INTRODUCTION

Home Is Where
By Kwame Dawes

Despite the great changes that have taken place in the South
over the years, this fundamental truth has not changed: race is a
defining force that can both galvanize and divide the region. Given the
largely negative recent history of race in the South, we are still finding
ways to affirm those whose race was the target of the greatest
damage. So we have not yet arrived at the place where we can dismiss
the need to affirm the positive contribution of African Americans to the
life and culture of the South.
It is this that allows us to embark on an anthology of poetry that
is distinguished by being African American. The obvious question that
could be asked is how the world would respond if some publisher
decided to publish a collection of white Carolina poets. It is not enough
to say that until fairly recently, if a Carolinas anthology were put
together, it would, in fact, be just that. It is better to admit that in the
matter of culture and race in the South and in the United States, there
is still the reality of majority and minority cultures. These are shaped
both by the sheer weight of numbers as well as by the matter of status
(economic, educational, political, etc.). In the quest to create the kind
of cultural balance that allows for a genuine union, it is sometimes
necessary to assert the cultural fact of a rich, complex tradition of art
among a certain group.
For the past ten years, I have been running a poetry organization
in South Carolina called the South Carolina Poetry Initiative. The
Initiative began as an attempt to create a sense of community among
poets in the state through workshops, contests, summits, readings,
and much else. The hope was to bring poets together and to
encourage a sense of region among the poets from South Carolina. The
response was strong, but the response was also troubling. For years we
were unable to interest African American poets from the state in any
reasonable numbers. We did everything we thought we could do to
change that. We brought in amazing African American poets to run
workshops and do readings, we contacted various poetry and arts
groups that exist in the community to encourage them to participate,
and we made contact with the individual poets we knew. It became
clear that many of these poets felt that they did not quite belong to
this organization because, for some reason, it was seen as a largely
white organization—this despite the fact that it was being led by a
black man. Rather than give up, we decided to persist by employing
approaches more akin to the focused and targeted efforts of
affirmative action.
Most recently we started a workshop for black poets in
conjunction with the organization Cave Canem. In doing this, we were
acknowledging that there is still, for African Americans, a great deal
that works against their being able to enter the mainstream poetry
world and for them to feel as if they somehow have a legitimate place
in that environment. Cave Canem has effectively demonstrated that by
focusing on creating an environment that is welcoming to African
American poets, and by consolidating the strengths of the black poets
around the country, a remarkable explosion of writing, publishing, and
award winning can take place among African American poets. Cave
Canem has empowered black poets around the country and has given
them the tools and the network of support to effectively change the
face of poetry in the United States today. This is indisputable. Poetry in
general, has benefited.
It is telling, then, that this anthology seeks to draw our attention
to the strength that exists in African American poets in the Carolinas
region. The quest is not to create a separate nation, but to draw
attention to the quality and range of work that is being produced by
African American poets from our region. Many of them are scattered all
around the country, and these poets show themselves to have a great
deal in common by being poets who have roots in this region. At the
same time, many of the poets have adopted the Carolinas as home, as
places of cultural and imaginative definition. These poets have all said
willingly that the Carolinas have played a major role in defining them
and in shaping their imaginations. These poets have written as people
trying to make sense of their identity and sense of place on this
environment. The result is a gathering of poets that is both exciting
and informative. I have not sought to select poems that are “about”
the South or about the Carolinas, especially. Instead, I called for poems
and then selected the poems that I believed were the strongest, most
evocative and consistent with the rhythm of the anthology. I have been
as interested in showing range as I have in simply choosing poems I
like. The latter criteria is decidedly biased, but I do not apologize for
this as I believe that my tastes are not as limiting to make the
collection monochromatic, plain, or predictable, and are not as eclectic
as to deprive the work of a unity of artistic taste that I believe is
necessary in any good book, in any solid anthology.
Instead, what I believe we have collected here is, first and
foremost, a wonderful collection of poems by poets who range from the
fully accomplished to those who are making their first outing. The
poets, of course, hail from different parts of our two states, and many
now live outside the region. This, then, is a proud collection―a
collectionthat the region should be proud of. I know, for certain, that
people will be surprised to see some names in this anthology, poets
they might have known of, but poets they had no idea were from either
of our states. I won’t pretend that this is a comprehensive list of
African American poets from our states. To arrive at the list of poets to
invite, I polled as many poets as I knew who might have been able to
help me find other poets. But I also know that I missed some people
and that some people simply chose not to send me work. This is fine. I
am more keen on exploring the voices that are actually here than
those that may not be here. My hope is that those poets from here who
have left will be reminded of their place in the community of poets
from the region, and the idea would be to create occasions when these
poets can be together to read and to affirm the presence of great black
poetry in our region. My hope, also, is that poets from across the state
line will find opportunity in this anthology to discover each other and to
remind us of the artificiality of such borders in the face of the genius
art of empathy that marks what we do as poets.
It is necessary to make a few comments about the idea of the
Carolinas as a singular space. The truth is that only those who do not
come from this region routinely mistake the two states. In my
experience, the tendency for people outside of the region is to default
by lumping both states into North Carolina. While North Carolina has
no city with more name recognition and legendary status than
Charleston, it is not unusual for me to hear people assuming that
Charleston is in North Carolina. Indeed, people don’t associate
Charleston with any particular state (a situation that I am sure
Charlestonians will say is understandable)—it is a place in its own right.
