Louise Crenshaw Ray's "Alabama Poetry"

Since April is National Poetry Month, I'm posting a few items on this blog about Alabama poets and such. In this one let's take a trip through a 1945 collection of poems by 37 members of the Poetry Society of Alabama and the career of its editor, Louise Crenshaw Ray.

Louise Crenshaw was born in Butler County on May 17, 1890, one of seven children. Her father was Thaddeus Crenshaw, who served three terms in the Alabama legislature. An ancestor, Andrew Crenshaw, served on the state supreme court and is the namesake of Crenshaw County.

Louise attended what is now Huntingdon College in Montgomery and also received a B.A. from the University of Alabama. She married lawyer Benjamin Ray on January 23, 1918. They had two daughters, Anna and Mary. 

Ray published four collections of poetry during her lifetime. Color of Steel appeared in 1932, followed by Secret Shoes (1939), Strangers on the Stairs (1944) and Autumn Token (1957). Her poems were also included in various magazines and anthologies. In the early years she wrote about such topics as Alabama history and the natural beauty of the state. Later in life subjects like love, loss, and racial issues appeared. 

Ray died October 23, 1956, in Birmingham. 

Craig Legg's magnificent history of Birmingham poetry project has some more details. Here are Legg's first two paragraphs about Ray:


 In 1933 the talented and dedicated Louise Crenshaw Ray was named Society president, the latest in a line of talented and dedicated literary club women to lead the organization. All Poetry Society officers were poets themselves, likewise gifted with organizational skills and leadership qualities. Along with Ray, the most active were Mary Pollard Tynes, Anne Southern Tardy and Martha Lyman Shillito. All published widely in the newspapers and magazines of the day, and served as officers in a number of clubs, including The Poetry Society, Birmingham Writer’s Club, The Quill Club and the Birmingham branch of the National League of American  Pen Women.
     In my own humble opinion, in the actual writing of poetry, Louise Crenshaw Ray stood head and shoulders above her peers. Born to a proud Old South family in the Alabama Black Belt, she moved to Birmingham as a young woman, taught school, and married lawyer Ben Ray. In 1932 she published her first volume of collected poems, titled Color of Steel, a fully realized, mature book of poetry and perhaps the best that I have yet come across by a Birmingham-related poet. It got mostly good reviews- and perhaps more important- received a flood of publicity, generating many newspaper articles about both book and poet. At the age of forty-two, Mrs. Ray was well past the age of ‘starlet,’ but, like James Saxon Childers at Birmingham-Southern, more often than not she seemed to command center-stage on the active Poetry Society ‘scene.’

Then he proceeds to an in depth discussion of the poems in Ray's book Color of Steel.

Below is more information about Ray and some of the other poets in this collection. Many of these individuals were also active in the Alabama Writers' Conclave [now Cooperative] and various local writers groups. The Poetry Society of Alabama was founded in Birmingham on February 7, 1929, and apparently disappeared at some point after publication of this anthology. Ray served as President in 1933. The Alabama State Poetry Society was founded in 1968. 

Some of these poets, such as Ray, were included in the Anthology of Alabama Poetry which the Conclave had published in 1928. I expect to post an item about that book this month. 

Bert Henderson was the third poet laureate of Alabama,  serving from 1959 until 1971.

Martha Lyman Shillito was the seventh President of the Alabama Writers' Conclave [now Cooperative], serving in 1929-1930. 

Mary B. Ward was Alabama Poet Laureate 1954-1958 just prior to Henderson. She was an original member of the Alabama Writers' Conclave [now Cooperative] and helped organize the 50th anniversary celebration in 1973. She was a feature writer for the Birmingham News and published poems in such places as The Saturday Evening Post, Saturday Review of Literature, Sewanee Quarterly, The New York Times, and The Washington Star.

Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama

Craig Legg's "History of Birmingham Poetry" Chapter 4, the 1930's blog post  has an extensive discussion of Ray's life and her collection Color of Steel published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1932. 

Source: eBay

The three poems below are taken from the 1945 anthology Ray edited and include the name of the journals that originally published them.

Langston Hughes' Alabama Poems

Langston Hughes [1901-1967] was an American writer born in Joplin, Missouri. During his career he wrote novels, poetry, plays and non-fiction works including articles and columns for magazines and newspapers. He was an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance and a civil rights activist. Hughes' bibliography of published works is extensive. 

