Analyzing Discourse in Sugar Cane: Stanza 1/6

1) The mother bending over a baby named Shug
2)  chuckles, “Gimme some sugar,” just to preface
3)  a flurry of kisses sweet as sugar cane.
4) Later, when she stirs a spoonful of Domino
5) into her coffee, who’s to tell the story
6) how a ten-foot-tall reed from the Old World,
7) on being brought to the New, was raised and cropped
8) so cooks could sweeten whatever tasted bitter?
9) Or how grade-A granulated began as a thick
10) black syrup boiled for hours in an iron vat
11) until it was refined to pure, white crystal.


Alfred Corn's "Sugar Cane" continues to reference Phillis Wheatley's poem. Phillis Wheatley does not mention "sugar" in her poem, and the only "cane" is "Cain" the biblical brother of Abel, however, the idea of refinement and binary of black and white is also a theme which relates to the manufacturing and processing of cane sugar into refined sugar.  This theme is immediately alluded to in the first stanza.  Sugar and its uses are mentioned six times in the first stanza.

The first stanza is told in the present tense. The scene starts domestic, familial, and  feminine. The characters are a mother and her baby daughter at home. The baby girl's name "Shug" appears in the first line, and is an African American Vernacular English (AAVE) use of "sugar", used as a term of endearment often used as a nickname. Like an allegory, the baby girl becomes sugar, by being named "Shug." In the second line the mother, speaking to her baby daughter asks her to give her kisses "Gimme some sugar" which is also playful AAVE. "Sugar" is slang for a kiss or kisses in AAVE.

The third mention of sugar is in the following line, the kisses are described metaphorically as being "sweet as sugar cane."

The forth mention of sugar is in the fourth line, where the use of sugar as a sweetener poured into coffee is described, and sugar appears as a proper noun as the American sugar brand name "Domino." This is the first reference to the commercial. "Domino" is interesting as a term because it is a game commonly plaid in the West, however it has it's origins in the "Old World" in Asia (specifically China) . It's origins are recorded as early as the Yuan Dynasty. Domino's are traditionally white rectangular tablets with black spots and have been known to be made of precious materials such as ivory and ebony, which are also imported to the West from Africa.  (The Domino Sugar Company had it's refinery in Brooklyn, New York along the East River)

The fifth mention of sugar, is in it's raw form as a "10-foot-tall reed" . (The following three line's describe the migration, process, and use).

The migration of the Sugar Cane plant is intertextual. The importation of sugarcane follows to importation of Africans to America, and therefore references Wheatley's "On Being Brought from Africa to America" (OBBFATA) The slave trade from Africa to America is inextricably connected with the sugar trade.  I think the diction here is important too. In line 7 Corn writes that sugarcane was "raised and cropped" not that it was "produced" or "cultivated". Corn uses words which can be interpreted to have negative connotations. The word "raised" can mean to cultivate, but it also sounds like "razed" which means to destroy completely and "cropped" which can refer to agriculture and the harvesting of a crop is most commonly used as a synonym for "cut" especially "to cut short."
Line 8, although not mentioning sugar explicitly refers to an integral quality of sugar as a product, as something used by cooks for consumption. Line 8 addresses taste by introducing the dichotomy of sweetness and bitterness. In the context of the 8th line the transformation from bitter to sweet is culinary, however the words "bitter" and "sweet" do not necessarily have to be related to food. Somehow, by bringing a "cook" into the stanza, there is always a question of agency... a third party is transforming something unpleasant to be perceived as pleasant.






Lines 9, 10 and 11specifically references sugar again. It is referred to by a processed rating of quality.  "Grade-A granulated" refers to the final processed product of sugar which is consumed in the west as typical table sugar. Here again, there is a dichotomy and contrast. In line 10 the origin of sugar is a " thick/ black syrup" which contrasts in both form and color to the "pure, white crystal." In line 11.  These lines, again, reference Wheatley's "OBBFATA." The word "refined" appears in the last line of OBBFATA. By line 11, the originally black liquid product of sugar has been through time and heat lost it's color,  become "refined" and transformed into "crystal."

This first stanza asks a question of a) agency WHO is going to tell the story b) or origins WHERE did sugar come from? c) transformation HOW did sugar change?


This stanza is set in the present tense. This stanza can be interpreted as a response to Wheatley's command to "remember", by asking "who's to tell the story...". This introduces the following narrative stanzas which are told (predominantly) in the past tense as recollections, brief stories from the speaker's memory.

This stanza takes part in discourses of time and space. Of age and race.  Of construction and destruction and agency.