Dreaming in Iambic Pentameter

Yesterday Rachel, Donna and I went into Philly for a poetry event at Robin’s Book Store, the oldest independent book store in Philadelphia. The event was billed as “Black Ink: Celebrating Writers of the African Diaspora,” and featured novelist John Edgar Wideman, alongside poets Afaa Michael Weaver and my friend Major Jackson.

We were among only a small handful of white people there, although the event was well attended, and I saw several African American poets I’ve seen before at Philadelphia poetry readings. There were only a couple of white men in attendance, including Aeron Petty, a former QND poets reader, and of course Larry, who runs Robin’s.

Consequently the event had a slightly different dynamic from poetry events I’ve attended in the past, even those featuring African American poets, as for example when Rachel and I saw Yusef Komunyakaa read to a predominantly white audience at Bryn Mawr.

The difference is hard to define, and those of us who believe naively that racial prejudice has been cured and all we need henceforth is color-blindness, would probably suggest I imagined it. I don’t think so. To return to a discussion Major and I had recently about “masking” in the interactions of African Americans and whites, I think there was quite a lot less masking going on. The atmosphere was (and I have been struggling to find the right words to describe it) unapologetically self-referential (which is probably exactly how white literary gatherings appear to ethnic minorities, but of course I don’t notice that.)

So, for example, when John Wideman (an author I must read if his books are anything like as penetrating as his gaze) was speaking in his opening words about the need for black writers to embrace the freedom of language, the elderly African American in front of me said, in a loud enough voice to be heard by the front half of the audience “Slavery is always with us.” Later, commenting on a bad review he had received for his latest novel, Fanon, Wideman compared the tone of the review to that of a slaveowner calling a grown male African American slave “boy.” Afaa Weaver, meanwhile, bemoaned the fact that his readership was not as “black” as he had imagined it would be. Given that Weaver’s poems, or at least the selection he read yesterday, are nowhere near as racially centered as those of say, Thomas Sayers Ellis, it doesn’t surprise me that he appeals to white readers. I am always encouraging white writers to read black writers, as one way of educating themselves about (and thus being less intimidated by) African American culture, so personally I see this as a GOOD thing for literature in America as a whole.

But I didn’t always get the impression that all the participants in yesterday’s event agreed with such cross cultural fertilization. For example Maurice Henderson, who hosted the reading, apologized at one point just before he promoted a white writer’s work. There was an Open Mic after the main readers and discussion panel, but you had to be a writer of the African Diaspora to be invited to participate. (Imagine the outrage today if a predominantly white literary gathering put a racial filter on the Open Mic sign up sheet…)

African Americans have long been treated unfairly by the white literary establishment, which is why the work done by organizations like Cave Canem and the Dark Room Collective have been vital in creating safe havens for African American artists and writers so that their work can emerge to inspire new generations to pick up the pen. I just wish that I could claim we were now reaching a stage where the solid boundaries which American writers use to define themselves and their work were beginning to become permeable. But I can’t, and yesterday reinforced this.

I would suggest to any white American writer reading this, that you make a point of attending an event like yesterday’s and putting yourself in the minority. You will feel a little awkward, which may help you empathize when the proportions are reversed. You may also feel a little sad. We still have a long way to go. Slavery is, indeed, always with us.

Today I read another brave and thought provoking post by Major Jackson on the Harriet blog of the Poetry Foundation. I call it brave because, in the interest of uncovering real truths we can use to address America’s current racial dysfunctionality, it makes comments which could be construed as negative against two iconic poets of the twentieth century: one white male, Wallace Stevens, and one African American female, Gwendolyn Brooks (who, by the way, has a very cool headstone.)

In a nutshell the story is this: Stevens, on seeing a photo of a professional event in which Brooks appeared, said “Who’s the coon?”, a remark that should not be defended and was considered inappropriate even back in that racist era. However, Brooks later propagated that story but made a subtle change–in her version the offending remark was “Who let the nigger in?”

Perhaps this was a simple mistake. After all, Brooks wasn’t present when Stevens made his remark. The theory is she read it in Joan Richardson’s biography. Yet, although I adore Brooks’ verse and find much of Stevens’s obtuse, I can’t help suspecting my heroine of doing something we all have a tendency to do, regardless of race, which is exploiting victimology.

To take it away from the most inflammatory division in this country, and towards one of which I can speak with more knowledge and much more ease, let’s consider how *I* exploit my own victimology. As a woman and a stay at home mother I do sometimes feel marginalized by a society which occasionally appears only to value women who remain in the workforce. For example, rejected by a prestigious artists’ colony, there was a kernel of thought at the back of my mind which not only blamed that rejection on my gender/life choice, but also blamed other minority groups for having better i.e. more glamorous, victimology than myself, and thereby garnering any preferential treatment that was on offer to balance out the usual predominance of white males.

It’s so very tempting to view oneself as a victim, isn’t it?

Here’s another example, demonstrating how early in our lives we allow ourselves to be subsumed by prevailing hierarchical norms. A well-brought up girl in my daughter’s fifth grade class was recently involved in an incident with her desk partner, who accidentally swiped her cheek with a pencil. As ten year olds will do, the first girl turned angrily to the second and said “Hey, are you blind?” The second (African American) girl promptly burst into tears and accused the first girl of having said “Are you black?”, a remark which makes no sense in the context. Nevertheless, the first girl was sent to the principal and severely admonished.

Frankly, it’s simpler to avoid any such discussions as these, because in hyper-sensitive twenty-first century America, it is so easy to lay oneself open to accusations of racism. Perhaps that’s also why, to respond to Major’s earlier APR essay on Race in Poetry, white poets typically avoid the subject.

I don’t have any epiphanic conclusions to draw, unfortunately. But I want to leave this blog entry with a conjoined, and potentially contradictory thought. While it behooves all of us to be vigilant in the words and phrases we use, especially when referring to minority groups, so as to minimize any possibility of offense, we also have a responsibility, when we listen to comments made about minority groups, not only to report them absolutely accurately, but also not to assume automatically that whatever is said is being directed against those minority groups because of their minority status.