Poem Analysis: The Trumpet Player

This poem contains contrasting images and through those images we understand that the trumpet player is burdened with not having a choice between what he can and cannot control. He has his capabilities, but he will always be held back by his blackness.
In the poem, the speaker talks about items that represent royalty, but those images are also contrasted with ones of oppression. The speaker describes the trumpet player with a worldly and regal vocabulary and the trumpet player proves this by how he expresses himself during his performance on stage. This stage presence conveys royalty. The trumpet player’s hair “gleams like jet- were jet a crown” proving that even his appearance is king like. Furthermore, his physical appearance continues to
Even though its presence in the poem is constant, its meaning has contradicting sides to it. On one hand, the speaker can feel the oppression and the pain that the trumpet player experiences through the musician’s presence on stage. On the other hand, the trumpet player’s music is also a form of how he expresses his pain. For the trumpet player, by playing music, it takes oppression and suppresses it. However, from his music, comes incredible pain. He feels a deep sadness born from racism and the “memory of slave ships,” but as he plays his music, all of the “trouble mellows to a golden note.” Although music eases his pain, it is also “a hypodermic needle to his soul.” By piercing his soul, his music is reminding him that he lives in a prejudiced world. It is a constant reminder that he has a gift, but cannot use it to progress in the world he lives in. Looking more closely, the physical use of a hypodermic needle is with heroin. With heroin, one does not “mellow to a golden note” - one fades away. The trumpet player’s “trouble” might subside for a song or a note, but he will fade away in a world where his race forces him to go unrecognized. The idea that his talent takes part in his suffering, shows that his music is double sided. The trumpet player’s identity is conflicted because his skin is equated with his