Race

Elizabeth Alexander

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2001

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“Race” is a poem in free verse—poetry that has no regular rhyme or meter. It comprises three stanzas. The first and third stanzas are narrative poetry from the perspective of the first-person speaker. The second stanza is in the third person and includes dense visual imagery; the second stanza is more lyric in nature because the focus is on capturing a specific moment and emotion using the senses.

Despite the lack of regular meter and rhyme, the poem does have a structure. Beyond the three stanzas, Alexander repeats, “Many others have told, and not told, this tale” (Lines 12, 21). In the first stanza, this line brings the narrative to a close and marks the shift to interpretation of the meaning of the story, namely, that Great-Uncle Paul was a “brother” ( Line 13) when he visited his family, regardless of his choice to pass. The second instance of the line in the third stanza marks the return to storytelling, but not to definitive interpretation. The speaker tells the story of how Paul ceased to be family when he demanded that his siblings help him pass by hiding their Black spouses from his white wife. Where the first stanza ends in certainty about the meaning of the story, the third stanza closes with a more universal statement about the oddities of race and family as concepts.

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The overall movement in the poem is from certainty and specific narrative detail to uncertainty and more philosophical statements about race. This structure reinforces Alexander’s critique of how poets represent racial identity in poetry.

Enjambment

Enjambment occurs when a phrase or sentence flows from one line to the next without end punctuation. For example, enjambment occurs in Lines 14-15—“The poet invents heroic moments where the pale black ancestor stands up / on behalf of the race.” The flow from “stands up” (Line 14) to “on behalf” (Line 15) reinforces the content, which is that in poetry at least, Great Uncle-Paul maintains his connection to his racial community. More broadly, Alexander uses enjambment to mimic the sound of a well-rehearsed story that “[m]any others have told, and not told” (Line 12). The enjambed lines give that first stanza a conversational tone that matches with the intimate, family context of a story about Great-Uncle Paul coming home to be his siblings’ brother once again. The third stanza has numerous breaks that interrupt that flow. The contrast between those enjambed lines in the first stanza and the many pauses within lines in the third stanza underscores how disruptive the less romantic ending of the story about Great-Uncle Paul is to ideas around race and family.

Caesura

Pauses within lines are examples of caesuras. A caesura may be marked with punctuation within the line, as in Line 5: “now in New York, now in Harlem, USA—just as pale-skinned.” The em dash slows the line down, allowing Alexander to emphasize the significance of those place names that come before. Those places are associated with modern Black identity. The breaths the reader has to take for the commas also give the line a jaunty rhythm that, coupled with the repetition of those “n” sounds, makes the line musical. These lines recall the association between Harlem and Black musical traditions like jazz. The implication is that the siblings manage to recreate themselves by moving, but this move connects them to their racial community.

Contrast that rhythm with what occurs in the second stanza: the poet envisions the great-uncle “in cool, sagey groves counting rings, / imagines pencil markings in a ledger book, classifications” (Lines 16-17). Here, commas create caesuras at the ends of the lines. Those lines move deliberately, reflecting Paul’s cautious approach to representing his racial identity. When Alexander uses “caesuras” in front of a caesura in Line 19, she is also making form match content: The content of the line is about the “ivory spouse” (Line 18) recognizing gaps and silences in her understanding of Paul’s identity. The caesuras also reflect the speaker’s tentativeness as they try to make Paul fit into the archetype of the heroic ancestor. Using the poetic term is self-reflexive and reminds the reader that this is not only a poem about Paul, but it is also a poem about the uses to which one puts poetry when confronting the issue of racial identity.