Lit in the City

“Poems do not have a monopoly on poetry.” –T. S. Ellis

A friend recently asked me to define “poet” for her. I quickly quipped: “Someone who takes the time to write a poem and see it all the way through.” I didn’t take much time to respond to her question, because poet seems less speculative, less query-forced than “poetry” and, to some extent, “poem”. What is “poetry”? What is a poetics?

When Amanda asked me to write for this blog, I immediately lit up, thinking about the poetics of poetry and poetry of poetics, thinking about the lyric sensibility of sidewalks and flashing hands, red lights and men with floppy hats lighting cigarettes on the corner. Without the dynamics of what’s currently around me, a very different poetry, meditative and prosaic. (Life in my Midwest was less about the musicality of a woman’s dress and more about the decisions she encountered in deciding on a dress or a skirt.) In this City, a young boy taps his empty plastic water bottle against his open palm. A man’s key chains click against his backpack. I can close my eyes and hear poetry: this woman walks in stochees to keep up with her dog’s trochees. Listen to how she says “Sooo oh fee”. Poetry. A child cruising on the sidewalk, “’Scuuuuse me”. Poetry. A woman hits the table, “You neh veh lees en too meeee!” Poetry. The silence followed by public realization of not love. Poetry.

I’ll use this blog space, in part, to investigate the sensations of poetry and poetics, looking as keenly at a woman’s legs in jete as Bianca Spriggs’ “one tattooed calf”.

I do hope there’s enough to entice you, to invite you, to slip into your head and stay with you in dream and wake states.

This blog is our blog, and is dedicated to women of the African Diaspora. Come on this journey with me.

In summer,

Metta Sáma