Poetry from Daily Life: Memory's a great start but let imagination rule

My guest this week on Poetry from Daily Life is Angela Jackson, who lives in Chicago, Illinois in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood. She fell in love with poetry in first grade and was writing her own poems by third grade. She wrote poems in high school and college. Angela says she loves every book as she works on it, especially her last one, More Than Meat and Raiment. This much-awarded poet lists more about herself in the credits at the end of this column. She currently serves Illinois as state poet laureate. ~ David L. Harrison

Imagination rules

“Poetry is life distilled,” said longtime Illinois Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Brooks. This is concise; but what does it mean? It means, as I understand it, that poetry is a place where the rich complexity of life may be gathered and compressed with a music and sense all its own. Memory and dream coexist. I have selected one of my poems to show what I mean. Other people have expressed a fondness for it, so I feel safe in offering it as an example.

Because the Nat King Cole Show was televised in 1956 or 1957, I know I was in first grade or thereabouts when this poem’s seed was planted in memory. And this is a very early memory of my mother lying on the couch watching that famous show with the rare appearance of a Black man on TV. This poem comes out of private memory, but it has a life of its own. I did not write it until well over twenty years after the fact when I was prompted to create a number of poems about imaginary tenants of an imaginary apartment building. I had tired of poems about myself using “i” (I am paraphrasing Audre Lorde). I wanted to turn my poetic gaze to others. I did not want to say that the poem was about my parents. I did not want them to know it!

The Mother Behaves Like a Young Woman with a Lover when Nat King Cole Comes on the Box

She takes off her run-over shoes.

She removes her re-run stockings.

She unzips her re-hemmed skirt.

She parts with her polyester blouse.

She lies down on the sagging couch.

Husband and children hide in the living room dark.

The television glow slides over her slip

Like moonlight.

Nat King Cole’s glossed hair glistens like an onyx.

His voice shines in her eyes. She closes them.

His song ends on the edges of her

Mona Lisa smile.

∘

Midnight sighs over the silence of sleeping children.

She sleeps on and on the sagging couch.

Until husband invites her to his bed.

∘

His voice

      newly tender,

      newly televised.

Of course, imagination guided the poem into being. My mother’s devotion to Nat King Cole was real. But I didn’t observe and remember her actions. Other than her lying on the couch, I imagined her actions. The body of the poem is the process of imagination. That is the case with poetry: Imagination is the guide. What a gift imagination is to us! I have never been married, but this poem provides for me a moment of the magic of the marriage of ordinary people transformed by a musical icon. And romance, good and bad, is an old favorite subject of poetry.

Yes, “Poetry is life distilled.” And it is memory lifted, dream unveiled, and imagination ruling. What a gift it is!

Angela Jackson has written award-winning poetry, novels, and plays, including a biography of Gwendolyn Brooks. She received Shelly and Lilly Awards for Poetry, an American Book Award, the John Gardner Fiction Prize, and the Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for Playwriting. Learn more here.

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