Unknowen

Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 9: Anne Spencer " PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. WWW URL: http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap9/spencer.html (provide page date or date of your login).

She is no pleader of causes, choosing rarely to comment on the race issue in her published poetry. Yet her biography reveals a wide acquaintance with civil rights leaders, literary dignitaries, lecturers, and other prominent citizens, black and white, who would appear as public speakers and/or artists in Lynchbu

students applaud both Spencer's assertiveness as demonstrated by her work for women's suffrage and her determination to create options that allowed her to pursue her art by diverse routes (as demonstrated by her work as the first black librarian in Lynchburg).

Spencer, Anne (1882–1975), poet, librarian, community activist, and muse and confidante to Harlem Renaissance intellectuals and literati. Anne Spencer was born inauspiciously on a Virginia plantation. Yet the combination of loving, though irreconcilable, parents and an unorthodox, isolated youth formed her extraordinary independence, introspection, and conviction.

Her father, Joel Cephus Bannister, of African American, white, and Native American descent, and her mother, Sarah Louise Scales, the mulatta daughter of a slaveholder, separated when Spencer was six. While her mother worked as an itinerant cook, Spencer roomed with foster parents in Bramwell, West Virginia, where no other black children lived. In insular and parochial Bramwell, she was groomed for the African American bourgeoisie. Her mother dressed her in the finest frocks she could afford and withheld her from an outlying school that enrolled working-class children until she could attend Lynchburg's Virginia Seminary with socially suitable African American students. Spencer entered the seminary at age eleven. At seventeen, she graduated as valedictorian.

Two events there redirected her life. With a sonnet, “The Skeptic” (1896), she began writing poetry; and she met her husband, Edward. They settled in Lynch-burg and raised three children. In 1918 Spencer was visited by James Weldon Johnson (The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, 1912), then field secretary for the NAACP. Their meeting launched a lifetime friendship—and with “Before the Feast at Sushan,” submitted to the the Crisis (1920), it inaugurated her publishing era.

Such poems as “At the Carnival” (1922), “Lines to a Nasturtium” (1926), “Substitution” (1927), and “Requiem” (1931) share the Romantics' affection for the ordinary and simple, retreat to nature's purity and peace, quest for love, disillusionment with earthly vanities, and passionate contemplation of eternity. Spencer flaunted tradition as much as she acknowledged it, laying claim to a modern poet's signature with sinister rhythms, slanted rhymes, blunt rejection of religious dogma, and enigmatic symbolism. During the 1920s, largely due to Johnson's mentorship, she published in such intellectual race magazines as the Crisis and Opportunity, in general anthologies of American poetry, in poet Countee Cullen's Caroling Dusk (1927), in Johnson's Book of American Negro Poetry (1922), and in Alain Locke's The New Negro (1925), the official mission declaration of Harlem Renaissance (New Negro movement) writers and artists.

She detested an editorial process that misread her meanings, misunderstood her motives, mercilessly alluded to her inconsistent output, and miscategorized her poems as either much too subtle or too subtly militant. For many poems, including “White Things” (1923) and “Grapes: Still-Life” (1929), Spencer stood at variance with editors and publishers who censored statements of racial and sexual equality and rejected whatever they judged too controversial and/or experimental for American audiences. Consequently, she confined her editorial submissions to a decade, and she never published a poetry collection. Of her thousands of unpublished writings, including a novel and cantos commemorating John Brown, some fifty remain.

Her paradoxical lifestyle kindled her writing. During the depression and World War II, her salon at 1313 Pierce Street hosted notables from W. E. B. Du Bois to Paul Robeson. Yet she so enjoyed the solitude of her garden that Edward erected a cottage for her there, naming it Edankraal, and he hired housekeepers to liberate her from the average southern woman's sentence to domestic drudgery. “The Wife-Woman” (1922), “Lady, Lady” (1925), and “Letter to My Sister” (1927) confide Spencer's ambivalence about matrimony, motherhood, feminism, and the unattainability of gender equality for African American women. They identify the masculine prerogatives of seclusion, intellect, and leisure served by the madonnas found everywhere in productions of the Harlem Renaissance.

