Ms. Locano
AP-LIT 4
24 September 2016
Peaceful Nightmare
"Suicide's Note" by Langston Hughes is the shortest poem that I've ever read that mandates such a grand amount of thought. This poem constructs a long list of questions after allowing your mind to grasp the main idea of the literal story. Hughes orchestrates the poem with the tone of such sadness so great that it almost feels peaceful.
Although we do not know the length of the Speakers life, we know it must have been tragic due to the whole suicide...experience he or she is having. The entirety of the poem says, "The calm, / Cool face of the river / Asked me for a kiss." Lines 1-3 consist of the 'peaceful' death of the Speaker. We ask, "What made this character desire such an ending for their life?"
The elements that add to the beauty of the poem is white space and imagery. Despite the fact that few words were used to create this work, the image is clear and profound. The white space that Hughes uses also allows his readers to wonder why he placed his quotations where he did. I believe his placement is the magic to the spell and completes the work with astonishment.
Thank you for such a profound response. Your notices and questions are very thoughtful. Every time I read this poem I think about what we learned about how important every word is in a poem because poets use less words than writers of other genres, yet they say so much (often much more than writers of other genres).
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