I Look to the Poets
Originally written on Wednesday, October 25, 2023 @ 4:00 p.m.
I was going to write about how I came to define Assemblage for my first post, but I currently have a hummingbird heartbeat nestled in my human body. My heart’s metronome is typically not going at this rate. So here’s a meditation I did writing about the state of the world.
On a recent phone call with a newly treasured friend & member of my community, I was asked where have I been turning to during this intense time. The intense time being in reference to bearing witness to the Genocide of Palestinians by Zionist Settlers. Without hesitation, I responded to the Poets. In his 1962 talk titled “The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity,” James Baldwin wrote that “the poets (by which I mean all artists) are finally the only people who know the truth about us. Soldiers don’t. Statesmen don’t. Union leaders don’t. Only poets.” I also agree that poets are the gem keepers of a nation’s soul. Poets are mines that are pillaged for diamond-shiny awards while their voices are simultaneously underappreciated when there is a lack of prestige. While Baldwin was talking about all artists, in the context of my conversation I was referring to the poets who write poetry. However, in this meditation, I will explore both Poets who write poetry and poets in Baldwin’s definition (mainly singers).
These Poets, note the capital P, were the first people I turned to when we first became privy to the Genocide of Palestineans. Without guidance or shakes of fear, the Poets do what the Poets do. The Poets shared resources, poems, uplifted the voices of Palestinians, hosted Poets for Palestine events, & more. The Poets were like a mangrove enclave, they waded above the tide with linked roots to support one another. The Poets’ tree limbs reached out to anyone in need of a shade-filled ground to untangle the roots they had no choice in receiving, but never questioned them before. As I watched the Poets do their work media companies & conglomerates did theirs too. The Poets’ videos expressing their solidarity with Palestine were muted, & the word Palestine automatically changed to terrorists on Meta-owned social media platforms. Yet still, the poets continued their work without placating propaganda-filled news.
In Nothing Personal, Baldwin reflects on the lovelessness & terror that exists within the United States. He writes that “where the people can sing, the poet can live–& it is worth saying it the other way around, too: where the poet can sing, the people can live.” If my heart could sing right now it would sing “Willow Weep For Me” by Billie Holiday.
Growing up, even now, Weeping Willows are one of my favorite trees. I was intuitively drawn to the personified name of the tree as a little girl. That was how I learned about personification, typically defined as giving non-human-like characteristics to non-human things. However, now as an adult, I tend to define personification as acknowledging the interconnected force between all things existing in the world. If I can weep, how sweet would it be for a tree to listen to my plea–bend its branches down for me & weep for me…with me. If my heart could sing right now the song would vibrate through the petaled chambers of my reflexed gardenia heart. Yes, I’ve got a clean heart & a heart full of clarity to guide me. If I can sing from my heart as a Poet, then you (the people) can live & breathe more freely. Yet, here I am bearing witness to the Poets’ songs being stomped out of them.
Furthermore, people who thought they had attained freedom–got out of the game & won– are finding out that it was never true. Well-intentioned people searching for a guiding hand in this gardened labyrinth are being led by people who traded one disillusioned system of security for another one disguised as freedom. Moreover, this disguised freedom is a personal victory not a contribution to collective liberation. It is your favorite influencers, content creators, & billionaires telling you to quit your job for the freedom of branding yourself. Why go to work when you can brand yourself from the comfort of your own home? Brand yourself so that you can appeal to large brands and corporations who one day will withhold your paycheck in exchange for your silence. Closed mouths have always gotten fed. Furthermore, closed mouths are met with open hands stuffed with cash. As a Black Woman, I have no interest in branding myself.
The content creator’s checks depend on working with big brands, your government has a vested interest in supporting Israel, these are not the people you turn to. Maybe a few creators might surprise you but I highly doubt it. Those with closed mouths will continue getting fed & they may not detonate the bombs but the billowing bills lining their pockets are soaked in Palestinian people’s blood. Baldwin goes on to write in Nothing Personal that, “when a civilization treats its poets with the disdain with which we treat ours, it can not be far from disaster; it cannot be far from the slaughter of innocents.” As I type this essay originally written on Wednesday, now Friday evening, Gaza has been cut off from the rest of the world. There is no electricity or way for Palestinians to contact anyone. We have been, and are currently sitting in the disgusting anticipation of the amplified genocide of the innocent Palestinian people.
Turn to the Poets, note the capital P. It wasn’t until recently that I began to identify myself as a Poet despite having been writing poetry since elementary school. It took until now to proclaim myself a Poet because of the fact that Poets are giants with huge shoes to fill. I stand on the shoulders & look to the Poets: Aja Monet,
, Sonia Sanchez, June Jordan, Nikki Giovani, Gil Scott-Heron, Amiri Baraka, Nikky Finney, Evie Shockley. These are just some of the Poets that I love & whose words serve as my North Star in a world that is hell-bent on polluting the night sky. No doubt, Israel is currently launching rockets into the night sky over Gaza as I type & these are not the ribbons I envision when I listen to “Ribbon in the Sky” by Stevie Wonder (who has been on repeat with Holiday, Siffre & Sade all this week).These Poets had & have backbones. These Poets spoke up & made personal sacrifices to contribute to collective liberation. These Poets penned lethal poems that ignited flames to what we thought language could do; what we thought language could hold. Aja Monet’s, a surrealist blues poet, album entitled when the poems do what they do expressed this sentiment that is so deeply rooted in the Black tradition of poetry. I always turn to the Poets, note the capital P, because they guide me home. These brands & corporations didn’t know that Poets can’t be banned in the opaque shadows they call home. That Transformative Dark Thing (click to read Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ article) contrasts itself & illuminates whatever is surrounding it in a way that only Poets can do. This is why, when Amanda Gorman offers this urgent poem, regarding bearing witness to the Genocide of Palestinians, it falls severely short of the work that Poets are doing.
