A Mystifying Silence: Big and Black

Author(s): Major Jackson

Source: The American Poetry Review, Vol. 36, No. 5 (SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007), pp. 19-
25
Published by: Old City Publishing, Inc.
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 Major Jackson
A Mystifying Silence: A Column
Big and Black
Nigger, your breed ain't metaphysical. formy
readings swirled about me, I groaned in an up
enviable verisimilitude that allows reade
?Robert Penn Warren, "Pondy Woods" stairs bedroom. I had to reschedule my poetryto survey
read and delve into the interior motivatio
andI psychic
ing to a later date in the residency. Originally was terrain of their characters. Poets, i
BEGINNING IN EARNEST HIS LONG AND slated to present with the famed Southern writer are content to create "speakers" in th
contrast,
preeminent literary career in the 1930s,
Barry it is
Hannah. Being the younger and poems emergent
who merely serve as stand-ins for their
safe to say poet and novelist Robert Penn
writer, likely I would have had to read first.
terior selves. Evident in the most experimental
Warren never envisioned a black readership, Mythenillness turned out to be a mild blessing;
driven poems, even there one detects the constr
or today. Yet, the above excerpted line of verse
Barryfrombegan his reading without any contextual
tion of an alter being. Only a few poets consistently
his poem "Pondy Woods," inspired by ization the 1926 or prefatory remarks with an opening para
and consciously avoid this strategy, but they str
lynching of Primus Kirby in Todd County, graph Kenwhich contained this sentence from mehisas clas
mere monologists.
tucky, has prompted over the years sic varied
short re story collection Airships (1978):Whereas
"ThisRobert Penn Warren under-envisione
sponses from black readers, literary artists,
niggerandwas eating a banana, hanging his
hisleg out audience, contemporary poets lag pr
reading
scholars, if not oft cited as an example ofthe
thefront
work seat on the curb," which evoked a hesi
cisely behind fiction writers because we ove
ings of racist ideology in 20th-century tant
American
then hearty spurt of nervous laughter from
envision a readership. I do not mean by this th
those
literature. Writing for the African American in attendance in the humid barn we
Review, on the
givepas
great consideration to whole groups of p
critic Mark Sanders remarks, Warren "compressed
toral Bennington campus where readings pleare held
different from us or as our audience, but th
into five deceptively economic feet nearly a half
in the summer, and as one could have predicted,
we are less willing to be repulsive and repugnan
millennium of white hegemonic philosophy, bothalienated the few black people in
roundly in the
our au
poems, so caught up in our quest for lingu
its rhetorical strategies and underlying presup
dience. Too often and still, all across corporate
tic and emotional beauty and earnestness?
boardrooms,
positions." In an interview for the Washington Star, military barracks, and college dorm
earnest are we in the vision of poetry as the provin
nearly half a century later after Warren penned
rooms in America, women, poor folk, gays and les
of communal good that we fail to create "speaker
his infamous rebuke, poet and Howard Univer
bians, and people of color are expected to exhibit
in our poems who are contemptible and dishono
sity professor Sterling Brown famously retorted,
"a sense of humor" and to quietly laughable.
and joke
Add to this our knee-jerk desire to hide ou
"Cracker, your breed ain't exegetical." along when the very core of their humanity
faults
is or
be the less admirable parts of our own liv
Warren could not have imagined or predicted
ing assaulted. in our poetry. There's a little racist, sexist, classi
such posthumous and contemptuous come-backs
The rational, appreciative writer and coll?gial
from such distinguished and alien quarters as a in me would have recognized that the
humanist
black literary critical establishment. The question
Alabama-born and Mississippi-bred Pulitzer prize
Contemporary fiction writers, it seems to me,
of the poem's audience, interesting enough, beliesnovelist, and short story writer with the
nominee, are more willing than poets to take risks an
its irony; although the admonition, farcically spo Southern lilt in his voice was simply
languorous
ken by a buzzard, is addressed to a fugitive black
explore reigning racial attitudes ...
accomplishing what any fiction writer worth his
man on the run from a posse after apparently as
ink would execute in constructing his story, the
saulting a white woman, more likely than not War
building of character through diction and setting,
ageist, homophobe in all of us. So, we expose ou
ren had in mind as his ideal audience forbut
his this
poem would not have prevented me, especially
selves in more acceptable and overly mined area
fable that notorious gang of poets andinscholars
my younger years, from wanting to of embarrassment
open up a and shame, even then, see
known as the Fugitives who launched New can of Criti
kick-ass and whip some Barry Hannah butt.
