Last week I featured Matthew Zapruder's poem "Mind the Gap" from the first issue of jubilat
— for this week's post I've picked a poem from our forthcoming issue,
due out next month. When asked about their magazine's aesthetic, many
editors talk of featuring the best in established and emerging poets,
regardless of school, reputation, region, etc. etc. Some just simply
say they publish the best-quality work they receive. Such responses do
a disservice to the job of the editor, which is to edit! And the only
thing magazines add to our literary culture is the way in which its
selections (of poets published in other magazines) present a unique
vision of poetry. But not a static one — to me, each issue of jubilat is as an argument about the art as impassioned and dynamic as it is surprising and sometimes even contradictory.
is with that last point in mind that I come to Lenard D. Moore's "Black
Poet Writes His Wife." Simply put, it's not the kind of poem that fits
neatly into our magazine. The poems we publish tend to push syntax
and/or structure much further than it does, and also tend to exist in a
more imaginary space/world. By contrast, Moore employs the epistolary
form in the most direct way possible – salutation and signature
included. The subject of the poem, a brief, sweet note from husband to
wife, is seemingly ordinary, and its first two lines, "I arrived almost
lunchtime / at the Hartford/Springfield Airport" couldn't be more
pedestrian. And yet, what follows is as lively, and at the same time
subtle, as anything in jubilat. This same contrast is true,
too, of the way the poem celebrates Blackness — "Black" is, after all,
the first word we read, and it defines the speaker. And yet, I find the
way the poem touches upon race truly beautiful, and beautifully
true. "Black Poet Writes His Wife" is firmly grounded in the "real"
world (and, in making reference to its writing, seeks to undermine its
own artifice), but in a refreshing way: the speaker infuses all he
observes and remembers with a lyric charge that makes the poem all the
more sincere. It feels to me, therefore, more intimate, more compelling
than other poems than begin in a place so known.
this mean that it's a "jubilat" poem? No — if I had one poem to serve
as an example of what we look for, this would not be it. Still, there's
something about "Black Poet Writes His Wife" that would strongly
connect to such an example — maybe its spirit, its deftness, its
discoveries. But I'm still mystified by it. And as proud as possible to
have it in our pages.
BLACK POET WRITES HIS WIFE,
Dear Elizabeth,
I arrived almost lunchtime
at the Hartford/Springfield Airport.
When I stepped outside
the temperature felt half
what your fever was.
It was the first time
this traveling year
that chill cut clean
to my black man bones.
It wasn’t too long
before random rain started
messing with my head
as if I were a canvas
out in the drizzled weather.
The sun hasn’t seen me
nor have I seen it—
just a simple sky all day.
This fall foliage is jumping
like the juke joints
I used to tell you about,
the ones where my sister and I
won chicken sandwiches dancing
against anybody who dared
while bass bossed the walls,
I wish you could see this town,
all red, yellow, orange.
Please don’t worry.
I am taking myself back
to Raleigh, in four days—
your birthday, our anniversary.
Well, I got to write a poem now.
Keep that sugar all bottled up
like that molasses
I told you I grew up on.
I know I’ll dream you here
as sure as your skin is brown.
Your husband,
George
— Lenard D. Moore