But North Carolina is, for some reason, the better-known state. It has
size and a cluster of nationally recognized cities to make that the case.
I won’t attempt to offer the various things that distinguish the two
states, from football to barbecue styles, but I will say that pulling them
together as a unit for an anthology is not always as natural a thing to
do as one might imagine.
Nonetheless, the things that unify are obvious: the shared name,
the long history of slavery, the tradition of resistance to slavery and
the attendant years of Jim Crow, the strong sense of place and
commitment to the land, the burden of stigma associated with being
from the “Deep South” or the “Bible Belt,” the extended history of faith
founded heavily in Christian traditions, and a long list of names of
people who left, became great, and constantly surprised the world with
the discovery that they were born and raised in one of these states. All
of these factors somehow find their way into the poetry that we see
collected here. The hope is not to create a unified sense of place, but
to acknowledge the lines that connect the people from this region and
the art that has grown out of these shared experiences and
backgrounds.
Anthologies allow us to manage a large and eclectic nation. An
American anthology even if it is defined by race, or theme, will always
be forced to omit some strong and impressive writers simply because
there are too many good writers working today, and because no single
editor is going to be able to know everything that is being written
across this wide and varied nation. Regional anthologies allow us to
give attention to poets who might be excluded from national
anthologies, not because of the quality of the work, but because of the
limitations of the idea of nation that one cannot avoid. What is most
encouraging to me with this anthology is that after the call for poems
was sent out to a list of over one hundred poets, I got responses from
all the established black poets in and from the region, as well as a rich
pool of poems from less established but equally interesting poets who
are willing to regard either North or South Carolina as home. From this
pool, I was able to make selections that I believed represented an
engaging picture of where contemporary poetry is in our states.
It is not incidental that these are black poets. That they are black
poets offers a way to look at their poetry and to contend openly with
the issues of race and place that are important to our region. We have
anthologies of poetry from the region that have not been defined by
race, and they have been strong and interesting places for us to
understand this region and its people better. There is, you will find, a
lot to be said about our region in these poems collected here, and most
importantly, you will, I am confident, be discovering a range of new
poets that you might never have encountered without this anthology.
My hope has always been that here in the Carolinas poets will
talk more with each other and will assert their importance to the
cultural life of the region more and more by this dialogue and
advocacy of the arts. Earlier in this essay, I remarked that when
society seeks to define its identity in an environment marked with
inequality, resulting in silence and invisibility for one of the groups
being pulled into this sense of identity, the effect is damaging and
never productive. Anthologies like these are offering visibility to poets
who may not have great visibility. I think of the people who will be
reading this anthology all the time. And here I am thinking of students
in schools across these two great states, African American children
who have never considered the possibility that they can write poems
or that they are present in the collective imagination that defines their
region. This anthology offers a sense of possibility and provides them
with the incalculable gift of example—someone has gone before, and it
is fine for me to want to achieve like these writers. If this is all that this
anthology accomplishes, I will be pleased. But I do know that it will do
a great deal more than that. For many of the poets collected here, this
is a coming-out party, the first step for a career in poetry that will
contribute richly to the American poetic tradition.
I became a citizen of the United States of America about two
years ago—the year Barack Obama became the first African American
to be president of this country. It would be patriotic for me to speak of
it as a proud moment in my life, but for immigrants, naturalization, like
marriage, is about embracing a new place and identity, and losing an
old one that you loved dearly. It is never a moment of pure joy. But it is
an important moment. The curious thing about becoming a U.S. citizen
was that it arrived long after I had embraced my position as a South
Carolinian. I have to say that I have always been more able to declare
myself a South Carolinian than to say I am an American. The state, full
of its complexities of pain and triumph, its beauty and ugliness, has
insinuated itself into my being, making me able to identify with it. Of
course, many in this state will never see me as a South Carolinian, but
that is their problem. One of the most important factors in shaping my
affinity to this state and this region has been the process of working
through my position as a black person among black people living in
this state. The Gullah culture, the long history of slavery and
segregation, and the genius of survival through language, art, faith,
and community are all things that have drawn me into this community.
As a Pan Africanist, a child of the African Diaspora, I have long
found affinity and belonging in the recognition of the grander scheme
of migration, dislocation, and survival that is the story of people of the
African Diaspora. This reality has been no less real here in South
Carolina. I believe that many others who have come to adopt these
states as their homes, share my story. When I am asked, as I usually
am, how I feel about living in South Carolina, I always repeat three
basic facts: 1) Two of my children were born here and all three were
raised here; 2) the state has given me a living that has been solid and
consistent; and 3) this state and my time here have given me at least
four books of poetry that would never have been written had I not lived
here. The last is the gift that I believe all the poets in this anthology
share. Whether by the accident of birth or the circumstance of
migration, the truth is that as poets we are grateful to this region for
making us the poets that we are. This is the true citizenship of the
poet, the citizenship of finding the often contradictory complexities of
home and belonging through language and image. Evie Shockley’s
poem, “Home Is Where” provided the title for this collection. At the end
of the day, these poems are about the meaning of home. What follows
the phrase, “Home Is Where,” may be a question mark, an ellipsis, or a
series of clichés, phrases, musings, and contemplations that can
ultimately emerge as poems. My hope is that each of these poems will
offer a beautifully varied and fresh continuation of that profound and
tantalizing fragment.
Kwame Dawes
Columbia, SC, December 2010
Terrance Hayes

