June 12, 2021

Still a TJ Kid at Heart

Have you come across the pseudo-fact, circulating recently, that claims 72% of all American adults live within 20 miles from where they grew up? I don't trust that as a statistic, but its true that the when I map the driving distance from my home in SW Washington, DC, to my family's home in Vienna, VA, the distance comes up as just 17 miles. Though I'd note that distance still takes more than a half-hour to travel thanks to Beltway traffic. 

There are moments when I nourish the instinct to get away, and moments when it feels incredibly rewarding to have stayed so close to home for so long. Evidence of the latter has been a recent dialogue with Fairfax County's Public Libraries, which provided refuge on many a day growing up. Our conversation has resulted in both an hourlong "Meet the Poet" event recorded online last week (which you can view here) and an upcoming July seminar, free, on "Narrative Strategies and Truth-Telling in Nonfiction," intended for folks interested in self-mentoring themselves toward writing a memoir. 

On the heels of a virtual 8th Period visit with the TJ Poets Club for National Poetry Month in April, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology asked me to speak at their graduation ceremonies. As an alumna, I couldn't imagine saying no. But as the date neared and it got really real, I wondered how I was going to use this chance--all six glimmering minutes of it.

The actual morning of ceremonies was a flustered affair, because the administration had only gotten the green light for an in-person gathering less than two months prior. My husband and I trekked out to Woodson High School in Fairfax on the first blazingly hot day of summer. A bunch of us tried to access the football field one way, then turned around and got told we would have to backtrack. I realized I didn't have a contact phone number for anyone. Seconds were ticking down to the 9 AM start time. 

But somehow (after being yelled at for accidentally stepping on the track), we found our way to the incoming march of TJ faculty. I felt tremendously relieved to spot Marianne Razzino--fellow member of the Class of 1998, now mathematics teacher--who was holding a black robe and generic regalia to throw on over my dress. Next thing I knew, I was sitting on a stage facing the Class of 2021.


Here's what I had to say, opening with a few ad-libbed observations as I eased into the strangeness of the task at hand~

Thank you for that wonderful introduction; thank you for choosing me to be here; thank you to my own former classmate, who made the regalia sit on me. I'm really honored. I'm glad to be here at Woodson, site of many a Thomas Jefferson High School Homecoming victory, and in the company of...cicadas. 

I know that you are a good, honorable group of people, because during this time I have watched multiple cicadas land on you, and you've found gentle ways to--[hand gesture]. I haven't seen a single one swatted or squished yet. I appreciate the pacifists among us. 

Years ago, I actually auditioned to be the graduating speaker for the Class of 1998. I was not chosen. So I thought about digging up that old speech. Pulling it out, tearing away the dot-matrix feeder strips; if you don't know that reference, ask your parents later. But the world that we lived in, in 1998, is so different from the world we live in now. 

I wanted to speak to you all as an alumna. I wanted to give you the most direct and hardest-earned knowledge that I could offer, and I'm following some amazing comments that have been made already. Forgive me that, in typical TJ fashion, I working on these comments 2 AM on the day they were due. 

I’ve got five minutes and I've got three things to tell you. 

First, I want to talk about a honey fungus in Eastern Oregon, Armillaria Ostoyae. I know. Stay with me. It's the largest creature on earth—it's the size of sixteen football fields—and it lives mostly underground. The bad news is this mushroom isn’t allowing the coniferous trees above to grow. But the amazing news is that parts of the organism are 8,000 years old. 

And then, I want to talk to you about the octopus, and the fact that it has three hearts and dark-blue blood. I want to talk about how capybaras are the friendliest creatures on Earth. I want to talk to you about DNA, and black holes. 

Science is the language that humans use to articulate wonder and curiosity, and it is beautiful thing that every one of these students, every one of you, speaks that language of science. You can go into any number of professions—you can become lawyer, restaurant owners, even a poet—but I can guarantee that your success in whatever field you choose will be enriched by continuing to learn about the science and technology of this world. So please, always hold space for that.