Spencer frequently abandoned her privacy to antagonize local racists and class snobs. She organized Lynchburg's NAACP chapter, opened a library at the African American Dunbar High School, and offered sanctuary to the pygmy Ota Benga, who had been exhibited in zoos as a specimen of African inferiority. She infuriated African Americans with her scandalous fondness for pants and stubborn opposition to integration of public schools. Lynchburg's whites, in turn, sniffed their noses at her interracial friendships and scathing editorial disclaimers against the alleged self-evidence of white superiority.

Spencer's overall contribution has been to refocus critical attention on the stake that southern African American writers, virtually dismissed, have held in the enduring legacy of the Harlem Renaissance. At once homespun and urbane, her writings complicate the arbitrary amputation of New Negroes into either the folk, epitomized by Langston Hughes's Simple stories, or the bourgeois mulattoes of Jessie Redmon Fauset's novels. Finally, Spencer's complexity advances our assessment of African American women writers in general, placing her at the center of a feminist renaissance midwifed by her forward vision.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/anne-spencer#ixzz1wBntXvFz

PRIMARY WORKS

Poetry:

"The Poems," in Time's Unfading Garden: Anne Spencer's Life and Poetry, by J. Lee Greene. Baton Rouge & London: Louisiana State University Press, 1977, 175-197.
"Before the Feast of Shushan," "At the Carnival," "The Wife-Woman," "Translation," and "Dunbar," in The Book of American Negro Poetry, edited by James Weldon Johnson. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1922, 169-173.

"Substitution," "Innocence," "Neighbors," "Questing," "Life-Long, Poor Browning," "I Have a Friend," "Creed," in Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, edited by Countee Cullen. New York: Harper, 1927, 47-52.

"Letter to My Sister," in Ebony and Topaz: A Collectanea, edited by Charles S. Johnson. New York: National Urban League, 1927, 94.

"For Jim, Easter Eve," in The Poetry of the Negro, 1746-1949, edited by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps. Garden City: Doubleday, 1949, 65.

Publications in Magazines and Journals:

"Before the Feast at Shushan," Crisis, 19 (February 1920): 186.
"White Things," Crisis, 25 (March 1923): 204.

"Lady, Lady," Survey Graphic, 6 (March 1925): 661.

"Lines to a Nasturtium (A Lover Muses)," Palms, 4 (October 1926): 13.

"Rime for the Christmas Baby (At 48 Webster Place, Orange)," Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life,
5 (December 1927): 368.

"Grapes: Still-Life," Crisis, 36 (April 1929): 124.

"Requiem," Lyric, (Spring 1931): 3.

SECONDARY WORKS

The Anne Spencer Memorial Foundation. Echoes from the Garden: The Anne Spencer Story(a documentary film). Lynchburg, Va.: Anne Spencer Memorial Foundation/Washington, D.C.: Byron Studios, 1980.
Facts of File Encyclopedia of Black Women in America: Literature. New York: Facts on File, Inc. Vol 2, 1997, 156-158.

Greene, J. Lee. "Anne Spencer," in Dictionary of Literary Biography: Afro-American Writers from the Harlem Renaissance to 1940. vol. 51. edited by Trudier Harris. Detroit, Mi.: Gale Research Co., 1987, 252-259.

Greene, J. Lee.Time's Unfading Garden: Anne Spencer's Life and Poetry. Baton Rouge & London: Louisiana State University Press, 1977.

Roses, Lorraine Elena and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph. Harlem Renaissance and Beyond: Literary Biographies of 100 Black Women Writers 1900-1945. Boston, Mass.: G.K. Hall & Co, 1990, 298-303.

Salem, Dorothy C. African American Women: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: Garland Publishing, 1993, 473-474.

