The Poetics of Class & How to Write Ourselves Back to Relevancy

1. With the help of essays like “A Question of Class” by Dorothy Allison and “Gender, Class, and Terrorism” by Michael S. Kimmel, my students and I have been thinking about class quite a bit this semester. To borrow a phrase from bell hooks, if anything is true, we are desperately trying to figure out where we stand: the pink slips, the credit card bills, the student loans, the knock-off designer purses. But – I have to ask – what about the poetry?

2. In “Where We Stand: Class Matters” bell hooks argues that, unlike race and gender, we don’t have a vocabulary for class. Most Americans refer to themselves as “middle class” while statistics show that most us aren’t “middle class” by a long shot. The language of class seems to be hyperbolic at best. Sure, we can name what it means to be exorbitantly wealthy or extremely poor, but where are the words to describe the rest of us?

3. If I accept the idea that poetry emphasizes creative and innovative use of language; that poetry allows us to name what, previously, was beyond the grasp of words, how can I not think about class? How can I not think about the potential of poetry to help us feel our way through these uncertain times?

4. As we continue to search for subject matter worth putting into words, perhaps it’s well past time that we, as poets, contributed to the conversation about class in America. It’s not only a matter of writing poems that examine, depict, and voice economic struggle. It’s about mining our libraries for work that already does so. Think of Walt Whitman’s apostrophe to a prostitute. Think of Langston Hughes’s poems about landlords and tenants. Think of Carl Sandburg’s Chicago.

5. Who among us will write poems for Gary, Indiana? Who among us will write poems for Detroit, Michigan? Who among us will write poems for Newark, New Jersey?

6. As we continue to decry the lack of an audience for poetry, the lack of interest in what we do as creative writers, perhaps the poetics of class offers us a responsibility, but also an opportunity to make our work relevant again (whatever THAT means).

7. Praise to all of you already writing these poems. Praise to all of you already reading them.

Langston Hughes & Closeted Poetry

I.

Last week, I told one of my 9th grade students that Langston Hughes was gay. The student stood up, panic-stricken, and pleaded, “Please don’t say something like that, Mr. Jones. That’s not funny.” He paused for a moment, then added. “He’s one of my idols.” None of the other students noticed the conversation, distracted by their own projects & discussions. And the student and I went about our separate ways. I should’ve have turned it into teaching “moment” but I didn’t. The student wasn’t ready, and – frankly – neither was I.

II.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I hated Langston Hughes in high school, but I wasn’t a big fan. His poetry was too simple & too concerned with race. Though I didn’t know the word at the time, I felt that Langston Hughes was passe. Save him for Black History Month & spare me another recitation of Dream Deferred. At least, that’s what I thought at the time.

III.

My sophomore year of college I watched “Brother to Brother” a beautiful independent film inspired by the life of poet Bruce Nugent. It was the first time I had heard of Nugent & his classic work “Smoke, Lilies, & Jade.” It was also the first time I had heard that Langston Hughes slept with men. The movie alludes to a fleeting relationship between the two poets. Needless to say, I went to the library that same day & started re-reading Hughes’ work. New interpretations & metaphors revealed themselves to me, then the poems mocked: Why hadn’t I seen it all along?

IV.

Why am I telling you this? (Really, that question is aimed at myself, more than you.) Because, for better or worse, when I was 13, 14, 15 years old, I went to books to learn everything I could about being gay. I knew I was gay already. I had felt this identity churning inside me long before I had a name for it, but the life.. How was I supposed to live the life? That’s what I was reading to learn about. I stole my mother’s copy of “Another Country” by James Baldwin because I was embarrassed for her to know I was reading it. Soon after that, I stole another one of her books, a novel by the late E. Lynn Harris. Again & again, I returned to these books looking.. looking for my own face.

V.

Again, why am I telling you this? (This time, I really am talking to you.) As someone who happily works with college freshman and, occasionally high school students, I cannot ignore the disservice we to do our students by white-washing & “straightening” the literature we present to them. A poet’s biography isn’t the whole story, but it’s often a valid part of the story. To teach “The Bell Jar” without discussing the realities faced by American women in the 1950s and 60s is to lose out on a great discussion. To teach Langston Hughes without giving any consideration to his sexuality is a foolish as ignoring his race.

VI.

And so I return to that student: to the look in his eyes, the way his voice seemed to fill with gravity & hurt. I can’t remember what started the conversation in the first place, only that I said it to shock him a bit, to prove that I know something that he didn’t. I haven’t shared this experience with you to come to the point of commentary. Commentary implies that I’ve made my mind up. I don’t even have an argument, except to say: Our students aren’t getting the whole story, and perhaps neither are we.