>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
[ Silence ]
>> Poet Laureate for the District of Columbia, Dolores Kendrick.
Ladies and gentlemen, you are in for a very special treat this afternoon.
In Washington, if you spend your time listening to,
yes and writing congressional speeches, it is a relief
and indeed refreshing to know
that magnificent poetry can be written even in Washington.
Perhaps it's because Dolores Kendrick is writing
in the other Washington, hometown Washington.
The District of Colombia where she was born
and which has honored her work by naming Dolores Kendrick a--
only our second poet laureate, the great Sterling Brown was the first.
Her hometown is not alone in recognizing Miss Kendrick
who has written 4 books including, "Why the Woman is Singing
on the Corner: A Verse Narrative," set in the district and "Women
of Plums: Poems with Voices of Slave Women."
The great poet, Gwendolyn Brooks praised a Woman Singing
in the Corner for "Its amazing bits of risk
and reckoning and hallelujah."
The poet Grace Cavalieri and producer and host of the Poets
and Poem from the Library of Congress hailed Woman
of The Plums for, "Establishing Dolores Kendrick as a major figure
in American letters, giving us new hope for this country's literature."
Her many awards would impress you, but in my limited time,
I want to give you a sense of what it takes to become poet laureate
of this disempowered city without a final vote in Congress,
subject to raw interference even
with spending its own local funds via Congress
that had nothing to do with raising them.
Dolores Kendrick's work shows all of the aesthetic
and intellectual hallmarks of great poets.
But unlike many of them, she does not want to be "invisible."
She says great poet-- great poetry does not belong to the poets.
Miss Kendrick is used to sharing what she knows and what she feels.
She began as a teacher in our public schools and helped fund-- school--
our school without walls, one of our very best.
Dr. Kendrick is very much one of us.
She represents a deep part of what it means to be the District
of Colombia in transition from the old segregated DC
to a cosmopolitan city.
She was educated at Dunbar High School known for storied graduates
in the days of segregation, among them, former Massachusetts Senator,
Ed Brooke who grew up in LeDroit Park here as Miss Kendrick did.
She has insisted on making her poetry available
and on inspiring other poets.
Miss Kendrick's Young Champion Poets Program is an annual competition
between 2 of our high schools, Duke Ellington and McKinley.
She spreads her poetry in new and innovative ways,
writing on public sculptures for example.
Stop by journeys, a sculpture at the New York Avenue Metro Station.
We in the district know well how fortunate we are
to have a poet laureate who believes
that good poetry does not belong to the poet.
Dolores Kendrick gives her poetry to her city
and to all who value fine poetry.
This afternoon, I am pleased to introduce Dolores Kendrick
who will offer her poetry to you.
Dolores Kendrick, [applause] poet laureate
of the District of Colombia.   [ Applause ]
>> Thank you Representative Norton.
This is such a special introduction that we're going to have a couple
of words from another figure
in Washington literary scene before Dolores actually speaks.
But we very much appreciate that wonderful introduction of Dolores.
I'd like now to call on and this is added with the special request
from Dolores and-- to call on Ethelbert Miller, a local writer,
poet, literary figure who has--
knows a great deal about the Washington scene.
Ethelbert currently is the director
of Howard University's African-American Resource Center.
Let's give Ethelbert a hand and then we'll hear from Dolores.
[ Applause ]
>> In 1984, with the help of Grace Cavalieri and James Earley,
I helped establish the poet laureate position
in Washington D.C. The idea was initially a way
to honor Sterling A. Brown, a man who until his death
in 1989 was often called the Poet Laureate of Washington,
the author of such memorable poems as Ma Rainey,
Long Gone and Strong Men.
Brown was an individual who traveled the southern road and helped
to encourage the appreciation of African-American folklore
and African-American music such as the blues.
In 1999, the honor of poet laureate was bestowed on Dolores Kendrick.
What this woman has done for 12 years has been remarkable.
In many ways, she's our first lady of poetry.
She has been a model of dignity on and off the page.
When the word is truly spoken,
the name Dolores Kendrick will be placed next
to Robert Hayden and Gwendolyn Brooks.
Here in Washington, there are politicians and word magicians.
This city is a place where the most courageous are often found working
alone, searching for the wonder that will make love to our ears.
This city is a choir of-- is a home to a choir of poets, a congregation
of men and women, of family or friends
and lovers, a city of believers.
