{"id":152950,"date":"2026-02-06T08:30:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T13:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=152950"},"modified":"2026-02-06T09:56:52","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T14:56:52","slug":"happy-birthday-poet-anne-spencer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=152950","title":{"rendered":"“Guilt pins a fig-leaf; Innocence is its own adorning.” — poet Anne Spencer"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nAnne Bethel Scales Bannister Spencer was yet another poet-librarian, like Dudley Randall<\/a>, and many others. As the daughter of a librarian, I am always drawn to these particular journeys, since libraries are not just buildings, they are symbols, and librarians are in charge of a public trust. For an African-American in an earlier era, becoming a librarian was one way to further education, but also …. to a librarian, knowledge is a lifelong process. You aren’t just educated during the brief years you go to school. Education, to many, is a way of life. This was true of the people who joined the poet-librarian tradition. So, let’s hear it for poet-librarians. <\/p>\n

Anne Spencer is primarily associated with the Harlem Renaissance, although she didn’t live in New York. Her legacy is a living one, primarily because of her home and her extraordinary garden in Lynchburg, Virginia. Her home was a gathering place for travelers, admirers, garden-lovers, poetry lovers, civil rights activists) – and is now on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places<\/a>. <\/p>\n

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More after the jump: <\/p>\n

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\nSpencer was born in 1882 in Virginia. After her parents separated, she and her mother lived in a tight-knit and established Black community. Anne enjoyed a luxury that so few children – even less so Black children – had at the time: lots of free time. She didn’t have to go to work. She had all this free time to … think and dream and walk in the woods (she loved nature) and just BE. She taught herself to read by poring through Sears & Roebuck catalogs. <\/p>\n

When her absent father learned Anne wasn’t going to school, he hit the roof. Anne was enrolled in a seminary school. She excelled, rising to the top of her class. She became a teacher, and married Charles Edward Spencer, whom she met at the seminary, They were a power couple. She became the librarian at the all-black Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, and maintained that job for 20 years. <\/p>\n

Speaking of Dunbar: Here’s Anne Spencer’s poem for Paul Laurence Dunbar (post about him here<\/a>). <\/p>\n

Dunbar<\/strong><\/big>
\nAh, how poets sing and die!
\nMake one song and Heaven takes it;
\nHave one heart and Beauty breaks it;
\nChatterton, Shelley, Keats and I\u2014
\nAh, how poets sing and die!<\/p>\n

In 1919, when she decided to open up a chapter of NAACP in Lynchburg, it changed her life. James Weldon Johnson (post about him here<\/a>) visited – as many did – and found out she wrote poetry. He recognized instantly the value of her work and sent it to renowned writer\/editor H.L. Mencken, who felt the same way as Johnson did. Anne’s first poem was published in the NAACP magazine The Crisis<\/em>. Her work spread. She was included in almost every anthology (and was the second African-American added to the Norton Anthology of Poetry<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Let’s also talk about the importance of her HOUSE. She and her husband devoted time, energy, and finances, to create this oasis. Anne was a devoted gardener, and the natural world is one of the main “characters” in her poetry (it’s not a surprise she loops herself in with nature-lover John Keats in the poem “Dunbar” above.) People would travel from all around to take tours through her garden. <\/p>\n

Here she is, in her famous garden: <\/p>\n

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In 2018, tribute was paid to Spencer by putting her a postage stamp<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Here are a couple of her poems. The second, “At the Carnival” is my favorite. <\/p>\n

TABOO<\/strong><\/big> <\/p>\n

Being a Negro Woman is the world’s most exciting
\ngame of “Taboo”: By hell there is nothing you can
\ndo that you want to do and by heaven you are
\ngoing to do it anyhow\u2014
\nWe do not climb into the jim crow galleries
\nof scenario houses we stay away and read
\nI read garden and seed catalogs, Browning,
\nHousman, Whitman, Saturday Evening Post
\ndetective tales, Atlantic Monthly, American
\nMercury, Crisis, Opportunity, Vanity Fair,
\nHibberts Journal, oh, anything.
\nI can cook delicious things to eat. . .
\nwe have a lovely home\u2014-one that
\nmoney did not buy\u2014-it was born and evolved
\nslowly out of our passionate, poverty-
\nstriken agony to own our own home.
\n happiness<\/u><\/p>\n

At the Carnival<\/strong><\/big><\/p>\n

Gay little Girl-of-the-Diving-Tank,
\nI desire a name for you,
\nNice, as a right glove fits;
\nFor you\u2014who amid the malodorous
\nMechanics of this unlovely thing,
\nAre darling of spirit and form.
\nI know you\u2014a glance, and what you are
\nSits-by-the-fire in my heart.
\nMy Limousine-Lady knows you, or
\nWhy does the slant-envy of her eye mark
\nYour straight air and radiant inclusive smile?
\nGuilt pins a fig-leaf; Innocence is its own adorning.
\nThe bull-necked man knows you\u2014this first time
\nHis itching flesh sees form divine and vibrant health
\nAnd thinks not of his avocation.
\nI came incuriously\u2014
\nSet on no diversion save that my mind
\nMight safely nurse its brood of misdeeds
\nIn the presence of a blind crowd.
\nThe color of life was gray.
\nEverywhere the setting seemed right
\nFor my mood. Here the sausage and garlic booth
\nSent unholy incense skyward;
\nThere a quivering female-thing
\nGestured assignations, and lied
\nTo call it dancing;
\nThere, too, were games of chance
\nWith chances for none;
\nBut oh! Girl-of-the-Tank, at last!
\nGleaming Girl, how intimately pure and free
\nThe gaze you send the crowd,
\nAs though you know the dearth of beauty
\nIn its sordid life.
\nWe need you\u2014my Limousine-Lady,
\nThe bull-necked man and I.
\nSeeing you here brave and water-clean,
\nLeaven for the heavy ones of earth,
\nI am swift to feel that what makes
\nThe plodder glad is good; and
\nWhatever is good is God.
\nThe wonder is that you are here;
\nI have seen the queer in queer places,
\nBut never before a heaven-fed
\nNaiad of the Carnival-Tank!
\nLittle Diver, Destiny for you,
\nLike as for me, is shod in silence;
\nYears may seep into your soul
\nThe bacilli of the usual and the expedient;
\nI implore Neptune to claim his child to-day!<\/p>\n

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\nThank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account<\/a>. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0<\/a>, if you’d like to subscribe.<\/em> <\/small><\/p>\n