Comment Ca Va?
An interview from past to present with dynamic DC poet Reuben Jackson
This interview accompanies an essay by Janice Lynch Schuster about the poetry scene in Washington, DC during the Reagan years, where she met Reuben Jackson.
Jackson is the author of Fingering the Keys (1991) and Scattered Clouds: New & Selected Poems from Alan Squire Publishing (Bethesda, MD, 2019).
Janice Lynch Schuster: Your new poems remind me of some of the poems in your earlier book fingering the keys, published in 1991 for the way both built on the story of a city where life could be and was hard for young black men trying to find a life for themselves in a world that would take that life for nothing. We were the “murder capital” of America, and we were watching whole neighborhoods being destroyed. Today, it’s gentrification, people being pushed out by new housing and lifestyles that they cannot afford.
The “narrative” of DC then was rage and anger. I hear this in your early poem, “edward,” when whole neighborhoods were being depleted of their young men. “he was an evil motherfucker/with a curveball that didn’t.” It’s an angry poem. Then you grow old and write a new poem called “Bunny,” where you write in a poem entitled “Bunny”: I’m not religious — But I pray for black boys/With each borrowed breath.
What changed for you? And what hasn’t changed for us?
Reuben Jackson: It’s the continuum. To be specific: In the late 1960s there were old school gangs that went from smoking pot to using heroin; shooting up was riskier. Some people like Edward got into armed robbery and drugs. The poem is an attempt at portraiture, of reflection and therapy. I hated those guys! To be “safe” you had to get a pass, you had to compromise, you had to change [to walk past them home from school].
Change. All things change and yet they don’t. Despair and dysfunction don’t. But guns got into it, money got into it. I wasn’t thinking so much about it as a children’s librarian…I saw a whole lot of it, and kids were hustling, and I was carrying a suitcase full of resentment, trying to explain what I was thinking — then — as I wrote, to see someone as hardened as Edward. He was an archetype.
Edward and Trayvon Martin occupy the same space. Edward’s humanity was complicated. I see so many young men now. They aren’t cut out [for this street life, Edward’s lifestyle]. And I’ve written about them in a poem called “For Trayvon Martin.” I had the idea that I just wanted to share a tenderness for them, to show a tenderness for myself and for them, and to walk them home.
It comes from a time and place — you know, when you were nerdy if you wore flood pants. If people thought you were soft, you’d get your ass kicked. When I was teaching high school in Vermont, I’d see kids who would have had a hard time [back when I was a kid]. So, I wrote “For Bunny” to be more layered and more nuanced, to show more compassion for them.
The writer of those two poems is not the same person. They’re like looking at high school yearbook pictures compared to today: You hope you see progression.
JLS: You write many poems about a boy — a man-child — trying to find himself. His mother — please say/you’re dedicating/that poem to a woman/you don’t seem to know any…. In the poem, “1973” or in the poem, “17” “too white for the/black folks/too black for the/white folks./comment ca va/brothers?/” Your work is full of the search for identity. Now, as an older writer, you seem more certain and yet still searching.
RJ: I have tried to be more emotionally forthright in my new work and to rely less on humor. My friends and I growing up taught ourselves to be as blasé as possible. I remember being at a seventh-grade card game and a guy across the table got mad at another game and pulled out a gun and SHOT ANOTHER KID. He shot him in the shoulder! He just shot him! But you had to act like it didn’t matter, like it wasn’t a big deal. And that was a big thing to witness, but we just had to stuff it, and stuff it, and stuff it. But all that stuff must go somewhere in your life, and it creates a backlog. You have an emotional backlog.
So, lots of the work is trying to make sense of the past. You speak at museum conferences inScandinavia and you’ve seen someone get shot at a card table.
I don’t think it’s a done deal. There’s no on/off switch, just like the fall foliage doesn’t come in uniformly, there’s no smooth transition [to understanding]. I relate to Quincy Jones, walking to school in Seattle, looking for a curious black man. I mean, he shined shoes and he got Academy Awards. How does one handle a big life? How does one own your life? It’s a messy life, and writing can cordon things off in an aisle. There’s a lot of life lived in between poems.
JLS: You write about the essentials that poetry has always covered — but with the voice deeply rooted in a particular experience of a musician, a critic, and a Washingtonian. Your poem, “For Trayvon Martin,” marks a step out of those worlds, when you move into this political world and watch this child, this young man, as if to protect him. You change what happened that night. You walk him home. The poem, which has been anthologized so widely, tells its own story — but what story does Trayvon tell you?
RJ: I grew up in this peer or street upbringing where you always walked each other home. You walked your boys home, it’s part of your bond.
My fantasy, when Trayvon was murdered, was that he was able to experience being walked home. You have a stoic tenderness. You wait till your date or your friend gets in. I just wanted him to get home…you just want a piece of candy. I couldn’t think of any other way to approach the poem.
I wrote what I knew from growing up. It’s an honor people are drawn to it. It’s wrenching to think about what is safe and what is not. I wish that he had gotten home and having this poem out there is bittersweet. But it’s one way for me to feel less furious.
JLS: Your poetry took an unexpected turn when you began your series of love poems about the barber, Amir, and his love, Khadijah. People on Facebook went wild for them — such beautiful lyrical verses that really seemed to resonate with the voice a lot like yours. Funny that Amir shared your birthday. What do you think — doesn’t the artist have the license to invent worlds and loves and people? Did the response surprise you?
RJ: Yes! An eighth or ninth grade teacher had a class working on a series of vignettes — he wanted the class to challenge their voices to see what would happen — and I decided to do the same. I had to think of their names, where they’d live…and then this “literary” stuff happened on Facebook. I was just talking out loud, seeing what Amir and Khadijah could do!
A magazine in Vermont called Seven Days picked it up for an article and it [the series] just took on a life of its on, it had a following…I was at a deli counter in Vermont when a woman recognized my voice. So not only were other poets experiencing this love story, but so were other people. When Amir died, people were really upset.
The act of writing the series exposed me to parts of my voice that were new, a different song. At the tenderest moments the poems are so uncharacteristic of my writing — it was really a composite of experiences. But I still get comments from people. I think part of the reaction had to do with a year of despondency after the Trump Administration came in. But it was shocking to me, how much people invested in the two characters, how much weight they carried. As Fats Waller said, “One never know, do one?”
Reuben Jackson will be reading at Politics and Prose on November 17 with poet Brian Gilmore at 1 p.m. at 1270 5th Street, NE, and on December 14 at 3 p.m. at the American Poetry Museum at 716 Monroe St NE #25 with poets Rose Solari and Martiza Rivera.
