The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers

by Various

  Annie Porter thinks school and churches though “excellent things,” do the Negro “little or no good;” but recommends industrial centers and a separate system of local government as their salvation. Industrial pursuits do more than has been accredited to them, if they train head and heart as well as hand, and churches and schools do less than they are intended to do, if they cannot spread the gospel and diffuse knowledge among any people. How the inhabitants of the ideal Negro village painted are to profit by that “higher and better civic training,” if they are—as the writer maintains—“entirely unable to take in political and geographic distinctions,” and unable to learn the teachings of school or church, I cannot determine. This is but another instance of contradictory views and statements.

  Annie Porter observes that a marked feature of the race is their distrust of white people. If this be true, can it not be easily accounted for? Trust or distrust originates from some knowledge of past action. The black man’s terrible experience in the hands of white men may, in many cases, have his mind against them, not because they are white but because they have so wronged him. Every such article as Annie Porter’s serves to strengthen this feeling. We have, however, too many friends among the white people for this distrust to be general. We can discriminate between our friends and enemies; between those who would do us justice and those who themselves neither regard us aright, nor would have others do so; between those who, actuated by broad and noble principles, would help and encourage struggling humanity and those who, controlled by blind and ignoble prejudices, would use their strength and influence against the Negro’s elevation.

  JOSEPHINE J. TURPIN.

  HOWARD UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  “The Province of Poetry” (1889)

  SOURCE: Josephine J. Turpin Washington, “The Province of Poetry,” A.M.E. Church Review, no. 6 (1889): 139–141.

  What is poetry? Of what does its essence consist? What is its distinguishing principle?

  Perhaps in this instance it is easier to give a negative than a positive definition. The language of Shelley, in his “Hymn to the Spirit of Nature,” might appropriately be applied to the genius of poetry:

  “All feel, yet see thee never”;

  and two other lines, taken from the same, may fittingly be added:

  “Lamp of Earth, where’er thou movest,

  Its dim shapes are clad with brightness.”

  It is agreed that all verse is not poetry. We read perchance a newspaper or magazine effusion and throw it down in disgust, exclaiming, “There is no poetry in that.” Why? Probably not one in a hundred could tell, and yet the judgment of the whole hundred might be correct. The want is one easily felt, but difficult to express. Of the explanations attempted, some might approach the truth after this wise: “Oh, there is no soul in it,” or “It does not make me feel,” or “It deals altogether with the trivial and superficial.”

  Poets and critics have responded to this inquiry with answers variously worded; but, beneath the outer garb of diverse language, we catch the glimpse of a common meaning. Webster defines poetry as “Modes of expressing thought and feeling which are suitable to the imagination when excited or elevated, and characterized usually by a measured form of one sort or another.” Emerson says, “Poetry is the perpetual endeavor to express the spirit of the thing; to pass the brute body, and search the life and reason which cause it to exist.” Ruskin calls poetry “the suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions.” Charles James Fox characterizes it as “The great refreshment of the human mind, the only thing after all.” Aristotle terms it imitation. Bacon says that “It was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind by submitting the show of things to the desires of the mind, whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind unto the nature of things.” Shelley calls it “The best and happiest thoughts of the best and happiest minds,” and Poe declares that “A poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites by elevating the soul.” Matthew Arnold thinks poetry “Simply the most beautiful, impressive and widely effective mode of saying things,” and Macauley says, “By poetry we mean the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination; the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of color.”

  If we dared to essay a definition, not discarding and yet not wholly accepting any of the above, but combining with the substance of each the popular idea, which generally has its foundation in truth, we might say that poetry is a species of composition, usually metrical in form, addressed especially to the imagination, and tending to please, instruct and inspire.

  There are people who pride themselves upon being what they call “practical,” and who look with contempt upon anything verging on sentiment. By the term “practical” they mean that which directly contributes to worldly success, business prosperity, the accumulation of wealth—in short, whatever primarily aids in the solution of the problem what we shall eat, what we shall drink, and wherewithal we shall be clothed. The talk of such a character is of stocks and bonds, of the state of the market, of buying and selling, his highest aspiration to be a “good liver,” to dress his wife in silks and furs, to be spoken of as a prosperous businessman, one who knows how to get along in the world. For him Nature has no charm, save as a contributor to his physical wants; literature no allurement, unless it teaches him how to turn what he touches to gold. He could see nothing in Niagara but wasted water-power, and would consider Homer to have been better employed casting up accounts in a ledger than writing the Iliad. The deepest and most tender affections are beyond his comprehension, and he goes through life maimed in soul, dwarfed and incomplete.

  What thinks such a man of poetry? All bosh, nonsense, as some think of religion, fit food for women and children. What of poets and their devotees? Fools, simpletons, crack-brained folks, worthy only of commiseration.