Second, I know I am talking to a crowd that is expert at cramming, at acing, at burning the candle at both ends, whatever metaphor you want. I say this with love: please, now, if you aren't already, think about your mental health. Think about taking care of yourself. Build your reserves. Recognize that the You who gets a B is worth just as much as the You who gets an A. 

And I love that I wrote this message to you all last night, but I've already heard it echoed today. I heard your principal say it, and I heard your classmates say it, and that tells me that you all are thinking about these things. Because I have been where you are. And, trust me, there will come a time when all-nighters are no longer an option, okay? All the caffeine in the world will not allow you to activate the way that you're able to activate right now. In addition to being brilliant, high-achieving performers, you might want to be good partners, loving parents, or simply people with lives outside your work. 

You are more than your productivity. To loosely cite Voltaire—whose Candide I read in Ms. Curtis’s AP Literature class—do not let “perfect” be the enemy of good. 

The third thing I want to say is that you are so fortunate in the company you have kept for these last four years, even when it was over Zoom. I move among artists, who tend to congratulate themselves for being interesting. And they are. But honestly, person-for-person, your classmates at TJ are the most interesting cohort of people you’ll ever meet, and their names will constellate the sky of every imaginable profession, every geographic location, in the years to come. So keep track. Don’t disappear on each other. 

Doesn’t mean you have to say these were the best years of your life and, in fact, I hope aren’t. I hope the best is ahead of you. But trust me when I say that the bonds forged in the fires of this high school mean something. 

I look out and know that I am looking at the people who will shape our world in the years to come. The great part is, I trust you with that world. I have seen so many signs that this generation is talented, adept, inclusive in your social values, generous with your spirit. I ask only that you take care of yourselves, and take care of each other. Thank you. 

As the ceremony shifted into presentation of diplomas, I realized that my placement--you could draw a straight line from the photographer's camera, to the principal, to my chair--meant that I'd be photobombing graduates as they received their diplomas. Sitting and smiling through 400 names is no joke. But it wasn't hard to smile, watching their individual energies as each person cued up to cross the stage. They fussed with their tassels, they stood on tiptoe, they double-checked which hand they were supposed to extend. "Whatever feels good to you, man, just go with it," one of their faculty advisors said, clapping his hand on the back of a student.

Watching a wave of blue caps flip into the air, what I felt was gratitude. And hope. 



May 05, 2021

Poetry in Bloom

1:30 AM on the (very) early morning of my 41st year, and I'm giving myself the birthday present of a blog post I started drafting (checks notes)...oh, back on April 11. 

National Poetry Month is always busy, especially with a new book in hand, but this year the events were all from my office--my Zoom corner. I have missed traveling on a profound level, because those long drives turn out to offer the time when I mull new projects. On the upside, never have I gotten to give so many readings while barefoot; two highlights were my event hosted by Politics and Prose, with Teri Ellen Cross Davis, and my event for The Writer's Center with Kim Addonizio. And my husband has held down the fort magnificently in terms of cooking dinner most nights.


April also marked my first experience coordinating an event for the O, Miami Poetry Festival. The challenge in proposing a project for 2021: to what extent would people be interacting? How could we create something fun, but also safe?  I reached out to Neil de la Flor last fall (great poet, lives in Miami, always has interesting ideas), and something came up organically in conversation--that his family had a multi-generational business in floral deliveries. One thing led to another, and we partnered with SWWIM to curate a selection of poems inspired by flowers, which then went out in bouquets delivered by Dolly's Florist. 

My contribution, other than a general habit for task-mastering, was to conceive delivering the poems in origami form--something that could sit decoratively in a bouquet and invite unfolding as a tactile interaction. Since I turned out to be the only origami enthusiast on the team, this also meant the literal hunkered-down time of folding 150 pinwheels. Felt good to do something hands-on, since I couldn't actually set foot in Miami. 

