Analysis of Leroi Jones A Poem Some People Will Have To Understand Ess

Analysis of Leroi J wizs A Poem Some masses Will Have To Understand There is an implied threat in A Poem Some People Will Have To Understand by Leroi Jones. Ostensibly, there is no intimidation. The poem is confessional, even reflective the theme is one of mutability and change. However, there is something frightening and ominous in Jones1 vision, which he creates done attention to word choice and building. Jones warning is immediately evident in the title through his patchipulation of words. The phrase befool to has two meanings. angiotensin-converting enzyme the one hand, have to is an innocuous statement of the alliance Jones expects to find among his black readers--these people provide have to understand the poem because it speaks to their individual, personal lives. On the other hand, there is a more sinister connotation in have to--the idea that others will have to understand this poem because they will be forced to do so. Beyond the title, Jones creates a forbidding speaker--a man at a crossroads, or rather, at a moment of decision. However, the structure of the first stanza is direct and conservative, almost prosaic. Jones gives us nothing that is revolutionary here. Instead, he lays the groundwork for this piece with the gloomy initial images of (d)ull unwashed windows of eye(1). These eyes are no doubt those of the speaker, and they have been dulled and dirtied by his humanity as a black man in the post-segregation 1960s. The industry he mentions in lines 2 and 3 is both the industry of the American appliance that exploits the underprivileged, and the industry he practice(s). The speaker is a self-professed slick / colored boy, 12 miles from his / home who practices no industry (35). By ... ...The promised phenomenon has not come, and it is flat up to him to bring it about through violence. Jones does not allow the speaker to tolerate any of his charm as he politely invites his machinegunners--the tools of his new industry--to disport step forward (26). He is a hustler to the end, a smooth-talker who is now at home in his new ego and his new profession. Jones employs the kinetics of change to his speaker throughout the poem. From an aimless vagrant to a fanatic revolutionary, Jones plots his speakers course using specific words and structural techniques. Through these elements, we bump the evolution of a new black man--one who is not content with the passivity of his earlier spiritual leaders. We are left with a threat--a steel clenched fist in a velvet glove of poetry--and it becomes a poem that we have to understand, whether we want to or not.