ENGLISH 101 28/9/2011 Hoops basketball, streets, childhood, jumping through hoops - Overcoming an obstacle/challenge Jackson talks about

ut the neighborhood in which he grew up and some parts where he grew up looked poor, impoverished (ghetto) and no one payed attention to it. Theme relevant everywhere in Jackson writing he talks about drunks, prostitutes, gun shots. His main theme hoops -even though all of this exists he was able to overcome the obstacles. He jump through hoops.

Selected Writings
URBAN RENEWAL XIII. The backyard garden wall is mossy green and flakes a craggy mound of chips. Nearby my grandfather kneels between a row of beans and stabs his shears into earth. I squint an eye, a comma grows at his feet. The stucco's an atlas, meshed-wire continents with leaders who augured hate, hence ruins, which further sow discontent. We are weeding, marking borders, a million taproots stacked in shock. Forty years from a three-story, he has watched theneighborhood, postwar marble steps, a scrubbed frontier of Pontiacs lining the curb, fade to a hood. Pasture of wind-driven litter swirls among greasy bags of takeouts. Panicles of nightblasts cap the air, a corner lot of broken TVs empties and spills from a suitcase of hurt. Life amassed, meaningless as a trampled box of Cornflakes. When a beggar cupped for change outside a check-cashing place then snatched his wallet, he cleaned a .22 revolver & launched this plot. Tidal layers of cement harden men born gentle as the root crops tended south, the city its own bitter shrine. We crouch by watering cans. He pulls a paradise of kale and shakes root-dirt that snaps like a shadow lost in time. Tomato vines coil by a plot of herbs. Far from the maddening caravan of fistfights, jacked-rides, drunkards, my pen takes aim from the thumbnail of his yard. from Hoops

Who? ( characters in the poem) : Major Jackson (speaker) , His Grandfather, The Beggar (side character) What is the Grandfather doing? Gardening, flashback to the grandfathers past (guarding the neighbourhood?) Grandfather poor? Retired. Lived in this area for a very long time and has experienced a lot. Grandfather has witnessed the change in the neighbour hood. In all of the negative they have seen they refer gardening to paradise/heaven. Even with guns/robbery and trash outside he was still able to overcome the hurdle. Setting? Garden, neighborhood, a mess, post war marble steps (old area),the hood,paradox garden (peacefull beautiful controllable) contrasting with the shrine, begger and guns. Panoramic view of his neighborhood looking at different snapshots of the neighbourhood. how was Jackson influenced by his grandfather? - in a positive way. Example of jumping through hoops other people left when the neighbourhood got tough to handle but his grandfather stayed and jumped through the hoops. Grandfather gave him roots. Do not be affected negatively by the environment.