ing the redemptive glow of self-reflection and t
cism from their perch at Vanderbilt University in
Regretfully (and, at times, proudly), I have a his
post-epiphanic splendor of personal triumph an
Nashville, Tennessee: Donald Davidson,tory
Randall
of reacting violently to being called the N-word;
enlightenment. If we do not suffer from any of th
Jarrell, Merrill Moore, John Crowe Ransom, and
once, in Columbus, Ohio, the hip-hop dancer
above and
-isms, we definitely do not write poems th
Allen Tate, in short, white, literate southern men
choreographer Rennie Harris and I found
reflectour
our personal growth. But more importantly
like himself. The provocative poem is a performa
selves crossing six lanes of highway traffic
theone late
readership we envision prevents us from wa
tive argument that attempts to deify and consecrate
morning, fleeing after I punched a beefy,ing
white guy
to offend, not a group, but the overwhelmingly
the dominance and superiority of white, intelligent progressive
in the nose for hurling that all too familiar and un times in which we live and write.
men over perceived instinct-driven blackinventive
men. epithet across a counter at me; the
Someother
might inaccurately allege that such a se
However, were Robert Penn Warren writing occasionin occurred when I was eighteenguarded
years old and disapproving milieu is the resu
today's highly policed culture and exchange of
in a fraternity house on a college campusof in Phil for a recovery /therapy-driven cultu
writing
ideas, and thus, to a more ethnically diverse andas rap music was being played. against the backdrop of "political correctness."
adelphia
politically sensitive audience of readers and Fortunately,
critics, I was spared the self:conscious
disagree and contend that poets and writers, wh
rest assured he would be hard pressed awareness
and most and dilemma of wondering if away somehowfrom their pencils and writing pads or la
likely excoriated for such retrograde beliefs
Barry about
and the roomful of largely white,tops,
aspiring
like everyone else, have the option of beh
black folk and explicit representations of white
writers at Bennington who revered him as inga model
as decent human beings, of being though
racist thought. A reading public today, despite
man ofthe letters were in cahoots and makingful me
andandconsiderate, which is not a question
author's intention, would likely receive the speaker
other black people in the barn the recipients
"politics" ofor "correctness," or even the invisi
in the poem as an embodiment and mouthpiece of inside literary joke. Having forces
some cruel, matured that make one self-aware about one's mor
the author's own narrow-minded ideas about non from my more explosive, younger
somewhat self,
groundings or lack thereof. It is quite the clich
white peoples. I confess; I am among thattruth
censori
is, had I been present for Barry's reading,
to assertI some of America's most superb writer
ous group, yet wonder, if such a hypercritical
likely vig
would have been, in the end, gratefulleaveformuch
his to be desired in their social interacti
ilance actually endangers writers' freedom to fully
representation of a white southern racist with their
(which I families and others; at least, the sha
characterize with great candor the complexity
hear, heof renders well), even if it struck me
of initially
their lives is not eclipsed by the false appearan
their full humanity? Does it not benefit as
us offensive,
to have provided the story were artfully writ
of normality. Yet, as artists, endowed with gifts an
even the most disdainful beliefs and opinions
ten andrepelegantly sought to earn my empathy.
the responsibility of giving full expression to th
resented in our art? I wonder how much self-cen I would not have laughed.
