African American Poetry: A Digital Anthology

Blanche Taylor Dickinson: Author Page

Blanche Taylor Dickinson, born on a Kentucky farm in 1896, is an enigmatic figure in American poetry whose works were only published between 1927 and 1929. Despite the limited information about her, it is known that she attended Simmons University and later taught in Kentucky. By 1926, she resided in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, a period during which her poetry gained significant recognition. 

Dickinson’s poetry was featured in  Opportunity, The Crisis, American Poet, Ebony and Topaz, and Caroling Dusk. She thought critically about Black women navigating a society constrained by white beauty standards (see “A Dark Actress—Somewhere”). Dickinson also explored biblical imagery (see “The Walls of Jericho”) and the figure of Black Samson (see “Four Walls”) to critique racial and gender norms. Whereas “The Walls of Jericho” focuses on racial uplift, “Four Walls” uses the racialized image of Samson to explore complicated and ambivalent aspects of resistance to social conformity. In 1927, she was awarded the Buckner Prize for her “A Sonnet and a Rondeau,” which is a remixing of the pastoral tradition.

Works Cited

Honey, Maureen, editor. “Blanche Taylor Dickinson (1896–?).” Shadowed Dreams: Women’s Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, Rutgers University Press, 2006, pp. 77–85. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1s47747.16. Accessed 1 July 2024.
Junior, Nyasha, and Schipper, Jeremy. Black Samson: The Untold Story of an American Icon. United States, Oxford University Press, 2020.

 

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