Risk, Courage, and Women: Contemporary Voices in Prose and Poetry

art for the sake of the soul

67 art for the sake of the soul Maya Angelou miss rosie when i watch you wrapped up like garbage sitting, surrounded by the smell of too old potato peels or when i watch you in your old man’s shoes with the little toe cut out sitting, waiting for your mind like next week’s grocery i say when i watch you you wet brown bag of a woman who used to be (the best-looking gal in Georgia) used to be called the Georgia Rose i stand up through your destruction i stand up. That poem was written by Lucille Clifton, an African American poet who teaches in universities all over the United States. It seems to me the perfect explanation of how we human beings have managed to stand erect—how, often brought to our knees by our own greed, chicanery or ignorance, we manage to pull ourselves up to a standing position. Miss Clifton has suggested miss rosie, a beleaguered, battered and lonely old woman as her inspiration, and using the same poem, in each instance I insert the word “art,” for “miss rosie,” for I believe that art encourages us to stand erect and stretch upward toward the higher ground. 68 Risk, Courage, and Women I believe that without the presence and energy of art in our lives, we are capable of engaging in heartless activities without remorse and cruelties with clear consciences. We become base because we think of ourselves only as base. We find no delight in immaterial things, and address ourselves and each other in the cruelest terms, for we believe we are deserving of nothing better. I grew up in an Arkansas that seemed to me to be a place on no one’s planet or, for that matter, on no one’s mind. The relentless poverty of the Depression, allied with the virulent racial prejudices of the time, had the power to grind the spirit into submission and pulverize the very ability to dream. Yet, I, as well as others, survived those lean years and those mean Arkansas roads, and I think we survived particularly because of the inheritance of black American art, an inheritance left to us by our forebears as surely as steel magnates left massive fortunes for their heirs. In Stamps, Arkansas, when parents on their way to the cotton fields left small children too young to work in the care of others too old to work, they knew that the baby tenders would recite Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poems to their children. Thus, even if a father was twenty miles away, his son would know of his father’s love for him because the older person would recite and act out: Little brown baby wif spa’klin’ eyes, Come to yo’ pappy an’ set on his knee. What you been doin’, suh— makin’ san’ pies? Look at dat bib—you’s ez du’ty ez me. Look at dat mouf—dat’s mearlasses, I bet; Come hyeah, Maria, an’ wipe off his han’s. Bees gwine to ketch you an’ eat you up yit, Bein’ so sticky and sweet—goodness lan’s! Little brown baby wif spa’klin’ eyes, Who’s pappy’s darlin’ an’ who’s pappy’s chile? Who is it all de day nevah once tries Fu’ to be cross, er once loses dat smile? Whah did you git dem teef? My, you’s a scamp! Whah did dat dimple com f ’om in yo’ chin? Pappy do’ know you— I b’lieves you’s a tramp; sustenance for living 69 Mammy, dis hyeah’s some ol’ straggler got in! Let’s th’ow him outen de do’ in de san’, We do’ want stragglers a-layin’ ‘roun’ hyeah; Let’s gin him ‘way to de big buggah-man I know he’s hidin’ erroun’ hyeah right neah. Buggah-man, buggah-man, come in de do’, Hyeah’s a bad boy you kin have fu’ to eat. Mammy an’ pappy do’ want him no mo’, Swaller him down f ’om his haid to his feet! Dah, now, I t’ought dat you’d hug me up close. Go back, ol’ buggah, you sha’nt have dis boy. He ain’t no tramp, ner no straggler, of co’se; He’s pappy’s pa’dner an’ playmate an’ joy. Come to you’ pallet now—go to yo’ res’; Wisht you could allus...