No Images

“No Images” is an emotional exploration of the tragedy of women of color in the United States’ urban centers in the 1920s. The poem sets up a kind of problem/solution dynamic. As such, “No Images” is a poem of denial, what the woman at the sink is versus what she perceives she is. The title defines the problem. The woman has no images that depict the “beauty” of a “brown body” (Lines 2, 3). Within this white culture, the speaker asks, how would this woman of color even begin to suspect her own beauty, her own glory? It is not that she is not beautiful, rather “she does not know / her beauty” (Line 1-2). Therein lies the tragedy of the poem—what she is (and what the speaker sees she is) against what she believes she is. 

Denied any interaction with her adopted culture, the woman of color accepts a submissive place, accepts that because she is a woman of color, because her skin is brown not white, she possesses no spiritual energy, no dazzling kinetic power, in short “no glory” (Line 4). Her poor self-image, created by the white culture, leaves her certain only of her own diminishment. She does not accept the radiant, near-spiritual energy that enhances, elevates, and transcends physical beauty.

In the second stanza, the speaker defines the problem using the woman’s background in a Caribbean (or African) culture. The poem avoids naming any specific location to keep the argument applicable to the millions of immigrant women of color who arrived in New York City in the early decades of the 20th century. If only, the speaker laments, the woman might return to her native island and there dance “naked” (Line 6) under palm trees. There, the woman would be immersed in a culture that celebrated the beauty so distant, so remote from the culture of her adopted city. In her adopted urban home in the US, she is surrounded only by images of beauty as defined by a white, Eurocentric culture. All she sees every day are images of beautiful white women in magazines, in advertising, and walking about the bustling sidewalks of her adopted city. She is a woman far from her native cultural environment. However, if she could dance along the rivers of her native land, the speaker argues, then she could see her image in the crystal waters. Then, “she would know” (Line 9) because then she could see herself in her element.

But the city has no palm trees, has no sparkling rivers, and the woman of color dancing through the city streets joyously naked would be criminal. Here, the speaker acknowledges, the woman at the sink will never suspect her “beauty” (Line 2), never feel her “glory” (Line 4). The dingy dish water offers no reflection for her to see. 

In the end, however, the poem itself offers the solution. There may be no palm trees in New York City and diner dish water may be flat and dark, but the speaker offers the poem as the image that the woman of color needs to elevate her self-esteem. The figure of the kitchen dish washer is a character William Waring Cuney creates to epitomize the unsuspected beauty and radiant glory of the women of color who crowded the streets of Harlem. The poem offers what the women of color in 1920s New York needed to begin to share in the joyous affirmation of Black life that came to define the Harlem Renaissance. Cuney offers the poem itself as a compelling recreation of the woman that elevates her to the poetic: If she could be herself and be where she belongs, then she would see herself as the poet sees her, an expression of beauty and glory.