Etheridge Knight

Etheridge Knight is an African-American poet who follows in the lyrical strain of Walt Whitman's free verse. He was born in prison and spent a good portion of his life in prison. His poems explore "imprisonment as a form of contemporary enslavement and [he] looks for ways in which one can be free despite incarceration." There's a certain connection to Thoreau and how he expressed that they could lock up his body but not his mind.

Simone Cypress shared Knight's very powerful poem, "The Bones of My Father," in our GFS Poetry Out Loud competition. It alludes to the legacy of slavery and how it pervades the lives of African-Americans today, amongst other intriguing allusions to the past. Here, the bones of his father are not dry, lifeless fossils buried deep within the soil. They are paradoxically alive; in fact, the skull of his father "grins" as a sad, and somewhat ghoulish, reminder.

The Bones of My Father By Etheridge Knight

1

There are no dry bones

here in this valley. The skull

of my father grins

at the Mississippi moon

from the bottom

of the Tallahatchie,

the bones of my father

are buried in the mud

of these creeks and brooks that twist

and flow their secrets to the sea.

but the wind sings to me

here the sun speaks to me

of the dry bones of my father.

      2

There are no dry bones

in the northern valleys, in the Harlem alleys

young / black / men with knees bent

nod on the stoops of the tenements

and dream

of the dry bones of my father.

And young white longhairs who flee

their homes, and bend their minds

and sing their songs of brotherhood

and no more wars are searching for

my father’s bones.

      3

There are no dry bones here.

We hide from the sun.

No more do we take the long straight strides.

Our steps have been shaped by the cages

that kept us. We glide sideways

like crabs across the sand.

We perch on green lilies, we search

beneath white rocks...

THERE ARE NO DRY BONES HERE

The skull of my father

grins at the Mississippi moon

from the bottom

of the Tallahatchie.

James Weldon Johnson

I want to continue in the celebration of African-American History Month and share the work of another amazing poet, James Weldon Johnson. Like Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, Johnson is a poet of the Harlem Renaissance, that amazing time of artistic expression in the 1920s. Johnson was a prolific and articulate writer as well as a civil rights activist, serving as one of the first presidents of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).

The poem below, "Lift Every Voice and Sing," is considered by many to be "the Negro National Anthem" and was adopted by the NAACP as its hymn. It expresses the power of black faith, endurance, and strength. I have also included Johnson's personal intro to the poem and a link to the song so you can hear it as well.

The poem that follows it is one of my personal favorites. I used to teach "The Creation" when I was a teacher of freshman English and we had many units on reading the Bible as literature. This poem reshapes the creation story of Genesis and humanizes God as he molds the clay and breathes life into it to create Adam, his precious son.

Lift Every Voice and Sing

By James Weldon Johnson 1871–1938

A group of young men in Jacksonville, Florida, arranged to celebrate Lincoln’s birthday in 1900. My brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, and I decided to write a song to be sung at the exercises. I wrote the words and he wrote the music. Our New York publisher, Edward B. Marks, made mimeographed copies for us, and the song was taught to and sung by a chorus of five hundred colored school children.
Shortly afterwards my brother and I moved away from Jacksonville to New York, and the song passed out of our minds. But the school children of Jacksonville kept singing it; they went off to other schools and sang it; they became teachers and taught it to other children. Within twenty years it was being sung over the South and in some other parts of the country. Today the song, popularly known as the Negro National Hymn, is quite generally used.
The lines of this song repay me in an elation, almost of exquisite anguish, whenever I hear them sung by Negro children.

 

Lift every voice and sing   

Till earth and heaven ring,

Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;

Let our rejoicing rise

High as the listening skies,

Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.   

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,

Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,

Bitter the chastening rod,

Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;   

Yet with a steady beat,

Have not our weary feet

Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,

We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,

Out from the gloomy past,   

Till now we stand at last

Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,   

God of our silent tears,

Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;

Thou who hast by Thy might   

Led us into the light,

Keep us forever in the path, we pray.

Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,

Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;

Shadowed beneath Thy hand,   

May we forever stand.   

True to our God,

True to our native land.

?

 

Source: Complete Poems (2000) 

The Creation             

James Weldon Johnson, 1871 - 1928

And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
I’m lonely—
I’ll make me a world.

And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said: That’s good!

Then God reached out and took the light in his hands,
And God rolled the light around in his hands
Until he made the sun;
And he set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
And the light that was left from making the sun
God gathered it up in a shining ball
And flung it against the darkness,
Spangling the night with the moon and stars.
Then down between
The darkness and the light
He hurled the world;
And God said: That’s good!

Then God himself stepped down—
And the sun was on his right hand,
And the moon was on his left;
The stars were clustered about his head,
And the earth was under his feet.
And God walked, and where he trod
His footsteps hollowed the valleys out
And bulged the mountains up.

