Speaker 1: Hey, y'all, Eve's here. I know you're ready to get
Speaker 1: into this episode, but really quick. We have been loving
Speaker 1: connecting with y'all over black storytelling, and if you've really
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Speaker 1: Now time for the episode. On theme is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio and fair Weather Friends Media. You are.
Speaker 2: Katie here in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: Spring has sprung and I love this time of year
Speaker 1: because of all the reminders of life. The days are longer,
Speaker 1: the festivals are popping, the grills are firing up.
Speaker 3: Basically, we back outside.
Speaker 1: And I love it. And you know what, it feels
Speaker 1: like a good time for an ode to black nature poetry.
Speaker 1: I'm Katie and I'm Eves. Today's episode living Breathing Poetry.
Speaker 1: In the United States, black people's relationship with nature is
Speaker 1: fraught with stories of human danger. Nature has often been
Speaker 1: a site of violence, dispossession, and exploitation. Think about lynching
Speaker 1: and its association with trees. About the horrendous trips that
Speaker 1: so many kidnapped Black Africans had to take across the
Speaker 1: ocean in the Transatlantic slave trade, and think about Jim
Speaker 1: Crow laws that prohibited black people from enjoying public beaches
Speaker 1: or limited them to dirty, remote beaches. We could go
Speaker 1: through a million more ways that people intentionally made nature
Speaker 1: inhospitable and hostile for black people. Of course, nature has
Speaker 1: also often been a site of refuge and a source
Speaker 1: for survival, but so many Black Americans experiences in nature
Speaker 1: have been rooted in exclusion and othering, so that relationship
Speaker 1: has been tainted. We've been forced to interact with the
Speaker 1: land as laborers and refugees, but we've also been torn
Speaker 1: apart from the leisure and beauty of nature in so
Speaker 1: many ways.
Speaker 3: We are haunted and we're healing. A lot of people
Speaker 3: around the world are organizing black outdoor groups and reclaiming
Speaker 3: their right to be present and feel happy outside.
Speaker 1: Definitely, and I am one of those people who loves
Speaker 1: to frolic outdoors. But I do still have a lot
Speaker 1: of conflicting feelings about nature, and a lot of them
Speaker 1: are expressed so beautifully in nature poetry by black writers.
Speaker 1: They write about the awe, the trauma, the inspiration, the love,
Speaker 1: the fear. Black poets have written a lot about their
Speaker 1: relationships with their physical environments. Those hard to parse emotions
Speaker 1: that I have when I'm hiking or camping can be
Speaker 1: summed up in a page or two in a poem,
Speaker 1: and Black Nature poetry helps me process those feelings, even
Speaker 1: if the contentment I find only last for a moment.
Speaker 1: As many Black scholars have pointed out, black writers are
Speaker 1: often left out of collections of American nature poetry, and
Speaker 1: nature poems are often left out of collections of Black
Speaker 1: American poetry. The book Black Nature, Four Centuries of African
Speaker 1: American Nature Poetry, edited by Kamil T. Dungee, was the
Speaker 1: first anthology to center nature poetry by Black American writers,
Speaker 1: and it was published in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 3: It's pretty telling that it covers four centuries of work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because obviously, just like writers of other races, Black
Speaker 1: people have a ton to say about the world around us.
Speaker 1: We have thoughts about the land that supports us and
Speaker 1: challenges us. We speak about the animals we care for
Speaker 1: and the disasters that destroy our homes. Black folks poems
Speaker 1: reflect the range of experiences that we have in our
Speaker 1: physical environments.
Speaker 3: When I think of nature poetry, I think of poems
Speaker 3: that exalt nature and emphasize its divinity and benevolence. It's
Speaker 3: usually positive, full of awe and wonder. But is that
Speaker 3: what you're talking about?
Speaker 1: That's part of it, but that's not all of it.
Speaker 1: As scholar ev Shockley explained in her essay Black Nature,
Speaker 1: Human Nature, there was a lingering perception that Black American
Speaker 1: poets did not write about nature, and that was propped
Speaker 1: up by black poetry's association with urban environments throughout part
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. But poems that explore the darker
Speaker 1: side of nature, not just its glory and magnificence, can
Speaker 1: also be considered nature poems.
