Life

“Life” appears in Madgett’s 1993 published collection of poetry titled Remembrances of Spring: Collected Early Poems. Even though the collection was put together and printed in the 1990s, the exact date of the poem’s composition remains unknown. While we can speculate regarding the exact year Madgett wrote her poem, we can state with certainty that living through the Civil Rights Movement greatly impacted and inspired Madgett’s work. This historical movement spanned from the 1940s through the end of the 1960s and can be defined as “an organized effort by Black Americans to end racial discrimination and gain equal rights under the law” (History.com Editors. “Civil Rights Movement Timeline.” History, 2017). Over the course of the Civil Rights Movement, Madgett directly or indirectly experienced historic moments, such as the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, the murder of Emmett Till in 1955, the Freedom Rides in 1961, the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963, the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. Within this context, the lack of individual agency and the controlling force of the “very old man” (Line 4) could be representative of the oppression and discrimination felt by those living through the Civil Rights Movement as they fought against the segregation imposed upon them by external forces.