Then he stopped and looked and saw
That the earth was hot and barren.
So God stepped over to the edge of the world
And he spat out the seven seas—
He batted his eyes, and the lightnings flashed—
He clapped his hands, and the thunders rolled—
And the waters above the earth came down,
The cooling waters came down.

Then the green grass sprouted,
And the little red flowers blossomed,
The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky,
And the oak spread out his arms,
The lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground,
And the rivers ran down to the sea;
And God smiled again, 
And the rainbow appeared,
And curled itself around his shoulder.

Then God raised his arm and he waved his hand
Over the sea and over the land,
And he said: Bring forth! Bring forth!
And quicker than God could drop his hand,
Fishes and fowls
And beasts and birds
Swam the rivers and the seas,
Roamed the forests and the woods,
And split the air with their wings.
And God said: That’s good!

Then God walked around,
And God looked around
On all that he had made.
He looked at his sun, 
And he looked at his moon,
And he looked at his little stars;
He looked on his world
With all its living things,
And God said: I’m lonely still.

Then God sat down—
On the side of a hill where he could think;
By a deep, wide river he sat down;
With his head in his hands,
God thought and thought,
Till he thought: I’ll make me a man!

Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky, 
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of his hand;
This great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till he shaped it in is his own image;

Then into it he blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen.      Amen.

 

Louise Erdrich/ Genre of Captivity Narratives

"Captivity narratives go back to the very beginnings of American literature in the 17th century, and were the first literary form dominated by women’s experience. The earliest and most popular was “A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” (1682), which went through four editions the year it was published, and 15 when it was republished in America and England. Rowlandson, the wife of a Puritan minister, and her three children were taken hostage by Narragansett Indians in February 1676. Six-year-old Sarah was wounded in the raid on their village, and died nine days later in her mother’s arms; the other two children were sold to different tribes, and Mary was forced to travel with her captors, trekking about 150 miles north until she was ransomed to her husband in May."       

 

       "Rowlandson had never written anything before she was kidnapped, but her book vividly dramatizes the psychological stages of the abduction experience, from the violent and disorienting “taking” to the “grievous” captivity, which Rowlandson divided into “removes,” because the Indians moved camp 20 times. Step by painful step, she was being removed from her life as a pious Puritan matron and entering the harsh world of the Narragansetts, where she found that her will to survive was stronger than her fear or grief. She surprised herself with her endurance and ability to adapt. She ate food that previously would have disgusted her, including raw horse liver and bear meat. Regarding the Indians as savages, she also learned to acknowledge their humanity, and to negotiate and bargain with them. After being ransomed, Rowlandson relived her ordeal for many months in dreams and flashbacks of “the night season.” But as she slowly adjusted to her return, Rowlandson came to understand how much she had changed, and found emotional expression, religious grace and public acceptance through writing her story. As an author of a book about suffering and redemption, she was able to re-enter Puritan society in a new role."

          - excerpted from "Dark Places" by feminist critic, Elaine Showalter 

 

The whole essay, which considers Mary Rowlandson's captivity alongside the modern kidnapping cases of Jacee Dugard and the three girls who were held in captivity in Cleveland, can be read using the link below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/books/review/tradition-of-captivity-narratives.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 

An incredibly talented Native American writer, Louise Erdrich, composed the poem, "Captivity" below in response to Rowlandson's narrative. Erdrich is primarily a novelist, know for great books like Tracks and The Round House, but here she uses her lyrical voice to show the human capacity to love and accept within crisis.

Just as a side note, one of top 5 favorite books is Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. That novel fits into this genre of tales of kidnapping and how one can affiliate, understand and even love one's captor. It explores an upheaval in a fictional South American country where a whole mansion of diplomats, socialites, and even the opera singer brought in to entertain them are held hostage by political dissidents. I highly suggest you read it, and anything else by Patchett!

Captivity

By Louise Erdrich b. 1954 Louise Erdrich

He (my captor) gave me a bisquit, which I put in my pocket, and not daring to eat it, buried it under a log, fearing he had put something in it to make me love him.

—From the narrative of the captivity of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, who was taken prisoner by the Wampanoag when Lancaster, Massachusetts, was destroyed, in the year 1676

The stream was swift, and so cold   

I thought I would be sliced in two.   

But he dragged me from the flood   

by the ends of my hair.

I had grown to recognize his face.

I could distinguish it from the others.   

There were times I feared I understood   

his language, which was not human,   

and I knelt to pray for strength.

We were pursued by God’s agents   

or pitch devils, I did not know.

Only that we must march.

Their guns were loaded with swan shot.

I could not suckle and my child’s wail   

put them in danger.

He had a woman

with teeth black and glittering.   

