We have a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks, Boy Breaking Glass. Just a little bit of bibliographical background here, it's dedicated to Marc Crawford. And that's clear in the text of the poem, a black writer and editor of a periodical called Time Capsule. And he was the one who suggested it, she says here. For whom the commission suggested that she write a poem that would speak about or for African American young people in the 60's quote surviving inequity and white power that was the commission in a way. It was published in Negro Digest in June of 1967 that's an issue that I've looked at and it's partly a black arts issue and we're not necessarily define that here but it's partly a movement piece, it partly fits with it and it also partly goes in its own way. Also I'll just note that Boys Breaking Glass is something, it's a trope that Gwendolyn Brooks uses in several of her poems. And typically not maybe as much here, although we can talk about it. It's typically a chance for her to critique the inner city architecture. Devised by people who basically saw windows as a problem. This is something to this day cities make the mistake of and creating an architecture even in schools where it's more of a penitentiary like windowless thing. So it's partly a critique of that and so, I'm going to read and then give way to you guys to invite you to say things about it. We wont do a close reading in order, but I want to hear your ideas and then we can respond to each other. Boy Breaking Glass to Marc Crawford to whom the commission whose broken window is a cry of art. Success that winks aware as elegance as a treasonable faith is raw, is sonic, is old eyes. Is old eyed premiere. Our beautiful flaw and terrible ornament. Our barbarous and metal little man. I shall create if not a note, a hole, if not an overture, a desecration. Full of pepper and light and salt and night and cargoes. Don’t go down the plank if you see there’s no extension. Each to his grief, each to his loneliness and fidgety revenge. Nobody knew where I was, and now I am no longer there. The only sanity is a cup of tea. The music is in minors. Each one other, Is having different weather. It was you, it was you who threw away my name. And this is everything I have for me. Who has not congress, lobster, love, luau, the Regency Room, the Statue of Liberty runs. A sloppy amalgamation. A mistake, a cliff, a hymn, a snare and an exceeding sun, wow. My favorite Brooks poem. I'm so glad we're talking about it. I can't wait to hear what you think. Amyris, any thought, start anywhere. >> Yeah, I feel that a recurring theme of course in this poem is the sense of racial otherness and the frustration of not having a name, of being invisible in a culture. And I feel like the first line really exemplifies that by starting with a subordinate clause. And that whose is both a question of whose broken window? It kind of calls into being that absence from the start. And then it's also that the broken window is that boy is only possession only manifestation of himself. His internal state of conflict and split consciousness. And it's a cry of art that issues forth. It's not something that's beautiful and shimmering. It's not a unified plane of glass it's immediately that brokenness. >> It's a different kind of art. Can you say just for starters because I know we're going to get to this what's the difference in this kind of art? >> It's sort of visceral, violent, non pre-planned, non-refined kind of art. It's an art of protest. It's an art of I guess a calling to a collectivity for recognition. >> So, collectivity in formal terms would be ironic or paradoxical because it's a fragmentation that calls for collective, right? >> Yeah. >> It's not a whole collective call for collective, it's a fragmentation, it's a breaking. >> That's true, yeah. >> It's a reversal of creation from construction making to destruction and unmaking that is none the less art. I know we're going to talk about that. So anyway good. Thank you for bringing up and great reading of the opening words there. Dave, thoughts? >> A lot of them, but just a few observations on full of pepper and light and salt and night and cargos. That's such a great, great sentence. And cargo to me just conjures up, well a feeling that the boys escaping from the area, and he's cargo on a ship, which conjures up the middle passage to me. And, it's interesting that he's trying to escape from a bad place to get to a good place, but now he's back on essentially, a slave ship, where that's not the case. >> And the plank. The presence of the plank kind of extends that thought? >> I also think it's interesting pepper and salt, because when the slave ships would go to West Africa, they would also load up with spices and bring them back to sell and another point is