Speaker 3: So basically anything dealing with the outside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: And this is one of those things that I go
Speaker 1: back and forth on because nature really can have like
Speaker 1: so many definitions, and I think different scholars and at
Speaker 1: different times have considered nature different things. And whether they're
Speaker 1: considering it from like a more environmental perspective or they're
Speaker 1: considering it from an ecological perspective, then nature can mean
Speaker 1: different things. It can mean human's relationship with nature, It
Speaker 1: can just mean things that are outside of the human
Speaker 1: body and the human scope, which humans' hands have created.
Speaker 1: But then there are other people who take nature to
Speaker 1: also include the human because we exist on this earth,
Speaker 1: and that would include the human form and things that
Speaker 1: we do in the built environment in nature. So I
Speaker 1: generally like to think of nature as things, and I
Speaker 1: think for this episode as well, things outside that are
Speaker 1: things that are not human created.
Speaker 3: Because even like here in Atlanta, there's Piedmont Park which
Speaker 3: is full of a lot of you know, trees and
Speaker 3: animals and water and you know fish and all that,
Speaker 3: but it was designed by a man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the concept of a park is human.
Speaker 1: But the grass is still nature, the fish is still nature.
Speaker 1: All of those things were not created by humans.
Speaker 3: So so you're talking about the park, it's not nature poetry.
Speaker 3: But if you're talking about the grass in the park,
Speaker 3: it is nature poetry. No.
Speaker 1: Well, I think if you're talking about the park, it
Speaker 1: still is nature poetry because the park includes nature. But
Speaker 1: if you're talking about like a skyscraper, then is not nature.
Speaker 1: I think the lines do get pretty fuzzy because you
Speaker 1: can talk about stepping outside your door and you live
Speaker 1: in an urban environment and there's a green space that
Speaker 1: uses turf instead of real grass. But I think you
Speaker 1: can still talk about nature because there might be trees there,
Speaker 1: still there might be birds that are living there. And
Speaker 1: also like there are pigeons, those are still part of
Speaker 1: nature too. So if I write a poem about interacting
Speaker 1: with the pigeons and I'm sitting on a bench on
Speaker 1: a street corner in the middle of a very busy
Speaker 1: street in a city, You're still talking about nature. So
Speaker 1: I think even in this book Black Nature by Kameilite Dungeee,
Speaker 1: she really takes an expanded view of what nature is
Speaker 1: and that often includes the urban environment. So from my
Speaker 1: experience and reading all the different scholars takes on what
Speaker 1: nature poetry is, there is a lot of leeway, Like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of wiggle room. But the way that
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about it today and for the purposes of
Speaker 1: our conversation today, I'm thinking about nature as things that
Speaker 1: are not part of the human made, human built environment.
Speaker 1: In the book Black on Earth, author Kimberly N. Ruffin
Speaker 1: talks about what she calls the ecological burden and beauty paradox,
Speaker 1: which quote pinpoints the dynamic influence of the natural and
Speaker 1: social order on African American experience and outlook. She goes
Speaker 1: on to say quote, and the combination of the burden
Speaker 1: and beauty resides a story the world should hear. So
Speaker 1: put on your sunscreen, grab your hats, get your allergy
Speaker 1: medicine if you needed, because today on the show, we're
Speaker 1: going to spend a little time outdoors. Part one, Fear
Speaker 1: may live here. It's hard to ignore the relationship between
Speaker 1: nature and horror. In the Black American imagination and in
Speaker 1: black creative expression. There are the dangers that we all
Speaker 1: face in the natural world, for example, territorial creatures, unpredictable weather,
Speaker 1: and toxic plants. And then there's the terror we feel
Speaker 1: when we remember that in this world, our interactions with
Speaker 1: the natural world have often been hostile and ugly. Even
Speaker 1: when everything looks beautiful, even when everything seems peaceful, that
Speaker 1: encoded fear reminds us that it's not. There's a reason
Speaker 1: Dungee opens her book Black Nature with an untitled poem
Speaker 1: by Lucille Clifton. In it, Clifton questions why she can't
Speaker 1: write a poem about nature and landscape without there being
Speaker 1: some sinister subtext beneath it. So I think it's appropriate
Speaker 1: to start with the nature poetry of a man who
Speaker 1: was enslaved George Moses Horton. He was born in North
Speaker 1: Carolina in seventeen ninety eight, and when he was a child,
Speaker 1: he taught himself to read and began composing poems in
Speaker 1: his head. He sold love poems to students at the
Speaker 1: University of North Carolina, and he used the money he
Speaker 1: made from selling them and working as a laborer at
Speaker 1: the university to purchase time from his enslavers. But he
Speaker 1: also composed his own poems, which were about slavery and
Speaker 1: rural life in the South.
