rats detniop-thgiE ,; nus; noixificurc; tsirhc; ssorc; xificurc; eniv eparg; ssalgruoH