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-Not a moral or lesson: "you may" not "you should"
-Ask "What is the speaker?" and "What is the occasion?"
-First person doesn't mean poet is the speaker

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What is the central purpose of the poem? By what means in this purpose achieved?
-> In Proem, Hughes' compares the past of his people to the present through repetition and writing entirely in first person

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- Describe the poem's dramatic framework

- Jazzonia uses the colors of silver and gold to describe the beauty of the people and land

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-A good place to start in understanding a poem is determining the speakers and the setting
->Patterns can be found across poems through this, for example Hughes' poems have taken place on Lenox Ave. multiple times (The Weary Blues, Lenox Avenue: Midnight)
-Events in the poem can help understand better some events in the poet's life
->Hughes' often write about black culture from his point of view because it was important to him (Proem, The Weary Blues)

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Always maintain mental alertness - a poem rouses and shocks you instead of soothing or relaxing

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-  to find purpose, maintain mental alertness
-  use purpose to assess the value of the poem and determine whether it is a good/poor one
-  by relating various details in poem to central purpose/theme, the meaning and function of poem can be understood
-- in "Proem", details such as the stanza about using music to describe sorrow relates to the central purpose of the poem which is the resilience of the black community

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-Restate poem to make it into plain prose, can be longer or shorter than the poem, needs to make the central theme of the poem clear
-Paraphrasing helps to understand
The Weary Blues - man hears a Negro singing a sad blues song, before it stops and the man goes to sleep as if dead

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1. Read a poem more than once
2. Keep a dictionary by you and use it
- Due to the length of time between the release of these poems and the present day there are many outdated or archaic words found in The Weary Blues
3. Read so as to hear the sounds of the words in your mind
- This is important when          reading almost all of Langston Hughes' poems because he often uses jazz and blues rhythms when writing poetry. This is found specifically in "The Cat and the Saxophone" as well as "The Weary Blues"
4. Always pay careful attention to what the poem is saying
5. Practice reading poems aloud