The Wife-Woman

Maker-of-Sevens in the scheme of things
From earth to star;
Thy cycle holds whatever is fate, and
Over the border the bar.
Though rank and fierce the mariner
Sailing the seven seas,
He prays as he holds his glass to his eyes,
Coaxing the Pleiades.

I cannot love them; and I feel your glad,
Chiding from the grave,
That my all was only worth at all, what
Joy to you it gave,
These seven links the Law compelled
For the human chain--
I cannot love them; and you, oh,
Seven-fold months in Flanders slain!

A jungle there, a cave here, bred six
And a million years.
Sure and strong, mate for mate, such
Love as culture fears;
I gave you clear the oil and wine;
You saved me your hob and hearth--
See how even life may be ere the
Sickle comes and leaves a swath.

But I can wait the seven of moons,
Or years I spare,
Hoarding the heart's plenty, nor spend
A drop, nor share--
So long hilt outlives a smile and a silken gown;
Then gaily reach up from my shroud,
And you, glory-clad, reach down..

Written by Anne Spencer (1882-1976)

HOME |BIOGRAPHY |POETRY |HOUSE|GARDEN|NEIGHBORHOOD|TOURS |SHOPOnce 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 know nothing, nothing

1313 Pierce Street • Lynchburg, Virginia 24501 • 434-845-1313 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 434-845-1313 end_of_the_skype_highlighting • The Garden Conservancy provides preservation assistance to the Anne Spencer garden

The visit nearly didn’t happen. Just before Johnson was scheduled to arrive in Lynchburg, Edward became sick with pneumonia. Anne, worried that having a house guest would be too much for Edward, considered canceling the meeting. Edward insisted that she go forward with the plans. He thought it would be good for their children, saying, “It’s our only chance to see and meet people, living here in Lynchburg. Take it. He may make it more cheerful” (Greene 48).

During this visit, Johnson “discovered” Anne Spencer the poet and began what would be a lifelong friendship. He happened upon one of her poems based on the Biblical book of Esther, "Before the Feast at Shushan", and encouraged Spencer to publish her work. The poem was published in the NAACP journal, The Crisis, in February 1920. This began Spencer’s decade of publication and nearly two decades of friendship with James Weldon Johnson.

FOUNDATIONRENTALSEVENTSDONATECONTACT USHOME|BIOGRAPHY |POETRY |HOUSE|GARDEN |NEIGHBORHOOD |TOURS |SHOPPOETRY

Anne Spencer's poetry, often “scribblings” found on any available surface, including walls of her home and loose scraps of paper, were written for herself rather than a public audience. Spencer used language to give voice to her thoughts, reactions, and, quite often, her indignation. She was an outspoken advocate for the rights of all beings: civil rights, women’s rights, rights of respect and dignity due to all people. Although Anne Spencer was interested and involved in many things during her lifetime, her name most likely would not have achieved the kind of international recognition it has today had she not been a noted poet during the Harlem Renaissance. Yet interestingly, it was her commitment to human equality that led to her fame.

Anne Spencer was a passionate believer in equal rights. In 1918, Spencer—and others committed to equal rights for blacks—sought to establish a local NAACP chapter. James Weldon Johnson, writer, critic, and field secretary for the national NAACP, came to Lynchburg in 1919 to help get the local chapter up and running. Johnson stayed with the Spencers. By law, as a black man, he was unable to stay in a hotel in Lynchburg at that time. The Spencers had indoor plumbing and heat, making their home the exception, not the rule, and it was a comfortable place for visiting dignitaries and friends.

The visit nearly didn’t happen. Just before Johnson was scheduled to arrive in Lynchburg, Edward became sick with pneumonia. Anne, worried that having a house guest would be too much for Edward, considered canceling the meeting. Edward insisted that she go forward with the plans. He thought it would be good for their children, saying, “It’s our only chance to see and meet people, living here in Lynchburg. Take it. He may make it more cheerful” (Greene 48).