that. When the slaves would be brought over, they'd first go to the West Indies to be seasoned. Their will would be broken before they would be shipped off for sale. >> Thank you. I think you're reading that well. Thank you. Anna? >> The line I can't escape is, nobody knew where I was, and now I'm no longer there. because that just breaks my heart. >> Spell that out. Either translate it for us, or say why it's powerful. >> I guess to me it just makes me think of someone who is just completely alone, has lost contact with his family, his friends, and no one knows where he is and now he has to move on and go somewhere else. >> Can we translate that, either you, Anna, or anyone, do a paraphrase of that? Is there another paraphrase? >> Well there's this idea that, just the action of what's going on is that, he was some place, and then he went someplace else. But the way it's defined is almost following from the loneliness of that previous line and fidgety revenge too. Nobody knew where I was. Why didn't somebody know where he was. Why was there nobody who knew where he was? >> I was already invisible, and now I'm no longer there. So it's like invisibility becomes, it's already a state of invisibility. And now I'm even less than that. So it calls up Ellison's, Ralph Ellison's concept of invisibility directly. Yeah. So, it's like, it was already a bad situation for identity, and now I'm no longer there. So what does that mean? Okay, yeah, great. >> Anna, did you have a further thought, because we sort of got enthusiastic and cut you off. >> No [LAUGH], it's okay. I was thinking about the use, just generally, the use of quotation marks to denote speech, but we still kind of, maybe in keeping with the invisibility, we're still not totally sure we haven't been given any kind of indication as who it is that's actually that's speaking. >> I think in the first instance, the second stanza, we assume that it's the boy breaking the glass who's speaking. But then after that I think you're right, it becomes less clear. Lily, your thought on this? >> I actually, maybe that line that Anne just brought up is almost a point where the poem turns. I really like the second half of the poem where there's really interesting fragments going on. Fragments is almost the wrong word, I feel like. But there's this amazing- >> No, it's the right word. For the last stanza, certainly. >> Definitely, yeah. But this little stanza, each one other is having different weather. >> That's great. >> Is really beautiful because it's- >> Can you do a close reading of that couplet? >> [LAUGH] Sure. >> You probably weren't planning on doing that. >> No, it's fine. So, each one another is meaning that's really the crux of what's complicated about it because it could be a group of people. Almost like saying each person but each one other could also be there are a lot of different people experiencing isolation of identity and just other, being other. >> Other, there's a lot of others. A lot of othering going on. >> Yeah, and so is having different weather meaning their extenuating circumstances of whatever is happening around them could be like there's an expression, take the temperature of the room, quote unquote. >> Mm-hm. >> Each person, depending on various aspects of their identity, is being treated differently or is experiencing different types of discrimination or maybe different depending on where they live, within the city, their life is different. So, each one other is having different weather, to me it speaks to it's hard to unite these different, multiple boys breaking glass, because each one other is having different weather. >> They're in different climates and different circumstances. I think that's really good, and I knew you were going to say something else, so we'll get back to it but the different weather is, I think, especially, given the Steinian quality to the very end, seems to be a nod to a modern trope. Both Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens, Stevens most famously referred to a different weather as a way of emphasizing the individual imagination. In the famous Stevens poem where there's a drunken sailor dreaming of red weather, the point there is modernist subjectivity and the drunken sailor is having his own worldly experience, it just emphasizes what you've already said. You were starting to say other things when we had you do close reading of that couplet. Do you have something to add? >> I just really love that she's created this way to talk about the boy breaking glass in a way that respects his subjectivity by talking about each one other as having different weathers. Almost like saying I couldn't begin to tell you the individual things that are happening to each of these individual people. All I know is that they're all in different circumstances, they're all in