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Race

Sometimes I think about Great-Uncle Paul who left Tuskegee,
Alabama to become a forester in Oregon and in so doing
became fundamentally white for the rest of his life, except
when he traveled without his white wife to visit his siblings—
now in New York, now in Harlem, USA—just as pale-skinned,
as straight-haired, as blue-eyed as Paul, and black. Paul never told anyone
he was white, he just didn’t say that he was black, and who could imagine,
an Oregon forester in 1930 as anything other than white?
The siblings in Harlem each morning ensured
no one confused them for anything other than what they were, black.
They were black! Brown-skinned spouses reduced confusion.
Many others have told, and not told, this tale.
When Paul came East alone he was as they were, their brother.

The poet invents heroic moments where the pale black ancestor stands up
on behalf of the race. The poet imagines Great-Uncle Paul
in cool, sagey groves counting rings in redwood trunks,
imagines pencil markings in a ledger book, classifications,
imagines a sidelong look from an ivory spouse who is learning
her husband’s caesuras. She can see silent spaces
but not what they signify, graphite markings in a forester’s code.

Many others have told, and not told, this tale.
The one time Great-Uncle Paul brought his wife to New York
he asked his siblings not to bring their spouses,
and that is where the story ends: ivory siblings who would not
see their brother without their telltale spouses.
What a strange thing is “race,” and family, stranger still.
Here a poem tells a story, a story about race.
“Race” Copyright © 2001 by Elizabeth Alexander. Reprinted from Antebellum Dream Book, with the permission of Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.
Source: Antebellum Dream Book (Graywolf Press, 2001)

Writing Ideas

  1. Alexander’s poem tells a family story at once real and imagined while creating historical and political context for the events it narrates. Try writing a poem that similarly operates on multiple levels: as a (true) family story and a larger commentary on the society and times in which the story is set. You might also interview your parents or grandparents to get a sense of their past and the eras they lived through.
  2. The line endings in this poem do particular work, as Stephanie Burt notes in her guide. Circle the last words in each line and use them as the first words in the lines of your own poem. Title your poem, like Alexander’s, “Race.”
  3. Try writing a poem modeled on Alexander’s structure: in the first stanza relate a story that “many others have told, and not told.” In the second, reflect on what “the poet” does in telling such a tale. And use the third to develop the larger questions writing the previous two stanzas have led you to.

Discussion Questions

  1. What does Alexander’s poem suggest about the connections between poems, stories, and race? How is race a story that gets told in the poem? Who are the various characters that tell it? How does suggesting race as a story that poems can tell influence what this poem looks or sounds like on the page? Think about conversational language, line breaks, and diction.
  2. Chart Alexander’s use of racially inflected language; think about allusions and theoretical language for talking about race, as well as descriptive words. What work do such words do in the poem? How do they accrue meaning or develop as the poem continues?
  3. In her guide to “Race,” Burt notes that the three stanzas contain different kinds of language to make different points, or test different ideas about poetry, stories, and race. What differences do you see between the stanzas? How do shifts in tone or diction affect your understanding of both the story Alexander is telling and its broader implications?

Teaching Tips

  1. Alexander’s poem is self-consciously a “story about race.” Ask students to paraphrase or summarize the poem’s “story” in a few sentences; then ask them to summarize or paraphrase the poem’s style in a few more. If Alexander is telling a story about race, is she also telling a story about poems? (Having students read Burt’s guide might be helpful.) Ask students to research other poems that tell stories “about race.” Try to get them to think historically: you might use Alexander’s poem to do a mini-unit on poetry “about race,” starting with 19th century poets such as Phillis Wheatley or George Moses Horton and delving into the Harlem Renaissance and Black Arts Movement. Students could research individual poets or the reception of individual poems or books of poetry. After developing a sense of how poems about race have circulated and been received in American poetry, have students look at contemporary poets and poems: Nikki Finney’s “The Afterbirth, 1931” or Harmony Holiday’s “Do any black children grow up casual?” might be good places to start. What themes or concerns do your students see persisting in poems “about race”? What formal changes occur? Do the poems all tell similar stories? What can they read about America’s own struggles with the story of race in the poems they’ve collected? After discussion, you might have students compose a class cento from the poems: each student should select a line from their poem and then “build” a poem by putting all the lines together.
  2. Elizabeth Alexander is perhaps most famous for reading her poem, “Praise Song for the Day” at President Barack Obama’s first inauguration. Have your students research and think about the civic uses of poetry in the United States. Why use poems to commemorate or memorialize special events? What has been poetry’s role in constructing American identity? How has poetry participated in American politics? Groups might research poets and poems of other presidential inaugurations (including Robert Frost’s famous performance at John F. Kennedy’s), or think about public and occasional poems such as Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus.” Have students compile a timeline and/or map of all the different locations and dates in which poetry has been used for civic purposes in the United States. What do such uses tell us about the role of poetry in America?
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