ANNE SPENCER

• Poet, civil rights activist, teacher, librarian, wife, mother, gardener
• 30+ poems published during her lifetime
• Second African-American poet to be included in Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry
• Helped to found Lynchburg Chapter of National Association for the Advancement of Colored poeple

• Died of cancer at age 93
• July 27th, 1975

white things

Schooling:

• Mother (Sarah Scales) enrolls her into Virginia Theological Seminary and College
• Gains literacy
• Meets Edward Alexander Spencer
• Marries in 1901
• have three children together

bio

WHITE THINGS

• juxtaposition of colorful things and white things
• natural and common VS. less-natural and "rare"

• presumption
• automatically special
• ironic

• pollution of the land
• feathers = light, without substance
• cowardice and insecurity

Most things are colorful things-

- the sky, earth, and sea.

Black men are most men;

but the white are free!

White things are rare things;

so rare, so rare

They stole from our a silvered

world--somewhere.

Finding earth-plains fair plains,

save greenly grassed,

They strewed white feathers of

cowardice, as they passed;

The golden stars with lances fine,

The hills all red and darkened pine,

They blanched with their want of power;

And turned the blood in a ruby rose

To a poor white poppy-flower.

They pyred a race of black, black men,

And burned them to ashes white; then

Laughing, a young one claimed a skull,

For the skull of a black is white, not dull,

But a glistening awful thing

Made, it seems, for this ghoul to swing

In the face of God with all his might,

And swear by the hell that sired him:

"Man-maker, make white!"

• immerses reader in rich colors
• jarring/traumatizing when "white-washed"

• richness of the ruby to the flimsy, weak flower that is "poor white"
• "poor white poppy-flower"
• hyphen almost sing-song and mocking

• broken lines drag reader into the horror
• "then"/"Laughing" has special emphasis
• Skull and ashes represent white supremacy

• emphasizes ego, horror

Lady, Lady

• woman
• black

- Chisel:

• noun - long bladed hand-tool that is struck with a mallet or hammer to cut wood, metal, etc.
• verb - to cut or shape; to cheat or swindle

- Yoke:

• noun - a wooden crosspiece that is fastened over the necks of two animals and attached to the plow or cart that they are to pull.

• Physical deformation as a result of working for white men
• Hands are worked until they are virtually unrecognizable
• "poor white"
• She is a launderer

Lady, Lady, I saw your face,

Dark as night withholding a star...

The chisel fell, or it might have been

You had borne so long the yoke of men.

Lady, Lady, I saw your hands,

Twisted, awry, like crumpled roots,

Bleached poor white in a sudsy tub,

Wrinkled and drawn from your rub-a-dub.

Lady, Lady, I saw your heart,

And altered there in its darksome place

Were the tongues of flames the ancients knew,

Where the good God sits to spangle through.

The "core" of this woman.

- she has been "altered" by surroundings and circumstance

"tongues of flames"

• biblical reference to Acts 2:28?

Ancient wisdom

• a carried heritage
• core self develops out of one's heritage

- A positive, inner guiding force

- Spangle:

• noun - a small, thin piece of glittering material
• verb - to cover with small sparkling objects

DIFFERENCES

• RHYME SCHEME
• White Things: inconsistent rhyme scheme
• Makes the poem appear mocking
• Lady Lady: rhyme scheme much more organized
• AB CC EF GG, etc
• VICIOUSNESS OF THE WHITE MAN
• White things:
• Acts of white men
• Lady Lady:
• Damage done to black woman

COMPARISON

SIMILARITIES

• Sing-song-y rhyming lyrics
• Nature as something that is being corrupted
• Addresses the power that white men hold over black men