Diann Blakely

8/21/2019 Diann Blakely

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Dear Claudia,

It's difficult to find a balance when one is writing a personal

letter that will be read by a community, but I feel were all of likemind or we wouldn't be here in the first place. I feel that I alsocan assume, from various posts, that the two things you andTony want most: 1) for your names to disappear from theconversation about "The Change"; and 2) for the conversationto prove ongoing, are visibly triumphant. Just look at the namesof others surrounding this piece.

Until a couple of days ago, I would not have thought either thenames or the conversation were necessary. Several things havechanged my mind, although one should have served as sufficientforewarning: last Wednesdaynight, Tony's "big black girl fromAlabama"--my home state--leapt from "The Change" and gaveterrifying chase with her tennis racket, clearly intending tosmash me to bits. The anxieties that provoked the dream were,

by that point, predictable and almost--but not quite--comic, for Ihad recently been the target of some very upsetting...no,shocking, indeed previously unimaginable, racial antagonism.

This came about as the result of composing a special onlinefeature called "The New Black, intended to be a celebration ofwhat Id long seen budding, then bursting into full flower in2010-2011, of African-American poetry. Three in less than acentury--what a great idea for an expansion of an annualNational Poetry Month omnibus I write!

Or maybe not: at first, my editors thought my enthusiasm toospecialized and narrow. Then I was told by a half-dozen people


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of both races that I was insensitive not to recognize thecultural/historical/sociopolitical friction still existing betweenblack and white women. How could I recognize something that

had not been true in my own experience? "It's not you," oneadvisor said. "It's slavery. Reconstruction. Jim Crow." ThenIwas warned that this was an especially touchy topic in the wakeof the murky-murk of what I myself called, Rankine v.Hoagland, declaring it the poetic equivalent of the O.J.Simpson verdict. Dont go there, dont write it at all--the timingcouldnt be worse.

No, I said, explaining that though I'd been thinking about thiswildly impressive third wave for many years, the past twelvemonths made it obvious that this new poetic renaissance wasn'tsomething engendered within the confines of my imagination.Furthermore, I had a number of cheerleaders, intentional andaccidental: first, I found a post made by Jericho Brown, sayinghe was really into [an] essay written by Percival Everett about

VIDA, of which I am a member and you are on the board. Thebest possible omens, thought this highly superstitious creature,for it was on Jerichos page that I had first found the news of"Rankine v. Hoagland, which my instincts told me meant anabysmal racial divide would once again open between whites andAfrican-Americans in this country and we would all fall intohellish rage and then dead silence.

But Jerichos words, and your position, seemed to underscoresomething Id picked up on in an earlier essay by SethAbramson: the gender disparity that still exists in publishing,which was reinforced by subsequent items about Riverhead andVIDA in Lagniappe, The Southern Reviews b-site. For me,


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Everett and Kim Pearson spelled it out. Everett said: "The sameway the government used to place historically warring Nativepeoples on shared or adjacent reservations, so has the culture

sought to pit women against African Americans, AfricanAmericans against Hispanics and so on." Pearson said: "Racism= prejudice + plus power. In this country, historically, thedominant racist ideology has been white supremacy. The beliefin white supremacy is not restricted to people who are sociallyconstructed as white. White supremacist discourse haspermeated our laws, and culture, so its not surprising that thereare people of color who live down the stereotypes they have

been taught to believe about themselves. That's calledinternalized oppression. Personally, I think that helps to explainthe complicity of women and people of color." And youvegiven further validity to their words by example: youre anAfrican-American woman who serves on VIDAs board. Andothers remarks echoed, in one way or another, the positions ofEverett, Pearson, and yourself.

If Im a savage little terrier when it comes to advocating forothers, I'm usually pathetic when it comes to myself;nevertheless, I had a sufficient number of trusted supporters andcheerleaders to allow me to remain unleashed. So I finished thepiece. Then I had the nightmare. Then, I was up all Thursdaynight and to 11:00 a.m. on Friday writing a re-introduction to abook I had already introduced. Then, after e-mailing my twohighly skilled and exacting editors / proofreaders--both of whomwork in arenas where Southern blacks and whites meet--what Ihoped was theperfect draft of this piece, each suggested strongly,out of a desire to protect me, that I remove a line because of thetrouble Id had with The New Black.