Speaker 2: Here's part of.
Speaker 1: One of his poems, called The Southern Refugee. The verdant
Speaker 1: willow droops her head and seems to bid a fare
Speaker 1: thee will the flowers with tears, their fragrance shed alas
Speaker 1: their parting tale. To tale tis like the loss of paradise,
Speaker 1: or Eden's garden left in gloom, where grief affords us
Speaker 1: no device, Such is thy lot my native home. I
Speaker 1: never never shall forget my sad departure far away, until
Speaker 1: the sun of life is set and leaves behind no
Speaker 1: beam of day. How can I, from my seat remove
Speaker 1: and leave my ever devoted home and the dear garden
Speaker 1: which I love the beauty of my native home. In
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty nine, Horton became the first Black American man
Speaker 1: to publish a book in the South, and he wrote
Speaker 1: the first known poem by an enslaved person that protested slavery,
Speaker 1: a poem called Liberty and Slavery. Horton also published books,
Speaker 1: and he saved money from the books he published with
Speaker 1: the intention of buying his freedom, but his enslavery didn't
Speaker 1: go for that, so he remained enslaved until the end
Speaker 1: of the Civil War, when he went to Philadelphia, then Liberia,
Speaker 1: and eventually back to Philadelphia. In the poem The Southern Refugee,
Speaker 1: Horton laments leaving the South, the place where he was enslaved.
Speaker 1: The horror of chattel slavery enforced displacement set the stage
Speaker 1: for this story, but it's also the story of a
Speaker 1: broken heart. His images of gardens, willows, flowers, and paradise
Speaker 1: paint a picture of a welcoming, idyllic environment, But nature
Speaker 1: mourns for him. It mourns his departure, and he grieves
Speaker 1: losing the land. He knows and loves us such a
Speaker 1: connection with the land that it speaks to him as
Speaker 1: he leaves, and as a refugee, Horton is fleeing a
Speaker 1: familiar environment and entering into unknown territory. So there's this
Speaker 1: connection and disconnection with land and environment that is a
Speaker 1: through line from slavery to all of its offshoots.
Speaker 3: Well, I think his work is more of the camp
Speaker 3: that humans are a part of nature, and just thinking
Speaker 3: about his position in the world. I think he was
Speaker 3: definitely closer to the land than a lot of us are.
Speaker 3: The way we live. Even being born in North Carolina
Speaker 3: in the late seventeen hundreds, the expectation is that you
Speaker 3: work the land. But then I imagined that there were
Speaker 3: people he was in community with on those plantations that
Speaker 3: did remember Africa or had stories from it, and you know,
Speaker 3: in a space that isn't like trying to be like
Speaker 3: so industrialized and isn't trying to like extract so much
Speaker 3: from the land, but you're just like working in community
Speaker 3: with it. So I think his poetry like speaks to
Speaker 3: that relationship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that might be Well, I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's why he expressed such a love for the land,
Speaker 1: but I do still think in reading his work it
Speaker 1: kind of I don't know if surprised me, but it
Speaker 1: definitely had an emotional effect on me. Of how emotional
Speaker 1: he felt about it. He really didn't want to leave
Speaker 1: this space where he probably saw so many other people
Speaker 1: face terrible things, and he too himself also probably had
Speaker 1: a lot of difficult times. I do know that in
Speaker 1: the story of his life he sold his poems, he
Speaker 1: did he was like a handy man at the university,
Speaker 1: but all the while he was trying to buy his freedom,
Speaker 1: which is very intense and to be told no. So
Speaker 1: I am still very taken aback by the expression of
Speaker 1: the love that he had for the land without overtly
Speaker 1: mentioning the horror at the same time, because as we
Speaker 1: mentioned early, there was that burden and beauty paradox. So
Speaker 1: a lot of the time we'll see black authors talking
Speaker 1: about their struggle between feeling so in alignment and connection
Speaker 1: with the land and at the same time feeling alienated
Speaker 1: by it. So in this poem, we don't see as
Speaker 1: much of that alienation from the land. We just see
Speaker 1: his connection to it. And so I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's a compartmentalization or if it's just an honest expression
Speaker 1: of how he felt, and it's just my projection and
Speaker 1: my viewpoint from this point in time of thinking he
Speaker 1: has to always talk about the terrors, because you know,
Speaker 1: they don't. They lived their lives, They loved a lot
Speaker 1: of things in their lives. The earth was still beautiful.
