Perspectives

To get a broader perspective on “Strange Fruit” by Abel Meeropol we will provide some ideas related to literary context, similar works and the poem in pop culture.

Context and literary period

Published in 1937 as a poem under the title “Bitter Fruit”, the text soon became the lyrics of the song “Strange Fruit” performed by Billie Holiday. The music was also composed by Abel Meeropol and “Strange Fruit” became a very popular song in New York. The song’s popularity should be connected with the fact that it was inspired by real-life events, the lynching and hanging of two African-American men.

As a poem, “Strange Fruit” falls within the modernist literary period. Some modernist features of the poem are the lack of a fixed rhythm, the contemporary theme it approaches (racial discrimination), the focus on meaning and cutting out unnecessary words, and the ...