Formatting note:
In the electronic versions of this book
blank pages that appear in the paperback
have been removed.
TRAVERSE
GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Clarke, George Elliott, 1960-, author
Traverse / George Elliott Clarke.
Poems.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-55096-395-3 (pbk.)— ISBN 978-1-55096-396-0 (pdf)
ISBN 978-1-55096-455-4 (epub)—ISBN 978-1-55096-454-7 (mobi)
I. Title.
PS8555.L3748T73 2014 C811'.54 C2014-900184-3 / C2014-900185-1
Copyright © George Elliott Clarke, 2014.
Cover painting “Africadian Pastorale” / front inside painting “Africadian Eve” / end painting “African Baptist Muse” © Laura Anne Martina, 2014; used by permission of the artist. Interior flower painting “Sudden Instant” © William Lloyd Clarke, 1953; used by permission of George Elliott Clarke.
Published by Exile Editions Ltd ~ www.ExileEditions.com
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Publication Copyright © Exile Editions, 2014. All rights reserved.
Digital formatting by Michael Callaghan
ePUB and MOBI versions by Melissa Campos Mendivil
We gratefully acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF), the Ontario Arts Council–an agency of the Ontario Government, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation for their support toward our publishing activities.
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CONTENTS
PREFACE
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
XXIX
XXX
XXXI
XXXII
XXXIII
XXXIV
XXXV
XXXVI
XXXVII
XXXVIII
XXXIX
XL
XLI
XLII
XLIII
XLIV
XLV
XLVI
XLVII
XLVIII
XLIX
L
LI
LII
LIII
LIV
LV
LVI
LVII
LVIII
LIX
LX
LXI
LXII
LXIII
LXIV
LXV
LXVI
LXVII
LXVIII
LXIX
LXX
for
Geraldine Elizabeth Clarke
(1939 – 2000)
&
William Lloyd Clarke
(1935 – 2005)
African Baptists, Adepts, Believers.
CROSSING
The salt-wavy tumult traverse alone.
—EZRA POUND
But I
had been falling for thirty years.
—ROBIN SKELTON
PREFACE
Anniversaries revivify: They justify indulgences, eccentricities, luxuries, and mercies. My private calendar is not as rich with reverent observances as others’ may be, but I do grant select dates transcendent import. See July 1st. True: Canada Day salutes the Dominion’s birth as a British Royal-loyal state constituted to deny the United States absolute suzerainty over this continent. But this date is pivotal personally, for, it was on July 1, 1975, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, that I inked several “songs” — as a 15-year-old — and began my apprenticeship to the art of poetry. Thirty years later, at age 45, I decided to review my being and doings as a poet. So, on July 1, 2005, while visiting Halifax, I drafted a verse-memoir to canvass my vital inspirations and the cobbling of my works up to then. What emerged was a series of “Rap Sonnets” – poems to be read aloud. The initial title was direct: Thirty Years (1975-2005). In 2006, I began to publish the poem’s sonnet-stanzas, in numerical/chronological sequence, in jour-nals: ARC, Echolocation, For Crying Out Loud, ELQ/ Exile: The Literary Quarterly. (I thank the editors of these publications for their support.) ELQ/Exile has taken most of the “sonnets,” and so more than half of this book has appeared in print since 2006. Assuredly, ELQ/Exile has liked the poem(s) enough to propose that the work outright now appear under its related imprint, Exile Editions. To aid that purpose, I’ve re-envisioned my title to Traverse, a word pleasing-ly both a verb and a noun. So, I conceive this book as both recording a portage and remarking a bridge. I have added here a closing nonet of “Rap Sonnets,” to catalogue events and publications since July 1, 2005. For those who rue the loss of the original “Thirty Year” rubric, I’ll note that 2013 marks thirty years since my first book of poetry appeared, i.e., Saltwater Spirituals and Deeper Blues, on yet another paramount date, namely, June 6th.
Though Traverse is autobiographical, I have manumitted some names and omitted others. I have also overlooked many signal moments such as my debut tour, in April 1977, to Church Point, Nova Scotia (where I viewed snow flurries round a lighthouse); my Fall 1981 residence in a Toronto subway station; my April 1993 encirclement by gun-hefting border guards at Port Huron, Michigan (where my entry to the U.S. “to give a talk on poetry” inspired alarm); my surf-side, noon-sun mugging by three thugs in Salvador, Brazil, in November 2007; and my receipt of The Queen’s inadvertently deferential nod in Halifax in June 2010 (She mistook me for a cleric: A reasonable error, given my surname.) Nor have I elaborated (or belaboured) my poetics: “Canadian” by origin, but “African” by inclination. Thus, like Canuck poets, I dignify; like Black poets, I signify.