Say the names Holly Bass, Sarah Browning, Abdul Ali, Kyle Dargan,
Myra Sklarew, Rose Berger, Kenny Caroll, Joe Ross, Sandra Beasly,
Derek Brown or Charlie Davis and there is no need for some.
Poetry is what we do here.   We are not a motor city
or an emerald city, we are a city of poets.
Here is where Whitman walked and used to hang out
and people dug Dunbar when he worked here.
Yes, this place by the Potomac, this Banneker of a place,
this city no longer a town and more than a destination.
Washington is a metaphor for all that is good in the world.
[Applause] It is here that the Split This Rock Poetry Festival is held
every 2 years and Busboys and Poets is open every night.
From our many circles, Ken Roberts continues to give us one
of the best poetry journals online
which is why the Woman is Singing on the Corner.
Our city is okay because of Dolores Kendrick and so many gifted others.
This afternoon, poetry catches her breath and catches us all in need.
Let each poem touch our heart.
Let there be no endings in our lives, only beginnings.
Let the poets speak of love and point us in the direction
where our imagination waits for the day of glorious reckoning.
Let us imagine more days like this one for after Sterling moments,
there can only be Dolores.   [ Applause ]
>> So, by way of Delegate Norton and Poet Miller,
I bring you Dolores Kendrick, Dolores.
[ Applause ]   >> Thank you very much.
I want to thank Miss Norton for coming and introducing me
and Ethelbert who created this office for me.
Mr. Cole here who has been very supportive of poetry
in the whole United States, but certainly here in DC,
and Mr. Billington who has done this magnificent program for all of us.
I'm very grateful to you.
And I speak for others who are grateful to you
for having this one moment in a time of chaos for us to sit and enjoy
and appreciate one another.
I'm going to do something today that is a part of--
has become a part of my life.
I believe that poetry has to work in everybody's life and there has
to be a moment when the poet and the reader are one.
I never realized that so much as when Chandra Levy's mother and I--
you probably heard of Chandra Levy who is the poor--
the girl who was murdered and there was a big trial about her murder
and her mother came here and sat in the courtroom when the man
who was accused of the murder and was really found guilty.
But somebody told me after the trial was over, somebody came up to me
and said, "Dolores, are you Dolores Kendrick?"
This woman came from nowhere and I said, "Yes."
She said are you a poet laureate of Washington DC and I said, yes.
She said, do you know Chandra Levy's mother?
I said, no, I don't know her.
She said, well, she made a statement after the trial
and she said had it-- and she said, you need to look up that statement.
And I did, I called the DA out in Maryland and I got in touch
with them, but I did see the actual quote in which she talked
about many things, but she talked
about the fact has she not read a poem by Dolores Kendrick
and to this day, I don't know what the poem was.
She would not have been able to get through that horror
that she was going through.
Now, if poetry touches people like that then
that poetry is doing its job, it's as good as the reader.
Another example I can give you is when I was with James Bowen
up in New England and he and I were sitting down talking
to one another and we were at an inn.
And the cook came out-- this man came out of the kitchen.
Now, I was in Exeter, New Hampshire
where there were probably only 2 black people in that city
and that happened to be Bowen and me.
And when we-- this man comes out, he is a cook, he has a big hat on
and he's carrying a few books and he walked up to Jimmy and he said,
"Sir, will you autograph these books for me?
I'm the cook, but I read."
And I said, "Jimmy, you can get every award in the world,
but it will never touch that, that that man has been
so touched by your work."   I've had several instances.
I could go on but if I did, you wouldn't hear any poems.
So I am convinced that it is the poem and the person
and at one point the reader can own the poem
and I'll tell you how that works in a minute.
So today, I'm going to read a series of poems that have been asked
for by various and sundry friends and people who read poetry.
They're not all poets.
And I will read these poems to you today
or excerpts from them for you today.   And I'm going to start right now.
[ Pause ]   I think John [inaudible].
Yeah, okay.   >> Okay?
>> Yeah.   >> Put it back in?
>> Yeah.   [ Inaudible Remark ]
>> Uh hmm.   >> Could you take the whole books?
>> Yeah.
>> I'm going to start with a poem called Canticle of a Black Lady
and this poem is from the Women in Plums and it was asked
by Pat Parnell who is a poet in New Hampshire.
[ Pause ]   Canticle of a Black Lady.
"Dying, asks a question, she gives an answer, done.
