Blanche Berry and “Humble Teats”
This issue’s focus on aging invites reflection on the body as it changes over time. Blanche Berry’s poem “Humble Teats,” first published in Exponent II in 1975, traces that arc with humorous resignation. Berry (1883–1966) was a Black actress, playwright, and poet of the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Saltville, Virginia, she trained as a dramatic reader and dialect performer. She spent decades on Black theater circuits in Harlem, Philadelphia, and beyond, appearing alongside figures such as Langston Hughes and Charles Gilpin.
In 1963, while living with her daughter in Washington, D.C., Berry was introduced to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by a neighbor and was baptized at age eighty. Before her death three years later, she shared a collection of her poems with her home teacher, Tom Rogers, who, with her permission, submitted them to the nascent Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. The poems made their way to Claudia Bushman and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who published seven of her poems posthumously between the 1971 “Pink Issue” of Dialogue and an early issue of Exponent II. Berry’s poetry draws on biblical language, Black vernacular traditions, and candid reflections on women’s bodies, labor, and desire.
When “Humble Teats” first appeared, its frank attention to women’s bodies unsettled some readers. It prompted critical, pearl-clutching letters to the editor (“Come on sisters—you have more class than that!!”), followed by letters in its defense (“May I . . . commend you for your fine taste and insight in publishing a warm, loving, human expression of the journey each of us as women must take through life even though it might be found controversial by some.”) Decades later, Berry’s poem invites readers to grapple with their bodies in all their complexity, while also calling attention to under-acknowledged ways Black artists have shaped — and continue to shape — Mormon feminist publishing.
“Humble Teats”
Blanche Berry
Teats that now are pimples,
Growing over skin
On the childish bosom
Innocent of sin.
Teats now little boils,
Nature’s growing tents,
Make the maiden wonder
What itches her contents.
Still they keep on growing
Until they’re little knolls:
Then stirs the maiden’s vision —
They’re trembling shaking bowls,
And now they meet “the Man”
Whose hands they seem to fit.
The maiden, still confused:
“Is this my knowledge trip?”
Alas, the awakening comes:
With milk they’re swollen tight
And tugging at the nipples,
Is a fretful little mite.
Other small ones come—
Who pull and gnaw and bite
Until those shapely mounds
Become a sorry site.
Breasts once round and plump
Are now no longer full
But more like empty bags.
Life takes its toll.
Originally published in Exponent II,
Vol 1. No. 4, March 1975, Pg 9.
Pictured below
Categories: From the Archive: Poetry
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