always some human landscape ...

from my anthology of (a)merican poems that should be read

Reading Yusef Komunyakaa's interview from Callaloo, 1990 ...

"There’s a sameness about American poetry that I don’t think represents the whole people. It represents a poetry of the moment, a poetry of evasion, and I have problems with this. I believe poetry has always been political, long before poets had to deal with the page and white space . . . it’s natural. Probably before Socrates, in Plato’s Republic, banished poets from his ideal state – long before South Africa, Chile, Mississippi, and Marcos in the Philippines suppressing Mila Aguilar and others. There seems to be always some human landscape that creates a Paul Celan. Too many contemporary American poets would love to dismiss this fact. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule: Michael Harper, June Jordan, [Carolyn] Forché, [Adrienne] Rich, C. K. Williams, and [Amiri Imamu] Baraka. But still, if you were to take many magazines and cut the names off poems, you would have a single collection that could be by any given poet; you could put one name on it, as if the poems were all by one person. True, a writer can say almost anything in America and have it completely overlooked, yet I think we should have more individual voices."

So much for the land of the free, home of the ...

Komunyakaa is right. We ignore, we squelch the lone voice – the voice that speaks against the grain. And here I'm not just referring to governmental or societal standards. This applies, as well, to the literati. The choir.

As poets, we revel in literary sameness, and gravitate toward the familiar. When we do find the fugitive voice, we’re not content until we’re all fugitives – obliterating the individual.

William Stafford and Lucille Clifton are great examples of the radical voice – absolutely removed from the poetic center of American literature. Voices crying in the wilderness – not connected to the bellow of the herd around them. There were others – certainly – but these two ripped out my soul.

*

Two very political and beautiful poems:

Lucille Clifton

To a Dark Moses


you are the one
i am lit for.
come with your rod
that twists
and is a serpent.
i am the bush.
i am burning.
i am not consumed.

*

William Stafford

At the Un-National Monument
Along the Canadian Border


This is the field where the battle did not happen,
where the unknown soldier did not die.
This is the field where grass joined hands,
where no monument stands,
and the only heroic thing is the sky.

Birds fly here without any sound,
unfolding their wings across the open.
No people killed – or were killed – on this ground
hallowed by neglect and an air so tame
that people celebrate it by forgetting its name.

*

Any comment I could make about either poem would take away from their power. Enough said.