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Thus I found myself in a writers worst waking nightmare: amoral dilemma centered on a single clause: when one crosses

the Jekyll Island bridge, on clear days, it's as though you can seeall the way to Africa, and I am haunted by the ghostly apparitionof slave ships and the lingering, suffering-but-ultimatelytriumphant spirit of Fanny Kemble. I live about eighty milessouth of Savannah, and what I had written was utterly true, foreven when I'm fictionalizing in a poem for dramatic effect or toprotect others privacy, I believe that the essential truth mustprevail. All writers have is their words, and if we are not faithful

to them we can scarcely hope we will receive better treatment.

I admit it. I was sorely tempted to yield. But I wantedto keepbeing brave, to use a complimentary word one of my readershad applied to me, and wouldnt it be mutually disrespectful tobe silenced as a writer because of fear? To what have I devotedmy entire writing life--which is to say, my life--if not bearing

witness to the racial atrocities I saw while growing up, to act as avessel for the ubiquitous suffering that continues in this world?Why didnt people want to know this? Wasnt it the basest formof colonialism to use another's time and energy as the equivalentof raw materials for the purpose of their own enhanced status aswriters, i.e., their manufacture? It's not as though I don't see, forexample, and on a daily basis, enormous pine trees from localfarms lopped and headed to plants to be made into furniture,after all.

But the answer is simple: the other writers were too busy doingexactly the same things I was.


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Thus I decided to consider all of these of coincidences andcollisions an enormously lucky accident. After exchangingpersonal e-mails, I decided to ask if you thought the sentence

indicated further racial insensitivity on my part. You said youdidnt believe in policing other peoples work. Nor do I. Thus Ireplaced my words, and then I began to readsome of the variousposts Id collected. A genuinely shocking one, encountered forthe first time last night, concerned a person who once wrote methat I came from "a great line of agitators, which is true, but itmakes me wary of my own tendency to be easily agitated.

The post focused in particular on the reading of a single poemduring which the audience--80% white--had laughed forprecisely the wrong reasons. I was simultaneously moved to tearsand outrage. I wanted to throttle, personally, each member ofthe class that had taken the thematic / imagistic thread as ajoke. While Im reluctant to police others sense of humor, suchlaughter seems more appropriate when provoked by the one of

our great contemporary poets of comedy and, for me, yetanother prescient source, Chris Rock. Speaking for blackwomen in a monologue they might find offensive, for I knowmany thin ones, I found it hilarious that Im regarded by bothraces--80% of my doctors are white and scold me constantlyabout my desultory eating habits--as a Cheerio-belt-wear[er].

If humor is one of humankinds saving graces, so is attunementto what you have called, quoting Judith Butler, the condition ofbeing addressable. It is a condition that affects us all, as doesthe imperfection of earthly understanding. But if I neededanyfurtherprovocation to understanding these conditions, to


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convincing myself to retain what I had written, to realizing thatthe dialogue which you and Tony began needs to continue onthe parts of both races, I have a beyond-gracious plenty of

reasons. And from these and I cannot look away (look away,etc., despite being born in the heart of Dixie.)

I think about the French root of "courage" and how it containswithin it coeur. Claudia, you and Tony have been clear aboutwhat the hoped-for outcome of your discussion, and I want toend by making it clear that if all of these circumnambient namesarent sufficient proof, the others in mon coeur show me that I

have not lost what I feared; indeed, they have enabled me to findsomething: my own "change," the self-advocacy for which I havebeen hoping and praying for so long Lord, o so long.

With best wishes for peace,

Diann Blakely

P.S. This open letter has become so long that I fear it willoverflow your screen, but yet another suggestion for deletion wasmade. Does the last phrase--'so long Lord, o so long' make itsound overwrought and as though youre trying to appropriateAfrican-American speech? one of the proofreaders/editorsasked. I'll leave it to readers to decide on the "overwrought"part, but insofar as the issue of appropriation is concerned, weboth knew the answer--a resounding no--and I knew that onceagain she was simply trying to protect me. For DownHere, Adrienne Richs dream of a common language was myearliest linguistic reality; and if my later influences are many, twoof the most powerful are Faulkner (particularlyAs I Lay


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Dying, the two-volume Compson saga, Go Down, Moses, andLightin August) and Tennessee Williams (particularlyA Streetcar NamedDesire andA Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.) Even more particularly, I

think of their gimlet-eyed but compassionate understanding ofwomen, of cross-racial complicity, and of the nose upturned atthe powerful odor of mendacity. And here I shall defer toAlfred Corns eloquence about the Souths racial osmosis. TheKing James Bible, with its upsurging, magisterial swells andsweeps, combined with sheer personal charisma--think chrism--not only gave us, after all, some of the most memorable passagesin Faulkner and Williams, but also those in the speeches and