Every ounce of it, fly winds to sea rocks and break
around a prayer upon their backs.   Turtles take notice.
You may walk with your eyes upright, beasts in the forest,
part the noon with your cries, stretch your bones
into the sun embrace amen as you eat the air.
It is done, said, pronounced, motion, spoken astonished,
the men of oranges have shed their skins
and their flesh is puffed upon weeds.
The women of plums are sweet and black.
Their flesh is moist with tears of joy,
their dreams are skins the color of dusk, their ripe dreams bitten
in two leave a sour sweetness in the membranes of the mouth.
The children of quince quiver in the womb, their eyes are dowries,
their tongues, soft songs.
And the bride comes forth carrying peacocks upon her fingers,
wearing roses in her hair.
She comes forth beyond the wedding day and speaks, 'I will and Amen."
[Applause] The essence of these poems is
where the poem strikes a reader.
Any place that a poem strikes you, I'm not of the academe
which gives you definitions as to what a poem is all about.
I long since abandoned that.
But if it strikes you in anything, in a word, in a phrase,
you may not even agree with the thought,
but if it reaches you somewhere, at that point, you own the poem.
I no longer own the poem.   The poet no longer owns the poem.
And I think Whitman said it beautifully.
He said, "I am a poet, I sing and celebrate myself.
For a modest consideration, I will sing and celebrate you."
[Laughter] So he had it down, huh.
The next poem is from Why the Woman is Singing in the Corner.
And a number of people have asked me about that poem,
how is it that I came to write it.
And I don't know there was a day when you would see these people
who would come out of-- who had been in asylums and they were
on the streets screaming and talking to themselves and whatnot.
And often they were women.
I used to see them in New York a lot, but they were down here, too.
And I ask myself, well, that woman had to have a past.
What was her past?   She's had to have a story.
And from that, I began to write Why the Woman is Singing on the Corner.
I-- today, you don't see very much of that because I know when I used
to hear the person on the street behind me, I knew what it was about.
But today, their own cellphones and I'm walking down the street
and all this noise and everything is coming behind me
and these folks are talking on their cellphones.
So it's no longer the same era, huh.   Could I have that?
With-- the one on top.   Thank you.
Fourteenth Street, this was asked by Bill McSweeney who--
of DC who asked me to read this particular poem to you.
And it's when this lady is about to lose her mind.
Now, what I want to make clear is that I'd model after Ophelia
in Shakespeare's Hamlet because Ophelia--
this woman cannot stand abandonment.   She's being abandoned all the time.
And she finally breaks.
Her fragile character cannot handle all of these abandon
and she has had a narrative experience with it.
That's what happens to Ophelia in Hamlet.
And if you remember or if you've read Hamlet, she does break
in the end, but she commits suicide.   This woman does not commit suicide.
She has a spiritual vision that she holds on to and it saves her.
[ Pause ]   Okay, here we go.
[ Pause ]
"Art would come in the night, take her."
Now, Art is one of her lovers.   We're not sure.
I'm not sure whether he's a husband or a lover.
I'm almost certain he's a lover 'cause she has about 4
"Art would come in the night, take her, sleep on her breasts.
What he would not take, she would give.
The wife in her had long since drowned and he had found the body."
Yeah, he was her husband.
"I don't want no men to own me anymore, she calls to herself.
Alone she finds her shivering voice a companion.
Better this way.
He can leave and I can leave and we don't need no parting papers.
And she washes the last customer's dish, closes the restaurant door,
goes out to look for him, a word or two slipping from her lips.
And the three lost husbands, they left one way or another,
but she had only one child, the one whose hand she held
in the darkness while she was asleep.
That one she lullabied to sleep, that one she spoke
to when the grims were about to kill her.
That one she created the three lives for it.
That one she took to parties over at Sappey's [phonetic]
and later Dolly Rose's [phonetic] fashion show that showed off the--
all the prettiest of colored women.
That one she had while she was defying nature."
The next one is a request from my pastor at the Church
of the Immaculate Conception.
And this is when she-- the same woman has a vision
that she can hardly explain, but actually is a vision of Christ
who has come for a moment just to say hello to her
and try to keep her sanity.   "A man came in and asked for water.
She served him.   He drank slowly, deliberately
and watched her burrowed faced, then he left.
And all the while she seem given to him in some strange way.
On the counter was a large chip and the glass
that held the water stood brightly touched by a song of sun.
He knows me, she thought, from somewhere.