She fed the child milk of acorns.

The forest closed, the light deepened.

I told myself that I would starve

before I took food from his hands   

but I did not starve.

One night

he killed a deer with a young one in her   

and gave me to eat of the fawn.

It was so tender,

the bones like the stems of flowers,   

that I followed where he took me.   

The night was thick. He cut the cord   

that bound me to the tree.

After that the birds mocked.

Shadows gaped and roared

and the trees flung down

their sharpened lashes.

He did not notice God’s wrath.

God blasted fire from half-buried stumps.

I hid my face in my dress, fearing He would burn us all   

but this, too, passed.

Rescued, I see no truth in things.   

My husband drives a thick wedge   

through the earth, still it shuts   

to him year after year.

My child is fed of the first wheat.   

I lay myself to sleep

on a Holland-laced pillowbeer.   

I lay to sleep.

And in the dark I see myself   

as I was outside their circle.

They knelt on deerskins, some with sticks,   

and he led his company in the noise   

until I could no longer bear

the thought of how I was.

I stripped a branch

and struck the earth,

in time, begging it to open

to admit me

as he was

and feed me honey from the rock.

?

 

Louise Erdrich, “Captivity” from Original Fire: Selected and New Poems. Copyright © 2003 by Louise Erdrich. Reprinted with the permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Barbie

"If Barbie were an actual woman, she would be 5'9" tall, have a 39" bust, an 18" waist, 33" hips and a size 3 shoe. She likely would not menstruate... she'd have to walk on all fours due to her proportions." Slayen estimates Barbie would weigh 110 pounds and have a BMI of 16.24."- Huffington Post

This is the image of beauty that many little girls internalize through their toys. Barbie is not real. She doesn't represent an attainable aesthetic yet this concept of beauty has dominated our culture. What's beautiful? Long, flowing hair. Perfect skin. Even Barbies with different skin colors look just the same- they just literally changed the skin color of the doll. Tiny feet, tiny waist, tiny everything... except long legs and big breasts.

I reject Barbie! When my daughters decided to give their Barbies mowhawks and decorate them with permanent markers, it was a strange vindication. The poem below, by Marge Piercy, represents the experience of a little girl who is not like Barbie and satirically reveals what happens to her from having accepted the Barbie-like culture of beauty.

Following is a link to a video about a new doll that just came out about Barbie's real self- an actual shape, with realistic skin tone and features. The manufacturer made this doll because there were no dolls that looked real.


"Barbie Doll" by Marge Piercy

This girlchild was born as usual
and presented dolls that did pee-pee
and miniature GE stoves and irons
and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.
Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:
You have a great big nose and fat legs.

She was healthy, tested intelligent,
possessed strong arms and back,
abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.
She went to and fro apologizing.
Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs.

She was advised to play coy,
exhorted to come on hearty,
exercise, diet, smile and wheedle.
Her good nature wore out
like a fan belt.
So she cut off her nose and her legs
and offered them up.

In the casket displayed on satin she lay
with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on,
a turned-up putty nose,
dressed in a pink and white nightie.
Doesn't she look pretty? everyone said.
Consummation at last.
To every woman a happy ending.        


         

       

Nikki Giovanni

Poet Nikki Giovanni has several poems that are in the same mode of self-embrace as the poems you read from Lucille Clifton and Maya Angelou. The most well-known is "Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)," which was featured in a book of poem for young people in 1972. Giovanni was inspired by a trip to Egypt and uses historical and Biblical allusions to explore the origins of the beautiful and strong black woman.

This poem has become so well-known that the title "ego trippin" became part of everyday language (and the name of an album by Snoop Dogg!). Urban Dictionary defines it as "thinking you're all that." In my opinion, that definition's negative connotation is missing the point. This is a positive statement about female fabulousness.

Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why) by Nikki Giovanni
I was born in the congo
I walked to the fertile crescent and built
   the sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
   that only glows every one hundred years falls
   into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad

I sat on the throne
   drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to europe
   to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is nefertiti
   the tears from my birth pains
   created the nile
I am a beautiful woman

I gazed on the forest and burned
   out the sahara desert
   with a packet of goat's meat
   and a change of clothes
I crossed it in two hours
I am a gazelle so swift
   so swift you can't catch me

   For a birthday present when he was three
I gave my son hannibal an elephant
   He gave me rome for mother's day
My strength flows ever on

My son noah built new/ark and
I stood proudly at the helm
   as we sailed on a soft summer day
I turned myself into myself and was
   jesus
   men intone my loving name
   All praises All praises
I am the one who would save

I sowed diamonds in my back yard
My bowels deliver uranium
   the filings from my fingernails are
   semi-precious jewels
   On a trip north
I caught a cold and blew
My nose giving oil to the arab world
I am so hip even my errors are correct
I sailed west to reach east and had to round off
   the earth as I went
   The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid
   across three continents

I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal
I cannot be comprehended except by my permission

I mean...I...can fly
   like a bird in the sky...