Among his many poems are several related in some way to Alabama. As might be expected, they address racial turmoil in the state. The earliest one is "Christ in Alabama", published in the Contempo magazine issue of December 1, 1931. In March of that year two white women accused nine young black men of rape; all had been riding in a train that stopped near Paint Rock in Jackson County. The blacks, dubbed the Scottsboro Boys, were quickly arrested and tried in early April before several all-white juries. The guilty verdicts were appealed and retried for years in the courts despite one of the victims recanting and other exonerating evidence. The case became infamous around the world. 

That first poem Hughes wrote about the case can be read below; it imitates the call and response of so much African-American music and its sources in sub-Saharan Africa. "Christ in Alabama" is a brief, blistering cry against this particular injustice and so many others. In the wake of the Scottsboro case 5000 copies of that Contempo issue were printed. A revised version of the poem appeared in 1967. Several commentaries can be found here. Jon Woodson places the poem in context in his essay "Anti-Lynching Poems in the 1930s."

In 1932 Hughes published a twenty page pamphlet titled Scottsboro Limited that included "Christ in Alabama" and three more poems, a verse play and striking illustrations by Prentiss Taylor. You can read some of the poems here; "The Town of Scottsboro" is brief but especially touching. 

In that same year Hughes undertook a poetry reading tour of seventeen states that included some in the South. The tour began about the time the Contempo issue appeared. According to Woodson's essay linked above, Hughes read his poetry to the Scottsboro Boys in Kilby Prison.

"For Selma" was included in the collection Ebony Rhythm: An Anthology of Contemporary Negro Verse edited by Beatrice M. Murphy and published in 1947. I'm not sure why he used Selma rather than some other small town, since the voting rights marches did not begin there until 1965. Perhaps he became aware of Selma when he was in the state in 1931. Although he lived in many locations around the country, Hughes did spend 1947 teaching at Atlanta University.

"Birmingham Sunday" is much easier to place, since it explicitly deals with the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing on Sunday, September 15, 1963. That event inspired another African-American poet; see Dudley Randall's "Ballad of Birmingham"   

"Alabama Earth" and "Daybreak in Alabama" are different in offering Hughes' hopes that race relations might one day improve "When I get to be a colored composer", even in a place like Alabama. "Alabama Earth" is set "At Booker Washington's grave" which is located on the Tuskegee University campus. 

Source: Project on the History of Black Writing

Daybreak in Alabama

When I get to be a colored composer

I'm gonna write me some music about

Daybreak in Alabama

And I'm gonna put the purtiest songs in it

Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist

And falling out of heaven like soft dew

I'm gonna put some tall tall trees in it

And the scent of pine needles

And the smell of red clay after rain

And long red necks

And poppy colored faces

And big brown arms

And the field daisy eyes

Of black and white black white black people

And I'm gonna put white hands

And black hands and brown and yellow hands

And red clay earth hands in it

Touching everybody with kind fingers

Touching each other natural as dew

In that dawn of music when I

Get to be a colored composer

And write about daybreak

In Alabama.

Alabama Earth

(At Booker Washington’s grave)

Deep in Alabama earth
His buried body lies-
But higher than the singing pines
And taller than the skies
And out of Alabama earth
To all the world there goes
The truth a simple heart has held
And the strength a strong hand knows,
While over Alabama earth
These words are gently spoken:
Serve-and hate will die unborn.
Love-and chains are broken.

To flung my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
   Dark like me-
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening…
A tall, slim tree…
Night coming tenderly
   Black like me.

For Selma

In places like
Selma, Alabama,
Kids say,
In places like
Chicago and New York...
In places like
Chicago and New York
Kids say,
In places like
London and Paris...
In places like
London and Paris
Kids say,
In places like
Chicago and New York...

Birmingham Sunday

(September 15, 1963)

Four little girls

Who went to Sunday School that day

And never came back home at all--

But left instead

Their blood upon the wall

With spattered flesh

And bloodied Sunday dresses

Scorched by dynamite that

China made aeons ago

Did not know what China made

Before China was ever Red at all

Would ever redden with their blood

This Birmingham-on-Sunday wall.

Four tiny little girls

Who left their blood upon that wall,

In little graves today await:

The dynamite that might ignite

The ancient fuse of Dragon Kings

Whose tomorrow sings a hymn

The missionaries never taught

In Christian Sunday School

To implement the Golden Rule.

Four little girls

Might be awakened someday soon

By songs upon the breeze

As yet unfelt among

Magnolia trees.

Christ in Alabama

Christ is a nigger,
Beaten and black:
Oh, bare your back!

Mary is His mother:
Mammy of the South,
Silence your mouth.

