In honor of Black History Month, the American Academy provides selection of poems newly added to their archive from literary magazines published during the Harlem Renaissance: Black Opals, Fire!!, and Voice of the Negro. I include a sampling. I couldn't resist starting with an introduction to "49 songs" and a reminder about the "Cinquain Form".
Last week, looking at David Shumate's poem, another aspect of poetry came up: It was interesting, but a monologue. The prime importance of poetry is the invitation to join in a suggestion of a conversation! Hopefully the selection this week will engage you to do so! Poems have a way to touch "the unsayable" which amplifies the challenge of guessing what the poet is trying to convey. The last three poems in this week's batch certainly provided extra challenge. I thank you all for offering what strikes you as we read them, and for sharing what you wonder about!
Poems
Funk(#49 Song) by Lily Painter ;Longings by Nellie Rathbone Bright 1898 –1977; Nameless by Mae Cowdery Cinquains by Lewis Grandison Alexander; November Night, by Adelaide Crapsey; A Thistle Will Do by Omar Berrada Statement of Teaching Philosophy by Keith Leonard Song of the Sun by James Longenbach (the full version here:
Nutshell
Funk: I provided a note about the "49 song", that originated as a "war-expedition song". How to adapt a precious tradition that maintains its resilience in a contemporary setting? We noted the poets slant homage with use of capital letters: Creator, Old World, as opposed to "new world", "ford" (as car). The rhythmic beat repeated in to the battle and back, the choice of adjectives like "unwanted" for dawn, "wrong" for eagles, the paradoxical ending, "my warrior, we aren't// the warriors, of anything // like that, anymore" punctuating the absence of the old "war-journey" and the honor of the warriors who used to "drift away". After several readings, the poet's words are confirmed: this is a "love anthem to reimagination", inheritance, survivance, reinforcing the old by way of reclamation".
Longings: The title informs us, and supports a tone that offsets the powerful verb "slay" in the first line... The poet has an art of "saying more without saying" in the first two lines which on first read sound confusing. One idea came up to read "things just things" as if speaking quickly with the "just things" as a hurried corrective. With no comma, the "just" as in "fair" is reduced to the meaning of "only". The line break jumps to the next line's surprising completion: things "they tell me I must do". The alternating rhyme abcb looks like it will set up a romantic lyric. The second stanza with windy longer lines, the curious "drams" (not a typo for "drums), is ee/ff. The third stanza dispenses with end rhyme, and threads in the slant rhyme of ee (echo of flee?) in feel, cheek, see,(twice) green, tree. Three "I wants" in this highly sensory stanza confirms the title, but then the satisfying drop to the voiceless fricative-filled flash flame like the fire... Black Opals is the name of the literary magazine Nellie Rathbone Bright co-founded, but also can refer to the highly-valued, rare, spectacular gem-stone used as metaphor for Black Women. Interesting that there was another quarterly devoted to "younger Negro Artists" called Fire.
Finality: For a poet with such a short life, one wonders what indeed was the cause of his death given this short poem. Some readers brought up the Buddhist idea of "no mud, no lotus", but given that the poet is black, given that so often a black person was not given a headstone or grave, that final two word ending or not so much about composting or cyclical relationship, but rather an abrupt and final nail rhyming with "forgot". One person wondered if a pun were intended with "bare" as implied bear. The tension of "God/Sod", the dark roots, and that death be the only triumph of the soul, shackles a sense of irreversibility of living conditions, whose only release is death.
Nameless: This poem published in the Christmas issue 1928 of Black Opals, uses the "delay tactic" of inverting the placement of the subject to the end. Sea, storm, wind... akin to beating heart, lashing storm, yearning song. Beautifully cadenced to lead to a break in the pattern with the arrival of night, which one senses as calming, the hope of prayer as a balm.
Cinquains: Also published in the same issue as Black Opals (https://poets.org/poem/cinquains). We remarked the punctuation of the first and fourth cinquain, the similar style as in Nameless, "how like" and mention of wind. A short form allows a certain "cutting out any BS". However, how the four related to each other, or if they were supposed to, was not clear. Perhaps 4 different snapshots inside his mind. For sure, we felt the group of four painted universal themes, not specific to people as "black" vs. "white".
November Night: to give an example of the cinquain form: 2/4/6/8/2 syllable lines. This one was the inventor of the form, Adelaide Crapsey and located on the Poets Walk that stretches out on University Ave in front of the Memorial Art Gallery.
A Thistle Will Do: Rather like the first poem, a sense of preserving a heritage in modern times. In the note, the poet refers to aspiring to the condition of "echo" and responding to the work by Palestinian artists, "May Amnesia Never Kiss us on the Mouth". https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5272
The artists examine how communities bear witness to experiences of violence, loss, displacement, and forced migration, collecting online recordings of everyday people singing and dancing in communal spaces in Iraq, Palestine, Syria, and Yemen since 2010. The project, considered a "performance" started in 2020 and continues. I spent a few hours trying to fathom the complexity of all the art performance which includes Infrarealismo,, the use of echo in sound, the play and punning using photography where we "are in the negative". I am overwhelmed.
Back to the poem. and the Poet. I found this interview: https://poetrysociety.org/poems-essays/stopping-by/stopping-by-with-omar-berrada This was very helpful, as I see he is trilingual, and most probably wrote "A Thistle will do" in English. The opening stanza with its enjambments providing double meaning already invites us into a magical work, and yet, he throws in the contemporary adjective, "tacky". There is a certain tenderness in his address to a daughter, a strange juxtaposition of "pixel pricks" and "unmanned hunters" with layers of echo of the past.
Some felt the poem was a case of "willful obfuscation" -- but I am not sure. For repair to happen, one must show the brokenness which he does with the disparate fragments of stanzas, the interrupted lyrics of songs... the break on the isolated island of the penultimate line "The song breaks". How to say the final line? How does he mean "landscape" -- is it related to the break of the song as the rejet of the enjambment that falls through space? Coupled with no break, A landscape return, starts with the same capitalization as the other starts of stanzas... and shares the same lack of a period as if to show a sample of an endless cycle. Without the note, I would be totally lost.
We did discuss the metaphor and qualities of a thistle as survivor in dry land, but also source of beauty, of food, and silken tufts that carry its seed.
Statement of Teaching Philosophy: A 15-line block, called a Statement, and yet is does not resemble a statement. A poem should "show, not tell" -- and usually relies on symbols, images, placement in its crafting. This seems like a snapshot of now with a memory of then. Is the message that we, as reader, also must do the struggle? "Punching" the cloud, could mean internet... Perhaps everyone's favorite line because it is one thing that CAN be said, understood, unlike fear of uncertainty. How do you understand the preparation of eulogies for all his loved ones? Why is that not included in a lesson plan? Do we shirk mention of death as we seek to understand the meaning of life?
Song of the Sun: just two verses.
I love that the final stanza, in italics stumbles through a staircase like a beam of light, broken, falling on itself with layered implications that double the meaning. Ex: Go if you are //Speaking. or you could understand, Go if you are / speaking/To me. Our eyes and brains doublecheck: To me (I have said this before), I say it now: I will be... The lines do not read in the way that I just wrote them -- but we are pattern-making animals, and want to see such patterns. We especially appreciated that the final verb, "Speak" could be an imperatif -- or that the poet is listening. The benefit of double-meanings.
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