The past four years, a sequence
Of blended memories: locations, people, songs.
[[I've listened where words and minutes would touch]]
[[When I am close enough, I am reminded]] I've listened where words and minutes would touch.
In high church ceilings,
The roof of my mouth,
Places that have heard
So many words.
[[When I am close enough, I am reminded]]
[[Some words, absent.]] When I am close enough, I am reminded
That each memory is a privilege.
The earliest memories fade fast.
I have little recollection of "firsts:"
First days, first times ______;
These experiences accrue meaning
Over time. But one defining first sticks out:
An absentee voter's ballot, filled out
On a table beside the café.
The same place the winner was broadcast,
Though I was asleep by then, pushing away reality,
Exhuasted from running miles around the track outside
When red overtook blue
And things stayed that way.
[[Cathy Park Hong writes, "The whole country is in a duel and we want no part of it"]]
[[My personal experience is unimportant.]]
[[That night marks a before and after. ]] But even in the "after," happinesses.
Bestowed on me by parents, friends, strangers.
I know these people intimately
And yet only as projections:
Each memory a metonym
For a whole self, a whole life.
Some I know better than others--
Through words, I've gotten to know them.
[[I've listened where words and minutes would touch]]
[[Some words, absent.]] Cathy Park Hong writes,
"The whole country is in a duel and we want no part of it."
That day, almost all were astonished.
Some classes were cancelled.
Professors opened office hours for
Crisis conversations.
Some students stayed in bed, sick
With worry for the world.
[[My personal experience is unimportant.]]
[[That night marks a before and after. ]] My personal experience is unimportant, but it is the only framework I have. I awoke that day already knowing what had happened, but checked the news just in case. My regularly scheduled class, Social Statistics, was cancelled, but students were welcomed to attend an informal debriefing conversation on the events of the night. We discussed exit polls--notoriously flawed, but the only information we had to grapple with--which claimed that 52% of white women voted for Donald Trump.
These days, the Pew Research Center suggests that 47% of white women voted for Donald Trump (45% voted for Hillary Clinton). This statistic has been used to argue that white women were really the ones who voted in Trump.
Some claim that white women cared more about their (white) race than their gender--hence the reason they voted for a white man over a white woman. "White feminism" has a long history--beginning with the suffragettes, who advocated for (white) women's right to vote--of choosing race over gender.
My professor, a woman of color, stated, "These events make me realize that I was never as safe as I had been led to believe, only that I thought I was." Together we realized the discussion of rhetoric and violence against marginalized populations in America was more urgent than we had thought.
[[That night marks a before and after. ]] That night marks a before and after.
Time in the "after" is warped:
Stretched, slow, viscous,
But only in memory. Days
Proceed mostly
~~As normal~~
As they did in the "before."
I can say that
Because I am at a lesser risk
Than many others. Even today,
After two years. Too long.
[[But even in the "after," happinesses. ]] Some words, absent.
Absent, that is, from voice,
Though perhaps still present.
I say (for I can't claim to know
What you would say)
Goodbye to a friend,
Possibly for the last time.
What I mean is:
~~I love you~~
~~I will miss you~~
~~You have changed something for me~~
Some words are too heavy.
Heavier still, projected hopes:
~~I hope to see you again~~
~~I hope I'm not bothering you~~
~~I hope I'm not too emotional~~
Hopes quickly turn to sorrows, and besides
Is it not violence to impress my hopes on you?
It puts you at a disservice, certainly,
To ask a question you don't know you're being asked,
And to put so much stock
In your answer?
Reader, is it violence?
[[Yes]] [[No]]I am sorry.
[[Sorrow how high it is/ That no wall holds it/ Back: deep]]It is comforting to know you do not think so.
[[I'll tell you of another memory.]] Sorrow how high it is
That no wall holds it
Back: deep.
Yes, deep as a well
That reaches an aquifer.
And sorrows, the water itself,
Ever-replenishing.
[[I'll tell you of another memory.]]I'll tell you of another memory.
This one does not belong to me.
On the farm in Greece:
"JGS 1976" scrawled
In permanent marker on the underside
Of the table we used for dinner.
My father's initials, a reminder
Of his presence
For our Greek relatives. He made the table
And signed it like a work of art.
[[Just a table, but a presence]]
[[I awoke with a head of marble in my hands]]I awoke with a head of marble in my hands.
I borrow these words from George Seferis
To tell you about cultural memory.
Greek, in specific. We love ruins,
Mythology, and history.
I feel disconnected from these
Ruins/memories/histories,
Despite an ambiguous pride in them.
I had no part in bringing them about--
Neither did my ancestors. And still,
I see doric columns and think "stability,"
Ionic, and think "wisdom,"
Even 2500 years later, on my college campus.
Korinthos and Davidson,
Both homes, if only in memory.
I am sure I am not unique in this association
Between cultural and personal. I like sharing
These memories and constructs
With others--even unknown to me.
[[Thank you for your patience]]Just a table, but a presence
Nonetheless. I do not know
If the table still exists there,
If my familiy still uses it for picnics,
If my father still thinks of summer,
1976. I wasn't there,
But my memory is melded to his.
This is comforting to me.
One day, the table will be retired
And I will not know it.
Yeats writes,
[[Everything that's beautiful drifts away / Like the waters]]Thank you for your patience,
And for sharing your time.
For a list of citations,
[[click here.]]
To start again, [[here->Beginning]] Works Cited
Ammons, A.R. "Dark Song." Poetry (September 1964). 353. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=29845
Clifton, Lucille. "why some people be mad at me sometimes." Blessing the Boats. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, Ltd (2000). 38.
Graham, Jorie. "Noli Me Tangere." The End of Beauty. Hopewell, NJ: The Ecco Press (1987). 42.
Hayes, Terrence. "American Sonnet for my Past and Future Assassin." American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin. New York: Penguin Books (2018). 82.
Hong, Cathy Park. "Fort Ballads." Engine Empire. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. (2012). 18.
Nabokov, Vladimir. "Pale Fire." Pale Fire. First Vintage International (1962). 31.
Pew Research Center. "An examination of the 2016 electorate, based on validated voters." 9 August 2019. Pew Research Center U.S. Politics & Policy. Accessed 7 May 2019. https://www.people-press.org/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters/
Seferis, George. "Mythistorema." ed & trans. Edmund Keeley & Phillip Sherrard. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (1995). 5.
Yeats, W.B. "The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water." In the Seven Woods. New York: Macmillan (1903).Everything that's beautiful drifts away
Like the waters.
That is, things don't disappear or disintegrate--
Just drift. Present somehwere, perhaps far.
This drifting: like artifacts on the River Styx.
Maybe somewhere there is an ocean of memories:
Yours, mine, ours.
Maybe you prefer the Angel of History.
Either way there is an existing record somewhere.
A record that is completely indiscriminate.
In the poem "why some people be mad at me sometimes,"
Lucille Clifton writes of right
And wrong memories, depending on the person.
This idea will always matter--whose memory
Gets elevated to History.
There is danger in the misrepresentation ~~of memories~~.
Nabokov writes,
[[I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the azure in the windowpane]]I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the azure in the windowpane.
A fatal trick: falling for the wrong image,
The wrong recollection.
Whether the consequence is emotional,
Political, or otherwise,
The danger remains.
There is only attentiveness and empathy to guide.
[[Thank you for your patience]]
And attentiveness.