different weather. >> Good. Cool. Kamara? >> The painful part about this poem for me is one, this aspect of danger. This boy is on the edge during this whole poem, so it's that aspect but also, the boy is breaking glass. This is present tense, this is continuous. This is happening and that's the other really painful part about me because it's not like this happened in the past. This is happening within the poem and- >> It's still going on. >> And all over, all over again and again. >> Continuous present >> Exactly. It comes back in the old-eyed premiere. >> Mm. >> Which is one of my favorite phrases in here. You've seen this premiere before, over and over. And premiere, it's exciting, it's surprising. You don't know what's going to happen. >> Yeah. >> But you do. [CROSSTALK] >> Gwen Brooks is, at this point in the 60s, very wise old-eyed, she's seen it all, and she's seen it happen again and again, so that just reinforces that wonderful reading. I hadn't thought of it that way. Can you, Kamara, start and then everybody else can join in to paraphrase or close read the second stanza which is the quote, I'll read it again, I shall create, if not a note, a hole, if not an overture, a desecration. Do you want to try that? >> In some ways, this line is filled with hope that creation will happen anyway but like we talked about in the beginning, what this art is, the art made from anger, made from lacking. So, I shall create, I think is one of the most hopeful lines but then, when you go to, if not an overture, a desecration. >> Which means what, translate that. I'm not going to write a symphony, I'm not that kind of artist. I'm an angered- >> I don't have those type of tools. >> I'm going to break a window, so my desecration is my art. >> Mm-hm. >> How controversial is it? Was it? Could it be? Because we don't have to be too specifically historical here. For Gwendolyn Brooks, the eminent by this point, eminent poet to be so sympathetic to a vandal, I guess the police would say, at best, that the kindest thing that the police would say about this kid is a vandal. Breaking a window, breaking of glass, presumably out of anger, frustration. Claiming it's our art and then Gwen Brook says, I'm going to write a poem in which I'm not only sympathetic to this act of this boy which is an illegal act, breaking someone's property, presumably, but I'm going to call it art. How can we reproduce the conditions where that is a controversial, a radical statement about art? It's very interesting, isn't it? >> I say do it, first of all. >> You, Anna says go, go for it, break the glass. >> But also, for someone, some grumpy poet person to tell her not to do that- >> Tell Brooks, how could you be supporting this radical act of destruction. >> Yeah. I would say that we cheered for this when the Dadaists did it. >> Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We were all rad and cool. >> We're all for this. >> [LAUGH] >> When fragmentation was all the rage, when Williams was doing the fragmentation. And what Brooks does that's so brilliant and powerful for me, is that she takes what we've learned about the importance of fragmentation and its proximity to the way modern life is lived and has un-neutralized it. Or radicalized it to the point where this is a political and ethical moment in Negro Digest in 1967, saying what we learned from fragmentation, we're now going to get to apply to a real situation. And if you really want to be radical, you 19 teens and 20's modernists, you will come along and see fragmentation as art because it was then. I'm just sort of elaborating what you said. Lily, you're nodding. Do you like that strategy? >> Yeah. Yes, I do. I also think like politically, there's a quote from Martin Luther King that I'm not going to try to quote because I'll butcher it but it's something like, riot is the voice of the unheard or is the language of the unheard. I think this takes it an even a step further saying rioting and destroying property and things like that is Not only a language, but it's going beyond communicating something. It's actually a statement of art and of politics- >> An expression. >> Yeah. >> So Anne Marie, I'm just going to put you on the spot here. Let's do a close reading of If Not a Note, a Hole. >> Yeah I mean there's an irony there, hole, hole right in the fragmentation we've been talking about. I don't know for me yet. >> Hole as in absence? >> And hole as in like a [INAUDIBLE]. >> Not W-H-O-L-E? >> I know but there's, like I think there's an irony. >> You think there's a pun there? Can you just translate it, if not a note, a hole, like paraphrase that. >> I think to create the space for actual creation something needs to be destroyed first and maybe that's the dominant power. >> So that's a second or third level answer. Can you do a first level