Poetry for These Times
- At June 15, 2020
- By Write in Community
- In Blog
4
A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.—Salman Rushdie
The last two weeks have been ones of strong emotion and calls for change, the brutal death of George Floyd making it impossible to go on as before, to maintain what seems to have become the status quo in this country: systemic racism, social injustice, and police brutality. While we as a country may denounce such racism and the awful fruits of it, we haven’t done enough to make it stop.
That time has come to an end. People are speaking out–protesting in the streets, demonstrating in front of statehouses and police departments, and turning to the written and spoken word. Twelve year old Keedron Bryant wrote a haunting new protest song and sang it on YouTube, the lyrics ending I just wanna live, God protect me, I just wanna live, I just wanna live. At George Floyd’s funeral gospel singer Dray Tate sang Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come, a powerful song which has been described as the anthem of the Civil Rights Movement.
And as we do in all times of high emotion—anger, grief, outrage, overwhelming sorrow, we turn to poetry. “Something about the specificity of poetry allows it to crystallize experience,” Mary Chan writes, “as if one were pausing time.” For this is a moment in which we must pause. We must listen. Poetry, reading it or writing it helps us to do so. It “is language at its most powerful,” as Rita Dove writes.
On the CBS News, a young African American woman recited Langston Hughes’ poem,
“Let America be America Again.” We may remember another of Hughes’ poems “Harlem” with its famous first lines “What happens to a dream deferred?” Or turn to Maya Angelou’s “Caged Bird.” “The caged bird/sings with a fearful trill,” she wrote “for the caged bird/sings of freedom.” These poets work “to name the unnameable.” They are taking sides and helping to “shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.”
Creative/Writing Exercise:
It is at this point in our monthly blog posts that we like to include a writing exercise. But these are not “usual” times. Let us just say this: poetry helps us to say what we feel but find difficult to express in ordinary language; and if we ourselves are writers, poets and songwriters, we may feel moved at this moment to write. Others of us may need a little distance before the words come. But one of our most important jobs as writers and as people is to pay attention. Paying attention is about respect. When we pay attention, we learn, we grow. Maybe we can help to make this country better, for all its people.
For more information about Writing in Community and The Writing and Creative Life, see http://www.thewritingandcreativelife.com
Tom Adkins
Dylan did a song 55 years ago about this kind of change… So did Sam Cooke. When will it happen and take hold?? Still waiting I guess.
Mike Stinson
“Poetry is free speech. It is ever on the side of the irrepressible spirit and in opposition to the censor, to Management, to the protocols of the company psychologist, to the roomful of men in blue suits who casually cheat schoolchildren. It is on the side of exhilaration and the stupendous vision, the sight of the stars through the barred window, the perfection of small birds, the democracy of their chittering language and of our own yakfest and hullabaloo. Poetry is made of the grandeur that is available to a man with no fortune but with somewhere to walk to and ears to hear and a mind to transport him. He may be defeated in love and finance and yet the night belongs to him, he feels entrusted with the stunning sky, the guardian of the houses on the street and all the people in them. So are poets, the angels and shepherds of the sleeping world.” –Garrison Keillor, Intro to “Good Poems”
Write in Community
Mike, this quote by Garrison Keillor is just perfect. Thanks so much for sharing it I especially like “poetry is made of the grandeur that is available to a man with no fortune but with somewhere to walk to and ears to hear and a mind to transport him.”
Fabulous.. .
Judy
Yes~ poetry at its best “crystallizes” the experience and is the result of careful attention distilled through our emotional response. As Mary Oliver said, “Attention is merely reporting if it is without emotion”. Whether captured in poetry, music, visual arts, dance etc., it is the carefully chosen, the discrete expression of word, color, feeling, note, rhythm, movement, strength and weakness, that champions clarity, precision and illuminates for others as well as for ourselves.
The pandemic can be reframed as providing us the gift of ‘the pause’, the space, the temporal room to listen, notice, to attend, to explore what is happening within and around us and give it substance that can be shared.