Love Song for Alex, 1979

“Love Song for Alex, 1979” is a lyric sonnet that Margaret Walker wrote for her husband. The poem is frequently labeled a sonnet because of its 14 lines, though it doesn’t follow the strict rhyme scheme of a traditional sonnet. In the style of lyric poetry, the poem expresses Walker’s warm feelings for her husband. Though it doesn’t reveal a narrative, we can glean some details about the couple’s relationship from the poem.

Poet Biography

Margaret Walker was born in 1915 in Birmingham, Alabama. Her parents emphasized the humanities throughout her childhood and lived in New Orleans until she left for Chicago. There, in 1935, she earned a bachelor of arts from Northwestern University at age 19. Walker found herself in the Great Depression, and she began working with the Works Progress Administration under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration, which had a program to employ writers. The program, the Federal Writers’ Project, produced local guides and histories, children’s stories, and ethnographies.

Around this same time, Walker joined the South Side Writer’s Group, a club consisting of around 20 African American poets and writers in Chicago. Here, she fraternized with other influential writers like Richard Wright (Native Son), Arna Bontemps (Sad-Faced Boy), and Fenton Johnson (Crossing the River). Along with these and other major players in the African American writing community, Walker became part of the Chicago Black Renaissance, which spanned from the 1930s to the mid-1950s. The movement also included musicians like Louis Armstrong, Elizabeth Catlett, and Charles C. Dawson.

Walker received her master’s from the University of Iowa in 1942 and won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition for her collection For My People that same year. She was the first African American woman to win a national writing competition. Shortly after, she married Firnist Alexander (for whom she wrote “Love Song for Alex, 1979”), and the couple had four children.

Walker’s later works include Jubilee (1966), a novel about an enslaved family, and Prophets for a New Day, a poetry collection that chronicled reincarnated traditional folktales and African Americans’ struggles. October Journey, another poetry collection, also sought to point out civil rights issues. Walker addressed feminist issues in other poetry and essay collections, including This Is My Century: New and Collected Poems (1989) and On Being Female, Black, and Free: Essays by Margaret Walker, 1932-1992. Walker’s sonnet for her husband appeared in This Is My Century, which published after his death in 1980.

Walker died in 1998 at age 83. She is remembered as a champion for African American women’s literature and considered one of the most important voices of the Chicago Black Renaissance. Throughout her lifetime Walker earned several fellowships, six honorary degrees, one Lifetime Achievement Award from the College Language Association, and another for excellence in the arts.

Poem Text

Walker, Margaret. “Love Song for Alex, 1979.” 1989. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The speaker begins the poem with terms of endearment for her “monkey-wrench man,” the love of her life whom she has been with for quite some time. She adds that their children have his quick temper. Though they’ve been together for dozens of years, and their interactions differ from when they were young, she still finds her happiness with him. She talks about his “arms and eyes” carrying them through fantastical places and the memories that hold them together.