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help on a poem - much appreciated!

hi fellow english ppl!
i'm at my wits end with the following poem that i'm meant to be comparing with 2 others for my coursework assignment and thought you clever people might be able to help me!
Basically i'm completly stuck on this whole metaphor of bread and honey and the idea of this person going to a 'hell'. All i can assume is that bread and honey stand for something like a relationship or a familar aspect of home that she is leaving behind? Just something with this poem isnt clicking. The other 2 poems i'm comparing it with seem to be about love - so maybe this is too?
Anyone with ANY ideas on the poem would be much appreciated just to get me going in the right direction! thank you so much TSR peeps! Happy englishing!

My dreams, my works, must wait till after hell - Gwendolyn Brooks

I hold my honey and I store my bread
In little jars and cabinets of my will.
I label clearly, and each latch and lid
I bid. Be firm till I return from hell.
I am very hungry, I am incomplete.
And none can tell when I may dine again.
No man can give me any word but Wait,
The puny light. I keep eyes pointed in;
Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt
Drag out to their last dregs and I resume
On such legs as are left me, in such heart
As i can manage, remember to go home,
My taste will not have turned insensitive
To Honey and bread old purity could love.
Reply 1
Honey may be a sexual reference perhaps. Or something to do with her innocence/purity. The bread something of importance or such that is necessary to her? Perhaps her 'hell' is being alone and single.
Wow, what a beautiful poem! That almost brought me to tears. I would definitely says it's about love, or more specifically her longing for love. The bread/honey metaphor seems to be relating to her innocence. She says she feels 'hungry' and 'incomplete', this could be both sexual and emotional as the two are very much linked and rely upon the other.

I think the 'hell' she speaks of is refering to heartbreak, which is something she seems to be strongly dreading, and expecting to happen. As she says, she is having to 'wait' and this is perhaps the most painful part of the process. Perhaps she is in a relationship which is doomed to end in heartbreak? Once finished she expects to feel weak of heart, and simply wants the pain she must endure to subside quickly so she can love again.

The devil/hell metaphor also appears to signify the sheer scale and unbearable nature of her pain, this is one seriously hurt woman! I thought it may also refer to something awful she or her once-lover has done - perhaps been unfaithful? The mention of 'old purity' could be of her own conscience, or the love between her and the person she speaks of.

In short, I think this is a woman who has loved passionately, been hurt and is about to endure even more pain. All she desires is to wipe the slate clean as it were, so she can love and be loved again... and SOON!!

I hope this has helped and I'm not just talking jibberish!! You could probably read it in a social/political context because the author was part of some Black Civil Rights movement in the US, but I prefer to think about it in the context of love! Love is more interesting than politics! :biggrin:

(PS - I relate to this poem so much :frown: Thank you for posting it though, it has reminded me why I love literature :smile:)
Reply 3
Could you attach some religious connotations to the poem, hence the 'bread', 'hell', 'devil' - could she have sinned?
The title of the poem explains the significance of the bread and honey. It's about suspending ambitions, and hoping not to relinquish them. I can't see why it should specifically refer to love, unless you interpret the food/hunger/dine/taste axis as sexual desire - but this is exactly what the speaker is having to relinquish. If you want to project some sort of narrative onto the poem, then you have to consider that there's no past involved, just a present moment and a hypothetical future.

I think the above reader just seizes on particular words then breathes whatever meaning into them she wants, without looking at the construction of the poem's 'argument' (hence she just quotes words, and not lines), as well as ignoring the title. Poems make a lot more sense if you read the syntax as well as the vocabulary. Still, who am I to say that these works and dreams aren't also a symbol for love?
Da Bachtopus

I think the above reader just seizes on particular words then breathes whatever meaning into them she wants, without looking at the construction of the poem's 'argument' (hence she just quotes words, and not lines), as well as ignoring the title. Poems make a lot more sense if you read the syntax as well as the vocabulary. Still, who am I to say that these works and dreams aren't also a symbol for love?


