Love Song for Alex, 1979

“Sonnet 116” by William Shakespeare

One of Shakespeare’s better-known sonnets, “Sonnet 116” deliberates on what love is and what it isn’t. The sonnet exemplifies Shakespeare’s form, with rhyming couplets and a volta appearing between the eighth and ninth lines.

“A Black Man Talks of Reaping” by Arna Bontemps

Arna Bontemps, a contemporary of Walker’s and a fellow writer of the Chicago Black Renaissance, penned “A Black Man Talks of Reaping.” Much like Walker’s novel Jubilee, Bontemps’s poem imagines a slave family and reveals the difficulties and generational sorrows of slavery.