He knows me, and she moved her aching fingers
over her withering brown hands.   Horizons are in her mind.
She hears a voice.   This is the place to draw water.
If you are thirsty, I am.   Announce me.
But you have no bucket, she says.   You have. That's all I need.
And what am I to do, she asks it aloud.
Give me your misery.   Forget mine.
Her voice becomes-- his voice becomes Tolly Bogs [phonetic],
who is sitting on a stool at the bar staring at her and wanting a beer.
What's your misery, Tolly, she says.
My wife ain't home with smiles and it's time for some libation.
I need some oiling.
The place is empty now and the white table cloths have long
since disappeared.
Customers, when they come, eat on their tables with paper napkins
and the food is short order.
The wall brocade is ripped and rotting
and these barstools complain under pressure.
The brass and wood no longer listen, but on occasional smudge
of sunlight reveals a listening path, somewhat more distance
than San Francisco, which is
where she originally got the furniture for her bar.
She gives Tolly his beer.
Take the money, ring it up, laughs, and said, the greens are good today,
goes to the kitchen to stir the pot.   Suddenly, she sings.
The next one is a poem called Bones without Pockets
and this is-- thank you very much.
This is a poem by-- from Now is the Thing to Praise and was asked
by Elaine V. [phonetic] of New Hampshire who is not a poet,
just a person who likes this poem and wanted to hear it.
[ Pause ]
Okay, as soon as I can get this straight, page 76.
Never mind that last touch of quail that scampered down the mountain
as she heard your footsteps, or the chipmunk that ran
under the wooden bridge when your wavering shadow reached its ears,
or the wood lilies that died after you picked them,
or the cook who plunged from the castle
when the landslide hit the mountain and washed the kitchen into the sea,
or the man who jumped in your dreams
until you were abandoned unidentified,
or the beggar who spilled coffee on your dress when asking for money
for another cup, or those swollen black white men
who didn't know his blood and picked a revolution for you instead
of an afternoon in his mother's house, or the endangered species
of friends and family who embrace one another while words soar
on the table, or that little lies that mark the end of a good book
or straight poem or the hollows in the ground as you walk
in your 30-dollar shoes that are already losing their soles,
or the song that never sings in the night or the appetite that is made
from too much disappointment.   Never mind all that.
The ghost is leaning on the fence.
Her hands dressed in pockets of sweet night
and your bones are her deliverance.   Your matters, her celebration.
And the next poem is from Dorothy McSweeny, which is called Rooms.
This is a poem about my leaving public schools and going to teach
in a private school in Exeter and what that caused me emotionally,
what it had to-- what it really did for-- to me as well as for me.
I don't know where it was.
It was near where all the rooms are clothed in ice
and naked children walked beside me and asked for candy.
That's not nourishment, I said.   It was near.
Their white bodies were hot with fevers.
I took their temperatures and wondered
if white flesh held heat longer than black.
They wondered at my curiosity.
I walked into the classroom with Baldwin, Brooks, Wright, and Hayden.
Their mastery of the universe, the strut of their language soft
in my footprints, I am filled.
And when I walked into the classroom, I closed the closet door
at the end of the room, looked at the straight white teeth
in the white mouths of the white faces before me and picked
up Shakespeare because I am different, I'm strangely cultured.
I know the land that seize the straight white teeth
where blooms the rooms of white mouths.
I discovered it long before Columbus.
I carried it in my loins while the rivers
of Africa swept through my blood.
I ate it when I was hungry, spat it out when it sicken me.
My children sucked its swollen bosom.
When the land was dry, I caught its dust and made fragile dreams
when Shakespeare was but a thought.   I picked up Shakespeare.
His body cracks.   The room grows larger.
So fine. This black child standing cold in the light
of the old school room public, he is shivering.
So am I. One day I will leave him abruptly
and I do not believe in violence.
But he screams quietly in the corner,
watching my blackboard magic, noticing the dust on my heels,
there is not enough room for us both.
We both have to grow.   We both need visions.
We both owe debts.   Yours a penny, mine a profession.
Pay up. Those rooms were wild and funny,
but I left them because they starved me.
They were close and muggy and wet,
but I left them because they drained me.
They were narrow and dim and soft,
but I left them because they crushed me.
They were raw infected disease, but I left them
because there was a stench from the children's decaying spirits.
And in the doorway, blocking my departure stood three shapes
with white teeth even and straight, no braces, whispering to me,
Shakespeare, Shakespeare.   Well, I have arrived.
