By Jewelle Gomez–
I grew up listening to AM radio in Boston in the 1960s; every day I heard the widest variety of popular songs from three decades. I came to love, not just the music of Sam Cooke, Patti LaBelle, Dean Martin, and Patsy Cline, but also the lyrics that were poems. They told stories, which led me to storytelling myself and to poetry.
Most English teachers in the 1950s and ‘60s simply taught the “literary canon”—writing they thought was good for you, like cod liver oil. Few knew how to convey the passion and impact of the ideas and images a poem conveys, leaving generations of students dreading the word “poetry” as if it were code for incomprehensible boredom.
Black Arts Movement poets like Audre Lorde (who proclaimed, “Poetry is not a luxury”) cracked open the code. I understood; Smokey Robinson’s lyrics ignited something inside of me, and a lyric poem could do the same. Adrienne Rich wrote: “This impulse to enter, with other humans, through language, into the order and disorder of the world, is poetic at its root as sure as it is political at its root.”
So, to start this disordered new year, I’m bringing some poets into my everyday reading, starting with Cheryl Clarke (@bdpoet), whose classic book of poems Living as a Lesbian and her essay “Lesbianism: An Act of Resistance” opened new pathways in literature and Black feminist politics. An old friend and comadre, she has been publishing for more than 40 years, and her new poetry collection was published by a mainstream press for the first time. It’s called Archive of Style: New and Selected Poems (https://bit.ly/3DUHC8l) and it reflects Clarke’s decades of political activism and thinking about the value of Black women in our culture.
Clarke’s poems, which occasionally focus on musical heroes such as Billie Holiday or Sam Cooke, often have a rhythm and syncopation that are palpable. We see it in her eruptions of desire threaded through her work from a new poem, “Make me a habit of you,” to one of her classics, “Mavis writes in her journal,” which opens: “ … I know Geneva loves me/more than the man she sleeps with every night … .”
The profound emotion Clarke elicits from political observations is raw and mythic, whether she’s telling the story of Sandra Bland’s murder by the police or invoking women to help show the way to the future as in “leave signs,” an invocation that shapes all I do. Clarke’s erudition, political analysis, and passion make her writing necessary bread for lesbians and non-lesbians alike.
Andrea Gibson (@andreagibson) is a poet/performer/recording artist and the current poet laureate of Colorado. Like Clarke, they imbue their work with the power of desire and intellect. In their new collection, You Better Be Lightning, Gibson has deep insight, even when writing a two-line poem: “Silence rides shotgun/wherever hate goes.”
Naturally, I was first drawn to their poem entitled “Aliens Explain Why They Are Visiting Earth.” The lines are amusing at times, but more often sly and wrenching: “Because if the heart/of the earth is in Arizona,/the Grand Canyon is proof/of how badly it is breaking.”
In another complex, tender piece about the clash of a political impulse with their lover’s reunion with her estranged parents, the poem resolves the moment by declaring that, for now, “everything but I love you is small talk.” Gibson has an exquisite way with words as they tell their stories in a musical rhythm that’s irresistible.
It’s exciting to discover new work by familiar writers and new work from writers new to me. I can’t unequivocally say queer poets might save the world … but I will.
Jewelle Gomez is a lesbian/feminist activist, novelist, poet, and playwright. She’s written for “The Advocate,” “Ms. Magazine,” “Black Scholar,” “The San Francisco Chronicle,” “The New York Times,” and “The Village Voice.” Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @VampyreVamp
Leave Signs
Published on January 16, 2025
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