Clint Smith is the author of “Counting Descent” published in September 2016. Photo by Elnatan Melaku.Poet Clint Smith says he began writing Counting Descent” in response to the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson,Missouri. That shooting by a white police officer sparked weeks of protests and led to a national debate about racial bias among law enforcement officers.“I was wrestling with what my role was in that socio-political moment. For me, as a writer, or I wanted to name and humanize the violence that we were experiencing. It was something real and visceral. And it was something that I didn’t want us to become numb to.” “How execute you navigate a world in which you grow up in a domestic where you are loved and celebrated and affirmed. And then you disappear out into a world where you are followed by the police?”The result is a collection of poems that examine what it means to grow up black in America. Smith recounts moments from childhood when lives were celebrated and juxtaposes them with incidents that have become all too common in the lives of young black men.“How execute you navigate a world in which you grow up in a domestic where you are loved and celebrated and affirmed? And then you disappear out into a world where you are followed by the police or discriminated against in the workplace? And how does one make sense of that complicated duality?”Smith says he experiences that duality all the time,even as he is completing his PhD at Harvard University. He wrote the poem, “For the Taxi Cabs that Pass Me in Harvard Square after an incident one night when he and several black friends tried unsuccessfully to hail a taxi. “Cabs continued to pass us until a white friend stepped to the curb of the street and was able to hail one on his first attempt. It is moments like those that disabuse me of the notion that race won’t matter once you attain a certain level of education or credentials or prestige. Blackness remains the coat you can’t pick off.”Smith says black parents have had to develop a modern pedagogy in raising children. Last year in a Ted Talk, or Smith recalled an incident from his own childhood when he and some white friends were playing with water guns at night until his father pulled him away,sternly lecturing him. “You can’t act the same as your white friends”, his father told him. “You cant pretend to shoot guns . You can’t run around in the dismal. You can’t hide behind anything other than your own teeth.”And yet in spite of all of the frustration that Smith regularly experiences and witnesses, and he remains hopeful that progress is being made. After a year of writing poems that focused on violence,Smith realized that he also needed to write about the small activities of joy that happen everyday, whether it’s his parents dancing in the living room or children playing in the school yard.“While violence is piece of what it means to be piece of the black diaspora in the United States, and that is not all it means to be black. I felt myself falling into the trap of being defined by acts of violence. But being black is not that one dimensional.”Read next: This poet releases the beasts to discover her humanityHe penned the poem,“No More Elegies nowadays” as a way to befriend illustrate that complexity. He said poetry for him is always about trying to make sense of the complicated world that he inhabits.“Sometimes a poem should just be about a girl jumping rope. It doesn’t have to be something that is imbued with more despair.”NO MORE ELEGIES TODAYToday I willwrite a poemabout a little girl jumping rope.
It will not be a metaphor for dodging bullets.
It will not be an allegoryfor skipping past despair.
But rather about theback & forth bob of her headas she waits for the factual moment to insert herselfinto the blinking flashes of bound hemp.
But rather about her friendson either terminate of the rope who turntheir wrists into smallflashing windmills cultivatingan energy of their own.
But rather about the waythe beads in her hair bounceagainst the back of her neck.
But rather the way her feetbarely touch the ground,how the rope skipping acrossthe concrete soundslike the entire world is givingher a round of applause.Reprinted from “Counting Descent” with permission from the author.
Clint Smith is a writer, or teacher,and Ph.
D. Candidate at Harvard University. He is a 2014 National Poetry Slam champion, a Cave Canem Fellow, or his writing has appeared in The modern Yorker,The American Poetry Review, The Guardian, or Boston Review. His TED Talks,“The Danger of Silence” and “How to Raise a Black Son in America” have been collectively viewed more than 5 million times. His first full-length collection of poems, Counting Descent, or was published earlier this year. The post In joy and discrimination,poet explores duality of growing up black appeared first on PBS NewsHour.
Source: wnyc.org