I’ve been ruminating on “Amy Sherald: American Sublime,” a retrospective of artist Amy Sherald’s portraiture at the Baltimore Museum of Art, and in my posts, I’ve been making connections of selected paintings to poems by Emily Dickinson. This is my eighth post in as many days, and in the previous seven, I started with a painting (or paintings) and then moved on to analogous works by the poet.
Today is different. I’m starting with a poem first, and then moving on (surely but slowly) to the painting at hand. The opening poem is an unusual one in that the subject is more than a bit enigmatic:
Today is different. I’m starting with a poem first, and then moving on (surely but slowly) to the painting at hand. The opening poem is an unusual one in that the subject is more than a bit enigmatic:
 | Dickinson used the word “Mine” six times: Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine! Could she have been any more emphatic? This technique, the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive lines to add emphasis, is “anaphora.” It’s often used in speeches (think Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream”), literature (think the opening to “A Tale of Two Cities), and poetry (think the poem I just shared) to make key ideas more memorable and – as I just noted -- emphatic. So what is it exactly that the speaker in this poem claims so vehemently is theirs? |
Well, in one interpretation of the poem, Elizabeth Phillips, in Emily Dickinson: Personae and Performance (1988), argued that the poem gives voice to Hester Prynne, the protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Phillips suggests that Dickinson assumed the persona of Prynne, who, having accepted the hardships and consequences of her love, refuses to acknowledge guilt. Phillips connects the poem's references to a "scarlet prison" (and similar imagery in the context of the interpretation) to the actual scarlet letter 'A' that Hester is forced to wear.
| However, others see these lines as a universal assertion of the sovereignty of one's own soul (a notion more aligned with the poems and paintings I covered yesterday and the day before). In one blog I came across about this poem, a person commented, “I can see her thumping her chest and proclaiming her sovereignty. This poem is akin to the masculine public brag, but spoken to the mirror of silence.” That idea of the speaker in front of a mirror called to mind Lucille Clifton’s poem “what the mirror said,” highlighted in yesterday’s post. Another interpretation I read likened the tone of the poem to Maya Angelou’s defiant “Still I Rise.” Dickinson’s lesser-known third cousin, twice removed (at her request), Emmett Lee Dickinson penned a very similar poem. It, too, uses anaphora to great effect; however, in this case, the speaker seems not to be Hester Prynne but – possibly – Donald Trump? |  |
This poem effectively encapsulates many of Trump’s failings, flaws, and faults – including the intense and inveterate racist beliefs at the core of his being. Related to his blatant bigotry, I saw this message in a social media post just yesterday:
“MAGA isn’t drawn to Trump because he’s smart or competent. They’re drawn to him because he tells uneducated, insecure, angry people that their stupidity and ignorance is actually strength. He gives them a script where nothing is ever their fault. Blame immigrants. Blame ‘elites.’ Blame Democrats, blame anyone except the person in the mirror (there’s that mirror motif again). He turns racism and sexism into a political identity. He makes being uninformed feel heroic. And MAGA eats it up because it saves them from having to grow, learn, or change. They don’t want leadership. They want validation for being ignorant. And Trump gives it to them every single day.”
“MAGA isn’t drawn to Trump because he’s smart or competent. They’re drawn to him because he tells uneducated, insecure, angry people that their stupidity and ignorance is actually strength. He gives them a script where nothing is ever their fault. Blame immigrants. Blame ‘elites.’ Blame Democrats, blame anyone except the person in the mirror (there’s that mirror motif again). He turns racism and sexism into a political identity. He makes being uninformed feel heroic. And MAGA eats it up because it saves them from having to grow, learn, or change. They don’t want leadership. They want validation for being ignorant. And Trump gives it to them every single day.”
| In mulling over the racist views Trump validates in his followers, a few examples popped to the top of my head: * When Disney announced that Halle Bailey was to play Ariel in a live-action version of “The Little Mermaid,” maggots freaked out and spewed bigoted hatred online with hashtags #NotMyAriel and #NotMyMermaid. * Maggots RAGED when an ad for a Christmas movie showed a Black man wearing a Santa Hat. |  |
* Maggots freaked out when a Super Bowl pre-game ceremony included a performance of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” ad referred to as the Black national anthem.
