The Blue Terrance

Narrated through the persona of a melancholy or “blue” individual, “The Blue Terrance” is a romantic, lyric poem about love and loss. What is distinctive about this love poem is that the object of love varies: it is interchangeably a person, society, and above all, the speaker’s own self. Hence, the title of the poem, “The Blue Terrance,” where the speaker’s alter-ego—the sad, lonesome Terrance—is the real addressee of his love letter. The speaker loves and despairs of his blue self, tries to describe and define it, and also to soothe its hurts, much as he would with a lover. Loving this self is very easy and very difficult at the same time, because neither the self, nor the feeling of love, exist in a vacuum. Complex historical and social realities surround and compose the self and its idea of love. The blue Terrance in therefore not only a jilted lover, but he is also a Black man in America trying to get mainstream society to accept him. Even though he knows he doesn’t need to be accepted by white society and is perfect the way he is, he also experiences the contradictory and universal human impulse of wanting to be loved and liked by everyone.