  “A primrose by the river’s brim

  A yellow primrose is to him,

  And it is nothing more.”

  There are Mr. Gradgrinds outside of Dickens’ pages, and the young lives of many a Tom and Louise have been sadly wrecked by their blundering stupidity. Only the weak are afraid of being tender; only the fool cultivates one part of his nature at the expense of the other. A great brain and a great heart are usually found conjoined.

  Sentiment may be termed the true sense of things. It is the underlying thought of being, the soul of phenomena, the reason for the existence of external manifestations. In the words of Madame De Stael, “What a world, when animated by sentiment, without which the world itself were but a desert!” There is a closer connection between what is entitled sentiment and what is classed in the category of the practical than most people think. What teacher has not had pupils who “couldn’t see any use in the study of the classics and the higher mathematics?” I have even known a young man, and one too who aspired to pulpit oratory, to say that he “Didn’t think he needed to take history and literature—they would be of no practical service to him.” There are older and more experienced people in the world quite as narrow in their views as this simple youth. Everybody is familiar with the arguments for the study of sciences of which we do not make direct use in common, everyday life. Similar reasons, though these not the most worthy which can be given, might be advanced for the cultivation of sentiment and its hand-maiden, poetry.

  Let it be observed here that there is a distinction between sentiment and the weak mawkishness known as sentimentality. The one is genuine coin, the other spurious imitation; the one alive to all honest, active endeavor for humanity; the other, “dabbling in the fount of tears, divorces the feeling from her mate the deed.” The one is affected to tears by the woes of the imaginary hero of stage or novel, yet indifferent to the misery of real men and women; the other, while perhaps no less moved by the distresses of fictitious beings, is touched by the actual suffering about him, and
labors for its relief.

  While sentiment, feeling, the cultivation of an inner, a soul life, does not directly contribute to the bread-winning process, it sweetens and strengthens and ennobles man’s whole nature, and so fits him for the better performance of any duty; arms him more effectually for any conflict, whether with difficulty or temptation, and makes him more of a man, abler to do a man’s work in the world.

  “Whatever elevates,

  Inspires, refreshes any human soul,

  Is useful to that soul.”

  Mr. G. J. Goshen, an English banker and political economist, declares that the cultivation of the imagination is essential to the highest success in politics, in learning, and in the commercial business of life. He who lacks a poetic taste lacks imagination, without which are wanting clearness of vision, comprehensiveness of understanding, and the subtle tact which is as oil to the machinery of both public and private life. To the cultivation of this faculty all who are deficient therein should assiduously address themselves. How this may be done Pres. Porter states: “The study and reading of poetry exercise and cultivate the imagination, and in this way impart intellectual power. It is impossible to read the products of any poet’s imagination without using our own. To reach what he creates is to recreate in our own minds the images and pictures which he first conceived and then expressed in language.” One who cannot like poetry may be said to have been born into the world mentally blind and deaf—a misfortune as much greater than the deprivation of the corresponding natural senses as spiritual things are superior to material.

  Poets are seers, divining and revealing hidden truths; interpreters of beauty and inspirers to a life of a loftier type. In these choice and gifted spirits the great heart of humanity finds its voice; through them all that is best in man speaks from soul to soul. Sentiments we hold sacred are clothed in worthy language. That we have long thought or felt vaguely is expressed in fitting phrases:

  “As imagination bodies forth

  The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

  Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

  A local habitation and a name.”

  Our most indefinite yearnings for higher things, our half-unconscious longings and aspirations are recognized and addressed. Each finds passages that seem meant specially for himself, so fully are the varied needs of the soul understood and supplied. The poet’s is

  “The gift, the vision of the unsealed eye,

  To pierce the mist o’er life’s deep meanings spread,

  To reach the hidden fountain-urns that lie

  Far in man’s heart.”

  Poetry has a particular charm for the lover of nature. It knows his favorites, paints them lovingly, descries new beauties, points out hidden relations, unveils the thought behind their creation, and sends him back to the woods more humble and reverent of spirit, and yet filled with new delight in what was before his pleasure. The green of the grass is fresher, the glitter of the dewdrop more brilliant, the carol of the birds a divine pean. It is as if he has had his eyes touched with holy spittle: he no longer sees “men as trees walking,” but looks forth with clear and perfect vision. To him who has hitherto been dull to the glories of nature, it may be said to add a sense. The world takes on a new aspect for him. Nothing is any longer commonplace or ordinary. He can find beauty, melody, sweetness everywhere. He rejoices in the scent of new-mown hay, the sheen of leaves, the waving of branches, the smell of damp fresh earth, the coloring and grouping of clouds. Solitude no longer means loneliness, nor leisure ennui. He now hath

  “The child’s sight in his breast,

  And sees all new,

  What oftenest he has viewed,

  He views with the first glory.

  Fair and good

  Pall never on him.”

