Today’s poems come from award-winning writers. Nate Marshall explores the meaning of “homeland.” His answers are shocking and informative, and they speak of destruction and re-building. He uses the counterpoints to a “homeland” to “landless” and “homelessness.” The form, grammar, and punctuation of this piece are all unconventional, surprising, and exactly right for the themes he conveys.
Linda Gregg’s piece which opens with, “What do they say about the land of the dead . . .” Less than a year later, she was dead. Perhaps she was dying when she crafted this poem, “Arriving.” Like so many wrenching poems, this one is replete with love and loss, pain and beauty, defeat and victory, and some things between.
Maybe some day, I will attempt to rewrite their poems in the image of their hopefulness, going just a bit farther into positive alternatives.
Landless Acknowledgment By Nate Marshall
before we get started we would like to acknowledge that we live on some unceded bones. sometimes me & mine imagine ancestral homes. all i got so far is Montgomery, Alabama. what is a homeland for me? maybe a boat? certainly not a country. maybe a plot of land somewhere so far from the south sides i’ve claimed that i would get lost on the way. i admit sometimes my homies talk about their families immigrating & i get jealous. we lost the land we were custodians over before i was a twinkle in the eye of a twinkle in the eye of a twinkle in the eye. closest i got to a homeland is my mama’s caucasian pitch in the phone calling the police. closest i got to a homeland is not never calling the police. closest i got to a homeland is my daddy’s laugh in a spades game. closest i got to a homeland is my lover’s tongue talking or otherwise. not to be dark but i am. not to be dark but the planet is on fire. not to be dark but they moving capitals because the water is coming up. not to be dark but our bones are in that water too. maybe that’s my capital? once the polar capitals melt & there’s a whole lot less land for folks to buy & sell & steal maybe everybody will feel a little more dark. will feel a little more homelandless like we do. why you think i call my compatriots homies? maybe ain’t no home except for how your beloveds cuss or pray or pronounce.
Arriving By Linda Gregg
What do they say about the land of the dead?
About the ceremony of the body?
About women in long dresses?
What do they say about the innocence of the flesh?
What about the endeavor in nature
at ease with the dance and music?
Long ago, beyond graves, are worlds in state.
The cities still there in ruin. The neck of the ibex.
Walled gardens surrounded by desert.
Imagined lions guarding the gate.
All as it was before.
Worlds out of time still exist.
Worlds of achievement out of mind and remembering
just as the poem lasts.
In the concert of being present.
I have lost my lover and my youth.
I want to praise the meadow, the horse
rolling over in the river with me
as a girl underneath it. Surviving to see
the ferns in the woods, sunlight on blond hills.
And the aged apple trees
in a valley where there used to be a cabin.
Where someone lived. And where small inedible apples
grow. That the deer will eat.
Background
Nate Marshall, from the South Side of Chicago is a writer, educator and speaker. He is the author and editor of numerous works including Wild Hundreds, The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, and his next book, FINNA, due out in 2020 from One World/Random House. He is an assistant professor of English at Colorado College.
He can be contacted here.
Linda Gregg (1942-2019) was born in Suffern, New York, and grew up in the woods of Marin County, California. She received her BA and MA from San Francisco State University. Her many books have been published by Graywolf Press. Titles include Too Bright to See and Things and Flesh. Gregg's honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and, a National Endowment for the Arts grant. Her poetry is archived here.
Exploration 1: What is a homeland for you? How did you come to define it?
Exploration 2: What criteria should be used, in your opinion, for awarding a prize to a poet?
ReplyDelete1. I lived in the streets of Boston till age 21. Since then I have lived in the woods of Roseau County. I feel at home in either place.
2. Poetry is a funny thing. It’s essential yet easily ignored. Criteria for prizes: comprehensible at least upon a third reading. A poem should be lean and sinewy, stripped of fat, fluff, and sentimentality. It should provoke thoughts and emotions in the reader. It should linger and echo in the mind. Give that poet a $100,000 prize so she can write poems for another year.