Black Poetry Tuesdays (July 25, 2023 Edition): "Karenge ya Marenge” by Countee Cullen

The week’s poem is a piece from Countee Cullen. Cullen was a queer poet, novelist, children's writer, playwright, and one of the prominent voices of the Harlem Renaissance. Countee’s work was heavily influenced by the concept of Négritude, a framework of critique and literary theory developed mainly by Black and African American intellectuals, writers, and politicians during the 1930s. It aimed at raising and cultivating a renewal of "Black consciousness,” a (re)discovery of Black values and awareness of the world and its view of Black bodies. This showed in the focus of his work, which was at the intersections of Blackness, racism, trauma, sexuality, finding identity, and self-expression.

The following piece is called “Karenga ya Marenge.” In this piece, Cullen explores language, its applications, and how racism, colorism, and anti-Blackness play a part in how Western culture absorbs words from melanated people, especially when seeking support and community in the face of oppression. It’s an interesting critique of Western culture’s adherence to the “proper” use of language and its response to those who are seen as less than, a struggle that we are still pushing through in 2023.

Karenge ya Marenge

Wherein are words sublime or noble? What

Invests one speech with haloed eminence,

Makes it the sesame for all doors shut,

Yet in its like sees but impertinence?

Is it the hue? Is it the cast of eye,

The curve of lip or Asiatic breath,

Which mark a lesser place for Gandhi’s cry

Than “Give me liberty or give me death!”

Is Indian speech so quaint, so weak, so rude,

So like its land enslaved, denied, and crude,

That men who claim they fight for liberty

Can hear this battle-shout impassively,

Yet to their arms with high resolve have sprung

At those same words cried in the English tongue?

You can learn more about Countee Cullen here.

Black Poetry Tuesdays (July 18, 2023 Edition): "dream where every black person is standing by the ocean” by Danez Smith

The week’s poem is a piece from Danez Smith. Danez is a queer-identifying, non-binary poet, writer, and performer. In 2014, Danez won the Individual World Poetry Slam and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry for their book [insert] Boy. Their poetry collection Don’t Call Us Dead was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2017. Danez’s work as a poet, writer, and performer lies at the intersections of Blackness, queerness, societal definitions of masculinity, desire, gender identity, trauma, and joy.

The following piece is called “dream where every black person is standing by the ocean.” In this piece, Danez focuses on the generational trauma of the ocean, to those Black lives lost through kidnapping and chattel slavery as Africans were shipped to sales hubs via boat. This piece, while brief, is layered with the weight of generational trauma and loss with melancholy hints of rebirth.

dream where every black person is standing by the ocean

& we say to her

what have you done with our kin you swallowed?

& she says

that was ages ago, you’ve drunk them by now

& we don’t understand

& then one woman, skin dark as all of us

walks to the water’s lip, shouts Emmett, spits

&, surely, a boy begins

crawling his way to shore

You can learn more about Danez Smith here.

Black Poetry Tuesdays (July 11, 2023 Edition): "Primer for Blacks” by Gwendolyn Brooks

The week’s poem is a piece from Gwendolyn Brooks, a Black female writer, and poet who was the first Black poet to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1950. Gwendolyn was also the first Black woman to hold the role of Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position now referred to as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. She served as the Illinois poet laureate for 32 years.

Gwendolyn’s work is well-known for being steeped in her experiences and identities as a Black woman in the United States, with a unique ability to be militant and steadfast in her use of language and imagery while drawing in white folx who were fearful of the writers, poets, and artists that were a part of her generation of Black voices post-Harlem Renaissance.

The following piece is called “Primer for Blacks.” It is an interesting study on Blackness as a singular identity but also a view into how even if you have an ounce of Afro-Carribean blood in your DNA, you are still Black in the eyes of whiteness. It’s a great piece about reconciling one’s identities at the intersection of Blackness as well as anti-black self-hatred.

Primer for Blacks

Blackness

is a title,

is a preoccupation,

is a commitment Blacks

are to comprehend—

and in which you are

to perceive your Glory.

The conscious shout

of all that is white is

“It’s Great to be white.”

The conscious shout

of the slack in Black is

‘It’s Great to be white.’

Thus all that is white

has white strength and yours.

The word Black

has geographic power,

pulls everybody in:

Blacks here—

Blacks there—

Blacks wherever they may be.

And remember, you Blacks, what they told you—

remember your Education:

“one Drop—one Drop

maketh a brand new Black.”

        Oh mighty Drop.

______And because they have given us kindly

so many more of our people

Blackness

stretches over the land.

Blackness—

the Black of it,

the rust-red of it,

the milk and cream of it,

the tan and yellow-tan of it,

the deep-brown middle-brown high-brown of it,

the “olive” and ochre of it—

Blackness

marches on.

The huge, the pungent object of our prime out-ride

is to Comprehend,

to salute and to Love the fact that we are Black,

which is our “ultimate Reality,”

which is the lone ground

from which our meaningful metamorphosis,

from which our prosperous staccato,

group or individual, can rise.

Self-shriveled Blacks.

Begin with gaunt and marvelous concession:

YOU are our costume and our fundamental bone.

     All of you—

     you COLORED ones,

     you NEGRO ones,

those of you who proudly cry

     “I’m half INDian”—

     those of you who proudly screech

     “I’VE got the blood of George WASHington in MY veins”

     ALL of you—

           you proper Blacks,

     you half-Blacks,

     you wish-I-weren’t Blacks,

     Niggeroes and Niggerenes.

     You.

You can learn more about Gwendolyn here.

Black Poetry Tuesdays (July 4, 2023 Edition): "On Being Brought from Africa to America" by Phillis Wheatley

The week’s poem is a piece from Phillis Wheatley, a Black woman whose poetic works came to national and international attention while enslaved by a white family in Boston, Massachusetts, at the age of seven. Phillis became one of the most prominent poets in pre-19th-century literature as an enslaved domestic worker, and she spoke of her experiences in chattel slavery and the heaviness of her circumstances.

The following piece is entitled "On Being Brought from Africa to America." It is one of her heavier pieces, exploring the forced assimilation of enslaved Africans into Christianity.

On Being Brought from Africa to America

' Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
'Their colour is a diabolic die.'
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

You can learn more about Phillis here.

Black Poetry Tuesdays (June 27, 2023 Edition): "Who Said It Was So Simple" by Audre Lorde

This week's Black Poetry Tuesday poem comes from writer, activist, radical feminist, professor, and philosopher Audre Lorde. I present Audre's powerful poem, "Who Said It Was Simple, " to y'all."

Who Said It Was So Simple

"There are so many roots to the tree of anger   
that sometimes the branches shatter   
before they bear.

Sitting in Nedicks
the women rally before they march   
discussing the problematic girls   
they hire to make them free.
An almost white counterman passes   
a waiting brother to serve them first   
and the ladies neither notice nor reject   
the slighter pleasures of their slavery.   
But I who am bound by my mirror   
as well as my bed
see causes in colour
as well as sex

and sit here wondering   
which me will survive   
all these liberations."

Lorde's focus in the piece was to point out the racism and classism of the feminist movement's whiteness and lack of intersectionality. She turns the language of the women she's observing back against them, using it to underscore how the "liberations" they seek both depend on and exclude "problematic girls" such as Lorde. Audre, who openly talked about the difficulties and traumas that came with being viewed as "other" in every group her identities were part of, keeps it short and sweet with this piece. But you can also sense her exhaustion, her need to make sure her identities were viewed as relevant and not tokenized. This piece was written in 1973 but is still relevant and impactful in 2023.

You can learn more about Audre Lorde here.