You're probably right. Although I started an English Literature degree in September, I have missed most of my work and lectures due to personal circumstances. Feeling a tad dusty and unconfident. That poem spoke to me on that level when I first read it, but as you say, I'm probably just breathing my own meaning into the words because of that... bit worried I have lost my analytical ability (well, for the real meaning anyway!) :frown:
possible biblical connotations re. 'land of milk and honey' relating to a place of abundance...comparisons with how she is storing the honey and bread away for better times, also possibly with her emotional state? if thats any help... :confused: it is a very weird poem...
Reply 7
singingsally1
possible biblical connotations re. 'land of milk and honey' relating to a place of abundance...comparisons with how she is storing the honey and bread away for better times, also possibly with her emotional state? if thats any help... :confused: it is a very weird poem...

I also thought similarly milk and honey being necessary or luxurious and something about life and death, although this may well be metaphorical.
SophistiCat
You're probably right. Although I started an English Literature degree in September, I have missed most of my work and lectures due to personal circumstances. Feeling a tad dusty and unconfident. That poem spoke to me on that level when I first read it, but as you say, I'm probably just breathing my own meaning into the words because of that... bit worried I have lost my analytical ability (well, for the real meaning anyway!) :frown:


I think the tone of my post comes across as rather mean, so I apologise for that, I was just trying to be precise. I'll try to dust you down as best I can.

My point wasn't that you shouldn't be able to interpret a text (within reason) in the way you wish, but that your interpretation was of a selection of words from the poem, not of the poem itself. Yes, you're welcome to attach various significances to "hell" or whatever, but they have to be legitimised within the structure established by the poem, and not just within a narrative that you're imposing upon it (and which is incompatible with that structure: you imply a past).

Reading often involves particular, personal meanings that might result from individual lines or phrases, a fact that criticism tries to supress in its aiming for objectivity (yet, you find in many novels phenomenological accounts of reading, e.g. Proust). Indeed, I would contend that no text has an inherent meaning ("the real meaning", as you say), just inherent potential for meaning, which is in a dialectical relationship with the reader. I mean, for example, that 'Othello' will be far more meaningful to someone who has experienced sexual jealously than someone who has not, but that this meaning will be unparaphrasable and that it is in the text only as a potential. Obviously there are other paraphrasable meanings that are dependent on public use of language (and hence cultural factors), which are what criticism tends to dissect. But, whilst the connection is clear in that 'Othello' example, personal associations can often be rather arbitrary, and can arise from words or phrases wholly out of context.

None of this denies the meaning the poem has for you; however, the problem is that you are attempting to render it universal, and as a result need to justify it with textual evidence - yet your interpretation derives just as much from you as from the text, and does not take account of the argument. Indeed, you've created your own argument - and in a poem of this nature it's not acceptable to impose a form upon it to account for the private associations that various elements produce. As every sentence in your post seems to be qualified with a "could" or a "perhaps", you seem to recognise how subjective your interpretation is, but as soon as you end up writing everything in this way, you can be sure that you're drifting away from the text! You can clearly tell what you need to qualify, but you don't seem to appreciate the significance of this.

Now (and I'm going to qualify that last paragraph somewhat here) whilst I can't deny the meaning the poem has for you in so far as it arises from associations with individual lines, I can take issue with the argument you've constructed: "In short, I think this is a woman who has loved passionately, been hurt and is about to endure even more pain. All she desires is to wipe the slate clean as it were, so she can love and be loved again... and SOON!!". This kind of paraphrasable meaning is the result of synthesising your various impressions, and creating - independently of the text - connections between them that are incompatible with the poem itself. They do not fit its argument, which can be paraphrased thus:

The speaker announces her (?) intention to put her figurative honey and bread into storage for the time that she must spend in a figurative hell. She still has a desire for this figurative food, but does not know when she will be able to access it once more. She has to wait until she has endured the figurative hell before she can, to the best of her ability, figuratively go home and (hopefully) have a figurative feast.


If you wish to ascribe significances to the figurative elements in the poem, they must fit into the above pattern. You seem to want the bread and honey to represent both sexual innocence AND a loving relationship. Does this work? Does it fit with the idea of storage? With travelling? As I've pointed out, you also imply a strong sense of a past behind the poem, which doesn't feature at all. You need to have a sense of the way in which elements of the poem relate to each other. Otherwise what you're reading is the equivalent of this:

As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou growest
In one of thine, from that which thou departest;
And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestowest
Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest.
Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?
O! carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;
Him in thy course untainted do allow
For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.
But when your countenance fill'd up his line,
Then lack'd I matter; that enfeebled mine.


It's by Shakespeare, but there's no argument (I'll let you work out why).

