Digging Deep Into Our Past

“The poetry of a people comes from the deep recesses of the unconscious, the irrational and the collective body of our ancestral memories.” – Margaret Walker

Poet and novelist Margaret Walker was born in Alabama on July 7, 1915, learned to read and write before age 5, infused with a love of poetry, art and music by her minister father and musician mother.  She started writing poetry in her teens and with the encouragement of the great Langston Hughes had her first poem published at age 17.  

 

Walker’s first poetry collection, For My People (1942), won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award – the first Black woman to ever receive the prestigious prize.   Her novel Jubilee is widely regarded as “the first truly historical black American novel.”   For Saturday’s Poem, here are Walker’s “Lineage” and “I Want To Write.”

       Lineage

My grandmothers were strong.
They followed plows and bent to toil.
They moved through fields sowing seed.
They touched earth and grain grew.
They were full of sturdiness and singing.
My grandmothers were strong.

My grandmothers are full of memories
Smelling of soap and onions and wet clay
With veins rolling roughly over quick hands
They have many clean words to say.
My grandmothers were strong.
Why am I not as they?

I Want To Write

I want to write.

I want to write the songs of my people.
I want to hear them singing melodies in the dark.
I want to catch the last floating strains from their sob-torn
throats.
I want to frame their dreams into words; their souls into
notes.
I want to catch their sunshine laughter in a bowl;
fling dark hands to a darker sky
and fill them full of stars
then crush and mix such lights till they become
a mirrored pool of brilliance in the dawn.

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