How I Got Over

I’ve been meaning to blog about Carolyn Rodgers since I sadly heard about her death back in April. I’ve watched a video of Carolyn Rodgers at Northwestern a couple of times and picked up one of her books that I wasn’t familiar with, but the one that most people know her for is How I Got Ovah-an emblematic collection of the Black Arts Movement that again points to the resilience of black women. The book was released in 1975 and was nominated for the National Book Award.

It was a nice surprise to come home to my husband and hear The Roots’ latest album, How I Got Over. The title reminded me of what The Roots did with Things Fall Apart (taken from Chinua Achebe’s novel of the same title) and Common’s Like Water for Chocolate (from Laura Esquivel’s novel that was adapted for a film). We heard so much of what we need to feel in music and what we need to resist now. I felt so moved by what I heard that I wrote a poem that summarizes what all the songs become in my listening head. I think I could make it longer and add more, but I wanted to capture this feeling of immediacy of writing right away that always changes with more listening and time. In any case, here’s the poem:

After Hearing How I Got Over
for The Roots & Carolyn Rodgers

Always start the piece with three Black women
harmonizing like honey buzz. Cymbals, kick drum
escalate into husky shadowed rhymes.
An epistle appeals to higher powers in skeptical
verse in chorus when the drum brings back cadences
of a morning’s start because all strive for illumination
when the world presses insistent as piano keys,
but everything changes, and change keeps us alive.
Drum steady as metronome clap carved from ancient
metals and marble, but even the frequency makes space
for the nostalgia of streets familiar as Marvin Gaye
or Curtis Mayfield asking Who’s worrying about you baby?
Someone needs to keep asking questions in this timber.
The elders cannot carry shields forever, and everyone
is growing older. Return to finger snap, soul clap.
Keyboards echoing flute open canvas of the day
that begins like fresh breath. Cascades fall into cycles
of shining light into corners where Thought stands
treading over the smack of beats familiar and fierce
as all contemplation could be. A studio speaker voice
requests a snare roll, then the pleas of doin’ it again
call to keep notes and lyrics breeding, multiplying
a brood of well-loved children who march toward fire
or is it residing in their rib cage, their well-lit eyes,
their quick feet, their quicker minds, their knife tongues,
or their palms hidden in the relentless knuckles of fists.
The band softens the volley of syncopation, reminiscent
of house parties with rhythm swinging until the break
marks flawless herk-jerk of bodies and head nods.
An infant cries, and a horn warns its listeners of lives
to come. A life consumed by consumption if absence
of thought exists. A tambourine rattles because who
always wants to be a customer? Create. Conclude. Silence.