Amiri Baraka's 'Preface to a Twenty Volume Sucide' - explorations of text

1. What is the mood of the speaker in the opening lines? What images suggest his feeling?
Depression. the speaker doesn't feel anything towards the thing that happens in his life. In line 2 'The grounds opens up and envelops me', it gives the image where his surrounding is being blinded and he may felt suffocated with surrounding which doesn't have lights.

2. What is the significance of the daughter's gesture of peeking into "her own clasped hands"?
The daughter's gesture may suggest that she was praying to god. It may shows that the daughter still believes in god and have hope in god while the speaker who had lost hope and forgotten about god.

3. What does the title mean? How does it explain the closing line?
The title may suggest that the speaker had the intention of ending his own life. Since the title is only a preface, the closing line may suggest that the act of his daughter changed his intention. the act of his daughter may had made him realize that there is still god.

4. Why does Baraka have 3 short lines, separated as stanzas? How do they convey the message of the poem?
The first 2 short lines may suggest how the speaker felt about losing hope. The speaker felt that he had came to a dead end where there is nothing and there is no hope. however the last line shows how hopes have come back through the prays to god.

5. Why does Baraka begin stanzas with "Lately", "And now" and "And then"? What do these transition words accomplish?
The first 2 words shows how the speaker felt recently and what he does in the period of time where he had lost hope. the last word shows shows a different feeling where the speaker just did something which eventually changed his feeling of losing hope to having hope again.

6. How does the speaker feel about his daughter? What does she represents to him?
The speaker might love his daughter so much where the action of him going to his daughter's room maybe because he wanted to check his daughter well being. his daughter may represent of new hope that comes to life.