I've loved origami since I was a kid, taking classes on how to make cranes at the McLean Community Center. One thing I thought about as I worked in the (once again, very) early morning hours is how I used to try and rush through the preparatory folds; the moments in process when the paper has to be creased, then uncreased, to ease a later move. Younger Me thought that was a waste of time, that surely I could finesse the move without it. Older Me understands the necessity. Maybe there's a metaphor in there somewhere. I'd like to think that the challenges of 2020 were, in a sense, preparatory folds for some great move ahead. 


Some other things that happened: I logged on at 5 AM on a Friday to hear the work of a friend I made in Cyprus, an international poetry discussion only possible across Zoom; I got to virtually visit my old high school, which has asked me to speak at their (in person!) June graduation proceedings; I wrapped up a semester of teaching creative nonfiction workshops at the undergraduate and MFA levels, which proved a particular delight; we refreshed the balcony planters with a new type of sedum, "Indian Blanket" (Gaillardia pulchella, a wildflower), tomatoes and peppers; Sal the Wonder Cat continued to loll his ridiculous self across every conceivable surface of this apartment. 

Perhaps this is a trite thing to say, but I do appreciate you coming by this blog. I don't update it as often as I could, or should, or want to. But it's a good, sturdy little tether that binds me to remembering the question of whether I would ever publish a book at all, and therefore how quintessentially lucky this life has been. I'm happy you're here. 

February 28, 2021

The Golden Shovel: On the Legacy of Ms. Brooks and the Future of the Form


Made to Explode
is out! I want to pause and celebrate that, even though I couldn't do what I would customarily do--fill a room with folks, several times over and within a 14-hour driving radius, for readings and hugs and pints and signings. March and April will bring a number of online, Zoom-based events (check out  my schedule on the right-hand side of this blog), but I miss what tactile reality. Still, it is a gorgeous book and I'm grateful to W. W. Norton, my blurbers, and for those who have already reached out to say they are reading it. If you think you might want to teach the book and want guidelines, or even a virtual classroom visit, just reach out and let me know. The life of a poetry collection is long--this is the hardback, there will be a paperback incarnation, and there will be the chance for future conversations. 


I aim for each of my collections to have a couple of craft conversations going on. Count the Waves was about iterative modes, and included six sestinas and a series in dialogue with "The Traveler's Vade Mecum."  Made to Explode is the first collection where I've deeply engaged with the prose poem, particularly in a series of monument and memorial interrogations with the title "____, Midnight," meant to evoke visiting those places in the liminal nighttime hours. But it's also a collection that holds two Golden Shovels, and I wanted to write a bit about what that form's (relatively brief) history, its implications, and how it might advance into poetry's collective consciousness. 



In 2010, Terrance Hayes published Lighthead, his third collection, which would go on to win the National Book Award. In the notes at the back, he spends the most time defining the pecha kucha, a mode based on the format of Japanese business presentations. But he also acknowledges that his poem "The Golden Shovel" "is, as the end words suggest, after Gwendolyn Brooks' 'We Real Cool.'" A few entries later, he notes, "'The Last Train to Africa' is after Elizabeth Alexander's poem 'Ladders.' Like the form used in 'The Golden Shovel,' the end words come from her poem." Hayes would later elaborate on the backstory, which involved asking his two children to memorize poems--one by Langston Hughes, the other by Gwendolyn Brooks--and, after becoming preoccupied with their nightly attempts at recitation, deciding to "string the whole poem down the page and write into it." Multiple drafts resulted, two of which made it into the collection. 


"The Golden Shovel" would be a striking, classroom-friendly poem under any circumstances, because it showcases Hayes' gift for the heightened lyric vernacular, his disciplined and yet playful lineation (sometimes enjambing mid-word), and an ongoing thematic concern with the father figure. But something caught afire about this "nonce form"--a term I assign because it's invention that can be credited to a particular poet, in a particular moment, that may or may not carry forward. What fueled interest is both excitement for Hayes' work and shared reverence for the figure of Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), an incredibly brilliant poet--the first Black poet to win the Pulitzer Prize, the first Black woman to act as poetry consultant for the Library of Congress. The opportunity to teach these two important voices in conversation helped move the form from the realm of "nonce" to "contemporary form,"  as multiple poets began engaging the mode at the same time. 