Yet, the checks will keep coming, new book contracts will be signed, & the beacon of United States optimism will never dim as long as Gorman’s pen flows placated ambivalent gold. Now is the time to turn to the Poets with a spine & a pen filled with onyx ink. Baldwin, in Nothing Personal, makes the claim that “we [Americans] are unbelievably ignorant concerning what goes on in our country–& appear to have become too timid to question what we are told.” These are the times where the Poets have never historically been timid. The Poets’ ability to bear witness, emphasized because this characteristic is deeply important to Black Feminist praxis, is what took me so long to proclaim the title of Poet. I knew, that to be a Poet meant surrendering to what the poems needed to do, being rooted in my environment, & connecting my roots to others all while knowing I could go through a drought-filled period of time. In other words, proclaiming myself a Poet with a spine could lead to a period of time where I lacked opportunities. In one of my poems, I ask “who can get free without chaining someone else?” This paid publication is the start of me finding out how to do just that. Because this publication is supported by readers I can be free on the page to write this & whatever other songs my heart sings. Unfortunately, Billie Holiday was tied to the business of making records & when she took a chance it cost her her life.
Billie, like many other Black Jazz artists, was revered by white patrons & audiences alike. Billie only started to wear her emblematic gardenia flower in her hair or behind or ear because of a terribly overheated curling iron burning her hair. Therefore, Billie decided to gather gardenias that were being sold to cover the singed hair before her show started. The sweet scent of gardenia flowers clouded the scent of scorched hair. Black folk have always bloomed when society expected us to crumble into the debilitating debris around us. Billie made an undesirable truth beautiful & in doing so…the gardenia became her brand. I, as a Black Woman, have no interest in being branded; & neither did Billie. When her white audience came to expect sweet-scented flowers, Billie gave them popular trees bearing strange fruit. Billie was a bold Poet with an inclination to bear witness & question what she was told. In other words, Billie was a Poet with a backbone. Especially when we consider the level of increased surveillance & harm at the hands of the state she endured as a result of her 1939 record “Strange Fruit.”
I turn to the Poets because they don’t falter under Blackened skies, they don’t struggle to see the traps of this capitalistic scene, and they lead with opaque eyes unbeknownst to a certain kind. I turn to the Poets because they write about flowers while coughing petals up from their lungs & end up talking about suffocation. I turn to the Poets because I don’t know where their words will take me but they will steer me closer to home, key in palms, awaiting a free & unoccupied land. I turn to the Poets because they weep for a freer world & their words open up the floodgates to create the change to see it. I turn to the Poets because they affirm life & love in the same way that Palestinians teach life (click to experience Palestinian poet Rafeef Ziadah poem “we teach life, sir). I turn to the Poets because they make space for me to unravel the unruly webs of my spanish moss brain/all the things I stored that I now have the space to discern/regulate. I turn to the Poets because they weep like the trees that aren’t supposed to do anything other than stay tall, sturdy, & straight. In this stoic world the trees are expected to only move when forced externally (like the wind pushing their limbs) but never be moved by something happening internally (xylem & phloem turning to tears due to emotions). I turn to the Poets because they weep when the world warms several degrees, they always cover me & listen to my plea.
If I can’t hold Palestinians then maybe my language can bloom fiercely like white gardenias to hold them. The shadowbanners didn’t know that the scent of white gardenias becomes more fragrant at night to attract pollinators to stimulate growth. If they come for us (if they come for Gaza) tonight, more of us will carry the pollen to the next rupturing flower. If my language can’t hold them, then while those silent motherfuckers sit with their hands & mouths full, I hope Billie’s words personify before our eyes. I hope the tree branches bend down & listen to Palestinians’ pleas (because our world leaders have shown they will not). Despite me writing this & bearing witness to their stories on social media I alone can not make the final decision to call an official ceasefire.
In a world where rockets are made out to be as comforting as ribbons ornamenting the borders of a gift box, it must too be possible to weep & have people listen…for at least the trees to listen. I turn to the Poets because they got me….from the river to the sea…Palestine will be free 🍉.
Turn to your Poets
Safia Elhillo (Information about Palestine & Sudan)
Hanif gave an amazing interview about Palestine, Islamaphobia, & more on Youtube
Turn & call your representatives
Turn to the images & video to bear witness to another person’s reality
Turn inward & educate yourself & your community
Black Women Radicals has curated a Black Feminist Reading List on Soliditary with Palestine
Haymarket Books is offering three free e-books about how to move toward a free Palestine here
Turn to their reality & be moved enough to do something about…
Sudan
Haiti
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Palestine
Turn, keep bearing witness to people’s realities, & be moved enough to do something until Sudan is free, Haiti is free, the Congo is free, until we are all free
Turn, keep bearing witness, & be moved enough to do something until a ceasefire is agreed upon & Palestine is free 🍉!