Life

“Life” appears in Naomi Long Madgett’s 1993 collection of poetry titled Remembrances of Spring: Collected Early Poems, though the exact date of the poem’s composition is unknown. Madgett began writing at an early age, and by her teenage years, Langston Hughes served as her mentor. In addition to writing poetry, Madgett also taught high school and college English. She began her own publishing company, Lotus Press, to accurately represent her work as well as the work of other underrepresented African American writers. Throughout her works, readers can clearly trace influences from the Civil Rights Movement and the Harlem Renaissance. In “Life,” Madgett’s speaker relays the lack of human agency, the fleeting nature of life, and the amorphous definition of the value in life itself. Consisting of a single stanza with six lines, Madgett uses extended metaphor to make the concept of life seem inconsequential and trivial compared to some higher power. Though there is no set rhyme scheme or meter, the use of figurative language through metaphor and allusion elevates the technical quality of Madgett’s poem.

Poet Biography

Madgett was born in 1923, in Norfolk, Virginia.