Alice Walker

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Alice Walker is an internationally celebrated writer, poet and activist whose books include seven novels, four collections of short stories, four children’s books, and volumes of essays and poetry. She won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 1983 and the National Book Award. Source

How Poems Are Made / A Discredited View

Letting go

In order to hold one

I gradually understand

How poems are made.

 

There is a place the fear must go.

There is a place the choice must go.

There is a place the loss must go.

The leftover love.

The love that spills out

Of the too full cup

And runs and hides

Its too full self

In shame.

 

I gradually comprehend

How poems are made.

To the upbeat flight of memories.

The flagged beats of the running

Heart.

 

I understand how poems are made.

They are the tears

That season the smile.

The stiff-neck laughter

That crowds the throat.

The leftover love.

I know how poems are made.

 

There is a place the loss must go.

There is a place the gain must go.

The leftover love.

Published:

1971

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Civil Rights Movement

Anthology Years:

2021

2022

2023

Themes:

Ars Poetica

Literary Devices:

Anaphora

a figure of speech in which words repeat at the beginning of successive clauses, phrases, or sentences

Antithesis

a person or thing that is the direct opposite of someone or something else

Epistrophe

the repetition of a word or phrase at the end of successive clauses