Let's Write A Poem About the Ones We Have Lost, or Things I Have Not Learned and Do Now Wish to Happen

Bianca Swift Author

04/04/2021 Added

81 Plays

Description

Video Presentation 2021

Searchable Transcript

Search:

[00:00:01.970]Hello, my name is Bianca Swift
[00:00:03.860]and today I'm presenting the culmination
[00:00:05.590]of three years of research
[00:00:06.690]alongside the Charles W. Chesnutt archive,
[00:00:09.150]in which I've worked on the transcription
[00:00:10.600]and coding and proofing
[00:00:11.580]of Chesnutts' correspondence
[00:00:12.610]with members of the Black intelligencia.
[00:00:15.010]The title of my presentation is
[00:00:16.357]"Let's Write a Poem
[00:00:17.190]About the Ones We've Lost;
[00:00:18.610]Or "Things I have not learned
[00:00:20.040]and do not wish to happen."
[00:00:21.750]This title is an amalgamation
[00:00:23.490]of an earlier poem I wrote
[00:00:24.620]about Chesnutt and a slightly adapted quotation
[00:00:26.550]of one of his most famous lines:
[00:00:28.097]"Impossibilities are merely things
[00:00:29.660]of which we have not learned
[00:00:31.010]or which we do not wish to happen."
[00:00:34.730]Charles W. Chesnutt was an African-American author,
[00:00:37.230]essayist, and lawyer who wrote nine novels,
[00:00:39.500]more than 80 stories
[00:00:40.430]and more than 70 speeches.
[00:00:42.060]His most famous novel is The Marrow of Tradition,
[00:00:44.190]a fictionalized retelling
[00:00:45.200]of the Wilmington Massacre of 1898.
[00:00:47.580]The Charles Chesnutt archive
[00:00:49.900]is a digital archive
[00:00:50.880]devoted to preserving
[00:00:51.713]and disseminating these works
[00:00:52.750]as well as many others he created.
[00:00:54.640]The creation of this archive
[00:00:55.630]is led by Professors Kenneth Price and Matt Cohen
[00:00:57.660]of the University of Nebraska Lincoln,
[00:00:59.320]with the archives' founder Dr. Stephanie Browner
[00:01:01.180]of The New York's New School.
[00:01:03.240]The work that I've done alongside the Chesnutt archives,
[00:01:05.130]many grad students and project managers,
[00:01:07.130]has resulted in the discovery,
[00:01:08.370]transcription, and encoding
[00:01:09.480]of nearly 130 pieces of correspondence
[00:01:12.100]between Chesnutt and the black historical figures
[00:01:14.320]such as Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois,
[00:01:16.920]Walter White, and John Patterson Green.
[00:01:19.250]Throughout this process of research and encoding,
[00:01:21.100]I have used lines from Chesnutt's correspondence
[00:01:23.360]to compose and write poems.
[00:01:25.220]This I completed in lieu of other forms
[00:01:26.860]of bi-weekly journaling.
[00:01:28.370]So rather than the culmination piece
[00:01:29.810]of this research being a poster
[00:01:32.040]or presentation,
[00:01:33.210]it will instead be a poem
[00:01:34.210]that encompasses all three years
[00:01:35.320]of my work with Charles Chesnutt,
[00:01:36.790]as well as the experiences
[00:01:38.020]that I've had while doing so.
[00:01:39.630]So, without further ado,
[00:01:42.600]let's write a poem
[00:01:43.433]about the ones we have lost,
[00:01:45.090]or things I have not learned
[00:01:47.440]and do not wish to happen.
[00:01:50.040]Chesnutt say:
[00:01:51.170]"the Negro in the abstract."
[00:01:52.520]Chesnutt say:
[00:01:53.500]"the importance of a thing
[00:01:54.580]is not to be measured
[00:01:55.413]by the number of times you do it."
[00:01:56.750]Chesnutt say: "in America,
[00:01:58.780]as in Europe and elsewhere
[00:01:59.980]the worst happenings
[00:02:00.890]are those that get talked about."
[00:02:02.110]Chesnutt say:
[00:02:03.140]"I am merely hanging on
[00:02:04.220]by my eyelashes to see
[00:02:05.550]if I can possibly save something
[00:02:07.530]from this wreck."
[00:02:08.370]And I say,
[00:02:10.320]it's funny
[00:02:11.990]How I've been listening to you talk
