Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

This morning I opened an email announcement on my phone. Another former student published a book of poetry this year. I let out a loud and celebratory, “Woot woot!” to my empty house. When such news arrives in my inbox, I cannot help but 1) consider how long I’ve been doing this, and 2) consider our poetic lineages. In some way or another, all poets fall into, or resist, traditions of mentorship, guidance, and influence.

I liken my students’ debut publications to branches — they grow on the great tree of poetry, one that includes my teachers, their teachers’ teachers and acquaintances, and so on. I studied with Sonia Sanchez, who joined a workshop in the late 1950s with poet Louise Bogan, who had gained much herself from her friends, Modernists poets William Carlos Williams and Marianne Moore. Or maybe lineage is more like a beautiful spiderweb.

When I first met the poet CK Williams at a reception in New York City, I excitedly told him that I read his work in a class with Garrett Hongo. As a graduate student, I transcribed his poems into multiple journals. Looking excited himself, but vaguely, into the distance, he acknowledged our kinship, something along the lines of, “Then, you’re like a descendant.” He filled his plate with vegetables and cheeses, then laughably proclaimed, dipping a lone carrot stick into a mound of hummus, “Well, this is as good as it gets.”

Hongo’s other teachers include Robert Hayden, who studied with W.H. Auden, who was turned on himself to poetry through the lectures of J.R.R. Tolkien — yes, that Tolkien. Alright, I won’t keep going. But I will say this: I haven’t even scratched the surface of literary forebears and imagined bonds across language and time.

How do we celebrate our teachers? We pass down their advice. We recall legendary moments in the classroom. We discuss the brilliance of their poems, and sometimes, we gossip about their failures and triumphs. We keep their poems alive in public. When poets die, we also mourn the loss of great friends.

Today’s poem is by a Los Angeles poet, one whose life and work are the subject of renewed interest and celebration, not only as a writer of astute verse, but also as a beloved teacher.

The Poet
by Bert Meyers

                      1.

They said, Go, rise each day
with her, become 
the reliable dough a family needs.
I wouldn’t. I walked away
from the kitchen, the store
she was building in her breast . . .
And everything grows dim
like the little stone 
brought home from the shore.

                      2.

What will I bring
if I come to your house?
A cold wind at the door,
bad dreams to your spouse.

There isn’t a tree
in your backyard;
the lawns are plastic,
the chairs are too hard.

No, I wouldn’t talk.
I’d be full of spite
and I’d strike my head
like a match that won’t light.

                      3.

Woman, mirror of all my sides.
I pass through you to the window.

When I lay my hand on the grass
forgive me if I call the earth my child.


                      4.

Always poor, he knows
the crickets will leave him
small jars of money.

He waits, he admires a weed. 
His dreams are addressed.

At night by his desk
he becomes a flower;
children are bees in his arms,
a little pain making honey.

	    1968

"The Poet" by Bert Meyers. Used by permission of the Estate of Bert Meyers.