big basket” on her head. “She swings it moughty
easy, / An’ ’pears to me at such times / It ain’t no
awful load.” However, he also notices that on her
return home each evening, Mandy Jane’s basket
“seems a burden,” but she does not ask for help.
Although Luke is certain the load is food Mandy
takes from her employer to distribute to her less
fortunate neighbors (she takes the darkest path
home and is followed by hungry dogs), Luke re-
fuses to pass judgment on her, for “tain’t my busi-
ness noway.” Moreover, Luke rationalizes, Mandy’s
employer lives on money “comes from niggers pick
/ cotton, / Ebbery dollar dat she squander / Nearly
bust a nigger’s back” (30). Concluding that Mandy
Jane’s action is justified, Luke remarks:
So I’m glad dat in the evenin’s
Mandy Jane seems extra happy,
An’ de lady at the big house
Got no kick at all, I say;—
Cause what huh “dear grandfawthaw”
Took from Mandy Jane’s grandpappy—
Ain’ no basket in de world’
What kin tote all that away. (36–37)Here, Brown expertly manipulates language
not only to signify race and class with his use of
“grandfawthaw” and “grandpappy” but also, with
his use of “kin” as metonymy, to burrow deep be-
neath the surface of the poem’s meaning to expose
the exploitation of southern black laborers and
the potential tragedy of their blues life, had it not
been for their fortitude, dogged strength, and pro-
pensity to transcend, to fight back through indi-
rection, to signify on their would-be oppressors,
disarming them in the end. The Lady in the Big
House “Got no kick at all.”
A similar kind of dogged strength is found in
“Southern Road,” in which the prisoner working on
the chain gang defiantly and proudly declares that
he has no need to be told what his condition is:
White man tells me—hunh—
Damn yo’soul;
White man tells me—hunh—
Damn yo’soul;Got no need, bebby,
To be tole. (52)As MICHAEL HARPER writes in the preface to The
Collected Poems, Brow n’spoetry teaches in the sense that it illustrates
a clarity and precision of form as the skeletal
structure of the expressive design of language,
and that language has a purity of diction be-
cause the poet’s selectivity is the voice of au-
thority—he controls the atmosphere, the
cadence, and pace of utterance, activating the
landscape and voicing of the poem, while dis-
arming his reader, his hearer. (xiii)Brown’s equally masterful use of blues forms
to denote a trope of black life and, indeed, of the
human condition is readily seen in such poems as
“Memphis Blues” and “Ma Rainey.” In “Memphis
Blues” the refrain “What you gonna do when Mem-
phis on fire” recalls not only an old Negro spiritual
and Old Testament narratives about man’s inevita-
ble destruction, as recorded in the story of Sodom
and Gomorrah, but also the biblical prophesy of
the fire next time when God, Christians believe,
will destroy the world by fire not water as he did in
Noah’s days. Yet in “Ma Rainey” Brown also focuses
on destruction by water, by including the song Ma
Rainey sings, “Backwater Blues,” which deals with
a more immediate and relevant experience of the
members of her audience, a song about “de hard
luck / Round’ our do’ ” and about “de lonesome
road / mus’ go.”
However, Brown’s use of a flood, of a natural di-
saster: “Thundered an’ lightened an’ the storm begin
to roll / Thousan’s of people ain’t got no place to go,”
speaks to a more global experience than a racially
specific incident. In fact, as a trope for human trag-
edy, the flood in “Backwater Blues” moves readers
and hearers beyond the boundaries of race, class,
or gender. No one (“thousan’s of people”) escaped
the disaster; all are made victims who, like Sisy-
phus, are left to climb an “ol’ lonesome hill” where
they are left alone to helplessly contemplate their
existential fate. Aware of the ultimate condition of476 Southern Road