Race

In “Race,” Alexander critiques the uses to which we put poetry. The contrasts among the three stanzas help her to develop this theme. In the first stanza, the speaker grapples with the tension between Great-Uncle Paul’s alienation from the family and his connection to the family once he reunites with the family in New York. Line 13 shows the resolution of that tension as Paul’s siblings welcome him back into the family fold. If the poem ended there, it would be a classically structured narrative about the power of family and love to overcome ruptures such as passing and geographic separation.

Instead, Alexander uses subsequent stanzas to propose alternatives to the reconciliation the first stanza enacts. The self-reflexive nature of the second stanza turns the reader’s eye to writing itself. The speaker imagines Great-Uncle as a writer who uses his “pencil markings” (Line 17) and “graphite markings” (Line 20) to pin down the concrete world of the forest around him. All the while, the wife the speaker imagines is one who feels alienated and puzzled by what she cannot understand about Paul. The wife is no more able to get at who Paul is than the reader can get at the reality of what it is like to be in a family where one member passes and the others do not.