2001/06/01 by Kelly J. Mays · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Ambivalence #Art #Caribbean history, culture, and politics #Heaven #History #Literature #Music History and Culture #Poetry #Psychoanalysis #Psychology #Race, History, and American Society #Stanza #White (mutation)
paper · doi:10.1353/vp.2001.0013
openalex publication_date 2001/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/24
As the poem's title and last stanza tell us, the answer is the "poet" or "The Bard" (l. 25), and the striking image at the heart of this initial question tells us much about Jones's vision of that poet's role and mission. "Rivet[ing] broken bands / And stranger-hearts together," the poet acts like a smith or mechanic. Yet where the smith welds together bits of metal, the poet welds together people, forging an affective community out of isolated "stranger-hearts." As subsequent stanzas make clear, the poet does so in part by "call[ing] up glories past" (l. 9), connecting people together in the present, so the poet implies, by connecting them to their history. Thus, just as the poet's "voice" defies time and death (l. 17), to "ring thro' the advancing years-- / And history--and time" (ll. 19-20), so, too, does the community he forges with that voice. As a result, the community itself may well be the death- and time-defying, eternal "home" that Jones initially insists that the poet "builds with fast-decaying hands."