Speaker 1: Why shouldn't they enjoy that and be able to talk
Speaker 1: about it in that way without always reverting to their trauma.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I do think it's interesting because I feel like black
Speaker 3: people are obsessed with like black first. Yeah, and he
Speaker 3: said he was like the first known person to like
Speaker 3: write poems denouncing slavery, which I think that's just like
Speaker 3: a very interesting first to be why, just because you
Speaker 3: would think if there were poets like that would be
Speaker 3: like the first thing that you would write about, I think.
Speaker 3: But of course it's very dangerous to be writing while
Speaker 3: you're enslaved. A lot of people couldn't write in English,
Speaker 3: and you know their mother tongue was taken from them,
Speaker 3: so probably not like the highest priority to be writing poems.
Speaker 3: But it is interesting to have that like first documented.
Speaker 1: To me, it is interesting, and I think that there
Speaker 1: may have been other people who had oral poems who
Speaker 1: didn't write them down right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, even the spirituals their songs, and you know, songs
Speaker 3: and poems are like very.
Speaker 2: Like it's still verse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they were condemning slavery and like telling people
Speaker 3: how to get the fuck own in a very covert way.
Speaker 2: But like you.
Speaker 3: Said, they might not have been written down and they
Speaker 3: might have been like who actually wrote these or like
Speaker 3: are they just like a community song?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: We all made together?
Speaker 1: And Horton he at first he spoke his poems as well,
Speaker 1: and he remembered them in his head and he spoke
Speaker 1: them and he had somebody else transcribe them who was
Speaker 1: able to write, because he wasn't able to write. But
Speaker 1: he was doing this as a child. He started doing
Speaker 1: this when he was young, and it wasn't until much
Speaker 1: later after that eighteen twenty nine publication, I believe when
Speaker 1: he learned to write himself. So it's you know, illiteracy
Speaker 1: also plays a factor, and unable to write also plays
Speaker 1: a factor in this first for him. But as we
Speaker 1: know first, there's always some context around first. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the other thing that struck me about this poem is
Speaker 1: his use of the word native, because I feel like
Speaker 1: that word native can have so many layers to it.
Speaker 1: In the end of the part that we read from
Speaker 1: this poem, he says the beauty of my native home,
Speaker 1: So he uses that word native, and I think that
Speaker 1: can be a heavy word because I mean, people were
Speaker 1: kidnapped from Africa and had to come overseas to get here.
Speaker 1: And he still considered not just this soil, but the
Speaker 1: southern United States his native home because he could have
Speaker 1: just at home, but he chose to add the qualified
Speaker 1: native on top of it. So that shows just how
Speaker 1: strongly he felt that is the place where he belonged,
Speaker 1: is the place he loved, and how much of a
Speaker 1: connection he had with that land.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think it goes back to just
Speaker 3: like Black Americans being like very nomadic people and being
Speaker 3: like forced nomads, right, like we were taken from Africa.
Speaker 3: But then you know, like we're here, we're born here,
Speaker 3: we have family here, we make culture here, and so
Speaker 3: at some point, for better or for worse, this is
Speaker 3: like our home. And he even left and went to
Speaker 3: Liberia and then came back to the United States. So
Speaker 3: I feel a question people still have today like can
Speaker 3: we go back or is this where we're supposed to
Speaker 3: be at this point?
Speaker 1: And there's the act of claiming that's happening in this
Speaker 1: poem as well, which is also another thing that comes
Speaker 1: up a lot.
Speaker 2: So he went back to.
Speaker 1: Liberia for a minute, there is evidence of that happening,
Speaker 1: and then he came back, so there was something pulling
Speaker 1: him back. I'm not sure if anybody knows what happened there. Yea,
Speaker 1: they have records of him getting on the ship and
Speaker 1: going over there, and they have records of him coming back.
Speaker 1: But the reason is why we don't have We don't
Speaker 1: have diaries from this man that I know of that
Speaker 1: tell us that. So that's unknown. Part two. But we
Speaker 1: must work. So we've talked about this tug of war
Speaker 1: happening in the consciousness.
Speaker 2: Of black people. We've talked about how.
