POST MARDI GRAS POEM OF THE DAY: from Claudia Rankine's Citizen
If you haven't yet read Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric, pick it up asap, and get ready to engage. Citizen gives voice to what it means to be black in America today, and, through Rankine's narrative and formal choices, implicates readers of any color; it demands empathy of its readers or else demands that we question our resistance to such. It is an exquisitely painful book to read (As Jonathan Farmer writes in his Slate review of Citizen, "It is one of the best books I’ve ever wanted not to read.") precisely because it so rigorously and accurately performs the truth. Despite, or perhaps because of, the suffering it uncovers, its existence in the world makes me proud to be an American. James Baldwin, quoted in Citizen's sixth section, writes, "The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions hidden by the answers," and certainly Rankine achieves this. Go see for yourself.
Some poignant moments from this 159-page melding of images, verse, and prose poems:
"And when the woman with the multiple degrees says, I didn't know black women could get cancer, instinctively you take two steps back though all urgency leaves the possibility of any kind of relationship as you realize no where is where you will get from here." (45)
"You lean against the sink, a glass of red wine in your hand and then another, thinking in the morning you will go to the gym having slept and slept beyond the residuals of all yesterdays.
Yes, and you do go to the gym and run in place, an entire hour running, just you and
your body running off each undesired desired encounter." (79)
"because white men can't
police their imagination
black men are dying" (135)
"How to care for the injured body,
the kind of body that can't hold
the content it is living?
And where is the safest place when that place
must be someplace other than in the body?" (143)
"Trayvon Martin's name sounds from the car radio a dozen times each half hour. You pull your love back into the seat beause though no one seems to be chasing you, the justice system has other plans.
Yes, and this is how you are a citizen: Come on. Let it go. Move on.
Despite the air-conditioning you pull the button back and the window slides down into its door-sleeve. A breeze touches your cheek. As something should." (151)
