After analyzing several female poets in the anthology such as Andre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alice Moore Dunbar- Nelson, and Angeline Weld Grimke, I am amazed by the artistry within these fine women. Once I began reading June Jordan’s Poem About My Rights, I was captivated by the way she conveyed her pain on these pages. This was made for every black woman on this planet. There is a line for every woman of color that has suffered and feels disrespected, invisible, and meaningless. Jordan was born in New York City and attended Barnard College and the University of Chicago. After graduating, she went on to teach at several universities, including the University of California at Berkeley. Among her many awards and accolades, she received the National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.

June utilizes repetition, laws, and historical events and correlates them to her rape. Initially analyzing the poem, it’s clear she is talking about physical rape, but as it precedes, she compares the rape to be of the mind, and the stealing of innocence, and the theft of the life she longs to live. The first stanza is simply about being alone. June wants the chance to walk alone and stargaze while she talks to God. However, every woman knows that walking alone at night is extremely dangerous. “Alone in the evening/ alone in the streets, alone not being the point/ the point being that I can’t do what I want to do with my own body because I am the wrong sec the wrong age the wrong skin.” The serenity that a nice walk by oneself brings is a privileged woman who doesn’t have. We are targets. She explains at the beginning of the stanza of all the precautions a woman must taker shall she decide to take that nightly walk alone, whether that be to her car, to her home, to her death. This brings me to the point of feminism.

Feminism is the advocacy for equal rights for women. However, a black woman and other minority women have a separate fight than a white woman. Though Jordan does state in the poem that all woman are targeted walking alone at night and that we were all “born the wrong gender,” she deciphers the inequalities we fight with white women and the ones we fight alone. Rape excludes no women based on race. We band together to advocate for laws to ensure our justice, and we defend our stories day in and day out explaining that it doesn’t matter if we dunked, or that we’re dating, or that we wore that skirt, or we led them on. It is not our fault that we are hunted. Jordan writes in the second stanza, “in France they say if the guy penetrates but does not ejaculate, then he did not rape me.” She goes on to different countries, laws, and policies that do not favor the female’s turmoil. Feminists around the world march, argue, defend, and stand up against everyone who sees us as secondary. But that does that include the problems that exclude white women and leave minority women to fend for themselves.

Toward the end of the poem, Jordan excludes white women and emphasizes the problems of her herself as a black woman. This is one of the most potent lines in the verse: “I am the history of rape, I am the history of the rejection of who I am, I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of myself.” Early she talks about how her parents wanted to correct her black features to make them fit Eurocentric standards. In the third stanza, she talks about the wrongful deaths by police officers and the C.I.A.. Though white women are still discriminated against, they will only face prejudice because they are a woman. They will never experience the injustices of being a woman and a minority.

The ending of the poem is empowering. June affirms that she is not wrong in anything that she is. She explains that nothing about this poem gives consent to dismiss her as a black woman or a woman period. “I have been the meaning of rape; I have been the problem everyone seeks to eliminate by forced penetration…but let this be unmistakable this poem s not consent.” She does not allow the historical evidence, the law, the despicable behavior of others, to deter her from becoming everything she is meant to amount to. This poem truly moved me, and I am grateful for June Jordan’s creativity.

The amazing Gwendolyn Brooks’ career is an anomaly to the literature world, considering she was a black woman in the early 1900s. Her success in the poetry world beat all the odds among minorities and women. Brooks is a Topeka, Kansas native who attended junior college and worked for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Chicago. Even though she only went to community college, Gwendolyn went on to teach poetry at five credible universities and colleges around the country. In Rita’s introduction of the analogy, she expresses the hardships and obstacles the women in this field faced for the chance to speak their truth. The Mother and A Song in the Front Yard are two phenomenal pieces that convey a story that only a woman can tell. To unpack all the allusions, the symbolism and metaphors in her poems just must put yourself in the shoes of a woman.

