"High Windows" by Philip Larkin

The poignancy in this poem stuck me the most. The speaker proclaims, "That'll be, life; No God any more, or sweating in the dark in the dark about hell and that, or having to hide what you think of the priest. He and his lot will all go down the long slide like bloody birds." Many things are playing into this statement, pain, ire, and some relief perhaps. The speakers dreams of a his or her ideal paradise full of pleasure and nature; a world free of sorrow and worries. The speaker leaves us with this rather edenic description, "Rather than words comes the thought of high windows: The sun-comprehending glass, and beyond it, the deep blue, that shows nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless."

"I, Too" by Langston Hughes

The persona of this poem refers to himself as "the darker brother," singing to America about who he is. It sheds some light on the struggle for equality that people endured back in the 60's. To begin, the poet speaks on his oppressed state saying, "They said me to the kitchen when company comes.." He is being ignored and treated as if he doesn't exist, but knows that freedom is eminent. He concludes by declaring, "Besides, They'll see how beautiful I am and be ashamed- I, too, am America." There is an obvious level of poignancy in this piece; there is no boundaries in beauty because beauty is equality.

"Frederick Douglass" by Robert Haven

Haven is personifying the idea of freedom through the life of Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist and a writer. We see how one's private life, Douglass's, is made public in order to provide testimony for this idea of freedom. Haven says, "When is it finally ours. this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful and terrible thing, needful to man as air, usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all..." The idea of life and death is seen throughout this poem as well. Frederick Douglass lived through and escaped from slavery fighting for his freedom and it is for that very thing, his continuous fight for liberation, that he will be remembered. He is alive through his death; "This man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world where none is lonely, none hunted, alien, this man shall be remembered." I found myself in this poem because it is as a result of the actions from the likes of Douglass that I and everyone else in America can enjoy freedom and democracy.