You have to recognise where intuitive personal meaning ends and the creation of your own meaning begins, as well as what the 'public' / 'real' meaning is (this is effectively the argument). You can then interpret away as you wish, but you can't just choose to snatch particular words or lines from the poem that strike you, and then reconstitute them into a narrative independent of their original context.

Or, to put it even more simply, you'll get better at Prac Crit if you suspend the desire to interpret for as long as possible, and just re-read a poem carefully. If you look at the other responses to this thread, you'll see that all people are doing is jumping straight at interpretation, seizing on words and suggesting significances, without trying to appreciate how the poem functions as a whole.
(On the other hand, all I've done is give a paraphrase without trying to do the interpretative or critical work for the OP)
Surely the individual words themselves contribute to the overall meaning of the poem?

As a reader, striking words help us in our interpretation of the poem?
Yea, and the individual words of my post contribute to its overall meaning, but I still think you should read the whole thing properly.
Ok, I'm only asking.
Reply 13
Thank you everybody for your analysis of the poem - i'm surprised at how much of a discussion its caused! As my task was to compare versification of the poems and not really its content, I dont really need a close interpretation. I did wonder about it being about heartbreak -i discovered it was put in an anthology about heartbreak and also the other 2 poems i'm comparing it to seem to be about an unnatural love - Rossetti's 'in an artists studio' suggest obsessive love, and Heaney's 'a dream of jealousy' - well the title can explain that 1. I decided to tread really lightly on the issue of what this one means, I still dont think i fully understand the roles of the bread and honey - maybe emotions and feelings she feels in control of that she can hide away until later after the passing of some figurative hell - clearly linked to some emotional pain she is about to endure i think.
Its a really tough poem to comprehend and thanks for all your talk about it, its really helped open the poem up, I dont think i've ever met a poem that has challenged me this much so far! It would interest me to know what you think of the syntax of the poem da_bachtopus and how that could suggest a meaning? I've finished the essay now and put my own ideas into it, but wanted to keep the debate going!
thanks for all your help, carry on discussing it if u wish - i'll be watching hehe!
hey, this may be a basic interpretation compared to many others here, but i felt that the poem is about heartbreak, her 'hell' is the sorrow she is feeling for being alone, the bread and honey is the sweetness of her love/desire and her happiness which she is storing up for a future relationship, she hopes she can get over how she is feeling and move on, the ending is quite positive about that i think. (set me straight if im totally wrong or being way too simplistic)
For some reason an overriding thing I'm getting from that is something to do with her virginity....the 'bread and honey' - something precious and sweet?
Yet it's as though she's hiding it away - if she's waiting for a return from 'Hell' perhaps that's implying that she's sinning - is she having sex but still trying to save a part of herself? And why?
This would make so much more sense if I wasn't writing it in a five-minute free at school.....but i just think that's a really lovely poem and I'm joining in!
kelamia
hi fellow english ppl!
i'm at my wits end with the following poem that i'm meant to be comparing with 2 others for my coursework assignment and thought you clever people might be able to help me!
Basically i'm completly stuck on this whole metaphor of bread and honey and the idea of this person going to a 'hell'. All i can assume is that bread and honey stand for something like a relationship or a familar aspect of home that she is leaving behind? Just something with this poem isnt clicking. The other 2 poems i'm comparing it with seem to be about love - so maybe this is too?
Anyone with ANY ideas on the poem would be much appreciated just to get me going in the right direction! thank you so much TSR peeps! Happy englishing!

My dreams, my works, must wait till after hell - Gwendolyn Brooks ~

My interpretation is

I hold my honey and I store my bread ~ Sweet and plain memories
In little jars and cabinets of my will. ~ In her mind to keep her going
I label clearly, and each latch and lid~ She doesn't want to lose them
I bid. Be firm till I return from hell.~ She needs them to get her through
I am very hungry, I am incomplete.~ her desparate craving
And none can tell when I may dine again~ 4 fulfillment
No man can give me any word but Wait,~ she needs an answer
The puny light. I keep eyes pointed in; ~ to sustain hope
Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt~ until the pain
Drag out to their last dregs and I resume ~ is over
On such legs as are left me, in such heart ~ so she has strength
As i can manage, remember to go home, ~ to risk her heart
My taste will not have turned insensitive ~ which still has life
To Honey and bread old purity could love.~ and get new sustaining memories of love



Though I could be wrong:wink: