Po-Po-Poetry – Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine 3


Claudia Rankine

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine won the PEN Open Book Award and the PEN Literary Award, the NAACP Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry.  It was my great pleasure to see Claudia Rankine recently at Emerson College in Boston.  She spoke On Whiteness – sharing images and research on the concept and practice of “whiteness” from a class she taught at Yale. Her presentation was like a candle flame that becomes incendiary.

Citizen: An American Lyric – this book…this epic should be read in its entirety, so selecting an excerpt is not the best thing to do but it is the right thing to do because I want to share something from it during National Poetry Month.  The book is free form with poetry-lyrics-essays-observations moving in and out, back and forth.  The words, with images that support and expand them, burn.

(This excerpt is from page 131 Stop and Frisk: script for situation video created in collaboration with John Lucas.)

I knew whatever was in front of me was happening and then the police vehicle came to a screeching halt in front of me like they were setting up a blockade. Everywhere were flashes, a siren sounding and a stretched-out roar.  Get on the ground. Get on the ground now. Then I just knew.

And you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.

I left my client’s house knowing I would be pulled over.  I knew. I just knew. I opened my briefcase on the passenger seat, just so they could see.  Yes officer rolled around on my tongue, which grew out of a bell that could never ring because its emergency was a tolling I was meant to swallow.

In a landscape drawn from an ocean bed, you can’t drive yourself sane—so angry you are crying. You can’t drive yourself sane. This motion wears a guy out. Our motion is wearing you out and still you are not that guy.

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Yes, this is a tease. I didn’t even touch the part about Serena and Venus Williams or Katrina or various situations of micro-aggression or…get the book. Read it.

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About National Poetry Month: Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month, held every April, is the largest literary celebration in the world with schools, publishers, libraries, booksellers, and poets celebrating poetry’s vital place in our culture.

 


About Candelaria Silva

Candelaria Silva-Collins is a marketing, community outreach and programming consultant; writer; and trainer/facilitator who lives in Boston, Massachusetts. She has designed and facilitated workshops on a wide variety of topics including communication, facilitation, job search skills, team building, and parenting issues. She currently coordinates the Community Membership Program of the Huntington Theatre Company. Her work as Director of ACT Roxbury was profiled in several publications, including The Creative Communities Builders Handbook. Candelaria’s children’s stories, short stories, essays and reviews have been published in local and national publications and she is an active blogger. Her publications include the booklets, Handling Rejection; Pushing through Shyness: Networking Tips when You’re Shy, Slow to Warm Up or Just don’t Feel you Belong; and Real Questions about Sex & Relationships for Teens: A Discussion Guide for Parents. She has served on the boards of Goddard College, Wheelock Family Theatre, Boston Foundation for Architecture, and Discover Roxbury. She is currently Chair, Designators of the Henderson Foundation.

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3 thoughts on “Po-Po-Poetry – Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

  • Helen M Credle

    Candelaria THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for this teaser….It MADE me remember the terror I faced raising my son, now 43, that this terrifying story would not happen to him. I use to lay in bed and plan how to train/educate him if it were to happen. What would I do to get him home from the police station….OR….even more horrible….I would I deal with the courts to keep him from going to prison…WHY????…just because he fit the description….Forever grateful for the reminder of how we truly live….ALL of US mothers, sisters, daughters, et all of the beautiful hue of being variations of a theme in color…Helen Credle