Speaker 1: We see nature's beauty and duty only to itself, while
Speaker 1: also realizing that we have been divorced from our connection
Speaker 1: to it. The fear, alienation, and pain that we feel
Speaker 1: and relation to nature sometimes shows up in nature poetry
Speaker 1: in scenes where rich and wonderful landscapes are interrupted by
Speaker 1: illustrations of or allusions to violence. But another thing that
Speaker 1: black nature poetry helps me think about is labor in nature,
Speaker 1: the kind that we must do because our survival depends
Speaker 1: on it, or that we choose to do because it
Speaker 1: fulfills us. Because I'm a twenty first century girl in
Speaker 1: the US of A, I have relative privilege. I don't
Speaker 1: have to toil the same way my ancestors did, just
Speaker 1: to put food on their plates. And I have enough
Speaker 1: money to pay for the labor I might otherwise do
Speaker 1: if I had an economic status that didn't afford me
Speaker 1: those luxuries. So as I enjoy nature, and as I
Speaker 1: realize how much I don't know about it, I think
Speaker 1: about how much environmental knowledge and practical experience my forebears
Speaker 1: had to have.
Speaker 2: We have sown, we have reared, and we have grown.
Speaker 1: In some nature poems, we get to see black people
Speaker 1: loving the earth, using tender hands to touch soil and
Speaker 1: water gardens, and using calloused hands to dig dirt and
Speaker 1: harvest vegetables. It is difficult, but it's our duty. I
Speaker 1: can think about how. In the Palm Sorrow Home by
Speaker 1: author Margaret Walker, the speaker longs for southern land. She
Speaker 1: says this, I want the cotton fields, tobacco and the cane.
Speaker 1: I want to walk along with sacks of seed to
Speaker 1: drop and fallow ground. And I can think about Anne Spencer,
Speaker 1: a poet, activist, and gardener, and everything she said about feeling, seeing,
Speaker 1: smelling and touching and speaking of Anne, there's the poem
Speaker 1: to a Certain Lady in her Garden by Sterling A Brown,
Speaker 1: which was for Anne Spencer. Here are a couple of
Speaker 1: stanzas from that poem. Surely I think I shall remember this,
Speaker 1: you and your old rough dress, bedaubed with clay, your
Speaker 1: smudgy face, parading happiness, life's puzzles solved. Perhaps in turn,
Speaker 1: you may, one time, while clipping bush tending vines, making
Speaker 1: your brave sly mock at dastard days, laughed gently at
Speaker 1: these trivial, truthful lines, and that will be sufficient for
Speaker 1: my praise.
Speaker 3: He really saw her. Yeah, to be seen in that
Speaker 3: way lovely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really enjoyed that. It felt so celebratory. I
Speaker 1: was like, I want somebody to write a poem for me,
Speaker 1: and a good one. I love the joy that I
Speaker 1: feel like he felt in writing it, and the joy
Speaker 1: that he saw in her, and not just in her gardening,
Speaker 1: but also like in the messiness around her gardening. So
Speaker 1: he appreciated all the flaws that came up in the
Speaker 1: act of her like tending to the land. And I
Speaker 1: think that also feels like an image that I seen
Speaker 1: so many black women do, is like them working in
Speaker 1: their gardens and kneeling down in their gardens and getting
Speaker 1: their hands dirty or maybe wearing gloves. You know, it
Speaker 1: can be nostalgic, but also very typical pastoral image that
Speaker 1: is typical of a lot of other nature imagery in
Speaker 1: nature poetry of people gardening and these blooms and flowers
Speaker 1: and greenery.
Speaker 2: It's very verdant. So I really liked that about this.
Speaker 1: It felt very simple and wholesome, and it also felt
Speaker 1: like kind of a meta narrative because we're sitting there
Speaker 1: imagining and in her garden. But she often also wrote
Speaker 1: about her garden herself in her poems that.
Speaker 2: She did because she's also a poet, so.
Speaker 1: It's like her in her element, is her in this
Speaker 1: very free space. And there's another part of the poem
Speaker 1: where Starling A. Brown does this juxtaposition between the street
Speaker 1: that's right there by the home and the garden itself.
Speaker 1: So he calls the streets things like dingy, and he
Speaker 1: says the noise is futile or something like that, and
Speaker 1: he says they're silly. So he's attaching these negative characterizations
Speaker 1: to the human built environment that is literally right there
Speaker 1: next to this act of creation, and it's taking in
Speaker 1: her garden, And in my mind, I'm forming these images
Speaker 1: of gray drab street right up against the greens and
Speaker 1: all of the other colors of her garden, and it
Speaker 1: makes it seem like it's this haven for her.