English class, 9:00 a.m., private.
The sun is clear, the grass listens in the quiet.
The sky bothers the cloud making quick shadows for the willow,
the birch and the elm, the skin of the bright room itches.
It always seems to need lotions, creams, salves, balms.
It is very delicate.
I wonder if power is delicate ever if those who live
in fragile rooms become the bones of such rooms.
If all the broken limbs that hobbled
through the hard marble walls are diplomas of unpitiable pride,
oh, the-- the stench again.
I, too, have a power struck from the lineage of my visions
that crowd upon me more demandingly than the dead who walk me now.
Their ghosts are in their children,
the white mouths, the little questions.
But these faces are icons.   They are gilding.
They are sweet and bloom and special rooms in the right temperature
and light while my visions knock at the door.
Exit ghost.   Shakespeare should know better.
[ Applause ]   Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm going to read a poem from-- a brief part of a poem called Cardinal
in Summer [phonetic] because I met a friend, my friend of many years.
She and I had gone to the same college,
but we really didn't know each other.
But she saw this poem and--
and realized and we took a course together
and she said you're Dolores Kendrick.
I said, yes.
She said, I love the poem Cardinal in Summer.
And this is Regina Jervay [phonetic] of Washington D.C., and she asked me
if I would read the poem.   I can't read the whole poem,
but I will read a part of it for you, for her.
The wise bird flies to the top of the wind
and raps a steel cold morning to his breast, but you, bird,
I've seen barred before my window languishing
in the limp racks and sun.
Some are caught fastened between the steps of the Venetian shade
that cannot climb your heights or break your flight
and harvest the white steel light of the blind man's touch.
What if some prowler were to come?
Some great eagle and treacherous seeing life as death and death
as life and I'm free to choose.
Warm in the womb of the wind tree, red warm yet quivering in shadow.
Throat warm, soft and cloud warm, feather branched
in the small boned world, you rest and rocks below you crumble.
Yet, I watched the blood on your wing spurn--
burn like fire and spring you to the lap of god.
The next poem--   [ Applause ]
Thank you.   [ Applause ]
The next poem is from the heritage--
I don't know if any of you have known Paul Breman
who published mostly your major African-American poets
around the '60s and late '50s and there's a compendium
that would put-- was put out about three years ago and in
which he had all of the original poets and all the poems in them.
But one of them, he published some unpublished poems and one
of them was mine called Intermezzo.
My mother listens to Cavalleria Rusticana.
My mother loved music and she loved that Intermezzo
and that's how I grew to understand that Intermezzo and understand
that music because we'd listen to it together.
And this poem I chose, this is my choice for a poem.
Thank you.
I don't know what I would have done if John hadn't decided to sit
Okay.   [ Pause ]
In My Mother, I have to tell you that the NPR asked me
to write a poem for Mother's Day some three years ago
and this is the poem that I wrote
and since it involves Cavalleria Rusticana, the Intermezzo.
When they sent me the CD, they put the Intermezzo under my reading
and it was really quite effective.
In fact, it did a job on me because I find it very difficult
to read this poem now without the music.
And for a while, even at the Library of Congress when I read it,
I hired a string quartet to play under it
so I can make it work, you know.
But we'll have to do with just the words today.
But if you ever listened to Cavalleria Rusticana,
that intermezzo, think of this poem.   In my mother were operas and poems
and sweet ballads floating upon jazz tempos.
And she brought me out of her body with the number seven wrapped
around our umbilical cord, a reminder of the surgical severance
that never cut clean enough for the navel to reach the ends
of the earth she lived in, seeded and silenced.
Such music embraced her for being so perfect that the comings and goings
of pain and unquestioned entities of the spirit merely caused her
to comfort those around her who needed to be in her skin,
and give me air to search
and breathe my own seeding beyond what I knew or wanted
or didn't want or moved at my touch.
The days came and went like scant November leaves dangling
up backyard-- upon backyard juniper trees, songs of sweet acapellas
and burnt umber flowing to the wealth of arias settling
within her managed sight and strain pieces of memory for she knew how
to sift the comfortable from the catastrophic.
And she knew the patient sound of solos put into her mourning breast.
Days on end, she ran her fingers over the keys of the piano as if
in murmurs of music there were some long lost love hovering in the body
of adagios too sweet to undo.   There were things to know.