  The poet

  “Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

  Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”

  “The violet by the mossy stone,

  Half hidden from the eye,”

  is to him not merely a bit of vegetable beauty, but a symbol of modesty and sweet retirement. He considers “The lilies of the field, how they toil not, neither do they spin,” and from them learns a lesson of quiet trust and restfulness in the sustaining power of a gracious Providence. The great ethical truths which Nature “half reveals and half conceals” are presented by the poet; yet we do not feel that he aims to “point a moral,” but rather that his heart is full, and he needs must speak what is. His is the surest fame. He writes for no one time or country. With him anachronisms are impossible. He addresses himself to the heart, and by the heart; the same in every age and clime, he will always be understood. He portrays the beauty of Nature, perennial in its charm and constant in its attraction for the sons of men.

  Poetry is closely allied to our best affections. Home, wife, mother, country, are themes ever dear to the poet. He recognizes that “The heart has needs above the head,” and seeks to supply it with food fit for its use. By the study of poetry the affections are strengthened, purified and refined, divested of earthy dross and rendered more ethereal in their nature. We are taught to accord the sensibility its proper prominence in life and to keep the heart child-like, tender and susceptible of holy emotions.

  The whole aim of poetry, working within her God-given sphere, is to spiritualize the nature. Even when perverted and debased, divorced from her rightful function, she yet shows some signs of her original calling. Perhaps no great poet has so misapplied his powers as Byron; yet what lofty and soul-inspiring strains are found in his works. As illustrative of his higher and better self, the following stanza may be quoted:

  “There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

  There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

  There is society where none intrudes,

  By the deep sea, and music in its roar;

  I love not man the less, but Nature more,

  From these interviews, in which I steal

  From all I may be, or have been before,

  To mingle with the Universe, and feel

  What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.”

  Even Don Juan contains occasional passages of purity and delicacy. What can be finer than this?

  “’Tis sweet to hear the watch-dog’s honest bark

  Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home;

  ’Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark

  Our coming, and look brighter when we come;

  ’Tis sweet to be awakened by the lark,

  Or lulled by falling waters; sweet the hum

  Of bees, the voice of girls, the song of birds,

  The lisp of children, and their earliest words.”

  Poetry takes us out of ourselves; it carries us into a new world, the world presided over by

  “The glorious faculty assigned

  To elevate the more than reasoning mind,

  And color life’s dark cloud with orient rays.

  • • •

  Imagination lofty and refined.”

  What delight to escape for a while from the cares, the vexations and annoyances of the common life and spend an hour with creations of divinely inspired origin. Irving says of Chaucer’s “Flower and Leaf”: “It brings into our closets all the freshness and fragrance of the dewy landscape.” Poetry rejuvenates the old, imparts to the world-worn a relish for simple pleasures, and converts even the cynic to sympathy with the innocent gladness of childhood, the bright hopefulness of youth, the rapture of first love, the smile of woman, the fond pride of the young mother. It is not true that the poet paints a life which does not exist. He paints the best of the life which is, a life opposed to the worldly and artificial, “hidden from the wise and prudent and revealed unto babes.” All children are poets, for in them the believing predominates over the exam
ining state of mind.

  Poetry is the divinest of all arts. So thought Milton, who wrote with the conscious dignity of a prophet. In the words of Poe, it produces “An elevating excitement of the soul quite independent of that passion which is the intoxication of the heart, or of that truth which is the satisfaction of the reason.” Carlyle, in his “Life of Burns,” calls “A true poet a man in whose heart resides some effluence of wisdom, some tone of the ‘eternal melodies,’” and declares that he is “The most precious gift that can be bestowed on a generation.” That is not true poetry which cannot uplift and inspire. It may be rhyme or verse, but it lacks the divine fire without which the draft is flat and vapid. “The poet is born, not made.” He writes because he must, not because he will. Pope says of himself:

  “As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,

  I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.”

  What is more ludicrous than the pretentions and affectations of would-be poets—jugglers in the divine art? Some of these are poor self-deluded creatures who persist in believing themselves inspired, the verdict of all mankind to the contrary not withstanding; others, because they think it a “fine thing” to be a poet, turn to poetry with a deliberateness they would carry into watch or cabinetmaking, not realizing that their needs must be filled with an inflatus from on high. They ape the style and manner of Apollo’s favorites, adopt Byronic collars and flowing locks, assume an air sometimes wild and frenzied, sometimes dreamy and abstracted; disregard the simple things of life, and strain after what is high and mighty. With such individuals sense is

  “sacrificed to sound,

  And truth cut short to make the period round.”

  While there is much written for poetry which does not deserve the name, there are poems that are never penned. There are “mute, inglorious Miltons who die with all their music in them.” To these has been given the poet-soul, but not the poet’s power of expression. They have somewhat of that “divine madness,” of that “fine frenzy” which characterizes the poet, and are those who best understand and appreciate him.