These poems both center on the black experience in the US, but they present it in quite different ways. In terms of their poetic elements, we can see at once that the form and structure of Dunbar's poem is more traditional than Hughes's. While both use rhyme, Dunbar writes in tetrameter, with a regular rhythm to each line. The structure of his poem hints at, but does not rigidly adhere to, an AABB rhyme scheme, with the central stanza, at only four lines, shorter than the five-line stanzas that flank it. This quasi-traditional structure is an excellent vehicle for the message of Dunbar's poem: it "wears the mask" of a traditional poem in the white, Western canon, just as the "tortured souls" of whom Dunbar writes "wear the mask" the world wants to see. They present themselves in acceptable form, while their "cries" are hidden beneath it. Dunbar's language, too,...
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is traditional, formal, and at times archaic ("Nay," "O," "thee"), all of which contributes to the artifice of the "mask" from which the poem envisions no escape for black Americans.
The structure and language of Hughes's poem, by contrast, provide a vehicle for its content by provoking anxiety in the reader: the form is unpredictable, opening and closing with questions isolated to single lines. The language is conversational, presenting a series of images which, while vivid, would also not be unusual to hear in conversation. This fosters a sense of intimacy between speaker and reader, as if his questions are posed directly to us.
The entire poem is comprised of questions: "What happens to a dream deferred?" Hughes lulls the reader into a false sense of security with one period—"Maybe it just sags / like a heavy load." This, his tone seems to suggest, is what the non-black world is hoping will happen to those who have been crushed into submission like "a raisin in the sun." However, this only lends greater potency to the final, italicized question which seems to leap out at the reader like the explosion it alludes to: "Or does it explode?"