God is His father:
White Master above
Grant Him your love.

Most holy bastard
Of the bleeding mouth,
Nigger Christ
On the cross
Of the South.

This Decembr 1, 1931, Contempo issue published not only Hughes poem but his essay about the Scottsboro boys case. 

Source: Flashpoint

Source: Flashpoint

Alabama Horizons: A Poetry Collection

Since April is National Poetry Month, I'm featuring some Alabama poets and poetry collections on this blog and my Twitter account @ajwright31 This post notes the anthology Alabama Horizons published in 1999 and containing poems by ten poets who were members of the Mountain Valley Poets group. The organization operated in the central Alabama area; I've been unable to determine that the group still exists.

I've also included three poems that caught my eye as I leafed through the book. 

"Alabama" in Three Poems

I recently stumbled across the three poems below that contain the word "Alabama". I failed to note the site where I found them, but they are available on various places around the web. Since National Poetry Month is coming in April, I thought I would write a few posts on such appearances in poetry, poets from Alabama and such. 

Margaret Walker is the only one of the three authors with a direct Alabama connection; she was born in Birmingham in July 1915. When she was young her family moved to New Orleans, and she finished growing up there. Heading to Chicago for college, she graduated from Northwestern in 1935. She remained in that city for several years, working for the Federal Writers Project that was part of the New Deal during the Great Depression. 

In 1942 she earned a masters degree in creative writing from the University of Iowa. Her revised thesis was published that year as For My People; the title poem is below. The third verse no doubt draws on her Birmingham childhood memories. Walker taught at what is now Jackson State University in Mississippi for thirty years and before her death in 1998 published other collections of poetry and the novel Jubilee. 

Francisco Aragon's poem "Blister" has only an incidental connection to the state. The speaker in the poem talks of someone who lives on "Alabama Street" in whatever city the poem's action inhabits. Aragon is a Latino writer, poet & editor born in San Francisco who has studied at universities in Berkeley and Davis, California and New York City. Aragon spent a year living in Spain, and currently directs the literary program at the Institute of Latino Studies, University of Notre Dame. Wherever Aragon's "Alabama Street" is located, it's one of many around the United States. 

This stamp honoring Whitman was issued in 1940.

Source: Wikipedia

Walt Whitman needs no introduction from me; read more about one of America's greatest poets here and in various biographies. In "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" he meditates on a trip to the beach on Paumanok (the Native American name for Long Island) as a young boy. Day after day he watched the behaviors of two mockingbirds "feather'd guests from Alabama." One day the female disappears, and the older poet speaks the male's reaction through his younger self's perceptions. The poem has been interpreted in ways you can read more about here and here.  

The poem was first published in a newspaper on December 24, 1859, and included under a different title in the edition of Leaves of Grass published the following year. Why did Whitman choose to place the birds from Alabama? I have no idea. But Whitman does connect to the state in strange ways sometimes. Jennifer Crandall's documentary Whitman, Alabama uses the poet's "Song of Myself" to aid residents in speaking about themselves. And then there's Jake Adam York's wonderful poem "Walt Whitman in Alabama" which brings the poet to Gadsden and Attalla. And the mocking birds were there....

FOR MY PEOPLE

By Margaret Walker

For my people everywhere singing their slave songs

     repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues

     and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an

     unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an

     unseen power;

For my people lending their strength to the years, to the

    gone years and the now years and the maybe years,

    washing ironing cooking scrubbing sewing mending

    hoeing plowing digging planting pruning patching

    dragging along never gaining never reaping never

    knowing and never understanding;

For my playmates in the clay and dust and sand of Alabama

    backyards playing baptizing and preaching and doctor

    and jail and soldier and school and mama and cooking

    and playhouse and concert and store and hair and

    Miss Choomby and company;

For the cramped bewildered years we went to school to learn

    to know the reasons why and the answers to and the

    people who and the places where and the days when, in

    memory of the bitter hours when we discovered we

    were black and poor and small and different and nobody

    cared and nobody wondered and nobody understood;

For the boys and girls who grew in spite of these things to

    be man and woman, to laugh and dance and sing and

    play and drink their wine and religion and success, to

    marry their playmates and bear children and then die

    of consumption and anemia and lynching;

For my people thronging 47th Street in Chicago and Lenox

    Avenue in New York and Rampart Street in New

    Orleans, lost disinherited dispossessed and happy

    people filling the cabarets and taverns and other

    people’s pockets and needing bread and shoes and milk and

    land and money and something—something all our own;

