Throughout the readings, I kept
hearing “say her name,” “say my name,” “I Am Somebody.” These commands are interwoven throughout the
civil rights movement and the Black Panthers who demanded on placards and in
chants while marching, “I AM A Man.” It
was only when I read the final poet assigned, Idris Goodwin, that I saw the poem
“Say my name” and marveled at the continuity.
Because of course, in Jason Carney’s poem, “America’s Pastime,” he
actually does say the names of people I shall now call AMERICA’S MARTYRS.
What Carney
captures and names “racist laughter” is the horrific gaze trained upon Black
American citizens tortured as entertainment. It takes a White man like Carney to speak
this truth for a white audience to finally hear. (I’m calling him white after his
self-identification on Def Poetry Jam as “Irish, Choctaw and ‘Snuff.’”) I can only hope that choir of white peers
will turn to his channel to hear him and silence its “Laughter singing.”
The poet
John Rodriguez died at a mere 30 years old.
He left a legacy in his poetry and in the poem Bronx Bombers he identifies what ties together so many of the poets
we’ve read in this selection:
“Nothing
else fuel artistry like rage”
We are looking at violence and what fuels the protest, the
refusal to go away, stay down, shut up, be silenced. Rodriguez names it in those six words, claims it
through chronicling Reagan’s shameful and criminal acts and calls our nation
out as one “without a conscience.”
Goodwin’s
insistence on the proper pronunciation of his name Idris, and the cross he’s born
because of his name is sanctified through a final claim: pride.
He can be proud of the African Quran name because it is distinct,
individual, it is identity that stands out. The poets we’ve read this week challenge that
notoriety of standing out – a visibility that’s cost them their lives at the
hands of violence rooted in deep bias and ignorance.
This
defiance, the demand to be addressed correctly, to spit words and create one’s
own prophecy of survival, to leave fingerprints in poems that prove these poets
of color lived is itself an act of resistance. Existence is resistance. To honor the breath that is Life, to become
one’s own lord or “God of whistling” as Danez Smith lays claim, is to become
that hand that frees you. These poems
become Lords of Living despite wearing the “red gown,” the “ruby gown” in an
“endless, bloody bow.”
How
sorrowful and tragic that Smith must call this what it is: endless.
May these poems be prayers that are finally heard and can lead to stopping, to ceasing to
ending this merciless acted-out violence upon the Black body.
I appreciate the thread that you find between these readings, the thread of recognizing those who have been brutally murdered by white violence and recognizing and remembering them. It is shameful that all too often, as you point out, it takes a white person to speak about these horrors to finally get a white audience to understand white violence against people of color. You point out that white audiences, largely, refuse to listen to a multiplicity of voices and/or they appropriate black and brown cultural traditions with no regard for the real violence enacted on black and brown people. Thank you for your words.
ReplyDeleteI like your focus on the importance of naming things. of 'it is important what you call a thing'. I think the idea of 'existence is resistance' is evident in a lot of the poems we read and is important for protest even though it would be nice sometimes if existence didn't have to mean resistance.
ReplyDeleteWe seem to be stuck on Themes in reading these poems when I'm dying to know how poets like you see the way these ideas are manipulated by the poet. In particular Goodwin uses so much technique in presenting his name--mythology as well as repetition-different typographical techniques, as well as sources of information. You are eloquent on ideas, but as a poet, you can mine more than what the poems say to you, right?
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