During this visit, Johnson “discovered” Anne Spencer the poet and began what would be a lifelong friendship. He happened upon one of her poems based on the Biblical book of Esther, "Before the Feast at Shushan", and encouraged Spencer to publish her work. The poem was published in the NAACP journal, The Crisis, in February 1920. This began Spencer’s decade of publication and nearly two decades of friendship with James Weldon Johnson.

Most of her poems appeared in the Crisis, others in similar journals such as The Lyric. Many appeared as well—both during the Harlem Renaissance and afterwards—in anthologies. Her poems are included in Countee Cullen’s Caroling Dusk, Johnson’s The Book of American Negro Poetry, Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes’ The Poetry of the Negro, and the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. Her work continues to be anthologized today.

Contributed by Nina V. Salmon

A sampling of Anne Spencer's poetry:

For Jim, Easter Eve

If ever a garden was a Gethsemane,

with old tombs set high against

the crumpled olive tree—and lichen

this, my garden has been to me.

For such as I none other is so sweet;

Lacking old tombs, here stands my grief,

and certainly its ancient tree.

Peace is here and in every season

a quiet beauty.

The sky falling about me

evenly to the compass. . .

What is sorrow but tenderness now

in this earth-close frame of land and sky

falling constantly into horizons

of east and west, north and south;

what is pain but happiness here

amid these green and wordless patterns,--

indefinite texture of blade and leaf;

Beauty of an old, old tree,

last comfort in Gethsemane.

Lines to a Nasturtium
(A Lover Muses)

Flame-flower, Day-torch, Mauna Loa,

I saw a daring bee, today, pause, and soar,

Into your flaming heart;

Then did I hear crisp, crinkled laughter

As the furies after tore him apart?

A bird, next, small and humming,

Looked into your startled depths and fled. . . .

Surely, some dread sight, and dafter

Than human eyes as mine can see,

Set the stricken air waves drumming

In his flight.

Day-torch, Flame-flower, cool-hot Beauty,

I cannot see, I cannot hear your flutey;

Voice lure your loving swain,

But I know one other to whom you are in beauty

Born in vain:

Hair like the setting sun,

Her eyes a rising star,

Motions gracious as reeds by Babylon, bar

All your competing;

Hands like, how like, brown lilies sweet,

Cloth of gold were fair enough to touch her feet. .

Ah, how the sense reels at my repeating,

As once in her fire-lit heart I felt the furies

Beating, beating.

[Earth, I thank you]

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!

He Said:

“Your garden at dusk

Is the soul of love

Blurred in its beauty

And softly caressing;

I, gently daring

This sweetest confessing,

Say your garden at dusk

Is your soul. My Love.”

1975

Turn an earth clod

Peel a shaley rock

In fondness molest a curly worm

Whose familiar is everywhere

Kneel

And the curly worm sentient now

Will light the word that tells the poet what a poem is

Life-Long, Poor Browning

Life-long, poor Browning never knew Virginia,

Or he’d not grieved in Florence for April sallies

Back to English gardens after Euclid’s linear:

Clipt yews. Pomander Walks, and pleached alleys;

Primroses, prim indeed, in quiet ordered hedges,

Waterways, soberly, sedately enchanneled,

No thin riotous blade even among the sedges,

All the wild country-side tamely impaneled . . .

Dead, now, dear Browning lives on in heaven,—

(Heaven’s Virginia when the year’s at its Spring)

He’s haunting the byways of wine-aired leaven

And throating the notes of the wildings on wing:

Here canopied reaches of dogwood and hazel,

Beech tree and redbud fine-laced in vines,

Fleet clapping rills by lush fern and basil,

Drain blue hills to lowlands scented with pines . . .

Think you he meets in this tender green sweetness

Shade that was Elizabeth . . . immortal completeness!

Requiem

Oh, I who so wanted to own some earth,

Am consumed by the earth instead:

Blood into river

Bone into land

The grave restores what finds its bed.