Don't you love it?! I also love a poem from her collection, Blues: For All the Changes, entitled "A Blackbird on My Knee." She uses wonderful metaphors to show a sense of loss and desire for her loved one to return to her. I love her sense of humor and unsentimental sense of emptiness.



A Blackbird on My Knee, by Nikki Giovanni (1999)

I'm windex without a window                Drano without the sludge
I'm wax without hardwood                     Mean without a grudge
I'm a poem without rhyme                      A clock without time
A rabbit on crutches                               A meat-eating deer
             Without you around one thing is clear

I'm a horse with no kick                        A bee with no sting
My hair won't plait                                My bell can't ring
I'm a quilt without filling                      I take without stealing
I'm savings without interest                  Stocks without bonds
             My goldfish have moved to my neighbor's ponds

                                                    I sing to no music
                                                    I rap to no beat
                          My heart is too heavy           I need a retreat

                         I'm lonely and weary              I can't get rest
                               I'm unsatisfied since I've had the best
                       You need to come home and take care of me
                   I said you need to come home and take care of me
           I'm just sitting in this vacant lot with a blackbird on my knee



Two more links to good poems by Giovanni:

"Walking Down Park"
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177834

"A Poem on the Assasination of Robert F. Kennedy"
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177840

 

Phenomenal Women!- Lucille Clifton and Maya Angelou

There is a great legacy of self-love from female African-American poets. It is an unapologetic embrace of women's fabulousness: their hair, their hips, their smile, their curves, their everything. It is a counter current against the machine of self-loathing and criticism that beleaguers so many women today. These strong black ladies take pride in who they are and remind us that we should too! I wanted to include the video clips so you can hear their voices, their unabashed swagger and pride in who they are. A feel-good moment for your day!

Lucille Clifton (a Pulitizer Prize winning poet from Maryland!): "Homage to My Hips"




Maya Angelou: "Phenomenal Woman"

Langston Hughes

February is African-American History Month and in celebration of that time, I will be featuring some classic and contemporary African-American poets in my blog. I will start out with the poet whose words resonante with me the most: Langston Hughes.

"Hughes, more than any other black poet or writer, recorded faithfully the nuances of black life and its frustrations. Although Hughes had trouble with both black and white critics, he was the first black American to earn his living solely from his writing and public lectures. Part of the reason he was able to do this was the phenomenal acceptance and love he received from average black people....  It was Hughes's belief in humanity and his hope for a world in which people could sanely and with understanding live together that led to his decline in popularity in the racially turbulent latter years of his life. Yet unlike younger and more militant writers, Hughes never lost his conviction that "most people are generally good, in every race and in every country where I have been."  -poetryfoundation.org

The first poem, "Mother to Son," is a lyrical dramatization of a black mother telling her son about the reality of the world they live in. (Conversations that are still happening today.)  She uses the imagery of the stair to illustrate to her young boy how things have never been easy for her, and also may not be for him. But he should keep climbing up those stairs, as she has done.

Mother to Son

By Langston Hughes 1902–1967 Langston Hughes

Well, son, I’ll tell you:

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

It’s had tacks in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor—

Bare.

But all the time

I’se been a-climbin’ on,

And reachin’ landin’s,

And turnin’ corners,

And sometimes goin’ in the dark

Where there ain’t been no light.

So boy, don’t you turn back.

Don’t you set down on the steps

’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.

Don’t you fall now—

For I’se still goin’, honey,

I’se still climbin’,

And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

 

The next poem I want to share is "Harlem," also by Langston Hughes. It is a brief but impactful poem about what happens when a dream is "deferred," postponed or indefinitely suspended. Lorraine Hansberry uses this poem as the inspiration for her award winning play, A Raisin in the Sun, that chronicles the life of the Younger family in south side Chicago in the 1950s. You MUST read this play if you haven't already!

(This by the way, is an excellent companion piece to Death of a Salesman. It covers many of the same themes of working paycheck-to- paycheck, and trying to achieve the American Dream. The family dynamics of the Loman family and the Younger family are very similar, even though the issue of race is present in Raisin.)?

 

Both poems are about wanting to live your best life and the necessity of having an upward-moving step/a dream (typically hopeful Hughes) but with an undercurrent of fatalistic reality.

Harlem

By Langston Hughes 1902–1967 Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

      Does it dry up

      like a raisin in the sun?

      Or fester like a sore—

      And then run?

      Does it stink like rotten meat?

      Or crust and sugar over—

      like a syrupy sweet?

      Maybe it just sags

      like a heavy load.

      Or does it explode?