Why swans sing before they die, how crabs present--
prevent themselves from crawling out of a suffocating barrel,
where the last firefly went, what old Josiah said before he died,
why Grandma Lee was an alcoholic, all the lessons learned
and forgotten in the spill of an autumn moon or the scream of a star.
It was for me to remember the Cavalleria Rusticana as if
that opera were the language of women born of men who conceived them
after the rib was broken and music took over the world
and the histories of smiles and soft ablutions.
At her dying, she taught me how to transpose the deep dusk
of darkness into unsuspected light.
And where to pull the key from the original octave to take it higher,
somewhere else into the languishing intermezzo, pulling joyfully
at the heart and the edge of the sun's sleep.
[ Applause ]   Thank you.
The next poem which I'm going to read briefly,
I won't read the entire poem, is called Sisters before the Rain
and this was asked by Mary Frances Dagostino up in New Hampshire.
And before that I will read The Cleaning--
The Cleaning Woman which was asked by Lionel Thomas who was--
is with the Maryland Arts Commission and was formerly
with the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
So I'll read The Cleaning Woman and excerpts
from Sisters before the Rain.
The Cleaning Woman is Lionel's selection.
[ Pause ]
If you held her-- I have to tell you that I read this
at the Kennedy Center at an event that we had there
and it had not been published and then actually clean--
it's about cleaning women.
These women who go into these building at night all
in the big cities and those buildings are glistening
because those women get down on their knees and they scrub
and they get very little money for it,
but they've been doing it for ages.
And at that night, there was an actual cleaning woman there
and she asked if she could have the poem and I had to tell her
that the poem was not published at that moment,
but as soon as I got it published, I would be able to give her a copy
and as it turned out, it did get published and I was able
to send her a copy within two months after I read it.
The Cleaning Woman: Hattie Elder.
If you held her, her bones would crack and sink
into their skulls like morning frost.
You would not know that her body had scrubbed its way into the flesh
of the dreams of her husband and children and grandchildren
with every swing of the mop or fall of floor that held the footprints
of executive suites in cold unmalleable buildings or that--
that once she-- that she once made peace with--
with little impudent dreams that called to her
in a language she surely felt, but never completely understood
or wanted to know as she was conflicted in given to odd things,
old things, things that predestined her to that of caretaker.
If you dared to touch her, woman of so many years of benign love,
the living of which comforted her in pale and impossible moments,
you would know her bones and how now gnarled hands carried
within them a rich and profound blessing
that was even too heavy for her to bear.
So she was thankful for the skin
of her dreams thinning it's-- as the days went by.
She was thankful.
And if you dared to touch her, you would know what she meant
as she searched your face like the road leading to her tiny house,
the bone and home of it in whatever traveled in your eye.
Her tidy floors were her floors,
no one else could clean them as well as she.
And whoever walked upon them had been blessed by her.
She took pride in that and a certain care
that outlasted the pain she felt in her legs, the arms and back,
and the wheelchair she knew awaited her for her trouble.
Sometimes the buildings talked to her
and she talked back while riding the midnight bus
to home and what there awaited.
And you would know if you dared to touch her
that her presence was what counted even
as her fragile figure beckoned you in to a shelter
of whatever is permanent
for touching her would expose your mortality.
But if you were fortunate, you would direct your eye to a black
and golden butterfly, the monarch of the lens
of all your fallible senses.
And you would see her enter into its wings for a midnight nap,
while the executive suites smoldered and brightened
and beckoned in the dark.   [ Applause ]
Thank you.
Then the next one is-- and I'm going to read this part
of this Sisters before the Rain.
I have this condition where when it gets like this and it stays
like this so long, I get the blues.
So I have to find a way to move myself out of that and then
if it rains, I really have to find my way out of that.
So I talked with this friend of mine Mary Frances Dagostino
and decided well, the best way to get that fixed is to go out in it
and to face it, and she and I talked about that
and this poem was the result.
The rain has come today breathing a moisture of fallen things
into the soil of my life.
Falling weather, my mother called it.
Weather that falls, captures, embraces, does not ask
and account a deferred payment of lingering circumstances.
It bears a wise.
As the watery sky invaded my little world of well-kept rooms blooming
in paints and colors framed because their energies--
of their energies of light, powerfully were somewhere hidden
in the hidden hollows of cohesive corners and things that move
in darkness, or the grey matter rinsed resistance to forms
and shapes that manifest themselves in a lamp of light, a glass, a cup,
a photograph, you called and told me that it was raining in New England.