Oh, I who did drink of Spring’s fragrant clay,

Give back its wine for other men:

Breath into air

Heart into grass

My heart bereft—I might rest then.

TABOO

(Transcribed from handwritten poem at left)

Being a Negro Woman is the world's most exciting

game of "Taboo": By hell there is nothing you can

do that you want to do and by heaven you are

going to do it anyhow—

We do not climb into the jim crow galleries

of scenario houses we stay away and read

I read garden and seed catalogs, Browning,

Housman, Whitman, Saturday Evening Post

detective tales, Atlantic Monthly, American

Mercury, Crisis, Opportunity, Vanity Fair,

Hibberts Journal, oh, anything.

I can cook delicious things to eat. . .

we have a lovely home—one that

money did not buy—it was born and evolved

slowly out of our passionate, poverty-

striken agony to own our own home.

happiness

1313 Pierce Street • Lynchburg, Virginia 24501 • 434-845-1313 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 434-845-1313 end_of_the_skype_highlighting • The Garden Conservancy provides preservation assistance to the FOUNDATIONRENTALSEVENTSDONATECONTACT USHOME|BIOGRAPHY |POETRY |HOUSE|GARDEN |NEIGHBORHOOD |TOURS |SHOPPOETRY

Anne Spencer's poetry, often “scribblings” found on any available surface, including walls of her home and loose scraps of paper, were written for herself rather than a public audience. Spencer used language to give voice to her thoughts, reactions, and, quite often, her indignation. She was an outspoken advocate for the rights of all beings: civil rights, women’s rights, rights of respect and dignity due to all people. Although Anne Spencer was interested and involved in many things during her lifetime, her name most likely would not have achieved the kind of international recognition it has today had she not been a noted poet during the Harlem Renaissance. Yet interestingly, it was her commitment to human equality that led to her fame.

Anne Spencer was a passionate believer in equal rights. In 1918, Spencer—and others committed to equal rights for blacks—sought to establish a local NAACP chapter. James Weldon Johnson, writer, critic, and field secretary for the national NAACP, came to Lynchburg in 1919 to help get the local chapter up and running. Johnson stayed with the Spencers. By law, as a black man, he was unable to stay in a hotel in Lynchburg at that time. The Spencers had indoor plumbing and heat, making their home the exception, not the rule, and it was a comfortable place for visiting dignitaries and friends.

The visit nearly didn’t happen. Just before Johnson was scheduled to arrive in Lynchburg, Edward became sick with pneumonia. Anne, worried that having a house guest would be too much for Edward, considered canceling the meeting. Edward insisted that she go forward with the plans. He thought it would be good for their children, saying, “It’s our only chance to see and meet people, living here in Lynchburg. Take it. He may make it more cheerful” (Greene 48).

During this visit, Johnson “discovered” Anne Spencer the poet and began what would be a lifelong friendship. He happened upon one of her poems based on the Biblical book of Esther, "Before the Feast at Shushan", and encouraged Spencer to publish her work. The poem was published in the NAACP journal, The Crisis, in February 1920. This began Spencer’s decade of publication and nearly two decades of friendship with James Weldon Johnson.

Most of her poems appeared in the Crisis, others in similar journals such as The Lyric. Many appeared as well—both during the Harlem Renaissance and afterwards—in anthologies. Her poems are included in Countee Cullen’s Caroling Dusk, Johnson’s The Book of American Negro Poetry, Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes’ The Poetry of the Negro, and the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. Her work continues to be anthologized today.

Contributed by Nina V. Salmon

A sampling of Anne Spencer's poetry:

For Jim, Easter Eve

If ever a garden was a Gethsemane,

with old tombs set high against

the crumpled olive tree—and lichen

this, my garden has been to me.

For such as I none other is so sweet;

Lacking old tombs, here stands my grief,

and certainly its ancient tree.

Peace is here and in every season

a quiet beauty.