writings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

P.P.S. The re-introduction of which I spoke, the one whichoccasioned the initial deletion, was rejected, as was a subsequentplea to revise it in accordance with what its Commissionerwanted all along: "a plug." (No one else seems to see thecrossover connotations of a word used for sex and now used

more commonly for marketing, but I do.) As I recall, I wasspecifically asked not to repeat my original piece, or merely toprovide excerpts. Instead I thought it would be moreinteresting, and a wholly non-martial salute to all involved, if Itold the story--yes, in my own wholly nonlinear and associativeway, but isnt that how Eliot said a poets mind should in factwork, ceaselessly amalgamating disparate experiences?--ofhow it came to be written and how much the celebration ofmany people--their books, individual poems, odes, and lines--seemed occasioned thereby. I will say nothing else except theCommissioner is a straight white male; that I outlined in detailthe very points I wished to make; and that I said would makethem in a very linear way, using the excerpts from the original


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introduction as supporting material. The mans gender andracial identity, as well as his rejection, seems proof of the pointsmade by Abramson, Brown, Everett, Jones, Pearson, and many

anonymous others); it seems additional proof that certain peopledo not want this conversation to continue. To relapse into theKJB resonances that seem engraved upon my synapses and verypulse, O Thy Blessings are Manifold Indeed, O Lord, for I havebeen provided with other moments of comedy and will soon beprovided with a website venue upon which to post this string ofpieces, and at first I thought the ending would be theCommissioners words: he was "passing." And then what seems

as though the id andJokes and the Unconscious were let loose like apack of slavering, rabid dogs, and Claudia, dont you thinkcruelty should be policed? Here I am referring to two othertruly outrageous puns: was Tonys intention, in The Change,to refer to a euphemism for menopause? Was he intentionallydisrespecting Sam Cookes A Change is Gonna Come? Andwhat was in the mind of an African-American poet and fiction

writer whose work I have admired for many, many years whenshe decided to re-master poor Phillis Wheatley? Does shewant her sold back into bondage?

Thanks, however, are due here to Cornelius Eady for taking thephotograph of her first manuscript last week, and to KevinYoung for making it available to him. How I wish I could havebeen there with him and the Other Ms. Wheatley, meaningNatasha Trethewey, whom Ive known for at least seventeenyears and remains as sweet and gracious and ferociously, spikilyintelligent as Elizabeth Alexander. With the latter I share acraving for radiance and a teacher in Derek Walcott.


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Those who are agin us are agin us, as Patricia Spears Joneswrote in a post, and there are many arrayed agin us. Anattack on one minority is not only an attack on all minorities, but

it is also a crime against humanity, for hatred, being theprojection of something feared onto an Other, seeks to destroythat Others right simply to be. If I am in accordance withJennifer Michael Hechts assertion that happiness is a myth, Iam surely also in accordance with many others in believing thateveryone has the right to exist with integrity.

P.P.S. In conclusion, Id like to offer two links and an

explanation of my title;

1) I have said many times that I did not write The New Blackas a refutation of Kenneth F. Warren(http://chronicle.com/article/Does-African-American/126483),but that I was grateful for the CHE for printing one itself(http://chronicle.com/article/African-American-

Literature/126867/#comment-17513574 0). Yet I remainembarrassed that Harvard, my alma mater in the strangestpossible way, is lending its imprimatur, i.e. its endorsement, ofWarrens foolish and dangerous argument.

2) My title comes courtesy of Wallace Stevens: He observeshow the north is always enlarging the change, Stevens writes ofthe aurora borealis, seeing them as snakes. Form gulping afterformlessness, he writes, envisioning the Northern Lights asemblems, in other words, as signifiers, of original sin. It is ofextreme significance that Stevens seeks comfort in motherkind,which makes that gentled that can gentle be. Of course, Man-kind seeks gentleness and then simmers with self-hatred for


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admitting vulnerability, weakness, lack of self-sufficiency, thecondition of being addressable. Who can understand betterthan writers just how much words can hurt?

Look no further than Bible for proof that since the Pentateuch,women and blacks have borne the mark of Cain. But in thiscase, Gerald Barraxs words contradict Stevenss, and on them Iwill close: "How can any American poet, White or Black, notwrite about race? It is our national ground of being. Southernwriters, for what should be obvious reasons, have dealt with itmore openly and honestly than regional poets of the North, East,

and west, who either politicize race or ignore it altogether. Theformer should have their noggins thumped for trivializing thecrucial human issue of our culture; the latter should have theirartistic licenses revoked." In other words, in our times, it is theAmerican South that has enlarged the change most definitivelythan any region of this American Mean Ole World.

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Diann Blakely