Speaker 3: Lots of fun imagery.
Speaker 2: Yes, lots of it. Part three Then rest a while,
Speaker 2: so Kabi.
Speaker 1: As we've made clear, black people have a complicated relationship
Speaker 1: with nature, but black poets did write about their relationship
Speaker 1: with nature outside of its wrong as a setting for
Speaker 1: trauma and subjugation. Through Black nature poetry, we get to
Speaker 1: see how black people enjoy their environments. We get the romance, pleasure,
Speaker 1: and pastoral softness that black poets were deemed incapable of.
Speaker 1: For many years, people believed black folks were, as poet
Speaker 1: Evi Shockley put it, uncomfortable in nature. Now, I don't
Speaker 1: think nature poems by Black Americans can be completely divorced
Speaker 1: from their social and historical context. And that's where I
Speaker 1: think what you talked about earlier coming in Katie, how
Speaker 1: there was that human element in George Horton's work how
Speaker 1: it came into his even though his imagery.
Speaker 2: Was all about nature.
Speaker 1: It would be hard for a black nature poem to
Speaker 1: be all leisurely and sublime or all tragic. But there
Speaker 1: is a middle ground where we lay in the bliss
Speaker 1: and splendor and stay awhile take Harlem Renaissance poet Helene Johnson.
Speaker 1: She lived to be eighty eight, but she only published
Speaker 1: poet Tree from the nineteen twenties to the mid nineteen thirties.
Speaker 1: Poets James Weldon Johnson and Robert Frost praised her writing.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty three, her last published poem, Let Me
Speaker 1: Sing My Song, appeared in the journal Challenge. After this point,
Speaker 1: she continued to write privately, but she stopped publishing poetry
Speaker 1: by nineteen thirty five. Family life consumed her attention. Still,
Speaker 1: more than half of her poems included nature themes. Here's
Speaker 1: part of one poem titled Fulfillment. In it, she uses
Speaker 1: examples from the natural world to express the simple joy
Speaker 1: she finds in everyday life. To lean against a strong
Speaker 1: tree's bosom, sentient and hushed before the silent prayer it
Speaker 1: breathes to melt the still snow with my seething body,
Speaker 1: and kiss the warm earth tremulous underneath, and even in death.
Speaker 1: Johnson planned to hold nature in high regard. Her association
Speaker 1: of nature with humility, beauty, and freedom is evident in
Speaker 1: her poem and vacation. Let me be buried in the rain,
Speaker 1: in a deep, dripping wood, under the warm, wet breast
Speaker 1: of earth, where once a gnarled tree stood, And paint
Speaker 1: a picture on my tomb with dirt and a piece
Speaker 1: of bow, of a girl and a boy beneath a
Speaker 1: round right moon, eating of love with an eager spoon,
Speaker 1: and vowing an eager vow. And do not keep my
Speaker 1: plot mode smooth and clean as a spinster's bed. But
Speaker 1: let the weed, the flower, the tree, riotous, rampant, wild
Speaker 1: and free grow high above my head.
Speaker 3: I think this is my favorite poem. Oh why I
Speaker 3: think it shows that kind of what I'm saying, Like
Speaker 3: we are nature, and she put herself in it and
Speaker 3: trying to like not make it bend to her. Because
Speaker 3: when you think of cemeteries, they're really manicured. A lot
Speaker 3: of them be called like Memorial garden, but it'll be
Speaker 3: full of like fake flowers by the graves. But she
Speaker 3: was just kind of saying, let me just be here
Speaker 3: and let nature do what it do, and I'm gonna
Speaker 3: do what I do, and we're just gonna be in
Speaker 3: harmony because we are like one thing. That's what I
Speaker 3: got from it.
Speaker 2: M hm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Beneath is that feeling of returning. Yes, it's like this
Speaker 1: is where I came from, this is what I'm going
Speaker 1: back to. And it has environmentalist tones too, like it's
Speaker 1: it feels like a green burial, like it's not much interference,
Speaker 1: not much interjection of human made materials that she mentions
Speaker 1: in here. She does mention wood interesting because you kind
Speaker 1: of associate with with caskets, so I feel like it
Speaker 1: calls that up. But that wood is about the forest itself.
Speaker 1: She's talking about that and the use of that word.