The theme of the poem THe Mother is about a woman who had an abortion and is feeling the emotional connection to the baby and mourning the life that she never allowed it to have. The title is telling of the entire poem. She still refers to the woman as a mother even though she has decided not to have the child. The first two lines of the poem are heart wrenching and memorable. “Abortions will never let you forget. You remember the children you got, but you did not get.” It is a physical and mental attachment that changes a women’s life, regardless of the abortion, was vital. “You will never neglect or beat.” Irrespective of the controversy about the options to give children up for adoption or abort it, Brooks pays homage to all the parents that were granted children but neglected their kids or to all the kids who were abused and even killed in foster homes.

A Song in the Front Yard is a remarkable piece about a young girl who is bored of her privileged, perfect life and wants to see how life is like for the less fortunate kids. While finding sources that have analyzed this poem, it is evident that white people looking at this poem can not comprehend it the way I believe Gwendolyn wanted it to be portrayed. The girl in the poem is to be white. White kids not only appropriate culture and attempt to partake in acts they believe are “black,” but when it comes to being stereotyped, denied opportunities, and wrongfully arrested and even murdered, they will never want a piece of that cake. This is the story of a girl who wants to be black until being black is not fun. Brooks does not mention the awful reality that the “charity kids” in the poem live, but the girl’s mother says, “Johnnie Mae will grow up to be a bad woman. That George’ll be taken to jail soon or late”. These lines are pivotal to properly comprehend that even though the girl is naïve now, her mother is teaching her to believe that they are better than the kids who play in the alley. “A girl gets sick of a rose” means she can get tired of the luxury, the easy life, and finds interest in a world completely different from hers. The front yard symbolizes the privilege of ignorance. Not only the ignorance of the little girl but in the mother as well. This poem takes place during a time of racial segregation in which minorities are forced into neighborhoods that are unkept, government-funded, and deprived because of gentrification, discrimination, and economic inequality in available jobs for African Americans. Not to mention, the mother will probably never fathom living in a place where those kids live. But she is sure that her daughter should not mingle with those kids and is confident of their fate even though she unaware of the racial disparity that separates the opportunities they have and the opportunities her daughter has.

          

For the amount of scrutiny and discrimination casts upon black men during the lifetime of Amiri Baraka, I am astonished by the way he captivated the anguish and frustration of not only being a minority but suffering from depression. He was born as LeRoi Everett in Newark, New Jersey. Everett attended Rutgers, Howard, and Columbia universities, and served in the U.S. Air Force. The composition of Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, An Agony, As Now, and Black Art are three of his most elegant pieces in which he expresses his vulnerability about the struggles of mental illnesses.

Baraka worked as an editor, a playwright, a theatre director, and publisher. Before diving into Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, I would like to acknowledge that in almost all his poems, his first line is so captivating. It sets him apart from other writers and leaves a lasting effect on the reader for the remainder of the piece. In this poem, he talks about how everyday life is like while dealing with depression. The theme is hope. One of the hardest battles people who suffer from depression fight is searching for a reason to get out of bed. Or the confidence that today is going to be better than yesterday, and ultimately hoping that this illness with not consume them. The first two lines of the poem read as: “Lately, I’ve become accustomed to the way. The ground opens up and envelops me”. The poet is exhausted from everyday life. The smallest tasks take the most out of him. Everything is consuming.

The second stanza talks about how he looks to the night sky and stars for a sign or guidance. He even mentions that when the stars are not there, he counts their empty spots. Which could either mean he is just so desperate for hope that he will plead even when the thing the poet asking to is absent, or Baraka has lost someone close to him which has sent him into a depression and “the absence of the stars” is the void of whoever he lost. “Nobody sings anymore.” He explains how the whole world has lost hope in their initial dreams and desires. In the last stanza, he walks into his daughter’s room, where she’s kneeling and praying in her hands. This is his realization that perhaps not all the hope in the world is gone. In which all the hope adults have lost is within children or their inner child.