[00:02:13.420]for years, and I ain't never heard your voice.
[00:02:16.280]And ain't that the worst kind of metaphor;
[00:02:18.050]ain't say something like
[00:02:20.170]all the research in the world
[00:02:21.490]isn't gonna make us kin
[00:02:23.110]somethin' like
[00:02:24.780]can your bones feel me studying you
[00:02:26.210]from where they lay in Lakeview Cemetery?
[00:02:29.040]Should I have asked them if this was okay?
[00:02:31.660]Something like: what is a research,
[00:02:33.600]but an exhumation,
[00:02:35.180]and ain't it rude
[00:02:36.410]to autopsy a body
[00:02:37.800]without its permission?
[00:02:38.810]Isn't it just the way
[00:02:40.180]that I pick and choose words
[00:02:41.560]from your mouth
[00:02:42.393]that allowing you to explain
[00:02:43.470]without asking you to say your piece?
[00:02:45.410]That I call this a gift,
[00:02:46.880]that I bulldoze your house to put
[00:02:48.220]up a statue without worrying
[00:02:49.215]about where you will live now?
[00:02:50.633]Charles Chesnutt, where will you live now?
[00:02:55.040]I keep telling people
[00:02:55.890]what you meant to say.
[00:02:57.810]Keep vivisecting your letters as if
[00:02:59.440]they can ever be as alive as you were.
[00:03:01.340]I keep acting like I know you,
[00:03:03.820]like I even remember your daughter's name,
[00:03:06.890]like I could pick you out
[00:03:08.310]from a crowd.
[00:03:10.240]But would it make it better, Charles Chesnutt,
[00:03:12.400]if I say that I have been looking for you,
[00:03:14.490]that I have squinted tired eyes
[00:03:16.170]over microfilm and analyzed handwriting styles,
[00:03:18.553]I have read Marrow of Tradition
[00:03:20.350]and The Conjure Woman
[00:03:21.440]and the literary career of Charles Chesnutt,
[00:03:23.340]and to be an author
[00:03:24.210]and an exemplary citizen,
[00:03:25.490]I have looked in
[00:03:26.323]Yale archives
[00:03:27.156]and Cornell archives,
[00:03:28.100]in the University of Massachusetts;
[00:03:29.990]I've traveled to New York
[00:03:31.340]and the Western Reserve Historical Society
[00:03:33.080]but I'm only just now realizing
[00:03:35.680]I went to Cleveland to find you
[00:03:38.609]and I didn't even go put flowers on your grave.
[00:03:42.660]I didn't even look for a cemetery.
[00:03:46.660]Do you know, Charles Chesnutt,
[00:03:48.955]that the historical society
[00:03:51.180]is a four-minute drive
[00:03:52.570]and one mile walk
[00:03:53.620]away from where you lie.
[00:03:56.610]But is it wrong of me to think
[00:03:57.623]that this is not where you are,
[00:03:59.810]to think that the words you wrote
[00:04:01.060]are more alive
[00:04:01.893]than the grave site
[00:04:02.726]I will not visit?
[00:04:03.559]Is it wrong of me,
[00:04:04.490]after all of this time
[00:04:05.510]to not let you become one more rotting thing?
[00:04:08.660]Even if it means a taxidermied,
[00:04:10.660]Frankenstein stitch of letters
[00:04:12.550]and essays, in lines
[00:04:13.670]I know you did not write,
[00:04:14.820]Charles Chesnutt,
[00:04:15.860]I do not have the right to this.
[00:04:17.490]Don't have the right to
[00:04:19.200]give my words a home in your mouth
[00:04:21.210]when you are not around to deny me,
[00:04:22.700]but if you would let me,
[00:04:24.680]I would like to ask you one more time
[00:04:27.590]to write a poem with me
[00:04:30.360]about the ones we have lost.
[00:04:33.780]I think, in a strange way,
[00:04:35.420]it is fitting I have not visited your grave.
[00:04:38.400]I have been to none of the others,
[00:04:40.450]and you must know the others:
[00:04:42.350]the James Scurlocks,
[00:04:43.530]the Julian Edwards,
[00:04:44.730]the ... George Floyds.
[00:04:48.650]Sometimes I think our bodies
[00:04:50.210]occupy the earth so often
[00:04:51.690]that we become no different
[00:04:52.940]than the dirt we are placed in.
