Poetry and Reason

 For those of you who follow this blog, you already know that I often turn to history in an effort to make sense of the present.  However, I also find poetry a source of clarity, and I will share part of a poem I recently read.  (Please excuse the condensing of the stanzas.) 

"Let America be America again.  Let it be the dream it used to be.  Let it be the pioneer on the plain seeking a home where he himself is free.  

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-- Let it be that great strong land of love, where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme that any man be crushed by one above.

O, let my land be a land where Liberty is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe."

As I read the 3 stanzas of this poem, it spoke to me about the division among Americans today, I thought of the divisiveness in Washington, the voting on such strict party lines.   

However, my sharing of the 3 opening stanzas omitted something important that the poet included between each stanza, concluding with "There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this 'homeland of the free' ".  

Image:  Library of Congress

The poet is Langston Hughes, a poet born in 1901, who died in 1967.  He wrote that poem in 1936, and while Black men had been given the right to vote in the 15th Amendment in 1870, attempted legal impediments and violence significantly delayed actual voting for many.  He certainly grew up in and continued to live in an era of separate drinking fountains, schools, restaurants, and much more. Consequently, he added between the opening stanzas of his poem, 'America never was America to me."  Yet, it is important to remember that he wrote the poem in 1936, and he lived through many changes in America after that.

His family history is important.  Both of his Great Grandmothers were enslaved, and both Great Grandfathers were their owners.  His Grandmother attended Oberlin College, and the man she married joined John Brown and was fatally wounded in the attack.  She remarried, and her husband brought their family to Kansas.  They were both educators, and their daughter and her husband remained in the same area of Missouri and Kansas, although he left the family to seek a more welcoming country.  Their son, Langston Hughes received most of his education in Lawrence, Kansas.

Langston Hughes is known for his novels, short stories, plays, poetry, operas, essays, and work for children.  At the time he wrote the poem I shared he had been invited with a group of Blacks planning to make a film in Russia.  The film was never made, but he did travel in China, Japan, and Korea.  Given his travels and his writings such as the one I shared, it is not surprising that he was among those hounded by Senator Joseph McCarthy.  Hughs explained the accusations against him that he did not have political feelings, nor did he read political documents.  Rather, his travels were an emotional effort "to find some way of thinking about this whole problem of myself."

What deeply changed his thinking was the willingness of Black soldiers, and perhaps particularly the Tuskegee Airmen, known as the Red Tails, who were willing to give their lives fighting for America in WW II.

Having researched all of that, I went back to his poem.  Yes, there is resentment and disappointment, yet there is also hope.  He wrote:  "I am a young man, full of strength and hope..., A Dream--Still beckoning to me!  O, let America be America again--The land that never has been yet--And yet must be--The land that's mine--The poor man's, Indian, Negro, ME--Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again."  

He concludes with these words:  We, the people, must redeem our land, the mines, the plants, the rivers, The mountains and the endless plain--All, all the stretch of these great green states--And make America again!

I don't believe most people think of Langston Hughes as a Kansan but just listen to his closing words:  America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath--America will be!  An ever-living seed, Its dream lies deep in the heart of me.  We, the people, must redeem Our land, the mines, the plain--All, all the stretch of these great green states--And make America again!

Yes, he did write "America never was America to me" between the first 3 stanzas of his poem," and many Americans today, in conclusion of the first month of our President, may be questioning whether America is excluding them, ignoring the Constitution they love.  But, in the end, Langston Hughes found hope.

April's Reminder to Enjoy Poetry

Photo credit:  Lyn Fenwick

 I don't know who is authorized to declare such things as "April is Poetry Month,...,"  but it raises a question that sounds like something Billy Collins might use to start a poem.

"It occurred to me

on a flight from London to Barcelona

that Shakespeare could have written

'This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England'

with more authority had he occupied

the window seat next to me

instead of this businessman from Frankfurt."

Excerpt from The Bard in Flight

Robert Frost said, "A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness."  However, not every poet finds inspiration in the same way.

Photo credit:  Lyn Fenwick, "Day After the 4th of July, Waiting for the Trash Man" 

In 1955, Beat Poet Allen Ginsberg was inspired to write "A Supermarket in California."

"What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked

down the side streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious

looking at the full moon.

In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the 

neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!"

Ginsberg's inspiration may not have been so different from that of Langston Hughes, who said, "I tried to write poems like the songs they sang on Seventh Street...," the block in Harlem where Hughes lived in NYC.

New Generations

Years ago, my husband and I went to a poetry reading where we heard Maxine Kumin read, and in her book that I bought that day is a poem titled, "For My Great-Grandfather:  A message Long Overdue,"  in which she describes the inspiration for the poem.

"...Great-Grandfather, old blue-eyes fox of foxes,

I have three pages of you.  That is all.

1895.  A three-page letter

from Newport News, Virginia, written

on your bleached-out bills of sale under the stern

heading:  Rosenberg The Tailor, Debtor,

A Full Line of Goods Of All The Latest In

Suiting And Pants.  My mother has just been born.

~   *   ~

You write to thank your daughter for the picture

of that sixth grandchild.  There are six more to come."

When I determined to share the journal of Kansas homesteader Isaac Werner at the center of history of the Populist Movement, it was a poem by Walt Whitman that inspired the structure of my book, "Prairie Bachelor."  Isaac's journal did not inspire me to write a poem, but a poet inspired me to structure the history of the Populist Movement through the eyes of a forgotten Kansas homesteader, and to begin the book with a funeral.