However, range of human beliefs, thoughts, experiences, a
sorship or ambivalence is at work among white
Contemporary fiction writers, it seems to me,
possibilities, the yellow, lined legal pages or t
poets with respect to writing about race.are more willing than poets to take risks and screen
blank ex is fair game. The imagination shou
Last year in June, my inaugural teaching semes
plore reigning racial attitudes of today and no
know yesmoral bounds?only seek its greatest ae
ter at Bennington Writing Seminars found me very
terday; of late, among them one thinks thetic
of Susan heights. The formal demands of writi
ill and bedridden for a few days due to food poisonRichard Ford, Colson Whitehead,
Straight, Richard
poetry will naturally resolve the moral questions
ing. Laid up in the Alumni House, whilePowers,
the activ and Edward P. Jones. In my opinion, ficwinning book Democracy, Culture, and t
In his
ities of creative writing workshops, lectures, and
tion writers anticipate less severe criticism
Voiceandofaim
Poetry, poet Robert Pinsky asserts, "Poe

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007 19

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is not the voice of virtue and right thinking?not global conflicts in South America, Africa and the and politics, conversation-stoppers and unpleas
the rhyme department of any progressive move Middle East, the Iraq war, corporate greed, world ant matter for any intimate gathering, especially
ment." Maybe some of that unacknowledged leg poverty, immigration, and militarism now serve as the hallowed lines of American verse. We pretend
islating Shelley speaks of as poets' work involves the terrain upon which we journey today in imag a world of racelessness out of interest in the greater
acknowledging and giving form to the dark im ining humanity writ large and individually in our good, the democratic spirit in action, or we follow
pressions of which we are constituted, including works of art. It seems incongruous, then, to have the invisible, liberal mission of seeing the virtue
the quiet moments in which we enact our bigoted such a lack of poems written by white poets that and worth of all people despite their ethnic and
beliefs and fears. The success of the Lions Gate address our cultural plurality, for the road to diver racial origins. But, for real, the differences remain
film Crash directed by Paul Haggis, which grossed sity has had an impact upon us all, whether we care and often they are materially evident, nevermore
$54.5 million in box office receipts in 2005, owed to acknowledge it or not. so than when we discuss illegal immigration and
its success, supposedly, to tapping into those We can delude ourselves if we like, but we unde revisit the topic of reforming the nation's Immi
uniquely American prejudices. niably harbor racialized views, and suppressed gration Bill, which, truth be told, is an affront to
All this to say, in a country whose professed thoughts about various ethnic groups. Race is still the Hispanic community.
strength is best observed in its plurality of cultures, the most controversial social phenomenon that de So deeply embedded are our racial views, it takes
what seems odd to me (and this I find most ap fines America as a country. A foreign policy such some public figure's blunder to ignite a firestorm
palling about contemporary American poetry) is as a "War on Terror" and the resultant influx of im of criticism that triggers us to vaguely confront our
the dearth of poems written by white poets that ad migrants from the Middle East spotlights ethnic own intolerance and prejudiced beliefs, or worse,
dress racial issues, that chronicle our struggle as difference and race as well as our attitudes towards
our cosmic indifference. In this setting, the per
a democracy to find tranquility and harmony as a diversity and inclusion in unique but all too famil sistence of race in public dialogue seems reserved
nation containing many nations. Why is this? How iar ways; racial profiling took on a whole new solely for nightly news and talk radio and occurs
it is that poetry does not reflect and serve as a meaning shortly after the tragedy of September only after controversial remarks are made, merely
record of the evolution of our racial attitudes and nth and still guides Americans' feelings about for the purpose of ensuring viewer/listener rat
progress much like American fiction from Harriet Arab-American men in turbans. Earlier this year, ings. Moreover, we discover the unpopular view is
Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin to Philip Roth's CNN reported that 60% of white people and 84% not so unpopular, and in fact, is widely held.
The Human Stain} Well, it does to some extent, but of black people consider racism a problem in When, earlier in the year, the radio announcer
the canon is severely lop-sided and asymmetrical. America. As I write, the nation's highest court is referred to a group of young, black, and academi
And without that complete, wide-ranging and far justifying the decision to rule against measures cally gifted student-athletes as "nappy-headed
reaching racial dialogue as a literary and cultural that once guaranteed equal opportunity in educa ho's," what we experienced was not only the con
legacy reflected in our poetry, discussions of race tion to all races, by saying such assurances violate tinued denigration and hostility toward women,
and ethnicity will forever be a spectator sport. the principle of a "Color-blind" legal system. As but another predictable media reaction to an ex
We are a country shaped and defined by ethnic Nobel laureate Toni Morrison makes clear in her hausted topic in desperate need of new and hon
stories of strife and victory. Yesterday, the enslave popular meditation on the subject, Playing in the est perspectives. Similarly, the washed-up come
ment of African peoples, the Civil War, Emanci Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, "State dian who spewed a volcanic tirade of racial epithets
pation, a violent post-Reconstruction, European ments to the contrary, insisting on the meaning at a group of black and Latino audience members
immigration, the Jewish Holocaust, Japanese in lessness of race to the American identity, are them at a comedy club in reaction to being heckled also
ternment, and two World Wars determined the selves full of meaning." triggered another empty series of news hour spe
political and moral grounds by which our art, liter To some extent, I understand the assertion, "race cials, as we attempted to come to grips with yet
ature, and culture achieved its greatest moments. as a social construct," and the less theoretical rea another distasteful display of suppressed racial
Today, the aftermath of wars in Vietnam and Korea, sons as to why race has gone the way of religion loathing. The comedian's comfort at shouting such

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20 THE AMERICAN POETRY REVI

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hate-filled words only evidenced, once again, the
reduction of etiquette regarding language in our
culture and an unmasked anger at having to con
form to an age of civility and regard towards oth
ers of different ethnic origins. The very words he
used that evening reveal his nostalgia for a past of
less decency and consideration: "Fifty years ago
we'd have you upside down with a f-fork up
your a?." We feel a false sense of purging only af
ter such renegade figures are publicly fired or
themselves extend public apologies. The charade
repeats ad nauseam.