Speaker 1: So she talks about using dirt and a piece of
Speaker 1: bow rather than engraving and engraving in a tombstone. So
Speaker 1: she purposefully seems like intentionally uses more natural words rather
Speaker 1: than some other things. Yeah, so I'm imagining a very
Speaker 1: wild place rather than a manicured place when I think
Speaker 1: of this poem, and I think I really like this
Speaker 1: one too. I think it is also my favorite of
Speaker 1: the ones that we talked about today. And it feels like,
Speaker 1: even though she only published work for such a short
Speaker 1: period of time, like over the course of a decade,
Speaker 1: she packed so much into it.
Speaker 2: And she also got published a lot in a very
Speaker 2: short time. I'm like, girl, you go, but it's what
Speaker 2: I get. Yeah, this is what we get. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I really like that.
Speaker 1: And one thing I think in general about Black nature
Speaker 1: poetry and why I like it so much, is because
Speaker 1: for me, it kind of replicates the feelings that I
Speaker 1: have when I'm in nature, even when I'm not in
Speaker 1: nature when I'm reading them, So I am so frequently
Speaker 1: overwhelmed and overcome by all the feelings that I have
Speaker 1: that aw the fear, the wonder. I am wondering what
Speaker 1: my place is in this soil, you know, I have
Speaker 1: all this history. If I'm in the South, in like
Speaker 1: a rural place, you know, I might be What's gonna
Speaker 1: happen to me? If I'm sleeping in a tent at night,
Speaker 1: I might be thinking about the animals that are around me,
Speaker 1: the creatures that are around me, or if there are
Speaker 1: other people involved, there might be actual questions that I
Speaker 1: have come from other people, like I've asked people to
Speaker 1: camp with me and they're like, I'm kind of scared, Like,
Speaker 1: what's gonna happen. There're gonna be a bunch of white
Speaker 1: people there. And I've had to have that conversation with people.
Speaker 1: It's like we're also in danger in the city, you know,
Speaker 1: like I get it, this is something that you haven't
Speaker 1: done before, but like, let's talk about this fear and
Speaker 1: why it's coming up. So all of those feelings that
Speaker 1: I have are multitudinous that I could go on about
Speaker 1: forever and ever. My knowledge that I have of the
Speaker 1: land and how I have still so much to learn
Speaker 1: to learn. Every time I go out and do something
Speaker 1: like hiking camp or go on a nature walk where
Speaker 1: some scholars talking and I'm learning this thing about what
Speaker 1: my ancestors did to be able to find their ways.
Speaker 2: It's like so much that I'm.
Speaker 1: Thinking about and that I'm holding even if I'm not
Speaker 1: thinking about it, I'm just carrying it in my body.
Speaker 1: And I think poems about nature, poetry by black people
Speaker 1: help me tap into that without having to overthink it.
Speaker 1: I don't need a think piece for it. I don't
Speaker 1: need a four hundred page book of nonfiction essays for poems,
Speaker 1: I can just sit with them and I can get
Speaker 1: more of an understanding that other people before me were
Speaker 1: thinking about it. The ways that they work through them
Speaker 1: was by writing, and that's helping me today. And some
Speaker 1: things were different, some things were the same. But I
Speaker 1: just really appreciate how I can let go of so
Speaker 1: much of the act of thinking when I'm reading poetry
Speaker 1: about nature and tune into the act of feeling. That
Speaker 1: feels very productive and trying to parse those feelings about nature.
Speaker 1: So in honor of rest, renewal, and regeneration, I'll leave
Speaker 1: everyone with the end of a poem by the first
Speaker 1: writer we talked about today, George Horton. This one's called
Speaker 1: on Spring inspiring months of youthful love. How oft we,
Speaker 1: in a peaceful grow survey the flowery plume, or sit
Speaker 1: beneath the sylvan shade where branches wave above the head,
Speaker 1: and smile on every bloom exalted months when thou art gone,
Speaker 1: may virtue then begin the dawn of an eternal spring.
Speaker 1: May raptures kindle on my tongue and start a new
Speaker 1: eternal song which ne'er shall cease to ring.
Speaker 3: And now it's time for roll credits, the segment where
Speaker 3: we give credit to a person, place, or thing that
Speaker 3: we encountered during the week eves. Who are what would
Speaker 3: you like to give credit to today?
Speaker 1: I will stick with the black nature theme and I
Speaker 1: like to give credit to the book A Darker Wilderness
Speaker 1: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars edited by Aaron Sharky.