I JUST WANT TO LOOK

A friend called to tell me there was a topless woman picketing

outside the court house so I got my keys and eyeglasses,
but when I arrived, there were already so many onlookers,
I could see nothing but the top of her sign reading:
I HAVE THE RIGHT TO— the rest of it was blocked
by bobble-headed men in suits, by near boys in ball caps,
by afros and bald spots. “What does it say?” I asked the mail-
man fanning himself with a big confidential looking envelope.
“I’m sorry,” he said, then “This is for you,” handing me
an envelope that had nothing but “To son” “From Mom”
written on it. The crowd moved a foot or two east, then
a foot or two west following the bare sign bearing woman.
“I know I should have given it to you long ago,” the mailman
was saying, “but I just couldn’t bear being the bearer of bad news
another day.” “That’s what you think,” a large woman yelled down
in the direction of the topless woman from the second floor
of the court house tossing out what looked like an old jacket.
The men sent a disapproving roar up and the jacket seemed
to gather wind and flap off toward the river. “You have no idea
how hard my job is,” the mail man said below the ruckus,
something was going on at the steps of the court house.
“Is she dressing now” I asked a policeman fondling his nightstick.
“You’re lucky,” he said and I thought maybe he knew how I’d stopped
less than an inch from the kneecaps of an old lady pedestrian
that morning. “Your name is Lucky Jefferson, correct?
The infamous numbers runner and star pimp of Garfield?”
“No, no, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“And there is never anything in my own mailbox,” the mail man
sobbed to me. It was like a dark forest there in the middle
of downtown, all that shoulder to shouldering and gawking
at backs. The policeman stared at me and said “I’m sure
you’re Lucky. We were in high school together. Remember the night
We listened to Purple Rain until my mother got home
from her job at the hospital?” “Rick,” I said. “Is that you?
Lord, I never thought you’d become a cop!” “My name is Alvin,”
the policeman said reaching for his cuffs. Inside the envelope
the mail man gave me I found a drawing of daisies in a blue vase,
and below them the words: You forgot Mother’s Day, Bastard.
“Woooo!” the crowd said, but I still could see nothing
of the topless woman. “I send my mother cards, but she sends nothing
to me,” the mailman said. The policeman placed a hand on his
shoulder.
The woman from the second floor of the courthouse yelled
“No, no you don’t have the right to do that!” and I realized, suddenly,
she was talking to me. I lifted the empty envelope over my head
and I swear everyone in the crowd turned to face me.
Nikky Finney

THE BODY OF LUCILLE

The job of the artist is not to leave you where she found you.
―Lucille Clifton, American poet

the body of lucille roosted

in the body of thelma,

her life nestled

to the feathery lap of mama,

who wore twelve fingers

(while whispering Dunbar)

just as she wore twelve,

just as the baby growing inside
of her would wear twelve.

lucille saw things,

and lived her light-filled life

from her daughter-roost,

dying on the same day
her mama died,

fifty years ahead, now, the daughters

& sons who as instructed, left the movies,

join all the poets in Babylon,

who once believed
their lives merely ordinary,

each of us now, holding out our red

calla lily hands, counting out our fingers
to be sure, humming now, longing now,
forever, for the two-headed body of lucille.