#NationalPoetryMonth: 3 Poems You Should Read
Happy National Poetry Month! We’re kicking off our favorite time of the year with a challenge to anyone who loves the sound of flowing words and rhythmic beats.
We have highlighted three poems from three poets, Lucille Clifton, Sarah Elizabeth Wright, and Ntozake Shange. We invite you to listen closely to the recorded performances and share your thoughts online through social media with your friends and family. Afterwards, we will highlight some of our favorite interpretations and publish them here on the NMAAHC blog.
Some of these poems deal with adult themes such as suicide and death, but all three have a myriad of interpretations. We encourage you to listen to the poems multiple times and read the brief biographies below to get a better understanding of each poet.
1. “Conversation with my son – About flowers” by Sarah Elizabeth Wright
About the Author
Born in 1928 in Wetipquin on Maryland’s lower Eastern Shore, Sarah Elizabeth Wright knew early on she was destined to be a poet. Fortified by an impassioned history teacher in a two-room schoolhouse, she entered Howard University at age seventeen. There she studied under Harlem Renaissance writer Sterling Brown and developed a close association with Langston Hughes, who visited the campus. After leaving Howard, she began collaboration on a book of poems “Give Me A Child” (1955), unique in its thematic fusion of art and poetry. Eventually, Wright made her home in New York, where she became one of the original members of the Harlem Writer’s Guild, a prominent literary organization that cultivated the writing talent of Wright and her contemporaries, including active members Maya Angelou and Rosa Guy.
Book, This Child's Gonna Live
Writing 'This Child’s Gonna Live' just tortured me because I was used to writing poetry. I said to myself, 'Who in the world told you that you could write prose?' It got on my nerves! But I managed, after about ten to twelve years, to get a book out of that. And what has been so ironic about many of the reviews is that they refer to the novel as 'pure poetry.'
Sarah Elizabeth Wright
In New York, Wright established herself as a poet and novelist. She is best known for her only novel “This Child’s Gonna Live” (1969), which explores themes of sexism, racism, and religiosity. After its publication, Wright came to the national attention of writers and critics who praised the novel for its rich poetic language, intricate plot, and disturbing themes.
About the Poem
Sarah Elizabeth Wright’s poem “Conversation with my son – About flowers” engages the voice of a parent imparting wisdom to a son about the kind of people he should seek to embrace or associate himself with on his life’s journey. It is a metaphorical poem in which flowers symbolize people, and fields symbolize communities. The parent commands the son to seek sunflowers—people who yearn for life and who are strong and tenacious in the face of life’s adversities.
“But look to the growing among us, giant sunflower crowd.”
In life, sunflowers yearn for the sun, turning their sun-like faces toward that brilliant blaze wherever it sits in the sky, and are known for their towering stature and longevity despite seasonal change.
Conversely, the narrator admonishes the son to eschew roses—people who have resolved to live their lives constrained purely by convention in places unfamiliar to the son.
“Don’t bother your head with roses! You will not want to go where they are trapped to thrive outside our fields.”
Though beautiful in their array of color and fragrance, roses are the most conventional of bouquets.
But the parent wisely points out that among the purely conventional is always one who seeks to break free and embed him or herself in a community like his own. Knowing that this propensity exists is a good thing, but the son should still rely on the vigor, vibrancy, and tenacity of his own spirited people within his own enduring community.
2. “Sorry” by Ntozake Shange
About the Author
Born Paulette Williams in 1948 in Trenton, New Jersey, Ntozake Shange completed undergraduate studies in 1970 at Barnard College in New York. After moving to Los Angeles to complete a master’s in African American studies at the University of Southern California, she formed the theater company “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide,” a name reminiscent of her own considerations of suicide while a Barnard student.
Booth Theatre Blaybill, for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf
Poems come like a fresh breeze or a rapid slap to the cheek. The body vibrates, blows warm or chill, damp or dry, fingers tighten or relax and the lips grow thin or thick as the day I was born. Writing is so physical. Words pummel or caress.
Ntozake Shange
In 1976 Shange garnered national recognition with the Broadway production of her choreopoem by the same but lengthier name “for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf,” which ran for nearly two years. Seven female characters presented poetic monologues conveying their struggles with racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination and violence. The production was an innovative blend of dance, music, poetry, and storytelling that placed the lives and voices of African American women on center stage.
