Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

Independence Day is here — cookouts, parades, flag-waving, fireworks! As a kid, July 4th was an excursion of exquisite side dishes and grilled burgers, hot dogs, and brats. Alongside aunts, uncles, and cousins, I ran with my weighed down paper plate of food to games of horseshoe, volleyball, tag, and, if at a beach, Marco Polo. Just when I was about to collapse from overstimulation and exhaustion, evening arrived with the light show in the sky.

The holiday reminds me of the place of America in poetry. Some poets treat America like a personified lover who hasn’t come home in a few days, who could do better. All bluesed-out, they write poems in the form of pleading letters. Aria Aber croons, “America the footsteps of your ghosts are white stones weighting my center.”

A subgenre in its own right, such poems simultaneously celebrate possibility but also bemoan. It’s not betrayal or faithlessness. Instead, they express a desire to see the country truly evolve into “The City on a Hill.” Allen Ginsberg asks, “America when will you be angelic?” They seem to ask, to borrow the immortal words of soul singer Aretha Franklin, America, when are you gonna be a do-right nation?

I find these poems moving; they never let go of the possibility of a true democracy. The sheer commitment and belief in America, born out of the spirit of critique, is a loving gesture of allegiance and patriotism. They are the literary equivalent of those who put body to cause with picket signs, who march for equality and justice. These poems enact a civic duty and call up language in their plea for the country to live up to its stated values. They are as American as it gets.

Today’s poem encourages us to do more than celebrate the narrative of our country, to reflect on our sacred inheritance with its sacred past.

America, I Do Not Call Your Name without Hope
by Dean Rader

                                 after Neruda

America, I do not call your name without hope
not even when you lay your knife
against my throat or lace my hands 
behind my back, the cuffs connecting
us like two outlaws trying to escape
history’s white horse, its heavy whip
a pistolshot in the ear. Lost land,
this is a song for the scars on your back,
for your blistered feet and beautiful 
watch, it is for your windmills, your
magic machines, for your fists. It 
is for your wagon of blood, for your dogs
and their teeth of fire, for your sons 
and the smoke in their hearts. This is for
your verbs, your long lurk, your whir.
This is for you and your fear, your tar,
for the white heat in your skin, and
for your blue bones that one day may sing.
This is for your singing. This is for the past,
but not for what’s passed. This is for daybreak
and backbreak, for dreams, and for darkness.
This song is not for your fight but it is a song
for fighting. It is a song of flame but not for burning.
It is a song out of breath but a plea for breathing.
It is the song I will sing when you knock
on my door, my son’s name in your mouth.

“America, I Do Not Call Your Name without Hope" by Dean Rader from SELF-PORTRAIT AS WIKIPEDIA ENTRY © 2017 Dean Rader. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.