This episode was originally released on November 21, 2023.

Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

“Words, words, more words!” says Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond in the film classic Sunset Boulevard. Norma famously complains of the demise of silent films, thanks to the appearance of the “talkies.” She goes on… “There once was a time in this business when they had the eyes of the whole world. . . But that wasn’t good enough. Oh no! They had to have the ears of the whole world, too.”

Among writers, Norma is not likely to find a sympathetic audience. Most poets hunger for language like bees thirst for nectar, like soccer players thirst for a winning kick, or a skydiver, out of necessity for survival, a successful jump. At times, a writer’s appetite for language feels outsized and obsessive. Love of words is considered by poets and critics alike as primal evidence of why the poet is in the game.

Yet, Norma would have been right at home with my family who considered walking on eggshells to be the norm. I came from a tribe for whom words were overrated. My family believed “you do not need to say everything that’s on your mind, or share your feelings just because you felt them.”

In fact, paradoxically, at times the unsaid was heard louder. I still recall the cutting look of disappointment whenever my mom walked into my unkempt bedroom. Once, my grandfather hushed me mid-sentence; I was telling him about how I felt the presence of my deceased grandmother in the house after her passing. “Nope. Stop right there.” he said. For him, to speak was to conjure. There was, too, the risk of an explosive moment in my home, because of suppressed feelings and deferred real talk. We were accustomed to holding everything inside and trying to avoid conflict.

Today, words lead me to pockets of understanding, which I've carefully cultivated through writing poetry. The journey to insights and those momentary stays against confusion are often filled with inarticulate, wayward wanderings and long stretches of speechlessness. Part of my love of poetry is owed to how it stages eloquence and puts a finishing touch on the thing that I finally needed to say.

But, on occasion, we find silence as a vessel of our innermost feelings. Today’s poem illustrates how, when language is muted, strong emotions such as love and desire are amplified — and echo into a future without end.

Without Name
by Pauli Murray

Call it neither love nor spring madness,
Nor chance encounter nor quest ended.
Observe it casually as pussy willows 
Or pushcart pansies on a city street.
Let this seed growing in us
Granite-strong with persistent root
Be without name, or call it the first
Warm wind that caressed your cheek
And traded unshared kisses between us.
Call it the elemental earth
Bursting the clasp of too-long winter
And trembling for the plough-blade.

Let our blood chant it
And our flesh sing anthems to its arrival,
But our lips shall be silent, uncommitted.

“Without Name” from DARK TESTAMENT AND OTHER POEMS by Pauli Murray. Copyright © 1948 by the Pauli Murray Foundation. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.