Speaker 1: That is not a book of poetry, that is a
Speaker 1: book of essays. But if you're interested in this kind
Speaker 1: of thing of reading more about black nature and being
Speaker 1: steeped in that world, then I would recommend to read cool.
Speaker 3: I would like to give credit to honey mangoes. They
Speaker 3: are in season and I just live for that, because
Speaker 3: you know, the peach plant, the peach crop last year terrible,
Speaker 3: But them honey mangoes, they gonna do it. And they're
Speaker 3: only in season for a little bit in Georgia at least,
Speaker 3: and I want to get a shout out at him
Speaker 3: because they delicious.
Speaker 2: Was it just the Georgia peach crop last year?
Speaker 3: Or I think because you know Georgia does it and
Speaker 3: it South Carolina. I think South Carolina do it more
Speaker 3: than Georgia, even though we do peach date I'd be
Speaker 3: seeing California peaches in the Georgia grocery store and they
Speaker 3: just was not it year. But I think it was
Speaker 3: something with, you know, the environment, Like I don't know
Speaker 3: if they there's like a cold shock or something happened
Speaker 3: where a good, good, good amount of it was just
Speaker 3: destroyed and the ones that weren't were that good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all my family members they swear by South Carolina
Speaker 1: peaches over Georgia peaches. Like everybody knows that South Carolina
Speaker 1: peaches are better than Georgia was.
Speaker 2: I can see that.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm not gonna I'm not even gonna fight
Speaker 3: nobody on that. Okay, you got a better peach. Okay,
Speaker 3: you're the real peaches.
Speaker 2: Go off. Rather be a peach than a pow meadow?
Speaker 2: Is that they're the power meadow state? Yeah? What is that?
Speaker 2: It's a tree?
Speaker 3: Oh not even I don't know why.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to cause beef between different species of plants.
Speaker 2: And I'm really not shout out to palmeatos and peaches.
Speaker 2: Can you eat a pal meadow? No you can't. That's
Speaker 2: actually fair.
Speaker 1: So hey, one provides sustenance, the other provided oxygen.
Speaker 2: I guess true. But the p street also provides oxygen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, Katie's clearly on the side. So everyone who
Speaker 1: wants to stand up from pal Meadows, please let us know.
Speaker 3: In the spirit of spring and rest, we are going
Speaker 3: on our own spring break to get back to nature
Speaker 3: to be creative, and we will be back June sixth
Speaker 3: with all new episodes. What are some of the things
Speaker 3: you're excited to explore during our spring break, Eves.
Speaker 1: I am looking forward to get out into nature for real,
Speaker 1: Like I think, I want to do a little bit
Speaker 1: more camping, and it's the time of year that's perfect
Speaker 1: to do that. I mean, all times of year can
Speaker 1: be perfect in different places for whatever your speed is.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I want to do some more camping. I
Speaker 1: haven't done enough this year.
Speaker 3: I'm excited to be in them books, reading, and you
Speaker 3: can look forward to episodes hearing from different archivists and
Speaker 3: the funny, funny stories that they've found while in the archives.
Speaker 3: We'll also be talking to a children's literature expert about
Speaker 3: the lessons kids that passes down from us to our
Speaker 3: little ones.
Speaker 1: And you can also look forward to episodes about black
Speaker 1: muses and the history of visual arts, and also crunk
Speaker 1: music and snap music. As you know we hear are
Speaker 1: Atlanta supremacists. So while we're on this break, you can
Speaker 1: go back and listen to episodes of on Theme that
Speaker 1: you haven't listened to before, or you can re listen
Speaker 1: to episodes that you haven't heard already, or you can
Speaker 1: just let people know about the show and y'all stay
Speaker 1: subscribed because all of our lovely episodes are coming in June,
Speaker 1: so make sure you're following us on social media. To
Speaker 1: keep up with us, we are at on them Show
Speaker 1: on Instagram. You could also keep up with us on
Speaker 1: our website. Go and read show notes at on Theme
Speaker 1: dot Show.
Speaker 2: See y'all after the break. Bye.
Speaker 1: On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and Fairweather Friends Media.
Speaker 1: This episode was written by Eves Jeffco and Katie Mitchell.
Speaker 1: It was edited and produced by Tari Harrison. Follow us
Speaker 1: on Instagram at on Themeshow. You can also send us
Speaker 1: an email at hello at on Theme dot Show. Head
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