Imitation #2 Music of the 1960's: Jimmy Hendrix, Purple Haze

Joel Milian                                                                                                                                9/9/12

Purple Haze

By - Jimmy Hendrix, 1967

Purple haze all in my brain

Lately things just don't seem the same

Actin' funny, but I don't know why

'Scuse me while I kiss the sky

Purple haze all around

Don't know if I'm comin' up or down

Am I happy or in misery?

Whatever it is, that girl put a spell on me

Critique:

This song by Jimmy Hendrix can easily be interpreted to fit the description of the effects Marijuana has on the individual’s body and the experience that it contains. Although Hendrix stated that the song was a product of a dream in the present day, Purple Haze is another word for the drug LSD and a type of Cannabis. I feel that the lyrics of this song are a critique. Hendrix is describing an experience and how it makes him feel. Since there are lyrics in the song in which Hendrix asks a question, I feel like he is questioning an audience but at the same time talking to himself. There are literary devices in this song. The use of diction with words such as “happy, misery, actin funny and seem” all refer to effects. The tone of the song seems to have an uplifting and almost calming tone to it. End Rhyme is also a present device throughout the song. The words at the end of every two lines rhyme. The line “Scuse me while I kiss the sky” can possibly show how enriching he feels.

The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain

Joel Milian

                                                  The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain

            Langston Hughes in this article written in 1926 describes the harsh realities that African Americans face. Hughes begins the article describing to readers what a young African American poet said to him. The poet said, “I want to be a poet – not a Negro poet.” This discouraging quotation then causes Hughes to describe the lifestyles of the African Americans dubbed with the name “Negroes” and that of the White individuals who many African Americans believed to be vastly superior to them and so wanted to be just like them. Although I am not an African American but Hispanic, I find Hughes’s words inspiring. He is embarrassed by those who wish to lose a part of their identity so that they can imitate those qualities of the common white folk. Langston Hughes as a very famous and prominent Jazz poet knew the significance of the Jazz music as a creation of the African Americans, and saw it as something that should be treasured. Ultimately Hughes makes the notion that be free to make your own decisions and having pride not shame or pity for yourself makes the individual strong and happy. The opinions and judgments of other individuals do not matter. An artist of any race, culture, religion should embrace his/her race whether or not their work primarily focuses on race. Race can still be something the artist can utilize to gain new audience members or simply to add to the uniqueness of their work.

Imitation #1: Edgar Allan Poe, A Dream Within a Dream

Joel Milian

                                                                                      A Dream Within A Dream

by Edgar Allan Poe
(published 1850)

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow --
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand --
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep -- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Critique

This poem by Edgar Allan Poe is about an individual leaving a lover and how he believes life may be a dream because he cannot hold on to the moment. The poem is centered on two main situations. The first being the narrator with his lover, and the second sees the narrator at a beach unable to maintain sand that he clutches in his hands. I believe the poem is a critique because the narrator is unable to tell between reality and dreams. The Rhyme Scheme for the first stanza of this poem is AAABBCCDDBB, and the second stanza is EEFFGGGHHIIBB. There are a few literary devices in this poem such as Assonance and Alliteration when Poe repeats “is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream.” There is also repetition in the second stanza when the narrator says, “While I weep – while I weep.” Personification is also present when Poe says “Yet if hope has flown away.” A final literary device is onomatopoeia in the first stanza with the word avow.