For my people walking blindly spreading joy, losing time

     being lazy, sleeping when hungry, shouting when

     burdened, drinking when hopeless, tied, and shackled

     and tangled among ourselves by the unseen creatures

     who tower over us omnisciently and laugh;

For my people blundering and groping and floundering in

     the dark of churches and schools and clubs

     and societies, associations and councils and committees and

     conventions, distressed and disturbed and deceived and

     devoured by money-hungry glory-craving leeches,

     preyed on by facile force of state and fad and novelty, by

     false prophet and holy believer;

For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way

    from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding,

    trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people,

    all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless generations;

Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a

    bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second

    generation full of courage issue forth; let a people

    loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of

    healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing

    in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs

    be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now

    rise and take control.

Margaret Walker, “For My People” from This is My Century: New and Collected Poems. Copyright © 1989 by Margaret Walker.  Reprinted by permission of  University of Georgia Press.

BLISTER

By Francisco Aragón

A disease

of the peach tree

—a fungus

distorts leaves.

The first time

I was taken

to see him

I was five

or six. A vesicle

on the skin

containing

serum, caused

by friction,

a burn, or other

injury. He lived

on Alabama Street

next to Saint

Peter’s and wore

a white t-shirt,

starched and snug.

A similar swelling

with fluid

or air

on the surface

of a plant,

or metal

after cooling

or the sunless

area between

one’s toes

after a very

long walk.

Don’t ask me

how it is I

ended up

holding it.

An outer

covering

fitted to a

vessel to protect

against torpedoes,

mines, or to improve

stability. My guess

is that he

brought it out

to show me

thinking, perhaps,

I had never

seen one

up close,

let alone felt

the blunt weight

of one

in my hands.

A rounded

compartment

protruding

from the body

of a plane.

What came

next: no

image but

sensation of

its hammer

(my inexpert

manipulation)

digging

into but not

breaking

skin—the spot

at the base

of my thumb

balloons,

slowly filling

with fluid…

In Spanish:

ampolla

—an Ampul

of chrystal

in the Middle

Ages could be

a relic containing

the blood

of someone

holy. I’m fairly

certain it wasn’t

loaded.

Francisco Aragon, "Blister" from Mariposas: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino Poetry. Copyright © 2008 by Francisco Aragon.  Reprinted by permission of Francisco Aragon.

OUT OF THE CRADLE ENDLESSLY ROCKING

By Walt Whitman

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,

Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle,

Out of the Ninth-month midnight,

Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his bed wander’d alone, bareheaded, barefoot,

Down from the shower’d halo,

Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they were alive,

Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,

From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,

From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,

From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears,

From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist,

From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,

From the myriad thence-arous’d words,

From the word stronger and more delicious than any,

From such as now they start the scene revisiting,

As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,

Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,

A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,

Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,

I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,

Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,

A reminiscence sing.

Once Paumanok,

When the lilac-scent was in the air and Fifth-month grass was growing,

Up this seashore in some briers,

Two feather’d guests from Alabama, two together,

And their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown,

And every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand,

And every day the she-bird crouch’d on her nest, silent, with bright eyes,

And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them,

Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating.

Shine! shine! shine!

Pour down your warmth, great sun!

While we bask, we two together.

Two together!

Winds blow south, or winds blow north,

Day come white, or night come black,

Home, or rivers and mountains from home,

Singing all time, minding no time,

While we two keep together.

Till of a sudden,

May-be kill’d, unknown to her mate,

One forenoon the she-bird crouch’d not on the nest,

Nor return’d that afternoon, nor the next,

Nor ever appear’d again.

And thenceforward all summer in the sound of the sea,

And at night under the full of the moon in calmer weather,

Over the hoarse surging of the sea,

Or flitting from brier to brier by day,

I saw, I heard at intervals the remaining one, the he-bird,

The solitary guest from Alabama.

Blow! blow! blow!

Blow up sea-winds along Paumanok’s shore;

I wait and I wait till you blow my mate to me.

Yes, when the stars glisten’d,

All night long on the prong of a moss-scallop’d stake,

Down almost amid the slapping waves,

Sat the lone singer wonderful causing tears.

He call’d on his mate,

He pour’d forth the meanings which I of all men know.

Yes my brother I know,

The rest might not, but I have treasur’d every note,

For more than once dimly down to the beach gliding,

Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself with the shadows,

Recalling now the obscure shapes, the echoes, the sounds and sights after their sorts,

The white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing,

I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair,

Listen’d long and long.