So, why should I expect our experiences and in
nate feelings about others different from us find
their way into our poetry? Our inchoate identities
and words oversimplify our actual selves. As a re
sult, when we attempt to give expression to our
thoughts about race we collapse into frustration
and cannot quite articulate what exactly we feel
based on our experiences. To quote Donald Hall:
"When we wish to embody in language a complex
of feelings or sensations or ideas, we fall into inar
ticulateness; attempting to speak, in the heat or
love of argument, we say nothing or we say what
we do not intend." More profoundly, he states:
[Poems] "exist to say the unsayable." Poetry gives
a far richer sensate experience and representa
tion of nuanced opinions and lives that are far too
easily summarized with the racial joke or preju
diced view.
More, I believe in poetry's power to enact em
pathy. If lyric poetry allows us, as Helen Vendler
has pointed out, to inhabit the consciousness of
others, then it follows that poetry becomes a means
by which we leave ourselves, for a moment, and
become someone else. That escape and entering
widens our humanity. I am William Butler Yeats
when I read out loud "Easter, 1916," and memori
alize, too, those who sacrificed their lives for a
cause they believed in. The poem becomes a win
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dow for me to understand martyrdom in our own
time. With each poem ingested, our interiority
grows and expands towards inclusivity, how we
come to bridge differences between us.
On the other hand, quite possibly, there is a limit
to our empathy. Do we really possess an appetite
for nuanced representations of racial attitudes and
experiences in our poetry for the purpose of culti
vating compassion in our nation? There is a dis
turbing and relative silence in American poetry
that refuses to be filled by the majority of white
American poets. Needless to say, pages of poetry
written by black, Latino, Native, and Asian Amer
ican poets do great service. Well, it's not like peo
ple of color have a choice, now do they?especially
if they are being true to themselves and writing
their lives. All else is manufacture. Over the cen
turies, many American poets of various ethnici
ties, from Rita Dove to Jessica Hagedorn and Agha
Shahid Ali to Sherman Alexie, have deemed it aes
thetically fertile, socially and politically relevant
even, to portray fraught and enlightening encoun
ters of ethnic difference, to explore joyful nuances
of the color line, while white poets have been more
reluctant to address the subject with veracity and
candor. Why?
I posed this question to many white American
poets over the past year. In their own voices, some
responses included: not wanting to cause discom
fort in the reader, highlighting poetry's entertain
ment value in the Age of Billy Collins; others point
to a lack of encounter and experience with non
white peoples, feeling they would not authorita
tively contribute much in the discussion of race re
lations; in the Era of Confession, some believe
writing about race is opportunistic and disingen
uous, for it is not a white issue, but an issue for
black people and other people of color; while oth
ers fear embarrassment and the negative reaction
of friends and strangers, once again, envisioning
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a liberal-minded and retributive readership that
would conduct a virtual, public lynching or a poet
icized Truth and Reconciliation trial.
As stated earlier, the presence of a perceived
hypercritical audience actually imperils well-mean
ing people from fervently expressing with candor
their true feelings and opinions. A friend who is
an executive director of a non-profit organization
noticed the willingness of her board members to
discuss openly questions of race, but once a Latino
man joined the board, the chatty trustees suddenly
felt stifled and unable to freely argue and debate
for fear of being erroneously accused of possess
ing racist views.
I will add another reason: perhaps the complex
ities of race in the 21st century far outreach our
imaginative capability. Another friend, who is a
Foreign Service Officer in the State Department,
called me up with an experience she felt I should
write about. Having entered a hired car after work
in Washington, D.C., where she was learning to
speak Urdu in preparation for her next tour of duty,
she happily put her new language acquisition to
work by asking the driver, who had been speaking
on his cell phone, from what region of southeast
Asia did he immigrate? Exuberantly, the man re
sponded his native country and was quite pleased
that this young, black woman from Louisiana
could converse in his native tongue. Language
brought them together. He praised her for her
clarity and diction, and reported that his elderly
mother was quite lonely in this country, and won
dered if she had time, would she consider visiting
her for an hour in the evenings, while he drove his
taxi; that way she could further her proficiency in
speaking Urdu prior to her departure overseas, and
his mother would be a little less lonely. He would
pay her.
