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.
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.