12/19/20: August Wilson Gets to His Black Bottom #poetry
August Wilson is better than Arthur Miller
As good as Eugene O’Neill
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
the bottom of the black man’s pain
which is the human pain
the bottom of the essence of personhood
how it rebels, defies, distorts
the artist as black man
following the requirements of an inner voice
angry with the community
doing it her way
the entertainer as black man
shaking her ass for the master
smiling and dancing
surviving and having fun
the religious man as black man
finding her dignity in a God
while denied it by white men
the fratricidal man as black man
hurting and mocking and threatening and raping and murdering her brothers and sisters
in futile attempts to escape frustration and feel power
the blessed moments of unity
atonement with each other
in the ecstasy of song
All the shadows and angels of mankind
refracted through a raw black prism
a flesh and blood prism
all the colors of people of color
all the colors of people
locked in a proscenium box
fighting it out
the past as prologue
the past as map
Postscript
I thought that I write more like Joan Didion than August Wilson
I don’t need the actors or settings
all of the work that Wilson did
to master a genre
who needs the genre I reckon
and that’s right for me
but that was August Wilson’s way
he took the white man’s way
the Greeks at the Parthenon
and he turned it into a black thing
then turned it inside out into a human thing
Joan Didion took the personal essay
and made it a way to describe the world
I kind of do that but it’s different
my style is more verbal than literary
but what difference does it make
what difference does it make \
if we are black or white
or man or woman
or playwright or monologist
what makes a writer is what you try for
writers are crazy
they think they can understand themselves
and the world
and history
They think they can understand
a woman on the news drones on new age fake wisdom about forgiveness
as if it was a choice
you can’t just decide to forgive
you have to go through things
and get down to the black bottom
you just have to see what is happening
understanding is better than forgiveness
the writer is an explorer
in a sub-atomic submarine
on a fantastic voyage
impossibly trying to sail down
down to the bloody black bottom of a bottomless wound
wounded by racism
wounded by capitalism and exploitation
wounded by betrayal
wounded by violent treachery
intended to separate us from our true gifts
tantalized by moments of free expression
we take only a few breaths in a lifetime
and the writers write about that
all of the real writers
no matter where they are from
or where they write
or who reads or listens or looks
write about that
the fight for breath
Jesus and Marx and Freud and Darwin
and especially the real artists and writers
who go to a bottom
not found in any of the big ideas
a bottom
in the glorious tragedy of human existence
Real writers wake from dreams and nightmares
and are free
accepting all of the world’s frustrations and opportunities
serene in who they are
August Wilson was a happy man when he finished a project
shedding a tear for his own suffering and the world’s
singing his song his way
undeterred by exploitation and thieves
To understand rather than care about being understood …
what a wonderful world
that men and women look at
as if they were wearing poorly prescribed eyeglasses
There is an abundance
beyond society and history
and especially beyond whatever you decided to serve
as your personal philosophy
instead of taking the arduous and rewarding journey
of descending into the black bottom.
Copyright 2020 Richard Thomas
