Bright, bracing, rapid and terse. Except for the sad vapidity of the 2nd stanza. I fervently wish this were a neat powerful 2 stanza poem (using stanzas 1 and 3). I wonder if anyone still remembers and still enjoys the fine lyrics Langston Hughes furnished for the Kurt Weill opera, Street Scene?
First time in a while that I've re-read "Cross", thanks for posting it, Shannan.
I read "Cross" for the first time back in high school or thereabouts 40-45 years ago. It strikes me the way Run-DMC sounds in comparison to Kendrick Lamar. I still like "My Adidas", but it's a far cry from "DNA".
The theme of being mulatto, specifically (which I am), and of being ambiguous with respect to racial typologies in general, has been taken up with great dexterity, recently, by mulatto writers, Shane McCrae, Danzy Senna, TC Williams, recently - and they go far beyond "Cross" and being cross about one's inheritances. McCrae, in poetry and Senna, in prose, do a lot with the absurdity of racial thinking, and Senna, is really adept at satirizing and laughing at, laughing through that absurdity. McCrae, with his peculiar biography of being kidnapped by his racist grandparents, certainly works through anger, but gives us something much more meaty than the rather sentimentalized tragic mulatto pose, that "Cross" assumes in in its final lines.
My response to that final uncertainty that Hughes' speakers pronounces would be "likely, somewhere in Switzerland" -- a response that I think most people reading this poem would not supply as a response...but that's where I live. The poem expresses but doesn't move beyond the equation that race = destiny. It is of its time.
Classic and still hauntingly relevant today. Sometime a touch of humor adds amazing layers to 'serious' subject matters. Light in rhyme and meter, but serious in what's really at stake. The things contemporary poets can learn from classics like this. . .
It’s hard to say where I fall on this poem. Should I be hot or cold (to continue a theme)? Is this a dressed up nursery rhyme? Should there be more remorse? Or is this a powerful rendition of someone wandering lost, searching for identity. I’ll go with the latter. There’s a lot of off-ramps and backstories here that the poet only hints at, which makes for a good poem, I think.
Another Master of words. Thanks to 'Only Poems Daily' for posting classic work. No fancy spacing, no tricky lines asking the reader to figure it out what it's about. Just truth straight from a poet's heart to a reader of any age.
Bright, bracing, rapid and terse. Except for the sad vapidity of the 2nd stanza. I fervently wish this were a neat powerful 2 stanza poem (using stanzas 1 and 3). I wonder if anyone still remembers and still enjoys the fine lyrics Langston Hughes furnished for the Kurt Weill opera, Street Scene?
First time in a while that I've re-read "Cross", thanks for posting it, Shannan.
I read "Cross" for the first time back in high school or thereabouts 40-45 years ago. It strikes me the way Run-DMC sounds in comparison to Kendrick Lamar. I still like "My Adidas", but it's a far cry from "DNA".
The theme of being mulatto, specifically (which I am), and of being ambiguous with respect to racial typologies in general, has been taken up with great dexterity, recently, by mulatto writers, Shane McCrae, Danzy Senna, TC Williams, recently - and they go far beyond "Cross" and being cross about one's inheritances. McCrae, in poetry and Senna, in prose, do a lot with the absurdity of racial thinking, and Senna, is really adept at satirizing and laughing at, laughing through that absurdity. McCrae, with his peculiar biography of being kidnapped by his racist grandparents, certainly works through anger, but gives us something much more meaty than the rather sentimentalized tragic mulatto pose, that "Cross" assumes in in its final lines.
My response to that final uncertainty that Hughes' speakers pronounces would be "likely, somewhere in Switzerland" -- a response that I think most people reading this poem would not supply as a response...but that's where I live. The poem expresses but doesn't move beyond the equation that race = destiny. It is of its time.
Classic and still hauntingly relevant today. Sometime a touch of humor adds amazing layers to 'serious' subject matters. Light in rhyme and meter, but serious in what's really at stake. The things contemporary poets can learn from classics like this. . .
It’s hard to say where I fall on this poem. Should I be hot or cold (to continue a theme)? Is this a dressed up nursery rhyme? Should there be more remorse? Or is this a powerful rendition of someone wandering lost, searching for identity. I’ll go with the latter. There’s a lot of off-ramps and backstories here that the poet only hints at, which makes for a good poem, I think.
Another Master of words. Thanks to 'Only Poems Daily' for posting classic work. No fancy spacing, no tricky lines asking the reader to figure it out what it's about. Just truth straight from a poet's heart to a reader of any age.