[00:04:55.550]Sometimes I wonder
[00:04:57.060]if a black body burial
[00:04:59.290]is just the tilling of the soil,
[00:05:02.300]the turning of the mud.
[00:05:05.440]Chesnutt, there was no archive for them.
[00:05:08.210]No one has compiled their letters.
[00:05:09.980]No one has looked for them
[00:05:10.960]in libraries or historical societies or collections,
[00:05:13.990]and this is why I MacGyver you
[00:05:15.630]into false idol, Chesnutt.
[00:05:17.930]I am sick of watching Black bodies fall
[00:05:20.240]without knowing if they have written a poem,
[00:05:22.480]and I know that symbols
[00:05:23.710]are a hollow thing.
[00:05:26.040]And I know that you believe
[00:05:27.050]an impossibility
[00:05:28.330]is merely a small mind's way
[00:05:29.850]of giving up
[00:05:30.683]but, Chesnutt, they cannot kill a symbol.
[00:05:34.370]I think all Black people know this to be true,
[00:05:36.610]which is why we elevate our dead
[00:05:38.009]to the position of demi-god,
[00:05:39.810]so they may rise again, unbroken,
[00:05:41.980]and I think this is
[00:05:42.990]the most we can ask of a Black thing.
[00:05:46.670]Not for it to be alive,
[00:05:48.620]not for it to even be not dead,
[00:05:50.800]but simply
[00:05:51.790]something unkillable,
[00:05:53.950]something that we can tell ourselves is hope.
[00:05:56.800]Something that doesn't look like giving up,
[00:05:59.160]like, Chesnutt, when I found you,
[00:06:00.880]I was one Daniel Kleve away
[00:06:02.440]from leaving this school
[00:06:03.560]that held me over white fire,
[00:06:05.350]one more call from my mother,
[00:06:06.870]from fleeing one more administrator's conference
[00:06:09.020]where they tell me my fear is like
[00:06:10.310]the Miller's dead child
[00:06:11.470]you wrote about, Chesnutt.
[00:06:13.540]Which is to say,
[00:06:15.497]it is just another plot point
[00:06:16.810]for someone else's happy ending, so ...
[00:06:19.940]I wonder if you were a landline
[00:06:21.680]or just an easy enough rope to tangle in.
[00:06:25.443]Chesnutt, I'm not sure if you were a savior,
[00:06:28.630]or the damning,
[00:06:29.510]but I know that writing about you
[00:06:30.950]feels like a flower at your grave.
[00:06:35.040]Charles Chesnutt, maybe the difference between
[00:06:36.820]being alive and being dead
[00:06:38.290]is how many people talk about us
[00:06:39.670]like old friends, so,
[00:06:42.120]I end this by telling you
[00:06:43.360]I'm not sure your quote about
[00:06:45.070]impossibility is correct
[00:06:47.560]because I'm not
[00:06:48.400]sure what I have not learned,
[00:06:50.100]and the things I do not wish to happen
[00:06:51.640]keep police brutality-ing their way
[00:06:53.520]into my mind,
[00:06:54.400]but I do know this:
[00:06:56.570]you were alive in 1858,
[00:06:59.740]and you weren't in 1933.
[00:07:02.620]But you led a life where you were Black
[00:07:04.650]and breathing,
[00:07:05.483]and prolific enough for me to find you,
[00:07:07.050]even now, and once
[00:07:08.480]I would have thought hearing a dead, Black voice
[00:07:10.300]that didn't make me cry was an impossibility,
[00:07:12.460]but now I know it's just another day
[00:07:14.380]in the office because I would write
[00:07:15.930]poems like these knowing you would have said
[00:07:18.127]"The Negro problem in the United States
[00:07:19.870]will right itself in time"
[00:07:21.190]and I would say,
[00:07:22.110]I'm glad your words have lived long enough
[00:07:24.090]for me to disagree with them.
[00:07:26.940]And I would say ...
[00:07:30.400]I would say: "Thank you."

The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!

You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.

Comments

0 Comments

Let's Write A Poem About the Ones We Have Lost, or Things I Have Not Learned and Do Now Wish to Happen

Description

Searchable Transcript

Comments icon comment

Related Channels

Comments