I hadn’t been writing for several months and was depressed during the first year of the Trump Presidency. I thought maybe I was done with poetry and then when I was writing this poem it felt that I was beginning again. I was beginning a new book. The poem is an invocation and the first poem in "Now It’s Dark." I think of Samuel Beckett’s: “I can’t go on, I must go on.”
Join us online tomorrow, February 19, at 8pm ET for the continuation of our series of conversations with poet-translators, featuring Margaret Noodin, Raquel Salas Rivera, Jeffrey Angles, Laura Marris and Tracy K. Smith.
"'To the Young That Want to Die,' by Gwendolyn Brooks, is, as I have proclaimed to homies, a banger: it’s a powerhouse, a marvel, a jewel. It serves as a manual, a list of instructions, but it also doubles as a song, a prayer, a mantra for those who might be sorry, overwhelmed, and wishing for an end."
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"Working on the poem, I saw clearly how the recurring image of black hair signifies within the specific context of Asian femininity, and yet in my hands—in my mouth—the phrase 'black hair' began to make space for a second set of values and vulnerabilities as informed by my racially specific experience."
