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1875-1935

Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson

Focus

Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson provided rich culture into her writing pieces and because of her complex understanding of race she was intellectually refined for her time. She offered something new and contributed to the Harlem Renaissance

Work Cited

Biographical

Common characteristics

Nelson's writing pieces typically surround her views and experiences in her life and on life. Her diary entries and many of her novels have underlying rich meanings.

  • Poet, essayist, diarist, and activist
  • New Orleans, Louisiana, to mixed-race parents.
  • middle class status
  • Paul Laurence Dunbar marriage
  • Straight University (now Dillard University)
  • Dunbar-Nelson explored the themes of racism, the color line, and oppression

Finch, Annie. "I Sit and Sew." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2016.

"Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2016.

"About Alice Dunbar-Nelson." About Alice Dunbar-Nelson. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2016.

"In every race, in every nation, and in every clime in every period of history there is always an eager-eyed group of youthful patriots who seriously set themselves to right the wrongs done to their race or nation or . . . art or self-expression."

-Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson

If I Had Known

I Sit and Sew

Analysis

Alice Dunbar-Nelson's poem, "I Sit and Sew", addresses many issues between the sexes during this time period. The repetition of "I sit and sew" meant to emphasize the exhausting repetition of the task. This piece of literature was crucial in the time it was written as it displayed a little acknowledged view from a woman.

The poem is an expression of her life after she had dealt with the divorce of her husband. The poem is split into two stanzas, the first representing her life before the marriage, and the second showing her life after the divorce, though, it could be also symbolize another time of love and loss, not specifically marriage.

If I Had Known

I sit and sew—a useless task it seems,

My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams—

The panoply of war, the martial tred of men,

Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken

Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death,

Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath—

But—I must sit and sew.

I sit and sew—my heart aches with desire—

That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire

On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things

Once men. My soul in pity flings

Appealing cries, yearning only to go

There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe—

But—I must sit and sew.

The little useless seam, the idle patch;

Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch,

When there they lie in sodden mud and rain,

Pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain?

You need me, Christ! It is no roseate dream

That beckons me—this pretty futile seam,

It stifles me—God, must I sit and sew?

If I had known

Two years ago how drear this life should be,

And crowd upon itself allstrangely sad,

Mayhap another song would burst from out my lips,

Overflowing with the happiness of future hopes;

Mayhap another throb than that of joy.

Have stirred my soul into its inmost depths,

If I had known.

If I had known,

Two years ago the impotence of love,

The vainness of a kiss, how barren a caress,

Mayhap my soul to higher things have soarn,

Nor clung to earthly loves and tender dreams,

But ever up aloft into the blue empyrean,

And there to master all the world of mind,

If I had known. -From Violets and Other Tales

by Paige Nestell

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