Explain, in the context of the poem, the epithets in lines 25. ...

[V@ndy87]

Explain, in the context of the poem, the epithets in lines 25.
 
  What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

This poem was the concluding text in Brookss 1970 chapbook Family Pictures. In what sense, then, is this a poem about family relationships?
 
  What will be an ideal response?

[ecabral0]

Answer to Question 1

• The downkeepers are obviously those determined to keep others downin other words, oppressors; given Brookss larger concerns and the context of Family Pictures, it seems not inappropriate to apply this phrase in racial terms. The sun-slappers, understood with reference to lines 67, are those determined to deny or block the light and to live in their own darkness and spread it to others. The self-soilers might be those who degrade their own human nature, which should be clean and pure, through their cruelty, aggression, and meanness of spirit. The harmony-hushers can be seen as those who subvert the natural oneness of humanity by their bigotry and divisiveness.

Answer to Question 2

• When we take the subtitle into account, with the awareness that Nora and Henry are the poets children, Speech to the Young. Speech to the Progress- Toward can be read in the context of such classic texts as Samuel Taylor Coleridges Frost at Midnight and William Butler Yeatss A Prayer for My Daughter, poems in which the speaker expresses his highest hopes and deepest desires for the way in which his child will grow up and the kind of person that he or she will become. At the same time, it is worth bearing in mind that Family Pictures presents portraits of African Americansboth prominent and privatewho are not blood relatives of the poet. Clearly, the family that she refers to is racial, not personal, and the Speech to the Young. Speech to the Progress-Toward is addressed to this larger family that also includes her own children.