Then, at a stoplight, in the far right lane of a busy
intersection, in which the light was green, her new
Paula McLain
Alicia Ostriker
Judith Vollmer
Anne Waldman {spring)
Michael Waters
friend was unable to turn due to heavy traffic. A taxi
driver honked and honked behind them. Suddenly,
the irritated taxi driver, who looked to be from West
Africa, pulled alongside them and yelled, "Nigger.
Go back where you came from?" Her new friend
shouted back as he was turning the car, "Nigger!
You go back where you came from?" They sat and
spoke not another word in English or Urdu the
remainder of the taxi ride.
Whatever the reason, the mystifying silence
around race highlights white American poets' un
settling and conspicuous unresponsiveness and
ambivalence towards a very important aspect of so
cial life in America, one given heft by our founding
documents, our history of immigration and war,
and by our being a beacon for so many disenfran
chised peoples across the globe who arrive here with
the hope of interweaving into the fabric of our
democracy. At least Robert Penn Warren and the
other Fugitives took a stand and compellingly wrote
poems and novels, albeit at times reprehensibly,
from the position of being white male Americans.
We knew where they stood regarding the "race ques
tion," which could allow us to substantively engage
the tradition of white southern identity in Ameri
can letters, and thus, each other quite candidly.
Luckily, a few contemporary white poets writing
today, even at the risk of criticism from contrarian
black poet-critics such as myself, actually do ex
hibit great hubris and are willing to take the risk
of censure and disapproval. They eschew a vigilant
readership and welcome the challenge of finding
new figures, innovative language, and expressive
forms to exploring their own attitudes about race
while thoughtfully redressing some of the racial
imbalance in American life. Some of these writers
include: Sharon Olds, Ed Pavlic, Sean Thomas
Daugherty, Henry Taylor, Philip Levine, Jake Adam white poet's home. Both parties are literally and fig
York, C. K. Williams, Tony Hoagland, T. R. Hum uratively in motion, being shuttled to their separate
mer and a few others for whom race is a consis neighborhoods and segregated destinations. One
tently vital and crucial subject. Poet Jim Daniels such poem, "I Am Not a Racist," which appears in
has also done a great service in putting together a Kathryn Maris's debut collection The Book of Jobs,
multiracial anthology of poems about race, Letters takes place on the "Brooklyn-bound express." In
to America: Contemporary American Poetry on Race. the opening section of the four-part poem, whose
Thus far, white poets have been content to: pop unrelentingly couplets echo the gap but also the
ulate their poems with people of color (see Eliza interconnectedness between her and the black peo
beth Bishop's "In a Waiting Room"); exoticize and ple on the train, the speaker looks around at the
extol the virtues of ethnic life and so-called "prim "Blank, humorless faces / on fast-fed bodies" and
itive" cultures (see Vachel Lindsay's "The Congo" thinks to herself "what happened to you / ain't my
or any number of Jazz poems written by white fault," a popular sentiment uttered by white people
poets); make passing presumptive and ostracizing who scoff at the idea of reparations or federal apolo
remarks about nonwhites (see Tony Hoagland's gies to black people. Many white people wonder
"Poem in Which I Make the Mistake of Compar why they should be held accountable for their an
ing Billie Holiday to a Cosmic Washerwoman"); or cestors' crimes. The speaker, pondering this, then
cunningly profit from the loaded meanings and hears the click of a walkman button being de
connotative power black and other dark-skinned pressed and mistakes it for a gun being cocked. In
peoples have come to signify in white readers' a subsequent section, the speaker walks through
imagination (see John Berryman's Dream Songs fresh snow down a New York street "in love with
and many works of literary art by American writ this city?jubilant, freezing, sane" when suddenly
ers). Contemporary poets replicate some of the she is jolted out of her ambulatory revelry.
same strategies but also are beginning to frame
contemporary situations, map new emotional and ... But ahead, a lupine
psychic terrain as well as aesthetic approaches to pack of youths takes plucking steps on my street.
discuss difference in this country and for us as a I'm almost home. I won't ostentatiously retreat,
public readership to take delight in, to debate and be suspicious unfairly, fear this brotherhood
argue. In my very non-academic survey of some of saunterers, or judge them by a neighborhood.
of these poems, I discovered a few surprising and
interesting patterns. The scene is too familiar to comment on at length.