The chief engineer of this initiative is Peter Kahn, himself a noted poet with an MFA from Fairfield University who, as a Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths-University of London, founded the Spoken Word Education Training Programme. Kahn has taught in Chicago's high schools since 1994, and his investment in distilling and assigning the Golden Shovel to students seeded a cohort of young poets. He co-edited, with Ravi Shankar and Patricia Smith, The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks, which came out in 2017 from the University of Arkansas Press. The anthology's intent, which Kahn described in an interview, was the place student work alongside that of more established poets, all of whom would constitute a "second generation" to Hayes' original experiment. Hayes' blessing, in the form of introducing the anthology, offers the clear dictate that "the 'Golden Shovel' form belongs to no one so much as Ms. Brooks. Peter Kahn, a citizen of Brooks' Chicago understands as much."


My contribution to the anthology is "Non-Commissioned: A Quartet," which uses the text of Brooks' opening in the "Gay Chaps at the Bar" series. Brooks' sonnet is a poem I have taught countless times, often in tandem with Gregory Orr's theory of the four temperaments. (In the original theory essay, considering the possibility of a poet who might perfectly balance story, structure, music, and imagination, Orr offers up the model of William Shakespeare; I'd counter with the model of Gwendolyn Brooks.) I won't try to unpack my own poem here, other than to say it's thinking about the experience of 20th-century soldiering; before appearing in the anthology, the poem won the 2015 C.P. Cavafy Poetry Prize from Poetry International, and now it appears in Made to Explode


Brooks is one of my favorite poets, full stop. So it felt organic to spend the hours required to "write into" one of her poems. Yet I also became increasingly aware of the forms' challenges--if we break the full text of a sonnet into a series of end words, we are talking about a really long poem (~100 lines). I was not surprised, in looking through the anthology to see that most people opted for briefer excerpts of longer texts. This flexibility has resulted in contributions from amazing folks, more than might have taken part otherwise, and it is fun to see how they intersect based on the common choice of a Brooks poem: both Aracelis Girmay and Hailey Leithauser, for example, write into "The Anniad." Other poets taking on lines from "Gay Chaps at the Bar" include CM Burroughs, Laura Mullen, Christine Pugh, Danez Smith, and Lewis Turco (and, though he didn't make it into the anthology, Reginald Dwayne Betts). 


Will the form survive into becoming not only a contemporary form, but a received one? I don't know. Should the form be prescribed as specifically a tribute to Brooks, that uses her poems exclusively? Even Hayes himself uses the form on an Elizabeth Alexander poem (though it should be noted that they're kindred spirits, and Alexander edited The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks). Can the "Golden Shovel" be relaxed into a form that uses any previously published poem, as the description in this Writer's Digest entry suggests? What about song lyrics? Does an author have any responsibility to pick up the concerns of the original text?


I felt compelled to work within the entirety of each Brooks poem in part because I wanted to guarantee any reader's immediate access to her poem's entire text. One of the things I love about this contemporary form is the title, which is actually a matter of relative coincidence: the "Golden Shovel," in the epigraph to the original Brooks poem, is the name of the pool hall where these seven youths gather. But as I've broken it down when explaining the form to students, the title contains somewhat paradoxical impulses: to make something "golden," a.k.a. to gild, but also to bury, e.g. the "shovel" at work. Because isn't even a celebratory occupation still a kind of colonizing? Am I truly writing "into," or am I writing over? 


In this thinking, I'm guided by Solmaz Sharif's insightful later-wave meditation on erasure aesthetics, "The Near Transitive Properties of the Political and Poetical: Erasure," which first appeared in Issue 28 (April 2013) of Evening Will Come: A Monthly Journal of Poetics. I'm also thinking about this as a white poet writing in tribute to and in (attempted) conversation with a poet held dear by the African-American community. "Non-Commissioned: A Quartet" is one of the oldest poems in Made to Explode. "Black Death Spectacle," which takes its name from Parker Bright's protest at the 2017 Whitney Biennial, is one of the last ones I completed as part of the manuscript. Parker wore a gray t-shirt on which he'd written that phrase, and stood between viewers and Dana Schutz's painting. The poem deals frankly and in a meta-mode with these issues, in part by applying the Golden Shovel to the entire text of Ms. Brooks' “The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till." 