answer, literally, for a seventh grader, if not a note, like something written. >> Okay, so if not a text or a work of art as we traditionally conceive of it. >> Then- >> Then a broken window, a hole in the wall. >> Or if not noise then silence. >> If not noise then silence, if not of writing then in absence. Right a reversal of creation. This is an uncreation. But an uncreation gets to count as a creation. That's the radical, that's what she's saying about poetry, I'm sorry, Lily. Go ahead. >> No. Or just if not conventionally defined single unit of a master work. Like note goes with overture and whole goes with desecration. >> Note goes with overture, so it's musical and take overture and draw a line to music is in minors. You were going to do that. >> No, I wasn't. [LAUGH] >> Okay. I did it and I'm proud of myself. A minor key off rhyme, shattered harmonics, minority. Music is in minors. The music of now, boy breaking glass, can you hear it? Can you hear the symphony? Can you hear the expression? Don't think the kid is not artistic, she's saying. I hear, but you just have to learn to hear the minor key. That's really great. Now, what are we going to do with the ending, though? What are we going to do with the ending? Because as in the poem by Gertrude Stein about the car accident let us describe, which is also a meta poem. There, everything falls apart at the end. And there is a similar, a hymn, a snare, and an exceeding sun is almost like a quotation from that piece. So what do we do with the breakdown at the end here, or if you don't let me tell you. I don't want to be the Whitmanian gnat in your ear telling you that it must break down. Assuming it's a breakdown or not, what do we do with the ending? And you love the ending? >> I do. I really love the way that she structured it. So there's that opening line, who has not Congress. The subject and verb is sort of like who has, runs. Or who has not run, sorry. So, but it is- >> Whoever doesn't have this stuff runs. >> But it's like a total run on- >> As it runs away? Or runs for office? >> Right, but it's also a total run on sentence, and- >> Nice. >> It's listing- >> Yes. >> These things that are equated with whatever the opposite of a sloppy amalgamation is, being proper, and conventionally defined success maybe? >> Yeah. >> So. >> Yeah. >> But incorporating those into that run on sentence, it starts the breaking down into fragments, it's really cool. >> Dave Umries. Dave, start with you. What do you do with the last? >> A snare is also a trap. I find that to be the most important part of it because I love the way this can be read. A hymn, as in hopeful. A snare, as in drum with the music from above. And the exceeding sun, that can be hopeful but really a hymn is something you can resort to when you're desperate and hopeless. >> We take exceeding sun, we draw back to light, we take hymn and we draw back to overture, note, music, minor key, right. So she seems to be beautifully summing up and yet it's fragmented, it's what you want a modern poet to do. It's perfect, let me just sort of throw out an idea and get final reactions to it. DH Melhem has written a really good book about Brooke's, and so it's not my idea, it's Melhelm's idea, and Melhem observes that there is a predominance of iambic pentameter at the beginning. It's written not in the form of a sonnet, by any means, although if you take the first 14 lines it does, it is sonnet like. But I'm going to emphasize some of the regularity of the metrics and then tell you what Melhem says and then you can react. Whose broken window is a cry of our success that winks aware. Now that's a regular line, but not pentameter. Success that winks aware. As elegance as a treasonable faith. Is raw, is sonic, is old eyed premier. This is Shakespearian Pentameter. Our beautiful flaw and terrible ornament, our barbarous and metal little man. The words are a little modern, but the metrics are very regular. I shall create, if not a note, a whole. If not an overture a desecration. Full of pepper and light, and salt and night, and cargos. Melhem observes that the predominance of the iambic pentameter makes you feel like you're in the presence of someone using metrics to make a sonnet. Boy shattering boy breaking glass is an ongoing as Kamara said, an ongoing activity and the poem in a sense, the boy is basically throwing a rock through traditional meter, throwing a rock through the beautiful glass of traditional poetry. And so Melhem eventually calls it a shattered sonnet as the meter changes completely and falls apart at the end. So it becomes a political intervention, a statement of controversial statement, that there is an ethics behind modern fragmentation. And that we ought to be consistent as Anna said, that we ought to affirm what this boy is doing. And then in the end, uses