The sky falling about me

evenly to the compass. . .

What is sorrow but tenderness now

in this earth-close frame of land and sky

falling constantly into horizons

of east and west, north and south;

what is pain but happiness here

amid these green and wordless patterns,--

indefinite texture of blade and leaf;

Beauty of an old, old tree,

last comfort in Gethsemane.

Lines to a Nasturtium
(A Lover Muses)

Flame-flower, Day-torch, Mauna Loa,

I saw a daring bee, today, pause, and soar,

Into your flaming heart;

Then did I hear crisp, crinkled laughter

As the furies after tore him apart?

A bird, next, small and humming,

Looked into your startled depths and fled. . . .

Surely, some dread sight, and dafter

Than human eyes as mine can see,

Set the stricken air waves drumming

In his flight.

Day-torch, Flame-flower, cool-hot Beauty,

I cannot see, I cannot hear your flutey;

Voice lure your loving swain,

But I know one other to whom you are in beauty

Born in vain:

Hair like the setting sun,

Her eyes a rising star,

Motions gracious as reeds by Babylon, bar

All your competing;

Hands like, how like, brown lilies sweet,

Cloth of gold were fair enough to touch her feet. .

Ah, how the sense reels at my repeating,

As once in her fire-lit heart I felt the furies

Beating, beating.

[Earth, I thank you]

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!

He Said:

“Your garden at dusk

Is the soul of love

Blurred in its beauty

And softly caressing;

I, gently daring

This sweetest confessing,

Say your garden at dusk

Is your soul. My Love.”

1975

Turn an earth clod

Peel a shaley rock

In fondness molest a curly worm

Whose familiar is everywhere

Kneel

And the curly worm sentient now

Will light the word that tells the poet what a poem is

Life-Long, Poor Browning

Life-long, poor Browning never knew Virginia,

Or he’d not grieved in Florence for April sallies

Back to English gardens after Euclid’s linear:

Clipt yews. Pomander Walks, and pleached alleys;

Primroses, prim indeed, in quiet ordered hedges,

Waterways, soberly, sedately enchanneled,

No thin riotous blade even among the sedges,

All the wild country-side tamely impaneled . . .

Dead, now, dear Browning lives on in heaven,—

(Heaven’s Virginia when the year’s at its Spring)

He’s haunting the byways of wine-aired leaven

And throating the notes of the wildings on wing:

Here canopied reaches of dogwood and hazel,

Beech tree and redbud fine-laced in vines,

Fleet clapping rills by lush fern and basil,

Drain blue hills to lowlands scented with pines . . .

Think you he meets in this tender green sweetness

Shade that was Elizabeth . . . immortal completeness!

Requiem

Oh, I who so wanted to own some earth,

Am consumed by the earth instead:

Blood into river

Bone into land

The grave restores what finds its bed.

Oh, I who did drink of Spring’s fragrant clay,

Give back its wine for other men:

Breath into air

Heart into grass

My heart bereft—I might rest then.

TABOO

(Transcribed from handwritten poem at left)

Being a Negro Woman is the world's most exciting

game of "Taboo": By hell there is nothing you can

do that you want to do and by heaven you are

going to do it anyhow—

We do not climb into the jim crow galleries

of scenario houses we stay away and read

I read garden and seed catalogs, Browning,

Housman, Whitman, Saturday Evening Post

detective tales, Atlantic Monthly, American

Mercury, Crisis, Opportunity, Vanity Fair,

Hibberts Journal, oh, anything.

I can cook delicious things to eat. . .

we have a lovely home—one that

money did not buy—it was born and evolved

slowly out of our passionate, poverty-

striken agony to own our own home.

happiness

1313 Pierce Street • Lynchburg, Virginia 24501 • 434-845-1313 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 434-845-1313 end_of_the_skype_highlighting • The Garden Conservancy provides preservation assistance to the Anne Spencer gardenAnne Spencer garden