Transcript

Hey, it’s Slowdown producer Myka Kielbon. We all need to take a moment to pause. Here at the show, we realized we know some pretty amazing poetry lovers who have their own Slowdown moments to share with you — chefs, musicians, journalists and more. These late summer Wednesdays, we’re bringing you their selections. We hope you enjoy.

I’m Tonya Mosley and this is The Slowdown.

When I was a child, my mother brought home these flashcards. You remember those flashcards that were basically the alphabet or cat, hat, bat, type of flashcards where on one side there was the picture and the other side was the word or the letter? Or, in the case of these flashcards, an explanation of the person on the front, a description of the person and their life. And these flashcards were black and white, and they were sketches of notable Black Americans. Honestly, I did know that it was important for me to know it, but I'd often roll my eyes at the fact that we'd have to go through these flashcards. But in particular, I always loved the artists. I felt like I could see myself in them some way.

One of the most beautiful things about now being middle aged, which I'm sitting in that, is that I am able to step inside of poems at different parts of my life and see things, understand words and ideas, and they carry deeper meaning for me as I move through life. I'm able to step back to my childhood and understand what my mother was doing and also appreciate it because what she set up for me was this walk where I could learn more based on what she was teaching me.

College is always a time where you're awakened to yourself and your history. And for me in particular, all the things that I had learned as a child came back to me in a way that made sense to me because by that time I understood my place in the country as a Black person. And I understood with greater complexity, there is a love, a deep love for our place of origin, for our country. And yet we will always be a visitor here. We will always be seen as other, but we can see the ugliness of the place. And that only comes from a place of, of course, experiencing that hate, but also having at the same time, this deep love for it. And there was nothing that I, that I had learned up until that moment that helped me articulate it more than the works of Claude McKay and W. E. B. Du Bois and those types of folks that really told that story of feeling two things at once, that there's a thin line between love and hate.

The Harlem Renaissance feels so current and so now, and the thing about it is it always has for me. From the time I was a little girl, it didn't feel historical, in fact, it felt like that is the place I want to be, and I yearned for it all of my life.

I understand what that yearning is. What it is, is to be a part of something that is a freedom movement. But it's not just a movement. a collective freedom movement. It's an individual movement too, through the creation of art. Those artists were, through expressing themselves, understanding themselves, and learning about themselves, and their contribution to the world allowed us to see ourselves in their art.

And that is, is current and is fresh and is needed. In every time period, as ever, this poem, America, is the poem of right now. We are looking at this place, this country, that we call home. And we're fighting for its survival, like we're looking at the soul of America and the fight for democracy in a way that no one in this lifetime has ever experienced before.

Today's poem is rooted in the idea of dual consciousness and the feelings of deep longing that form the backbone of the Harlem Renaissance. My relationship to it has changed, as I have changed, as this country has changed during my own life. Over a hundred years since it was first published, it still rings true to the eternal cry of the Black American.

America
by Claude McKay

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate,
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.