On Anger

This 18-line poem is written in free verse: without a specific rhyme or metrical scheme. The speaker is a Black woman; the racial and gender details combined with the use of the first person suggests that the speaker is the author. She is in dialogue with her white psychologist (who is identified as a woman with the pronoun “she” in the second line). The poem follows a therapy session at the psychologist’s home office.

In the first line of the poem, the speaker quotes her therapist; the italicized “edge” defines the titular “anger,” which is the referent of the first pronoun (“it”) that occurs. Before the speaker reinterprets this “it,” there is a line break, separating the definitions.

The second line includes words by both the white therapist (again in italics) and the Black speaker that are set up as synonymous: “Angry Black Woman” and “Strength.” Placing a line break before the continuation of the therapist’s second phrase for anger emphasizes the first word of that phrase.

The therapist’s second phrase is completed in the third line: “Strength / of Willful Negative Focus” and is built upon with the beginning of a third phrase for anger: “Acerbic.