About the Poem
In her poem “Sorry,” Ntozake Shange uses personification and allusions to jazz and masking to convey the malignancy of being perpetually apologetic.
The personification of Sorry in parts of the poem conveys the speaker’s tendency to debilitate one who routinely accepts apologies from a loved one. Sorry is a toxic person whose persistence is unrelenting.
“I got sorry greetin me at my front door.”
And when the narrator has had enough of Sorry “beatin’ my heart to death…I let sorry…take a walk down a dark & musky street in Brooklyn.” The only place name that situates Sorry is Brooklyn, where Shange herself resided, which might suggest that this is an autobiographical poem. In her personal life, Shange experienced problematic relationships that she, herself, found extremely difficult to overcome.
The narrator’s reference to the alto saxophonist Oliver Lake is an allusion to jazz as a soother of her soul. This reference represents a turning point in the poem after the narrator has resolved to let Sorry go.
“Letta sorry soothe your soul/I’m gonna soothe mine!”
The reference to playing Lake “loud!” is perhaps a nod to one of Shange’s highly metaphorically poem titled “I Live in Music,” in which “sound falls round me like rain, and saxophones wet my face like cold winters in St. Louis.”
Shange closes her poem by suggesting that the apologies are a form of masking, which the narrator’s loved one employs to absolve him or herself of guilt.
“you can carry all the guilt and grime you wanna just don’t give it to me. I can’t use another sorry.”
Most significantly, Sorry represents a mask designed to shield the true identity of the narrator’s loved one.
“You should admit you’re mean/low-down/trifling/& no count
straight out
steada bein sorry alla the time
enjoy bein YOURSELF”
The closing line is therefore an imperative to reveal one’s true identity, as pathetic as it may be. It also clearly addresses the dual meaning of the word “sorry.” As a personal insult, the narrator proclaims that being perpetually apologetic, or sorry, identifies the narrator’s loved one as sorry, meaning deplorable. Sorry then, as the saying goes, seems to be a sorry word!
3. “Praise Song” by Lucille Clifton
About the Poet
Born Thelma Lucille Sayles in 1936 in Depew, NY, Lucille Clifton initially began her career in the arts as a performer. She studied drama at Howard University, where in 1955 she performed in the celebrated production of James Baldwin’s play “The Amen Corner.” However, she would ultimately turn her attention to teacher’s education at the State University of New York at Fredonia. Clifton held teaching positions at Coppin State College, where she was writer-in-residence from 1971 to 1974; at Duke University; and the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Color photograph of Lucille Clifton wearing "Soul Sister" sweat shirt
I am open to poetry. Something catches my attention. I have the kind of mind that sees connections in things and sees ways of expressing, and notices what is human and what is not…and wonders about it. Poetry doesn’t come out of knowing the answers. Poetry comes out of wondering.
Lucille CliftonInterview conducted by Kelly E. Navies. From the Archives of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture.
After returning to Maryland, she became the state’s poet laureate from 1979 to 1985. Toward the latter part of her career, she was a Distinguished Professor of Literature and a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary’s College. Her final poetry collection “Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems,” 1988-2000 (2000) won the National Book Award.
About the Poem
“Praise Song” by Lucille Clifton is a poem expressing immense gratitude for the life of a loved one who was spared from suicide. Clifton uses repetition of the word praise to express the gratitude.
“Praise to the drivers…praise to the faith…praise to the arms.”
Commonplace visual imagery describes her Aunt Blanche and the circumstances of the suicide attempt witnessed by a ten-year-old child, who is now the adult narrator. Concrete images such as grass, driveway, street, and traffic give the reader a sense of place, where the suicide attempt occurred.
The word basketball is a metaphor for Aunt Blanche’s body and conveys the ease with which it rolled to its intended destination in the street. A sequence of action verbs establishes the trajectory of the incident. Aunt Blanche rolled, hurled, rose, walked, and sighed as she returned to her family.
The underlying theme of the poem is the need to avoid passing judgment on people in general and on suicidal people in particular. Only innocent children and God are free of this tendency to judge.
“Arms…welcomed her without judgment…like children might, like God.”