Black Poetry: Feel It and Never Forget It

"We write because we believe the human spirit cannot be tamed and should not be trained."

--Nikki Giovanni, poet

"The Events which transpired five thousand years ago; five years ago or five minutes ago, have determined what will happen five minutes from now; five years from now or five thousand years from now. All history is a current event."
--John Henrik Clarke, historian

In Part I, we said that poetry drops knowledge and sings truth, wherever it leads, whomever it helps or hurts. We said that, because it is often painful, the truth business can be harrowing and is not for the faint of heart. Nonetheless, the poet continues to seek it. But the poet seeks something else: remembrance-- remembrance of people as individuals, as part of a collective, as connected to the rest of the world. Why is remembrance important?

In "The Language of Life," journalist Bill Moyer's book about 34 poets, Nobel-prizewinning poet Czeslaw Milosz said a people should always know its history. However, they should be especially careful to know and remember it today. "Our planet is getting smaller ever year, and with its fantastic proliferation of mass media is witnessing a process that defies definition, characterized by a refusal to remember." So the poet not only seeks the truth. The poet seeks but to have us remember the truth for today and tomorrow.

To help us remember, the poet drops knowledge but-- just as importantly--communicates truth in a way that we are more likely to remember it. The poet writes to have us feel it through the core of our being. To paraphrase singer Wilson Picket, the poet says, "Don't fight it. You got to feel it." For example, Walt Whitman, the father of American, or New World, poetry, could have described a slave auction and opined that it was immoral. Instead, he made a poetic skit of it to make us feel that it was wrong:

Gentleman, look on this wonder
Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high
Enough for it…

This is not only one, this the father of those who
Shall be fathers in their turns
In him the start of populous states and rich republics, Of
Him countless immortal lives with countless embodi-
ments and enjoyments (from “I Sing the Body Electric” by Walt Whitman).

Whitman doesn't ponder or debate the morality of slave auctions. He makes us feel the inhumanity of one human being selling another human being, the horror of slavery itself.

Remembrance of things big and small

But the poet seeks not only truth about big events or heroic figures but remembrance of the power in the little things. For example, poet Robert Hayden could have just informed us that, when he was young, he didn't appreciate his father as much as he should have. Instead, he puts us in a time capsule and takes us back to his childhood, into his home to see his father in a different and more unforgettable way. He lets us watch as his dad warms the room for Robert and then tells him to get dressed.

I’ I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
And slowly I would rise and dress,
caring the chronic angers of that house,
speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
what did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

T Through Hayden, we learn that sometimes a father’s love may be expressed best by the little things done everyday in silence.

B But Hayden sought not only to make us feel. He sought to have us never forget. Never forget, he said, the slaves who died in route to foreign shores, during the Middle Passage. Never forget, he said, Frederick Douglas, the most committed, the most passionate abolitionist of all. And never forget the sons of slaves who made it over and the trials and tribulations they went through-- sons like El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. Never forget what Malcolm Little went through before he became Malcolm X, before he became Malik El Shabazz, before he reached the Upas trees, before the fall:

T"The icy evil that struck his father down
and ravished his mother into madness
trapped him in violence of a punished self
struggling to break free.

As Home Boy, as Dee-troit Red,
he fled his name, became the quarry of
his own obsessed pursuit.

He conked his hair and Lindy-hopped,
zoot-suited jiver, swinging those chicks
in the hot rose and reefer glow.

His injured childhood bullied him.
He skirmished in the Upas trees
and cannibal flowers of the American Dream--
but could not hurt the enemy
powered against him there."

G Poet Gwendolyn Brooks wants us to remember Malcolm too. But she wants us to remember not the tragedy of his upbringing or the failure of his mission. Never forget, she said, the impact of his intelligence, courage, and fierce militancy on his people, black people:

O Original.
Hence ragged-round
Hence rich-robust.

H He had the hawk-man's eyes.
We gasped. We saw the maleness.
The maleness raking out and making guttural the air
And pushing us to wall.

A And in a soft and fundamental hour
A sorcery devout and vertical
Beguiled the world.

H He opened us--
Who was a key.

Who was a man.

P Poet Nikki Giovonni said remember with feeling civil rights organizer Fannie Lou Hamer. White jailers arrested her for registering black people to vote, forced two black men to beat her until their arms got tired; and they took over. Never forget, said Nikki, her down-to-earth sweetness, her printed dress...and her okra smile.

Remember with feeling, the Rosa Parks. But remember, with feeling, those who may not have marched in the streets but who contributed in a myriad of other ways. Nikki said remember, with feeling, Nina Simone, who performed countless numbers of concerts to raise funds for Dr. King's organization to get nonviolent marchers out of jail, who was an activist in her own way, because...

N Nina Simone

w Was a beacon against the stormy sea of bigotry and hatred
Was a quilt against the cold of indifference
Was courage to the cowardly

Was boldness to the timid
Was love to the lonely
Was Home to the lonely
Is ours for now
And evermore

A Amen

T The importance of people's history

P People's historian John Henrik Clarke said that a people who don't know their history are lost. Because they don't know what happened in the past, they don't know where they are today and have little knowledge of what they must do to survive in the future. He put it this way:

"History is not everything, but it is a starting point. History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. It is a compass they use to find themselves on the map of human geography. It tells them where they are, but more importantly, what they must be."

So here's to history and its ultimate historians, the poets, who not only document our lives, but who plunge deep into our souls, uncover truths, and give it back to us so passionately than we cannot help but remember.