| Author | Message | ||
     Chrishayden "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Chrishayden Post Number: 6496 Registered: 03-2004 Rating: N/A |
John Lundberg from Huffingtonpost.com Posted March 23, 2008 | 07:04 AM (EST) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Read More: Langston Hughes Poetry, Michael S. Harper, Poetry, Poetry And Racism, The Inner Life, Breaking Living News This past Tuesday when Barack Obama stepped out of the political morass and wiped the mud from his suit, when every one of the chattering news networks quieted down to watch him speak, I cringed, convinced the gifted orator couldn't be that gifted. He was doing himself in. Yet there he was addressing racism, of all things, with wisdom and grace and care and forgiveness. Accepting that it was, in part, a calculated move by a campaign, and no matter its effect (or lack thereof) on the election, it was the most remarkable speech I've witnessed in my lifetime. There were the pundits unsure how to handle what so clearly had transcended politics. There was CNN, plucking the most inflammatory line in the speech: Obama: "Racism is a Stain on the Constitution" for their headline--then realizing they were an embarrassing demonstration of Obama's criticism of the press, pulling it. It was a surreal and, in some ways, joyous moment. Comments Buzz up!on Yahoo!Of course, as soon as Obama began walking off the stage, the smear engines of the right wing and the Clinton campaign were warming up again. Their agents were looking for attacks (how dare he insult his grandmother like that!). This is politics after all. But before we lose ourselves in that world again, I want to offer some of what poetry has added to the conversation on race. And I encourage you to add poems to my list. Like Obama, Langston Hughes was raised by his mother and his grandmother--his father having abandoned them. He became one of the great American poets. His influences--including Carl Sandburg and Paul Laurence Dunbar--were both black and white. His bold and ambitious poem about the African American experience I, Too, Sing America, echoes Walt Whitman more than anyone else. I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong. Tomorrow, I'll be at the table When company comes. Nobody'll dare Say to me, "Eat in the kitchen," Then. Besides, They'll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed-- I, too, am America. It stuns me to think that this was written--that Hughes faced these issues--just over fifty years ago. Michael S. Harper, currently a professor at Brown university, reminds us in his poem American History how bad it was at the nation's birth and how bad it still can be. Those four black girls blown up in that Alabama church remind me of five hundred middle passage blacks, in a net, under water in Charleston harbor so redcoats wouldn't find them. Can't find what you can't see can you? Harlem Renaissance poet Claude MckKay's The White House lays out more of the difficulties faced by African-Americans and speaks to the resentment that might build in a community. There is dignity and power in the poem's rigid form. Your door is shut against my tightened face, And I am sharp as steel with discontent; But I possess the courage and the grace To bear my anger proudly and unbent. The pavement slabs burn loose beneath my feet, A chafing savage, down the decent street; And passion rends my vitals as I pass, Where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass. Oh, I must search for wisdom every hour, Deep in my wrathful bosom sore and raw, And find in it the superhuman power To hold me to the letter of your law! Oh, I must keep my heart inviolate Against the potent poison of your hate. In his great poem For the Union Dead, Robert Lowell ruminates on Boston's monument to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (who was white) and his 54th Massachusetts Regiment of African American soldiers (you might know them as the subject of the movie Glory). Two months after marching through Boston, half the regiment was dead... The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier grow slimmer and younger each year-- wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets and muse through their sideburns . . . Shaw's father wanted no monument except the ditch, where his son's body was thrown and lost with his "niggers." Lowell wrote that the monument "sticks like a fishbone in the city's throat." It was a wonder to hear that throat cleared on Tuesday. | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 11943 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
My, my. If one didn't know better, one might think these poems were inspired by black "resentment". Wooooooo. | ||
| Chrishayden "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Chrishayden Post Number: 6516 Registered: 03-2004 Rating: N/A |
If you don't like them you a free to post some that you do--you VISIGOTH! | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 11965 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
I like the poetry just fine because it reflects the black resentment you are in denial about, crissy. | ||
| Rondall Moderator Username: Rondall Post Number: 94 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Referring to dear Cynique as a "Visigoth"....nice! The beauty and relevance in Langston Hughes' poem has not lost it's poignancy in the new millennium. The rhythm of antipathy and fear, drummed from the keyboards of those hoping to hide that times are changing to fast for them, will continue to get louder. And Cynique...how does one resent the truth that life has presented them? Could I suggest that this is possibly akin to someone hating who they are? Or maybe we should be address that someone should hate the situation they can not change? At post note, the aggrieving you find in the words of these poems stem from an aversion of inequity. It is natural and omnipresent in any form of oppression. And by the way, I also would love to see some of your poetry.... | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 11966 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Why is it so hard for folks to process the idea that Black people harbor resentment because of white oppression?? This is not a bad reflection on Blacks. And if this resentment takes the form of poignant verse, then so be it. I don't consider myself a poet. Any verses I spout, are spontaneous. |
