Analysis of the Leroi Jones poem that some people will have to understandThere is an implicit threat in "A poem that some people will have to understand" by Leroi Jones. Apparently there is no intimidation. The poem is confessional, even reflective; the theme is one of mutability and change. However, there is something frightening and menacing about Jones1's vision, which he creates by paying attention to word choice and structure. Jones' warning is immediately evident in the title through his manipulation of words. The expression “duty” has two meanings. On the one hand, "must" is an innocuous declaration of the alliance Jones hopes to find among his African-American readers: these people "shall" understand the poem because it speaks to their individual, personal lives. On the other hand, there is a more sinister connotation to "must": the idea that others "will" have to understand this poem because they will be forced to do so. Beyond the title, Jones creates a forbidding speaker: a man at a crossroads, or rather at a moment of decision. However, the structure of the first stanza is direct and conservative, almost prosaic. Jones doesn't give us anything revolutionary here. Instead, he lays the groundwork for this piece with the first dark images of “(d)ull windows of unwashed eyes”(1). These eyes are undoubtedly those of the speaker, and they have been dulled and soiled by his existence as a black man in the post-segregation 1960s. The “industry” he mentions in lines 2 and 3 is both the American machine industry that exploits the most disadvantaged, and the industry that he “practice(s).” The speaker is a self-described “skillful/colored boy, 12 miles from home” who engages in “no industry” (35). By "...... middle of paper ...... The promised "phenomenon" did not happen, and it is now up to him to provoke it with violence. Jones does not allow the he speaker to lose any of his charm by politely inviting his “machine gunners” – the tools of his new industry – to “please step forward” (26). a smooth talker who is now at home in his new ego and his new profession. Jones uses the dynamics of change for his speaker throughout the poem, from an aimless wanderer to a passionate revolutionary. speaker using specific words and structural techniques, a new black man, who is not content with the passivity of his former spiritual leaders. We are left with a threat – a steel fist in a velvet glove of poetry –. and it becomes a poem that we “must” understand, whether we want to or not..