I am by no means a fan of Whitman (I admire his craftsmanship and a lot of his post Civil War poems, but that is about it), but while reading the section for this week, I couldn’t help but feel more connected to Whitman as an author. The fact that poets and authors continue to have a conversation with him, decades after his death, is astounding to me. As I read Calvin Hernton’s “Crossing Brooklyn Bridge at 4 O’Clock in the Morning, August 4th, 1979”, I couldn’t help but be drawn further into the one-way conversation with Whitman and attempt to craft my own version of Hernton’s poem based on my own experiences of living in Charleston. Over the span of my college career, I have developed a love-hate relationship with Charleston. On one hand, it brought so many things that I cherish into my life and has helped me determine what I want to do with my life. On the other, it has also brought me a lot of torment and anxiety as well.
So, I give you…
“Crossing A Parking Lot at 4 O’Clock in the Morning in Charleston, South Carolina”:
Oh, love tormented heart in its confused and drunken state!
All of the night’s bittersweet embraces and caresses led
to another ride “home”
The moon and its cohorts slash away the darkness of the night while daylight is on its approach
This not-so-aloneness is my betrayal
The smell of not-so-cheap liquor lingers in my breath
Words clogged in my throat
Cold, hard steal jammed in my chest
Its owner yearning to release its children into me
To splitter and fragment bone, to puncture and tear flesh
This fear of movement! This fear of speech!
I, hunched over my knees, hands splayed out in front of me,
dead still in the heat of Summer,
Sit at this time in the morning facing Ashley River Road
leading its way to the heart of downtown Charleston
My shoes, caked with dirt and gravel and cat hair
stay rock solid underneath my kneecaps and on the asphalt ground
My lungs of fear, contracts and freezes,
no air goes in or out
My Kettle One eyes, wide as the hunk of L-shaped
metal is pressed further into between my ribcage
Their hands plunge into my pockets
like divers looking for sunken treasure
Looking back on that night, I think of you
Walt Whitman! Walt Whitman! Walt Whitman!
The poet of love, the poet of peace, the poet of life, the poet of America
The poet who has the power to speak across the ages, to those who he will never see
Those who he will never take in his hand and heal their wounds.
Your words continue spill and spray and inspire to this day
What would you think of today?
Would you cheer in rejoice or hang your head in shame and
look upon the future for a better time?
Oh, poet of future generations!
Carry me away along your lofty words
Grant me safety as I cross this parking lot of gravel and dirt
So that I may finally live to shed this fear.
On April 30th of this year, I was robbed at gunpoint while leaving a friend’s house at 4am in West Ashley. While I was filling out my statement for the police report, the officer told me the two men who robbed me also attempted to rob another person down the street. Upon declining to give them his money, they shot him and immediately fled the scene. Looking back on this moment, I can’t help to think of the small details of the incident, not the incident as a whole. I think back on the moon and the stars and the fluorescent street lamps that lit up the parking lot. I think of the gentle sway of the trees. I think back on the cold metal against my warm skin. Looking back, I think of Whitman, in a weird way. As an aspiring author, I can’t help but be totally transfixed by Whitman’s ability to transverse time. His writings have lasted throughout the ages and will continue to do so long after I am gone. I’m curious. Will my writings do the same?
Interesting links about crime in the Charleston area:
http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Charleston-South-Carolina.html
https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/sc/charleston/crime
Source:
https://www.apartments.com/the-ashley-charleston-sc/p94p45v/
Nice response here… the shift from grief to fear brings the inspiring incident more to the fore than Hernton’s poem does (in that poem, there seems to be some betrayal, some departure). I also like how you capture the insularity of this moment–how despite the external drama, you feel your own body and its fears more acutely. You really capture that sense of being frozen with fear well.
That’s also quite a detail about what happened to the other victim. I imagine going through something like this linger long after the moment, revived whenever circumstances seem similar. Very difficult…
Knowing how much this incident affected you and waking up to your texts and wondering if you were okay, it is no surprise to me that you would channel that trauma into something creative. It speaks to the kind of writer you are. You take inspiration from the good and the bad and that is something to respect. I always enjoy the small details that poets like Whitman or Ross Gay include in their poetry and I find that in your poetic adaptation, you do the same. I can tell that you so vividly remember all the details of the night, from the more memorable moments like the gun against you, to the less memorable but still poetic cat hair caked to your shoes. I also love the way in which you approach fear and the allusion to gun bullets as being “children”. I think this is a fantastic piece that could be adapted to stand on its own and I encourage you to do so.
This was really powerful to read. I think the fact that you didn’t lead with your personal experience lent itself to this. I was impressed while reading the poem, because it was very well written but also because I thought it was imagined. Realizing then that this was based in experience was shocking and terrifying. As well, rereading this again, it became all the more powerful to read the poetic way in which you describe the moment and the palpable and paralyzing fear. I thought it was interesting how you introduced Whitman into the poem essentially as a god like figure capable of granting safety. I have trouble thinking of Whitman in that context, however I think many writers that bring him in conversation with their work would agree with the way you framed him. Really well done. Amazing poem.