George Elliott Clarke
Cambridge, Massachusetts
25/12/13
* Saltwater Spirituals. Eds. Ronald Tetreault and the class members of English 4010. 23 April 2002. Dalhousie University Electronic Text Centre. http://etc.dal.ca/clarke/index_std.html.
** My radical pedagogues—those who taught me how to analyze and question when I was aged 16 to 19—were Jacqueline Barkley, Walter Borden, Carol Gibbons, Bev Greenlaw, Sylvia Hamilton, Fred Holtz, Joan Jones, Rocky Jones, and Terry Symonds. All once-Haligonians, they composed an open-door avant-garde, an open-sesame intelligentsia.
Scan or access these URLs:
George Elliott Clarke speaking about his book, along with his reading six of the poems.
www.tinyurl.com/TraverseTrailer
(8:18)
To enjoy a video of George Elliott Clarke speaking about the book:
A look back to the moment it came into being, on one day, July 1, 2005, marking 30 years of his
writing poetry.
www.tinyurl.com/ClarkeTraverse
(8:44)
DA CAPO: 1 /7/75*
...the beautiful seems right
By force of beauty....
—ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
*Cf. “Poetry: 1/7/75—1/7/05” in Black (2006) and “July 1, 1975” in I & I (2009).
I
What was handed down
was backtalk—
“nasty Nofaskoshan” noise—
black and insolent,
an A-to-Z menagerie
of braying—or caterwauling—script,
“cryin out loud” cryptic adorations—
Christ and curry and queynte,
not only in that order—
via a hodgepodge of fountain pens,
one quixotic, the rest antique,
straggling ink between wispy
lines, letting letters light,
dead-on, biting into paper.
II
Under black—but blazing—eyes,
I ruled pages, slant-wise,
because, wayward as a Goliard,
I thought kazoos could serenade bulldozers,
or that gold could sun rain.
I thought I could import Storyville
to a ghetto of fiddles and bagpipes, eh?
I was tryin to graduate
from grape Kool-Aid to Manischewitz wine,
from illegible crayons
to illegitimate poems,
to go howling after white vamps with black hearts,
and glean hot perfumes from their arctic flesh
off-and-on any sweaty sofa.
III
Upon a domain of Gravitas, I trespassed,
that beginner’s Dominion Day, falling,
where rude books made bodies plain,
spread-eagling Love,
affixing her— sorta—to a crucifix.
Lyrics turned as dark as the innards
of radios, stench of ozone accenting
cat-piss smells of LP jackets.
Their genius gave me chills
and made me want to throw up—
as if reading were the same experience
as watching a piano explode.
Damned be witless Abstraction, gutless Dreams,
heartless Ideals!
IV
My pitched ears slurped up Music’s juices;
mine eyes gobbled gilt wine plus hors d’ oeuvres—
the Champagne-and-caviar look of each page.
Anthologies were subversive—half-Tijuana bible
and half-marijuana dream:
Here’s sado-maso Poe diddling Plath;
there’s slave-tradin Rimbaud buggering Verlaine.
And, like some Lumpen Black Panther or Vandal,
I ransacked New Directions Pound,
Faber T.S. Eliot, City Lights Ginsberg,
McClelland & Stewart Leonard Cohen,
Penguin Books Baudelaire,
Farrar, Strauss, Giroux Walcott,
and Third World Press Carolyn M. Rodgers.*
*Cf. Amiri Baraka.
V
(I ain’t forgotten Henry Dumas, Conrad Kent Rivers,
Robert Hayden, or Jean Toomer.
I don’t shun their Deep South sermons,
their Harlemonious harmonies.
Their pages unfurl as thin as moonshine.
You tip one of their Gypsy poems,
and it tips you over, tipsy.
Their words float just like Mary Poppins—
but sting just like Muhammad Ali.
Suddenly, Queen Elizabeth’s English
turns Negroid, Mongoloid, dawdling,
and lavish in the mouth.
Now, you know “to draw down poems” means tappin
born-again, now deathless trees.)
VI
I was reading way too much.
My eyes were as bad as my manners;
my manners were as bad as my speech.
Literature set me a-stutter
cos ma black tongue could ne’er sound learnèd.
Sounded more like (a) foul play.
I mean, I was unsound. Dig?