I haven't known what to write in people's books, as I send out copies of Made to Explode, any more than we've known how to begin and end our emails to each other in these twelve months of the pandemic. "Stay safe"? "Hope to see you again"? But one thing I've been able to say is that I'm glad to be a poet now, in this time, because poetry is complicated and robust. And considering our emergent forms, and how they will (or won't) propagate is a big part of that. Neither of my Golden Shovels has been published, to date, anywhere online. With that in mind, I'll share them here. But I would ask that they only be taught in full dialogue with the Gwendolyn Brooks poems that shaped them. So I will include those texts, as well. 


Gay Chaps at the Bar


...and guys I knew in the States, young officers, return from the front

crying and trembling. Gay chaps at the bar in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York...

—Lt. William Couch in the South Pacific


We knew how to order. Just the dash

Necessary. The length of gaiety in good taste.

Whether the raillery should be slightly iced

And given green, or served up hot and lush.

And we knew beautifully how to give to women

The summer spread, the tropics of our love.

When to persist, or hold a hunger off.

Knew white speech. How to make a look an omen.

But nothing ever taught us to be islands.

And smart, athletic language for this hour

Was not in the curriculum. No stout

Lesson showed how to chat with death. We brought

No brass fortissimo, among our talents,

To holler down the lions in this air.


-Gwendolyn Brooks


#


NON-COMMISSIONED: A QUARTET

A Golden Shovel

after Gwendolyn Brooks, 

“Gay Chaps at the Bar.” 



I. 

No one chose us. We 

chose ourselves. What a man knew

in the concrete embrace of bunkers—how 

or who—would never make it to

the foxhole. A sergeant catches the order  

as it trickles down his just 

commander’s leg. We hauled the 

water. We led the dash.

We’re the vertebras necessary  

so the skeleton can dance. We’re the 

eighteen rounds in the length 

of a minute; the fifty pounds of 

an M1928 haversack. We’re the gayety 

of five-card draw in 

dead night, the muffled barter of good

smokes for bad booze. Privates taste

fear. A corporal will spit it out. Whether 

a man remembers to thread the

diaper of his pack: the stuff of raillery, 

except when it should 

save your life. We chose to be 

grenade men. There was no slightly. 

There is no plum butter, no bread, no iced

tea, no lemon. There is a meat can, and 

there may be meat in it. What’s given 

to a boy as he trembles, as he turns green, 

is the lesson of swim or

goddammitswim. You serve or are served 

on a stretcher. Once home, belly up 

to the bar and speak of the hot 

dusks—how you aimed the mortar—and 

remember us, who stayed in the jungles lush.


II.

The difference between liver and 

foie gras, we were taught, is in how we 

hold a beast’s head before feeding. We knew 


the throat lining to be beautifully 

calloused, like a palm. We learned how 

to load the gavage, to 


simmer corn in fat to give 

their flesh fat in return. They told us to 

keep the men. We discarded women


after hatching and the 

smell was foul, but so goes summer. 

We could almost taste the spread, 


rich in iron, surrendering to a tongue the 

way an ice cube melts in the tropics.

Nothing was wasted and of 


the lies they’ll tell, that’s the worst: that our 

care was a form of waste. It was love.

Everything stings less when


shot with rye. We took time to 

pin tin to each swollen breast, to persist

even when they hollered or 


the cage held more than it could hold. 

We stroked their throats and called it a 

sign of hunger 


if they swallowed. We took off

shoes that shone with their filth. We knew 

their feathers would not stay white.


No one had to give that speech, 

nor show us how 

their eyes would glaze when ready to 


slaughter. How can I make 

you understand? This is not a 

form of betrayal. Look.


In the field, the officer’s job is to make an

office: anything else is an empty omen.


III.

