On Anger

“On Anger,” written by Rage Hezekiah, was first published by the Academy of American Poets in their Poem-a-Day feature on February 1, 2019, and subsequently published in the anthology You Don’t Have to Be Everything: Poems for Girls Becoming Themselves on March 30, 2021. The Poem-a-Day feature occurred after other poems by Hezekiah appeared in literary journals and anthologies, but before the release of her first book.

This contemporary free verse poem speaks to the experience of being a Black woman in America. Hezekiah investigates how emotions, specifically anger, are discussed in therapy. She contrasts practices created and utilized by white psychologists—such as talk therapy and writing therapy—with ideas presented in Black Feminism/Womanism and the Black Power Movement. The poem questions how much of Hezekiah’s identity is centered in a single emotion (anger) and what it would mean to let go of that emotion. Since anger is a racially coded emotion, it evokes different opinions on how Black women in particular should behave.

Poet Biography

Rage Hezekiah was born in Beverly, Massachusetts, and grew up in Salem. Hezekiah remained in New England while in college, graduating from Drew University in New Jersey in 2006, where she received her B.A., then heading back to Massachusetts for her M.F.A. at Emerson College, which she received in 2015.

After college, Hezekiah moved to Oakland, California, whose Bay Area vistas—and growing up near Collins Cove—served as influences for her debut collection of poetry, Stray Harbor, published 2019. In addition to water, her poems focus on mental health, identity, family, and sexuality. She lists her literary influences as Zadie Smith, Ross Gay, and bell hooks.

Hezekiah’s poetry is also influenced by the many jobs she has worked throughout her life, including farm apprentice, baker, doula, nanny, and adjunct faculty. Currently, she works as Assistant Director of Academic and International Student Services at Bennington College in Vermont.

Rage Hezekiah has been the winner of several significant poetry and writing fellowships, including the MacDowell Colony in the summer of 2016, and two stints at Cave Canem in 2017 and 2018. At the latter, she completed work on her first chapbook, Unslakable, which won the Vella Chapbook Award in 2018, and received the Saint Botolph Foundation’s Emerging Artist award in 2017.

Before her book and chapbook were published, poems by Hezekiah appeared in anthologies such as Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse (Lost Horse Press, 2017) and Other Tongues: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out (Inanna Publications, 2010). She also regularly has poems featured in literary journals, including Chicago Quarterly Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Baltimore Review, and New Orleans Review. 

Poem Text

Hezekiah, Rage. “On Anger.” 2019. Academy of American Poets.

Summary

“On Anger” begins with a first-person speaker in dialogue with her therapist. First, the white psychologist suggests different ways of viewing the Black speaker’s anger. In response, the speaker writes down the therapist’s words on an index card. The therapist then seeks a history of trauma, but the speaker is unable to provide the clear story of abuse that is desired.

After this discussion, the speaker burns angry letters in the therapist’s fireplace, revealing they are in a home office: a living room. The speaker admits that she feels like the fire is destroying an integral part of herself, and questions who she would be without anger. Then, with an aphorism (common saying), the therapist asks what is being destroyed. The speaker’s answer is a metaphor of a gutted fish for the loss of an identity rooted in righteous anger.