Letter to my Sister: Anne Spencer

FONTS

Letter to my Sister: Anne Spencer

Analysis

General Career Facts:

T: Letter to my sister

- advice to her sister.

P: S1. I think is about women having to live in fear because they lack power in that time period.

S2. No matter what the women did they'd always be looked down on, even when they're fending for their loved ones.

S3. This stanza is saying to stay out of harms way or else the gods will not feel any remorse if failed to do so.

C: Personification is used in the quote, "the drowning waters tormenting fears And anger of red sins." to establish fears of being inconvenient.

A: Fearful: "Oh, but worse still if you mince timidly-- Dodge this way or that, kneel or pray"

S: Shifts from stanza 2 and 3 from a agonizing fearful tone to one of suspense and rapprochement.

T: The poem is titled "Letter to my Sister" because she giving advice to her sister in fears of her being in harms way.

T: Being overcautious can be a weakness, but equally, being the only way to safety.

• Most of Anne's poems are of religion race and the natural world
• Spencer had 30 of her poems published in her lifetime
• She is the first African American woman to be featured in the Norton Anthology of Modern poetry (1973)
• The Anne Spencer House Garden Museum is included on the National Register of Historic places

Letter to my Sister

It is dangerous for a woman

to defy the gods;

To taunt them with the tongue's thin tip,

Or strut in the weakness

of mere humanity,

Or draw a line daring them to cross;

The gods own the searing lightning,

The drowning waters, tormenting fears

And anger of red sins.

Oh, but worse still if you mince timidly--

Dodge this way or that, or kneel or pray,

Be kind, or sweat agony drops

Or lay your quick body over

your feeble young;

If you have beauty or none, if celibate

Or vowed--the gods are Juggernaut,

Passing over . . . over . . .

This you may do:

Lock your heart, then, quietly,

And lest they peer within,

Light no lamp when dark comes down

Raise no shade for sun;

Breathless must your

breath come through

If you'd die and dare deny

The gods their god-like fun.

Bibliographys

Biographical facts:

• http://www.artstolife.worldpress.com/2013/09/07/the-reality-beyond-the-reality-we-see-contemporary-russian-art-from-st-petersburg/
• http://www.humanitiestexas.org/education/online-resources/ela/harlem-renaissance
• http://hrc.utexas.edu/educator/modules/teachingthetwenties/theme_viewer.php?theme=culture&section=harlem
• http://www.annespencermuseum.com/biography.php

• Anne Spencer was born on a farm in Virginia, 1882
• Both of Anne's parents were slaves
• She enrolled in school at age 11, at the Virginia Theological Seminary and college
• She graduated six years later as valedictorian
• Anne then worked as a librarian for Dunbar High School for 20 years
• Spencer died of cancer at age 93
• She is buried at the Forest Hills Cemetery in Lynchburg

Boris Kustodiev Painting

• This is a contmporary russian art done by Boris Kustodiev
• This peice is based on the dictation that occured in Russia (Soviet Union at the time)