It was raining here, too, I said.   Here, too.
I must fight the dark that the rain carries.
I must remember wherever it lives.   That's just part of that poem.
There's a little more to it, but I thought I introduced it to you.
[ Applause ]
The other poems are coming from The Women of Plums.
Now, I don't know if I have time to read all of them the four.
One is from Modest--   >> You do have time for one.
Will that be okay?   >> I have time for one, okay.
I don't know which one you would like.
Those of you who know my work,
one is Peggy in Killing and the other is--
>> You want to have it both?
>> And the other one is Hattie on the Block.
>> Hattie on the Block.   >> Hattie on the Block, okay.
[ Pause ]
I have to read this in two voices as those
of you have heard me read it know.
I will read it in-- thank you, thank you very much John.
I will read it in the voice--   [ Inaudible Remark ]
This is the-- the slave woman.
I didn't know the slave woman would stand on the block
and challenge the people who were buying them.
I did some research and found out that they did.
And this is Hattie who did not want her daughter sold without her.
So she stands on the block and defies the audience
and defies the people who were there
to buy her daughter separate from her.
She's a very extraordinary woman I think.
Now, I'm going to read it when she is talking to the audience
and the slave people about to buy and then as she talks
to her daughter, she changes her voice.
Remember me?
I'm the woman you nailed to a tree after the twilight died.
Carrie, you'd be still now, don't make no noise.
Mama will protect you from all the shouting an' screaming an' bidding
that's going on right now.   Hold on, hold on to mama.
Won't be long now.
They'd done their lunch, they then had their lunch
and something will happen to take the fear out of your bones
and sweat off your eyelids and drain them
to the sweet winds for the birds to eat.
Something will happen.
Happens that I'd be a slave woman, maybe that makes me property,
not a human being like all you who come to buy me, see if I'm sturdy,
can hold ground, can withstand the elements,
bear fruit when the seed is in me, like the Lord's land,
sing for my supper when the seasons come.
Give death the mortgage on my bones.   Don't come near me.
Stay away.   I'm not buyable yet.
I'm a bit unleavened.   Still Carrie, be still, child.
Don't cry, don't let them see you cry, honey,
there's a victory in that.
Keep the tears inward, out of their sight.
Hold on to my apron, tear it if you won't,
hold hard while we crush the evil pushing its way through the crowd
of shepherds yelling before us and standing there mocking us with money
and all the changes in the temple, but they all look good, don't they?
Nice coats and trousers, bright shoes, sturdy hats.
Ever seen a finer looking peoples that than?
Evil be pretty sometimes, don't it?
Money look good even if it be for you soul.
Souls can't be bought.
I won't be of much use to anybody who buys me without my Carrie here.
I'd be crippled, needing crutches.   Who going to pay for them?
Or will I have to work the fields limpin'
about with my mind catching butterflies
when I should be picking cotton 'cause my soul be amputated
when you bought me without my Carrie for a few dollars cheaper?
No, don't, I beg you, don't touch me.
Stay back.
I can't leave this block and holocaust.
That's it, Carrie, hang tight.
My, your forehead be hot, fever coming on I expect
and your mother's fever gone cold making it more dangerous
when it be exposed to the elements that gather up round here now.
This early bright morning spoiled and festering in the mouths
of all these happy buyers who need the disease of your mama's wrath
so they can recover from their own dying.
Dying today if I'd be so without my Carrie.
I promise you that.
Look on us before you lay your money down.
What we cost?   2,500? Good price.
Buy what you breed.
Masters, owners, buyers, fathers, sons, take vengeance on your dollar.
God help me.   I'd be his maidservant.
I'd be his witness to this sale of woman flesh
in the 28-year of my delivery.   Carrie, look.
Wipe your eyes, child.
See? They-- they finished the biddin'.
Money be paid.   We's together.
God heard haltin' words to the ears of these deafened people,
you and me from this strange pulpit.   Look lively child.
We be sold, but we ain't bought.   [ Applause ]
I just would like to-- this is a four-line poem.
Thank you, thank you all very much.
I know Hattie, wherever she is, thanks you too.
I'll just end with this four-line poem
from a young woman who's in love.
She's a slave woman and she's dancing around the kitchen
and it's called, Jenny in Love and Jenny says,
danced in the evening while the super [inaudible] whooped
in the morning, danced again."   Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.