Photo credit:  Lyn Fenwick

Poetry comes in many forms, as the short selections I have chosen for this blog illustrate, and poems touch our lives in many ways.  Not everyone appreciates the same poems, nor must each person experience the same poem in the same way.  In his poem, "Music," Ralph Waldo Emerson finds music

"...not only in the rose."

"It is not only in the bird,

Nor only where the rainbow glows,

Nor in the song of a woman heard,

But in the darkest, meanest things

There alway, alway something sings."

Whatever poetry you enjoy, the annual reminder each April offers the opportunity to pull those neglected poetry books off the bookcase.  A poem might be just what you need during this unnatural season of Covid isolation. 

    

April Delight

When I awoke April 24, 2014, I had two appointments on my mind.  First, I needed to find the time during my busy day to post "Habits of the Past," the blog I had planned for that week because Isaac Werner loved Shakespeare and the previous day had been Shakespeare's birthday.  Second, my friend Shirley had invited me to join her at a poetry reading by Kansas Poet Laureate Wyatt Townley at the Kinsley Public Library.  At that time, I did not remember that April was the National Poetry Month, although my intended blog fit that celebration perfectly!  

Although Shakespeare was apparently Isaac's favorite writer, he was very interested in the lives of other famous writers.  Among the books in his library were Wharton's History of English Poetry, Authors' Classical Dictionary, Allibone's Dictionary of American & British Author's (2 Vols.), Fiske's Manuel of Classical Literature, Abbott's Shakespearean Grammar, Clark's Shakespearean Concordance, Lippencott's Biographical Dictionary, and Harbauch's Poems.  His engravings, stereoscope collection, and photograph cards also included images of poets and writers.  Isaac was on my mind as I entered the Kinsley Public Library for the reading.

Wyatt Townley, KS Poet Laureate 

We arrived at the library early and enjoyed the opportunity to meet the poet, Wyatt Townley, purchase books, and meet her husband, Roderick Townley who is also a poet and author.  Not all poets have the gift of both writing beautiful poetry and reading beautifully; however, Wyatt certainly possesses both talents, as well as a gift for public speaking, weaving together her poems, the stories behind her poems, and bits of poetry from other poets.  I was surprised when she quoted the same lines from William Carlos Williams that I had included in my blog!  (See "Habits of the Past, 4-24-2014.) 

A former dancer, Wyatt has transformed that sense of grace and motion into her dual roles of poet and yoga instructor.  Add to that a cunning sense of humor, and you have the ingredients for a compelling hour of poetry.  I was very proud to see that our current Kansas Poet Laureate represents the face of poetry to those within and beyond our state so well. 

Langston Hughes

What I did not know was that the evening of April 24, 2014, the celebration of poetry continued at Lincoln Center in NYC as the Academy of American Poets presented an evening of poetry, recited by a luminary group of actors and musicians, reading poems written by a wide variety of poets--what AP writer Hillel Italie called "a mini-survey of American verse."  As examples, musician Esperanza Spalding read "Life is Fine" by Langston Hughes, (1902-1967), with the defiant closing stanza:

Though you may hear me holler,

And you may see me cry--

I'll be dogged, sweet baby,

If you gonna see me die.

Life is fine!     Fine as wine!     Life is fine!

Maya Angelou with President Obama

Meryl Streep read poets Richard Wilbur and Sylvia Plath, while Kevin Kline read a poem by the popular Billy Collins called "To my favorite 17-year-old high school girl," and Tina Fey read James Tate.

Rosie Perez read 2013 Medal of Honor recipient Maya Angelou's triumphant poem "Still I Rise."
     You may trod on me in the very dirt
     But still, like dust, I'll rise. 

Edna St. Vincent Millay
photo credit Carl Van Vechten

Actor Patrick Stewart read Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem, "God's World," which he indicated was a personal favorite, sharing the story of having experienced the incredible beauty of a New England autumn that left him in tears and having been given Millay's poem that same weekend.

     O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!

     ...

     Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag

     And all but cry with color!

     ...

                    Lord, I do fear

     Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year;

     My soul is all but out of me,--let fall

     No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

What an incredible day of poetry April 24th turned out to be for me, and since I had remembered Isaac by sharing some of the poetry he may have admired, it seemed appropriate for me to use this week's post to share some more recent American poetry.  The e-mails and comments you sent in response to last week's post indicate that while not everyone who reads this blog particularly appreciates poetry, many of you do, and I hope others will read these blogs and consider picking up a book of poetry at the library, or perhaps some old textbook from high school or college long ignored.  Or, next time you are in a bookstore, you might find the poetry aisle and see if some modern poet is to your taste.  I will close with a poem that my unexpected day of poetry inspired me to write.  (The three lines that open the poem were spoken to my husband when he found me reading aloud from the book "The Afterlives of Trees" by Wyatt Townley, which I had bought at her reading the previous day.  The lines were offered to explain why I was reading aloud to only myself, and this poem grew from that short explanation.)

Poems only live when spoken.

When you read in silence,

they just lie there on the page--

Stillborn from the poet's pen,

awaiting a voice

to coax the breath of life

into the lovely words.

                                    (c) Lyn Fenwick