Reader:  Valerie Jensen  

Respondent:  Dianna Bassett

Recorder:  Jacqueline Brookreson

“A Black Man’s Sonata”

for John Dowell

By Afaa Michael Weaver

Unsettling America, pp. 227-228

Course Objectives:

Objective 3a:  African American alternative narrative:  “The Dream” 

To show “The Dream” not as the typical American Dream, but as a dream not yet achieved.

Objective 5a:  To discover the power of poetry and fiction to help “others” hear the        minority voice and vicariously share the minority experience.

Biographical Information:

Michael Weaver, now known as Afaa Michael Weaver was born in 1951 in Baltimore, Maryland.  He had an early love of paper and pencils, which later brought out his love for language.  He attended public schools there and at age 16 he ban studying at the University of Maryland where he stayed for two years before he began working in a factory in his hometown.  While working there, he received a contract for his first book, Water Song and later received a fellowship to attend Brown University.  While he was there he received his Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing.  His graduate thesis was a play called Rosa, which became his first professional production in 1993.  He has written other stories and four books of poetry.  Some important influences for Weaver are jazz and classical music as well as modernist painters.  He is currently a Professor of English at Simmons College. 

Interpretation:

I think the poem deals with the struggling life of a neighborhood in Philadelphia.  It tells the story through the eyes of someone who seems to have experienced some of the hardships that have gone on.  The second stanza refers to Obj. 3, the American Dream.  In the line that says, “the country radiates out from them in history’s circle where wealth is built on poverty”, he does not talk about the typical American Dream, but maybe the Dream he has not yet reached.  He talks about being poor and still having wealth inside as a person.  To him, he has reached another type of dream.  In the third stanza, he talks about the younger generation and how they do not show respect to anyone.  They are only worried about he here and now and surviving in this horrible place.  In the line that starts, “many of them will not know…” refers to Obj. 5a, to share the minority experience.  I think that line is very powerful because he is speaking out of experience and has seen death and knows the young kids that die will never see grandchildren and if they do live, will they survive in the streets of this neighborhood.  In a previous presentation, Charley Bevill points out that Weaver also references to respect, bringing out the influences he has as a writer.  Weaver’s influences of music allows him incorporate Aretha Franklin’s name in association with respect.

Weaver uses alliteration, similes, and metaphorical language throughout his poem.

Question 1:

What is the significance of the tiger throughout the poem is the tiger seen as predator or as prey or both and how does a tiger fit into the last part of the poem?

Jerri:  Maybe that he is trapped or out of place.  He might feel trapped by racial prejudice and economic hardships, ghetto poverty.  He might feel like he can’t live a natural life, there is loss of hope and even danger.

Dr. White:  Who is the tiger?  Is it the boys, or him?

Jerry:  I think it has to do with colors.  The black means strong fear.  He is looking for a weakness in himself.

Giselle:  I don’t think it is fear, but anger.  Black is anger.

Valerie:  Stripes of the tiger could also represent bars on the windows, being trapped.

 Question 2:

Did the young man want to die out of bravery, or because he was tired of the way he was living?

Jerry:  I think it is despair, he saw no future.

Sarah:  I agree it is despair.

Todd:  He has been released from jail, but still lives in the prison life.  He doesn’t care what society thinks.

Dianne:  It goes back to the tiger.  Do I attack them?  It is a reference to drugs that the younger guys die from?

Jerri:  Needles?

Dianne:  Yellow fire, needles.  There is a lack of shelter.

Dr. White:  The ghetto is represented as a jungle, a dog eat dog world.  It is like when Chink is arrested and the officers call him an animal.