Many white contemporary poets do not have But, I'll assert Maris achieves an astonishing ten
black friends. If they do enjoy the bonds and frus sion by giving resonance to the imagined void be
trations of friendship with people of other races, tween the speaker and the young men congregat
those poems are not being written. Rather, many ing on the street. The speaker fears and expresses
poems about race capture "encounters" with peo trepidation but the rhyming couplets reinforce the
ple of color. These poems normally take place in fact that they are involuntarily locked in an awk
public, on a street corner, or a job site, but fre ward dance of public racial guesswork, and, dare
quently on public transportation, and never in a I say, desire.
In many poems authored by white poets, as in
the larger society, fear of black people and innate

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22 THE AMERI

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feelings of guilt are dominant emotions. That or eminent scientists, which is why Robert Low The nurse was big and black
fear has a long history in America, going all the way ell's "For the Union Dead" ranks as one of his most and really pissed at me,
back to the fear of slave uprisings on southern important poems. Other poems which signify the only kid on the burn ward.
plantations. Reports of Toussaint Louverture's blackness will simply announce that the person is
Haitian rebellion in American newspapers in the black, as if no other shades exist to describe peo
1790S which contained vivid descriptions of massa ple of color, which has me wonder if white poets
cres of white plantation owners and their families can truly see black people: since I was zonked on morphine
had the effect of spurring many plantation owners most ofthat time, Mother believed
in the southern United States to counter with ... because the young man was I dreamed up the big black nurse.
greater forms of brutality as a means ?f controlling black speaking black Still, she was a messenger, my angel.
enslaved Africans and containing insurrections. ?"The Singing," C. K. Williams ?"Some Heretics," Patricia Dobler
Sharon Olds's extraordinarily written poem "On
the Subway," a classic poem when discussing race Well, we found two black boys up there Many black bodies get figured as horrific in the
and poetry, situates a terrified speaker across from in the wild cliff garden. process of naming:
a young black male, whose "feet are huge" and ?"On a Phrase from Southern Ohio,"
whose countenance is described as the "casual cold black, naked women with necks
James Wright
wound round and round with wire
look of a mugger." The fear of physical violence
between this woman and the black man sitting And the cause of death no mystery: two bullet like the necks of light bulbs.
across from her as they "rapidly [move] through holes Their breasts were horrifying.
darkness," is palpable and as the speaker suggests in the breast of a well-dressed black woman
?"In a Waiting Room," Elizabeth Bishop
justifiable, for "he is black/ and I am white, and in perhaps her mid-thirties.
without meaning or / trying to I must profit from ?"Landscape with Tractor," Henry Taylor or nonhuman, animal-like; as in Maris' above
his darkness.... There is / no way to know how "lupine // pack of youth," which is reminiscent of
easy this / white skin makes my life." His white The insistent lack of imaginative language to de the group of young boys who brutally raped a Cen
shoelaces laced through black sneakers are de scribe the full spectrum of people of color reveals tral Park jogger and were subsequently described
scribed as a "set of international scars." how over-reliant we are on the structures of lan by journalists covering the trial as a pack of wolves.
Ever since first encountering Elizabeth Bishop's guage and received thinking. Rest assured that In "On the Subway," Olds extends and riffs off
"In the Waiting Room," I have been interested in when a white person describes a black person, the tradition of such dehumanizing figuration
how black bodies are represented and/or how you'll almost always read the words "big" and by giving us a black man who has been skinned
"blackness" is signified in American poetry. I col "black" somewhere in close proximity to each alive; the speaker realizes she bears his pelt on her
lect these poems as others collect poems about other; I guess a dwarfish, black person does not in shoulders:
dogs or jazz. I attempt to identify what is gained vite fear in the imagination?either that or the im
He is wearing
as a result of differentiating race, and almost al ages of the black nanny and Mandingo still loom
red, like the inside of the body
ways, imagine the poems without racial signifier s. large in the collective psyche of America:
exposed. I am wearing dark fur, the
The most popular strategy of representing black whole skin of an animal taken and
ness is to write about black music or some popu and because the black girl was so big
and so black,
used.
lar musician, entertainer, or sports figure. This
is sensible; however, rarely do poems written by so unintimidated,
Olds is shrewd in conflating race and class and
white poets feature black lawyers, political leaders, ?"The Change," Tony Hoagland economic status by drawing the lines between the

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The Ashland Poetry Press J.D. Dolan, Creative Nonfiction
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kinds of power each possesses, which is signifi
cantly unequal, historical, and imagined, accentu
ating more still the basis of her alarm. The
speaker's power is one of privilege and class. She
wears a fur coat, eats steak, and carries a briefcase.
