Brother AACOOLDRE : Black History moment: the poem that got Obama in trouble

AACOOLDRE

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Jul 26, 2001
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How Frank Marshall Davis poem 47th street might be typologically linked with Obama’s poem “Pop”?

1. The mentioning of Orphan Annie and Popeye (Anne is Obama’s mother’s name)

2. A Green bus that snorts

3. Spotted soul of a straining street

4. A canal flowing in Mathematically precise channels

5. Impending death of a woman

So what do we have in Obama’s “Pop” poem?:

1. The Pop & Popeye comparison. All throughout the Pop poem Obama several times talks about his eyes.

2. A Green young man who pulls out a mirror from under a seat he has been saving. This is an allusion to a line of cocaine to be snorted through the nose.

3. A spot on the brain that may be squeezed out

4. Twice he states Pop “Switches channels”

5. Pop recites an old poem before his mother died

Some how some way my book Poor Dre’s Almanac was hacked into and this information was edited out. I’ve now updated my book to put all of this information back in. I’m glad they did this because I re-read both poems and found more information to link up. With that said I’m posting Frank Marshall Davis poem 47th street in its full text:

47th Street

By Frank Marshall Davis

From hollow backs

Of uneasy packhorse buses

Whinnying nervously

At 47th street street intersections

In Chicago’s Congo

Caucasian faces peer momentarily

In curious contempt

Then turn back to “Orphan Annie”, “Popeye”

News of the juiciest murders

Or bargain basement sales

Unconsciously sure of superiority

Within furnished apartment minds

As green buses snort

From gasoline spurs

Then gallop on.


But a new moon

Lingering longer

Sees the spotted soul

Of this straining street



I have watched a new moon crawl

Like a pale and eager child

To a lean building

And rest its white face

On the creased dark edge

Then look in platinum wonder

Upon the restless canal

Of 47th street below

Flowing in mathematically precise channels

Between cement walks.


Besides the beds of the deathly sick

Like an aged angel

Bathing souls with purple prayers

Refusing to leave before life left

And the town that had known her

Only as a name and gray-haired virgin

Now praised her unselfishness

Shared its most fragile secrets

And erected its new hospital in her honor


But it was not for these things

That Samantha Wilson labored


Knowing death eyed her closely

Dreading eternity friendless

She was arranging for companions

Among the fatally sick she’d tended

To be watchfully waiting

In that misty place

Beyond the grave.


 

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