An Agony, As Now, is a marvelous piece about a man who has been consumed by his depression, lives his life as a secondary character. He wears a metal mask that only has slits in the eyes where he watches his life unfold from the shadows. He must breathe the foul stench of what his world has become an even sees the horrid women he confides in to cover his actual problems. Flesh and metal are continuously brought up throughout the poem. His flesh is the only thing holding him together, yet it makes him weak. “Flesh” is a metaphor for all that makes him vulnerable and weak, which equates to all those bottled up emotions that he can not channel from the body of who he does not know. The metal is cold and hinders his ability to feel human touch and warmth. Baraka artistically explains how depression prevents one from not only expressing emotions but feeling emotions altogether. Mt final point about the poem is about his longing. He longs to escape his “enclosure.” Though he knows not how to feel, he knows what he wants to explore. “But it has no feeling. As the metal is hot, it is not, given to love.” To properly understand this line, we must revisit the first line of the poem, which reads as: ” I am inside someone who hates me.” Amiri believes that somewhere inside of himself, he still loves the person that he truly is. Without the depressive state is has been trapped in holding him back, he would be able to unwrap the love he desperately needs. Even in 2020, the black community still struggles to validate mental illness and combat negative feedback to those who search for relief from their struggles. Amiri Baraka is beyond a poet. He is a real activist for a conversation that so many people need to be having.

          

            Though it’d a man’s world, women have climbed the totem poll of life bit by bit through the centuries. Even in the realm of creative writing, our favorite female poets are constricted by societal standards which is obvious on these pages. Analyzing the work of Alice Moore Dunbar and Angelina Weld Grimke, led me to the various similarities and critical differences that tell an underlying story behind the poems from both writers.

            Dunbar was a Louisiana native born in the mid 1870’s. During her prime, her poems were featured in magazines and anthologies while she was an active newspaper editor and political activists. I Sit and Sew is the only open in the anthropology written by Alice, but it is telling of her true character. She wastes no time in getting to the point of the poem. In the first line she says, “I sit and sew- a useless task it seems”. She insinuates not only are that women are left to complete meaningless labor but that women themselves are meaningless in the eyes of the patriarchy. She had different plans for her life. Her aspirations did not include needles and string. My favorite two lines of the poem are “Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death, Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath”. The symbolism and metaphoric structure of the piece genuinely conveys struggles of a woman during the late 1800’s to early 1900’s. As you read the poem, she becomes more and more passionate and enraged about her circumstances until the final line which reads: “God, must I sit and sew?” The frustration one Dunbar speaks volumes for central atmosphere filled with misogyny.

            The fight for woman equality is a prevalent one, however, the struggles of all woman are not universal. Nobody in American history has caught hell like the black woman. Angelina Weld Grimke was a mullato woman from Boston, who also lived during the same time period as Alice Moore Dunbar. Her father was a distinguished author who specialized in activism for racial equality. She was blessed to graduate from Wellesley College and go on to publish her works in African American magazines and anthologies. Angelina even wrote a play which premiered in Washington DC and moved to New York City. Her poem Fragment is a captivating piece that tells only a ‘fragment’ of how exhausting being a black woman can be. The repetition of particular words in the poem are for two reasons. One being that the lives of black women can become not only repetitive, but they also mirror each other in a number of ways. The second reason being that black woman must be twice as good to receive half the opportunities as white women. “I am living in the cellars and in every crowded place”. African American women are not noticed. Visibly invisible to the average person regarding wealth, jobs, men, education, and opportunities. However, they are still living. They are still walking among us doing all of the above yet not receiving the recognition they deserve. My favorite two lines in the poem are: “I am the laughing woman who’s forgotten how to weep. I am the laughing woman who’s afraid to go to sleep”. These are last two lines of the poem and these are this the only time she refers to herself as a woman and not a black woman. Black woman will always face the problems that white woman face but white woman will not face the same problems black woman face. Grimke says she has forgotten how to weep. Many times, when African American woman express their emotions they are seen as overly sensitive or too aggressive. Which is a stereotype to diminish the feelings of black women and disregard their experience. The last line she says she is afraid to go to sleep. Day in and day out black women are directly and indirectly being poisoned by America. From being forced into food deserts do to gentrification, to medical racism, they are never offered the opportunity to freely chase their dreams without the constant reminder of death lingering in the back of their mind.