In contrast, his power is all brute force. "Alert un
der hooded lids" with his animal-like physical
strength, he could easily take her life "and break
across his knee like a stick." The ease, swiftness,
The poem's contextualized moment of stasis un
and indiscriminate nature of what he could possi
bly do to her are hallmarks of such violence and
fear in American poetry. Olds, however, is not con
tent to simply mark the boundaries of power which
threaten and separate her from the young man
across the subway aisle. Yes, they occupy different
rungs of the social ladder and public transporta
tion puts them in proximity to each other. How
ever, it is cunning, far-seeing, and useful to have
the speaker recognize the advantages she enjoys
at the expense of his subjugation.
Not only do black people possess animal-like
and sexual energy in poems written by white po
ets, but black people also give agency for others to
tap into their own carnal powers. As much as the
black body is feared in American life, it is also de
sired. Dorianne Laux's poem "The Laundromat,"
situates a young woman folding clothes in a laun
dromat who "gets off on words and gestures." The
speaker watches a flirtatious, older woman eyeing
a young man in silk shorts. The speaker is also
aware of a man who waits for her to bend over.
Everyone is "[c]aught in the crackle of static elec
tricity." The scene is so sexually charged one gets
the feeling the room is poised for a group climax.
The older woman voices an innuendo: "hot isn't
it?" But then,
A long black jogger swings in off the street to
splash his face in the sink and I watch the room
become a sweet humid jungle. We crowd around
the Amazon at the watering hole, twitching our
noses
though the
like wildebeests or buffalo, snorting, rooting
mates in the heat. I want to hump every and discourse about natives, primitivism, and
moving thing
in this place. I want to lie down in the dry dung
and dust and twist to scratch my back. I want to
stretch and prowl and grow lazy in the shade.
apologetically leaps off into a writhing, anaphoris
tic admission of arousal and sexual craving. This
is the burden black male and female bodies have
had to shoulder since time immemorial: perceived
hypersexual beings whose bodies both conjure fear
and fantasy. However, does it mean white poets
should not write about that perception and desire,
even if the metaphoric propositions are unsettling?
So many poems written by white poets are un
decided and do no more than give utterance to a
personal exhaustion of race in public dialogue,
or worse, to a seemingly interminable chasm be
tween the races.
We are stuck on
opposite sides of the car, a couple of
molecules stuck in a rod of light
?"On the Subway," Sharon Olds
As the speaker in C. K. Williams' poem "The
Singing" states,
... both of us
knew just where we were
In the duet we composed the equation we made
the conventions to
which we were condemned
Although I bristle whenever I read Bishop's
ekphrastic description of Ossa and Martin John
son's photograph of Africans in the National Ge
ographic, I think "In the Waiting Room" a fine, ex
emplary poem which avoids the pessimism and
doubt we associate with discussions of race. Al
outpoem participates in the colonial gaze
Western civilization, as did the Kansan couple's
films and books of exotic wildlife safaris, the poem
goes beyond the Martin's in imagining and repre
senting a larger humanity. The poem does not glo
rify difference nor seek to create some sort of nat
ural hierarchy in mankind, but asserts, albeit
hesitantly, the unity of all human beings:
Why should I be my aunt,
or me, or anyone?
What similarities
boots, hands, the family voice
I felt in my throat, or even
the National Geographic
and those awful hanging breasts
held us all together
or made us all just one?
The moment is afforded even greater import as we
realize the young lady in the poem begins to
awaken to her own humanity much to her won
derment and surprise. One wonders if Bishop at
tended the 1955 Museum of Modern Arts exhibi
tion of photographs "The Family of Man," curated
by Edward Steichen, who sought to give photo
graphic expression to the universality of mankind.
Needless to say, the politics of "In the Waiting
Room" are obviously complicated:
The waiting room was bright
and too hot. It was sliding
beneath a big black wave,
another, and another.
but Bishop, unlike Robert Penn Warren, seems
more na?ve and less xenophobic, one who simply
fell victim and subject to the reigning images of

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24 THE AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW

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African peoples at that time. Even so, we are the
better for her interpretation and artwork, for we
have the privilege to access a fuller portrait of the
woman and the times in which she was living.