that Steinian technique of falling apart in order to be a metapoem. So, final thoughts about the form of the poem, what Brooks is doing, let's just go all the way around starting with Amyris, briefly. >> Yes, I think the line the music is a minor is really sort of exemplifies what you just said about refusing resolution. It's sort of that minor key of a state of uncertainty, of perpetual dissatisfaction, and allowing this breakdown to happen and allowing the poem to mirror that brokenness that the boy is exhibiting over and over again, and sort of refusing beautifying things. Sort of breaking down these sort of statues of commemoration and celebration. Symbols of unity and patriotism. I said no the truth is that we're on the edge of something. We're on a cliff. >> Very good. Fabulous, Dave? >> I love the use of the word our in the first stanza. Our beautiful flaw and terrible ornament, our barbarous and metal little man. because I think it creates a couple dichotomies. It could be the our our. >> You mean our, right? >> Our. >> Just to make sure. >> I'm from South Jersey! >> Our. Our beautiful flaw. Those of us from Jersey. I'm sorry. >> [LAUGH] >> Our beautiful flaw, yes. >> May I? >> Who is she referring to? >> Well it could be the poet and the reader, our as the dialogue. Look at what we are talking about here, or it could be her the poet, and the boy. Expressing solidarity there and at the same time, creating another with the reader. >> The boy and I are making this beautiful flaw together. Dig it, I like that, I like that reading, Anna? >> I want to come back to the shattered sonnet thing. >> Mm-hm. >> Because I'm into that. I honestly think it's almost. >> I knew you would be. >> Yeah, to me it's more radical to shatter the sonnet. To actually throw a rock into the middle of a sonnet and actually watch it break down as we read, than to just reject it outright and just say that they're right using. >> Which is why, I mean as much as I admire what Claude McKay does in his sonnet because it's a triumph. And his strategy, a Trojan Horse strategy if that's the right phrase. >> Mm-hm. >> This is the kind of poem that takes the next steps it seems to me. Which is, you know it says to Mackay, bless you Claude, you did amazing work but your sonnet needs to fall apart because things are falling apart. >> Yeah. >> You know? >> You can't write a perfect sonnet in your face. >> You can't say it that way anymore. >> Yeah, exactly. You can't write the perfect sonnet in the face of this type of unrest these broken windows. >> Especially because people not seeing this is art are going to go and beat this kid up. Or club him down, or arrest him, or treat him not as an artist. If an artist is out there doing something. At least the society, not the police, alas. But the society would think twice. Well this is an artistic expression. This is free expression. I think that's what she is saying. Free expression, free verse, break it down, solidarity. We've sort of made that point a few times, but it's worth repeating. Lilly? Final thought here? >> Going along with the reading of the shattered sonnet, I think this second to last stanza, it was you, it was you who threw away my name and this is everything I have from me. Maybe we can think of this as like a statement that the boy is saying to the tradition of poetry. If he is indeed throwing that rock through the sonnet or through a white male poetic tradition, saying like, you guys threw me under the bus, and now this could be taken as a more sort of meta-poetic this, this act of throwing this rock or this. New poetic tradition maybe that Gwendolyn Brooks is helping establish. Like this is what I have for me and my subjectivity. because I don't want to follow from, directly from what you were doing. >> Really well put, thank you. Kumar? >> An exceeding sun is what I come back to all the time. And now I'm thinking of it more and more as an exceeding S-O-N. Exceeding sun as in the boy. She makes that pun in another poems, so that's totally legit. So if exceeding is an adjective of very great sun, it almost turns up at the end. And say, this boy, this sun is shining through the poem, there's some type of hope because he's reaching you. Yeah, I'd like to end it. >> He's almost the little tippler, leaning against the giant sun. Yeah, we've done really well with this. I'll just add the obvious, which is I think Gwendolyn Brooks is teaching us how to learn to listen to the dissonance has had to learn to listen to the non-harmonics. Because the music is now in the minors, and if you don't, aren't able to hear that. If you cannot hear a cry of art. It may not be art. A broken window in a city of turmoil. May or may not be arguably art. But it is a cry of art. And a cry of art can itself be an art. And we need to learn to listen to it.