But

nothing

ever

taught

us

to

be 

islands.


IV.

If a mother cradles her son’s face and 

praises how brave he is, how smart

how nimble or athletic, 

she is teaching him the language 

of easy victory—ten points scored for 

his team, the test aced, the prick of this 

needle to which he did not weep. An hour 

in the trench offered what was 


a different dictionary. We do not 

speak of smart, or brave, or honor in 

battle. That’s for telegrams to the 

parents, the posthumous curriculum. 

Little sprinter, you have no 

advantage in this marathon, no stout 

legs to carry you to the finish line’s lesson. 

Those soldiers who showed 

grace with a bayonet understood how 

the body must become a weapon to 

be wielded; how every chat 

is a conversation with 

the self we want to save; how death 

listens in, nodding. We 

laughed at the lieutenants who brought 

photos of sweethearts, because no 

girl wants to kiss a mouth full of brass. 

If the only volume is fortissimo, 

it’s not music that’s playing. Among 

every hour, what I recall is our 

silences. Our greatest talents—

accomplishing with a look what to 

a weaker man required a holler. 

We raised them. We laid them down. 

We learned faces but not the 

names, and we left lording to the lions. 

The roof of the house I lived in 

had a chevron’s peak. I took in this 

breath and then there was no other air.

 

-Sandra Beasley

[["Non-Commissioned: A Quartet" appears in Made to Explode, W. W. Norton, 2021]]

#


The Last Quatrain Of The Ballad Of Emmett Till


    (after the murder,

    after the burial)


Emmett's mother is a pretty-faced thing;

    the tint of pulled taffy.

She sits in a red room,

    drinking black coffee.

She kisses her killed boy.

    And she is sorry.

Chaos in windy grays

    through a red prairie.


-Gwendolyn Brooks


#


BLACK DEATH SPECTACLE

A Golden Shovel

after Gwendolyn Brooks, 

“The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till.” 



A man asks those viewing Open Casket what comes after

their shock, when from the 

safe distance of cocktails the boy’s murder

becomes a matter of palette, of line and stroke, after

someone fumbles their way through the

drowned? Was he drowned? Wasn’t the Chicago burial

a kind of show, they say, curated by Emmett’s 

mother? The painter says, And I, too, am a mother.


Our tools seduce. Ask what the shovel is

burying. Know that the paintbrush sees only a

canvas: Make it yours. Make it pretty. 


Carolyn Bryant is here and shit-faced 

again and muttering that she couldn’t do a damn thing

to stop them, bacon burned, wheels off the 

wagon, that if her husband had heard even a tint 

of recanting he’d have slapped her silly. Of 

course she’s here—moth pulled 

to the flame, one kid jealous of another’s taffy.

Now that a white woman’s hands are all over this, she

wants in. Carolyn paces, paces, sits.


Ask the poet what gets colored in. 

Ask the poet what gets colored in a 

red 

room.

Ask the poet who sits in a red room, drinking.


Most oil painters will not use pure black.

They build their black instead, from shades of coffee

and navy. When she 

leans toward the painting she almost kisses 

the tacky surface. There. She adjusts the spot-lamp, her 

skin catching the glow off what has been killed. 


Emmett Till is a fourteen-year-old boy,

quick to laugh and 

to help his mother with the laundry, and she 

offers driving lessons if they go to Omaha. But he is 

determined to be Mississippi-bound. Does he say sorry?

Does he promise, next time? Before the chaos, 

he tucks a pack of bubblegum in 

his pocket. She brings him home to the windy 

city so thousands can file by in their best church grays.


At the Biennial, the man’s T-shirt challenges those passing through. 

BLACK DEATH SPECTACLE. They murmur over the bloom of a

wound, seeing red without seeing red.

Question the shovel, he says, that’d till this prairie.


-Sandra Beasley

[["Black Death Spectacle" appears in Made to Explode, W. W. Norton, 2021]]

#


Just a reminder of the Golden Shovel form--reading the end words of each of my poems, above, will embody the full text of the Gwendolyn Brooks poem cited in the dedication line. Please do not replicate these texts except for educational purposes. ~SB

January 24, 2021

Who Gets to Be "From DC"?