Tony Hoagland is probably the most controver
sial white poet writing about race today. Poems
such as "The Change," "Rap Music," and the afore
mentioned "Poem in Which I Make the Mistake
of Comparing Billie Holiday to a Cosmic Washer
woman" have caused enough hubbub in poetry cir
cles to prompt the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation
to organize a "conversation" at last year's poetry
festival on the topic Race e[ Poetry which featured
Lucille Clifton, Terranee Hayes, Tony Hoagland,
and Linda Hogan in dialogue.
Hoagland's language is irreverent and sardonic;
pitted against that big black girl from Alabama,
cornrowed hair and Zulu bangles on her arms,
some outrageous name like Vondella
Aphrodite?
hitting the ball like she was driving the
Emancipation Proclamation
down Abraham Lincoln's throat,
?"The Change," Tony Hoagland
he engages familiar constructions of fear and white
alienation;
I don't know what's going on inside that
portable torture chamber,
but I have a bad suspicion
there's a lot of dead white people in there
and what I'm not supposed to say
is that black for me is a country
/A * PLU
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Scott Ely (on leave)
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Albert Goldbarth
www.plu.edu/~mfa mfa@plu.edu 253-535-7221
Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma WA 98447-0003
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007
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more foreign than China or Vagina
more alarming than going down Niagara on
Viagra
And it makes me feel stupid when I get close
like a little white dog on the edge of the big
dark woods
?"Rap Music," Tony Hoagland
most importantly, to my delight, he creates a space
for us to discuss race, even if the poems are exces
sively self-justifying and make us uncomfortable.
Lamentably though, the poems seem too contrived
in their constructed narrow-mindedness and too
controlled in their attempt to court controversy.
James Baldwin, in the classic The Fire Neoct Time,
asserts that "relatively conscious whites and the
relatively conscious blacks must, like lovers, insist
on, or create, the consciousness of others." It is a
beautiful utterance. Hoagland does not in the end
eschew audience; his poems read as if he envisions
a liberal-minded readership to willfully irritate, not
seduce: he's not a lover, he's a fighter. But then,
just as he begins to wrestle, he does an about-face,
as if he knows he can only push the envelope so
far, as if he knows what's at stake is the fragility of
his own self-hood. (To do so would require him to
interrogate not only the illusion of blackness, but
the whole systematic, rhetorical structures con
structed over time that equate whiteness with su
periority, power, and even literacy and literary her
itage ? la The Fugitives.) This is when his endings
reach too comfortably for the epiphanic, redemp
tive line that salvages Hoagland the Poet:
On Rap Music:
this tangled roar
which has to be shut off
or blown away or sealed off
or actually mentioned and entered
The Rainier
Writing Workshop
Adrianne Harun
Lola Haskins
Robin Hemley (on leave)
David Huddle
Judith Kitchen
Stephen Kuusisto
Susan Ludvigson
Kent Meyers
Brenda Miller
Ann Pancake
Summer 2007^ Fiona McCrae, Graywolf Press
IMlurpura
Marjorie Sandor (on leave)
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On. Racism and White Superiority:
Poof, remember? It was the twentieth century
almost gone,
we were there,
and when we went to put it back where it
belonged,
it was past us
and we were changed.
Yet, I would rather have his failures than nothing
at all. At least his poems announce him as intro
spective in a self-critical way on this topic. Self-cen
sorship should never be an option for poets.
Writing about race has to be so much more than
writing about race, and moreover, race in poetry is
not a mere discussion between black and white
peoples of the United States, or a visit to the Mar
tin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site, or some
poeticized contraption set up to ensnare an overly
sensitive group of readers who passionately believe
in equityy justice, racial harmony, and change. It
bears repeating again: for us to actualize as a coun
try whose ideals and documents profess the value
of a diverse ethnic and racial pppulace, we must
begin to pen a body of poems that go beyond our
fears and surface projections of each other to a
fuller account of the challenges and reaches of an
ever-evolving democracy. <
Major Jackson is the author of two collections of poetry,
Hoops (Norton, 2006) and Leaving Saturn-(University of
Georgia, 2002), winner of the 2000 Cave Canem Poetry
Prize, and finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award.
He is an Associate Professor of English at the University
of Vermont.
Peggy Shumaker
Sherry Simpson
Jess Walter
Poetry Master Class:
Linda Bierds
Special Guest
Summer 2007: Natasha Trethewey
Guest Editors
"\'*v4 Director:
Stan Sanvel Rubin
25