My Marxism-Leninism enlisted
Pushkin, Pasternak, Rasputin,
plus Nabokov’s Lolita.
My Maoism mixed sake and haiku
et les bons mots de Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
But Irving Layton modelled a swaggering guru:
“Take down a gal. Get taken down by a gal.”
VII
Them days, I navigated Halifax like a three-leggèd cat,
alert but hurt, limping,
moanin open-heart-surgery blues—
facin the stink of bad news,
slop of bad shots, sobs of liquor,
while syringes stretched buddies on ice,
cold as burnt-out fire-hydrants;*
and parading tarts made their privates
public for a price—
never too much. I only wanted
to make love when the moon gleamed sunny,
white chicks looked coloured, and ink
streamed from me, fluorescent,
blossoming luminous....
*Spotted in Detroit, Michigan, where I was an ACORN agent, in February 1982.
VIII
Didn’t I freeze, perambulating frozen,
peninsular Halifax,
North End to South End to North,
crossing and double-crossing Hierarch y
and Caste and Race and Sex,
stumblin at times them fault-lines?
As intoxicated as Lear, I staggered raggedly,
takin blows of rain and snow,
or slaps of rain and snow and tears,
stinging my black face breathless.
Fog and snow and rain and tears....
Store windows spit neon to bleach me white.
My genes were impure,
my blue jeans were dirty.
IX
Once I penetrated the oval, cuntal Legislature,
where he drove his fist into his seat, that teacher,
excited by N.S. Question Period hysterics—
orgasms of elect, silk-suited bawds
and taxpayer-bankrolled gamblers—
stunted members snapped in sheets—
beds, cash, tabloids, and then postage stamps
(after their scandals kindle, then pall,
leaving only ashen, blurry rumour).
Amazing it was to stand outlaw in the womb
of Law, inside a Palladian-style parliament,
so near the lawless, unruly Atlantic,
its waves always rearin to erase
deeds—and even the memory of deeds.
X
YHZ always was tearin
to go topsy-turvy.
I fantasized each street turned upside-down—
dunked deep underwater—
as if a perverted Atlantis, or an Earthquake version
of Paul Gallico’s Poseidon Adventure.
Every tavern radiated rebellion—
the demented glory of overflowing beer pitchers.
I held ideas as if holding a party,
stood sunflowers on the North End Library rooftop,
lifted French from records voicing suspicions,
and eyed James Brown vaulting from vinyl
like light ricocheting off a gold brick.
But soon Love had me all upside-down.
XI
But how could I woo second-cousin Nona—
no-plain-face Muse, outta Three Mile Plains?
(Neither miles of small print nor the sprawl of epic
can image her Majesty.)
My relation, never true love, nevertheless, her smile
mimed Mona Lisa elusiveness;
her Négritude, camouflaged, tinted her skin
a hint of New Orleans pralines;
her kiss had—I had to guess—the savour
of honeyed m
ilk.
Her romances were always capital-R Romantic.
Her jokes were as earnest as Romero’s Zombies.
Her 45s reeled card-table, 60-watt gloom
and auto-wreck, 60 m.p.h. pain.
XII
Hangin out, lingering, with Nona,
I got cultured in pickles, guitars, car engines.
She cared less about doing well for herself
than doing good for others.
I could spy the legacy of Slavery
divulged poignantly in our very colours—
blue-green-grey eyes or molasses ones,
blond(e) or copper or black hair
(that was either rambunctiously curly
or pass-for-white straight).
The consequence of my unsolicited
and quite unsophisticated desire
was to watch blushing roses blossom
and taste them in apple pie.
XIII
Forgive, please, these down-home metaphors,
but Nona was like a horse
I couldn’t ride, couldn’t even pet,
but for whom I was secretly giddy—
likely enough to plunge over cliffs.
Thus, my first love mirrored her blondeness.
(O, Nona, how could you have shot yourself,
and emptied out all your irreplaceable blood,
and blasted your gorgeous being, never vulgar,
into the soulless solace of a casket?)
That premier girl’s initials are O.K.
Okay? She was a premium knockout.
How could I not feel kayoed
by that svelte and vexing intellectual?
XIV
An Acadian fille with a foxy, Okie name,
only clandestinely English,
she urged me to be primal, musky, moody,
while she swallowed the Eucharistic pill.
But my eyes and ears weren’t yet open,
not yet truly formed.
My blood had still to pump
like a shotgun,
to charge—or discharge—the lusts tussling
in my cranium’s Coliseum.
I thought I could return the sunken Titanic
Traverse Page 1
