The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Brown, Sterling A. “Ma Rainey.” Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47545/ma-rainey.

Note that all parenthetical citations refer to the line number from which the quotation is taken.

“Ma Rainey” is a four-canto poem by American poet Sterling A. Brown. It explores the influence of Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, a Black American singer who came to be known as "The Queen of the Blues." Rainey died when Sterling A. Brown was thirty-eight years old, so it’s likely he would have seen her perform in his lifetime. The poem leans heavily into the dialect of rural Black communities in the early 20th century. Brown’s work was relatively unknown at the time of this poem’s publication, though it was rediscovered when a collected volume was released in 1980. This was shortly after the “blues revival” of the 60s and 70s in which the broader public began to discover the earlier blues tradition.