Selma, 1965

House’s “Selma, 1965” is a free verse poem written in 23 lines of varying lengths. There is no set metrical pattern, rhythm, or rhyme scheme and the poem consists of a single stanza. Highly enjambed—the sentences continue beyond the line break into the next line—the poem sets the scene of the historic march out of Selma, Alabama by layering in added details line by line (“in Selma / in the summer so hot” [Line 2-3]).

Written as a memory of a past event, House opens “Selma, 1965” with the image of ghosts (“Amid the ghosts of civil rights marchers” [Line 1]), which is carried throughout the poem and revisited in Line 9 (“We watched them come”) and again in Line 15 (“The were tattered angels of hope”). The ghosts introduced in Line 1 haunt the poem and become a larger symbol moving through Selma's streets—and through the lines of the poem. The word “Amid” (Line 1) stands out. Amid means surrounded by or in the middle of. In the middle of these ghosts walking for rights, are children singing in the street a song that defies slavery: “Before I’d be a slave, / I’d be buried in my grave…” (Lines 6-7).