* There was a major maggot meltdown when Tom Hanks appeared in a red Trump hat in a Saturday Night Live sketch because they felt the show portrayed them as racists – yet they cheer on the so-called Trump administration (an arm of the Trump Family Crime Syndicate) when he removes references to Black history from national parks and monuments.
Below: The National Park service dismantled an exhibit that commemorated the enslaved people who lived and worked at George Washington's home when he lived in Philadelphia. The removal was tied to a March 2025 executive order signed by Trump entitled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History."
* There was a major maggot meltdown when Tom Hanks appeared in a red Trump hat in a Saturday Night Live sketch because they felt the show portrayed them as racists – yet they cheer on the so-called Trump administration (an arm of the Trump Family Crime Syndicate) when he removes references to Black history from national parks and monuments.
Below: The National Park service dismantled an exhibit that commemorated the enslaved people who lived and worked at George Washington's home when he lived in Philadelphia. The removal was tied to a March 2025 executive order signed by Trump entitled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History."
“So,” you ask, “what does all of this have to do with Amy Sherald’s show, ‘American Sublime’?”
“Well,” I answer, “today’s featured painting is ‘As American as Apple Pie.’”
On various sites, I’ve seen this painting described thusly: “It redefines ‘Americana’ and traditional, exclusive American identity by centering Black joy, leisure, and contemporary style in a composition inspired by Grant Wood's ‘American Gothic.’”
What jumps out at me in that statement is the idea that the painting has in some way “REDEFINED” American identify because the subjects are Black. Seriously? Isn’t that sad – that White America can’t accept a Black Ariel, a Black Santa, a Black hymn, a happy Black couple? Look where we are as a country that Amy Sherald as to paint a conservatively dressed Black man leaning on a Camaro next to a Black woman in a pink Barbie t-shirt holding a flamingo sippy cup -- AND SHE HAD TO TELL US IN THE TITLE THAT THEY ARE AS AMERICAN AS APPLE PIE. I mean -- she even threw in a white picket fence and -- I suppose -- 2.5 kids inside the house doing their homework!
Let’s pause here for a minute and try this experiment: Read the preamble to the US Constitution and decide upon the single most important word in the passage:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
There are thirty-nine different words out of fifty-two in total. Which word did you select as the most important? Which word is most crucial? Which word stands out foremost in your mind?
Before I reveal the correct answer, let me pass on a disturbing anecdote related to the Preamble and deeply rooted Trump/maggot racism: Just the other day I saw an Instagram Reels – I can’t recall who was in it – just that individuals were debating the meaning of these introductory words to our constitution. I found it INCREDULOUS – though not surprising – that the individual representing the racist views of the narrow-minded maggot-world interpreted the words “to ourselves and our Posterity” to mean “for White people only” – and the other maggot malcontents in attendance cheered on. his bigoted blathering. Absolutely sickening.
Now back to my challenge. The correct response for the most important word in the Preamble to the US Constitution:
WE
What jumps out at me in that statement is the idea that the painting has in some way “REDEFINED” American identify because the subjects are Black. Seriously? Isn’t that sad – that White America can’t accept a Black Ariel, a Black Santa, a Black hymn, a happy Black couple? Look where we are as a country that Amy Sherald as to paint a conservatively dressed Black man leaning on a Camaro next to a Black woman in a pink Barbie t-shirt holding a flamingo sippy cup -- AND SHE HAD TO TELL US IN THE TITLE THAT THEY ARE AS AMERICAN AS APPLE PIE. I mean -- she even threw in a white picket fence and -- I suppose -- 2.5 kids inside the house doing their homework!
Let’s pause here for a minute and try this experiment: Read the preamble to the US Constitution and decide upon the single most important word in the passage:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
There are thirty-nine different words out of fifty-two in total. Which word did you select as the most important? Which word is most crucial? Which word stands out foremost in your mind?
Before I reveal the correct answer, let me pass on a disturbing anecdote related to the Preamble and deeply rooted Trump/maggot racism: Just the other day I saw an Instagram Reels – I can’t recall who was in it – just that individuals were debating the meaning of these introductory words to our constitution. I found it INCREDULOUS – though not surprising – that the individual representing the racist views of the narrow-minded maggot-world interpreted the words “to ourselves and our Posterity” to mean “for White people only” – and the other maggot malcontents in attendance cheered on. his bigoted blathering. Absolutely sickening.
Now back to my challenge. The correct response for the most important word in the Preamble to the US Constitution:
WE
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