Listen’d to keep, to sing, now translating the notes,

Following you my brother.

Soothe! soothe! soothe!

Close on its wave soothes the wave behind,

And again another behind embracing and lapping, every one close,

But my love soothes not me, not me.

Low hangs the moon, it rose late,

It is lagging—O I think it is heavy with love, with love.

O madly the sea pushes upon the land,

With love, with love.

O night! do I not see my love fluttering out among the breakers?

What is that little black thing I see there in the white?

Loud! loud! loud!

Loud I call to you, my love!

High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves,

Surely you must know who is here, is here,

You must know who I am, my love.

Low-hanging moon!

What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow?

O it is the shape, the shape of my mate!

O moon do not keep her from me any longer.

Land! land! O land!

Whichever way I turn, O I think you could give me my mate back again if you only would,

For I am almost sure I see her dimly whichever way I look.

O rising stars!

Perhaps the one I want so much will rise, will rise with some of you.

O throat! O trembling throat!

Sound clearer through the atmosphere!

Pierce the woods, the earth,

Somewhere listening to catch you must be the one I want.

Shake out carols!

Solitary here, the night’s carols!

Carols of lonesome love! death’s carols!

Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning moon!

O under that moon where she droops almost down into the sea!

O reckless despairing carols.

But soft! sink low!

Soft! let me just murmur,

And do you wait a moment you husky-nois’d sea,

For somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me,

So faint, I must be still, be still to listen,

But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately to me.

Hither my love!

Here I am! here!

With this just-sustain’d note I announce myself to you,

This gentle call is for you my love, for you.

Do not be decoy’d elsewhere,

That is the whistle of the wind, it is not my voice,

That is the fluttering, the fluttering of the spray,

Those are the shadows of leaves.

O darkness! O in vain!

O I am very sick and sorrowful.

O brown halo in the sky near the moon, drooping upon the sea!

O troubled reflection in the sea!

O throat! O throbbing heart!

And I singing uselessly, uselessly all the night.

O past! O happy life! O songs of joy!

In the air, in the woods, over fields,

Loved! loved! loved! loved! loved!

But my mate no more, no more with me!

We two together no more.

The aria sinking,

All else continuing, the stars shining,

The winds blowing, the notes of the bird continuous echoing,

With angry moans the fierce old mother incessantly moaning,

On the sands of Paumanok’s shore gray and rustling,

The yellow half-moon enlarged, sagging down, drooping, the face of the sea almost touching,

The boy ecstatic, with his bare feet the waves, with his hair the atmosphere dallying,

The love in the heart long pent, now loose, now at last tumultuously bursting,

The aria’s meaning, the ears, the soul, swiftly depositing,

The strange tears down the cheeks coursing,

The colloquy there, the trio, each uttering,

The undertone, the savage old mother incessantly crying,

To the boy’s soul’s questions sullenly timing, some drown’d secret hissing,

To the outsetting bard.

Demon or bird! (said the boy’s soul,)

Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it really to me?

For I, that was a child, my tongue’s use sleeping, now I have heard you,

Now in a moment I know what I am for, I awake,

And already a thousand singers, a thousand songs, clearer, louder and more sorrowful than yours,

A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, never to die.

O you singer solitary, singing by yourself, projecting me,

O solitary me listening, never more shall I cease perpetuating you,

Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations,

Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,

Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there in the night,

By the sea under the yellow and sagging moon,

The messenger there arous’d, the fire, the sweet hell within,

The unknown want, the destiny of me.

O give me the clew! (it lurks in the night here somewhere,)

O if I am to have so much, let me have more!

A word then, (for I will conquer it,)

The word final, superior to all,

Subtle, sent up—what is it?—I listen;

Are you whispering it, and have been all the time, you sea-waves?

Is that it from your liquid rims and wet sands?

Whereto answering, the sea,

Delaying not, hurrying not,

Whisper’d me through the night, and very plainly before day-break,

Lisp’d to me the low and delicious word death,

And again death, death, death, death,

Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my arous’d child’s heart,

But edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet,

Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving me softly all over,

Death, death, death, death, death.

Which I do not forget,

But fuse the song of my dusky demon and brother,

That he sang to me in the moonlight on Paumanok’s gray beach,

With the thousand responsive songs at random,

My own songs awaked from that hour,

And with them the key, the word up from the waves,

The word of the sweetest song and all songs,

That strong and delicious word which, creeping to my feet,

(Or like some old crone rocking the cradle, swathed in sweet garments, bending aside,)

The sea whisper’d me.