ACTIVITY Alice Dunbar Nelson, I sit and sew

● ACTIVITY ●

In 1920, the African American poet Alice Dunbar-Nelson wrote “I Sit and Sew,” a dramatic monologue protesting the limitations of her assigned role during a time of war. Analyze the poem rhetorically, paying close attention to the argument the speaker develops.

I sit and sew

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

I sit and sew—a useless task it seems,

My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams—

The panoply of war, the martial tread of men,

Grim faced, stern eyed, gazing beyond the ken

5

Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death,

Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath—

But—I must sit and sew.

I sit and sew—my heart aches with desire—

That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire

10

On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things

Once men. My soul in pity flings

Appealing cries, yearning only to go

There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe—

But—I must sit and sew

15

The little useless seam, the idle patch;

Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch,

When there they lie in sodden mud and rain,

Pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain?

You need me, Christ. It is no roseate dream

20

That beckons me—this pretty futile seam

It stifles me—God, must I sit and sew?

(1920)

Question

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ACTIVITY Alice Dunbar Nelson, I sit and sew: