Anne Spencer - 5 Short Poems (1920-1975)

Forgotten Poems #67

  
              —: Dunbar (1920) :—

       Ah, how poets sing and die!
       Make one song and heaven takes it:
       Have one heart and beauty breaks it:
       Chatterton, Shelly, Keats, and I—
       Ah, how poets sing and die!
  

    
              —: I Have A Friend (1927) :—

       I have a friend
       And my heart from hence
       Is closed to friendship,
       Nor the gods' knees hold but one;
       He watches with me thru the long night,
       And when I call he comes,
       Or when he calls I am there;
       He does not ask me how beloved
       Are my husband and children,
       Nor ever do I require
       Details of life and love
       In the grave—his home,—
            We are such friends.
    

    
              —: Height (1928) :—

       When I was young I felt so small
       And frightened, for the world was tall.

       And even grasses seemed to me
       A forest of immensity

       Until I learned that I could grow,
       A glance would leave them far below.

       Spanning a tree's height with my eye,
       Suddenly I soared as high,

       And fixing on a star I grew,
       I pushed my head against the blue!

       Still, like a singing lark, I find
       Rapture to leave the grass behind.

       And sometimes standing in a crowd
       My lips are cool against a cloud.
    

   
              —: Earth (p. 1977) :—

       Earth, I thank you
       for the pleasure of your language
       You’ve had a hard time
       bringing it to me
       from the ground
       to grunt thru the noun
       To all the way
       feeling seeing smelling touching
       —awareness
       I am here!
     

   
               —: Epitome (p. 1977) :—

       Once the world was young
       For I was twenty and very old
       And you and I knew all the answers
       What the day was, how the hours would turn
       One dial was there to see
       Now the world is old and I am still young
       For the young knows nothing, nothing.
   

“Mother Nature, February, forty-five years ago forced me on the stage that I, in turn, might assume the role of lonely child, happy wife, perplexed mother—and, so far, a twice resentful grandmother. I have no academic honors, nor lodge regalia. I am a Christian by intention, a Methodist by inheritance, and a Baptist by marriage. I write about some of the things I love. But have no civilized articulation for the things I hate. I proudly love being a Negro woman—its so involved and interesting. We are the PROBLEM—the great national game of TABOO.” (Spencer, in Caroling Dusk, 1927)

Anne Spencer (1882–1975) was a poet, civil rights activist, feminist, librarian, and avid gardener, from Lynchburg, Virginia; and a significant member of the ‘Harlem Renaissance’, along with fellow poets Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Bennett, Lewis Alexander, et al. She wrote her first poem in 1896, but did not start publishing until 1920, when her work was featured in prominent black arts and culture magazines The Crisis and Opportunity.

“I wonder why we have not heard more of Spencer. Her art and its expression are true and fine; she blends a delicate mysticism with a diamond clearness of exposition, and her subject matter is original.” (Jessie Fauset, The Crisis, 1922)

“The twenty [or thirty] poems published in her lifetime were invited primarily by black editors and anthologists. Another twenty-odd were gathered from among her papers by J. Lee Greene and published after her death.” (William Drake, The First Wave: Women Poets In America, 1987)

“Spencer and her husband frequently hosted Black travelers in their home, as African Americans were barred from staying at local inns and hotels due to Jim Crow segregation. As a result, their home became a salon for prominent individuals like W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, and Thurgood Marshall. In 1918, Spencer helped found the Lynchburg chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Writer and activist James Weldon Johnson was also the Spencers’ guest while he helped open the local NAACP chapter… Spencer’s son said of her, ‘My mother was full of fire’.” (Mariana Brandman, Anne Spencer, 2021)

  
              For Anne Spencer
                 by Dick Whyte

       that i was not
       and still am

       oh mother
       full of fire—

       you will be remembered
  

My verse has the basic form of a tanka, or free cinquain, or y’know, whatever you want to call it. A rose is a rose is a rose by any other name, and all that. Before this I wrote two prior stanzas, and I still think it works nicely as a triptych, but there is something about those five lines all on their own. I think it just says it all. But who knows? You might like the long form better? Taste is what it is—singular. Anyway, I thought you might get a kick out of seeing the 10 lines I had to write, in order to get the 5 lines I wanted to write, so here they are;

     
       that i was born
       and like a tree
       grown,
       well loved
       and watered

       that i was taught
       to be kind
       and to challenge
       myself and others
       to be better
    

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