Dream Defered

Dream Deferred is a poem that, like many, gets clearer and clearer every time you read it. After my first read I didn't really have to much of an idea of what exactly it was about I just knew it was talking about dreams and what happens when they are, well, for lack of a better word, deferred. Upon reading it another time, more slowly, I realized what the individual lines dealt with in reference to the dreams. Your dream could shrivel up like a raisin which means if not taken advantage of the best opportunity to achieve your dream could pass. It could fester like a sore, which means if it is not tended to it could bug you and progressively get worse and worse. The one line that really seemed to have a lot of different things that could potentially be in the “cone of meaning” was the last line about the explosion. This lone metaphor obviously needs to have some kind of meaning however what exactly is the most likely solution. Based on the time period the most probable thing that Hughes, as the speaker, would be talking about is civil rights and the possibility of them “exploding” and the possibility of violence.