If I stand in the right spot of our ninth-floor apartment, I can see the Capitol. I looked this way a lot during the past week, anxiously checking for smoke or other signs of distress that might interrupt the days around Inauguration  My gaze cuts across the vacant lot at 501 I Street SW, bare grass that has been the site of a hotly contested development plan since we moved to this neighborhood in 2015. If approved, the plan calls for a nine-story mixed-use building, and the Capitol will disappear. Never choose a place for the view, my neighbor reminds me. 

When I give readings from my books, I am sometimes introduced as "from Virginia"; other times the host says I'm "from DC." Neither feels wrong. This is my sixth rental since first moving to Dupont Circle in 2002. I spent eighteen years growing up in northern Virginia. I’ve lived in Washington, DC, just as long and almost longer. But I’d never say that I'm "from DC" on DC soil, not after having been asked—not unkindly, but firmly—So what quadrant were you born in? Which hospital?

The vacant lot in my sightline used to be Southeastern University, founded in 1879. A little further over was once 4 ½ Street SW; Myra Sklarew, my teacher at American University, wrote of her grandfather posing for a photo outside his home there back in 1913. The Titanic memorial hovers at the corner where Fort McNair meets with Southwest Waterfront Park, forever mourning those lost at sea in 1912. To live in this neighborhood is to box with one’s ghosts. My dad drove us along Hains Point to see The Awakening clawing out of the ground, back before they moved the sculpture to National Harbor. My Grandma Beasley gathered us for the Thanksgiving buffet at Phillips Seafood. My Grandma Pruett hummed along to the melodies of Arena Stage’s musicals. Here is where 22-year-old me roamed the Environmental Protection Agency building, destined for demolition and taken over in the meantime by Art-O-Matic in 2002. 


My first Southwest address was a building designed by I. M. Pei, and the second a complex by Chloethiel Woodard Smith. Both were key figures in the 1960s urban renewal movement that turned this neighborhood into a Brutalist toy-box of beautiful and, today, dilapidated forms. Their buildings also displaced thousands who couldn’t afford the new reality.

Sometimes when describing Southwest Waterfront, the other person interrupts—Oh, you
mean the Wharf?
—and I wince, caught between waves of gentrification. The pandemic has complicated my feelings toward this multi-million dollar behemoth. Restaurants where I couldn’t afford to a sit-down meal converted their pantries to bodegas that sold chicken, carrots, onions, and greens. The fancy liquor store distributed locally distilled sanitizer. When I first read The Anthem’s sign, “We’ll Get Thru This,” my immediate thought was: Okay then. We will. I needed to have someone say it. I needed for someone to spell it out in foot-tall letters.

Still, the city’s ghosts pull no punches. This past April, when it didn’t feel safe to go out, I could step out on the balcony and see cherry trees blossoming along East Potomac Park. I took great comfort in that. Now Washington Channel is disappearing, floor by concrete floor. Fifty years after our own building went up, I understand the irony of complaining about new construction or rising rent. I can still glimpse the water, if I stand in the right spot. 



In just a few weeksMade to Explode, will be published with W. W. Norton. The collection (my fourth!) has a whole section of prose poems that interrogate the strangeness of our monuments and memorials, our "living history, plus a sestina called "American Rome."  There are lots of things that I am unsure of, but one thing I do know is that DC is the right place to be as this book enters the world. I'm particularly excited that Politics & Prose is using it as the February pick for their Signed First Editions Book Club, because that will put the book into the hands of some Washingtonians who may not usually reach for poetry. 

Vienna is where my family is. Hyattsville is more affordable. Yet this neighborhood holds me, this peculiar cauldron of personal memory and cultural history just blocks from the National Mall. Maybe I won’t ever get to be a Washingtonian; maybe that was decided the moment I was born at Inova Fairfax Hospital. But I am here now. I choose DC for the view. Not a literal vantage point, or one particular set of windows, but because I am invested in what has been and what might be to come.