The Mulberry fields was such a beautiful poem. I found myself reading it over and over again. Going deeper and deeper every time. I could feel myself spiraling into the graves those markers used to hold the place of. I felt myself grabbing hold of the nameless, displaced, and rising them up from the ground so that everyone will know now. Everyone can see, see the truth. Clifton does this in her poetry, she gives voice to what has passed and places significance so that it may enter our present and bring change at the very least awareness to our futures. She is very intent-ful in her poetry. In Mulberry fields I knew their was a very specific story and so I searched... I found out in Maryland there was a plantation called Mulberry fields and it holds a graveyard. A slave graveyard. These graveyards very often have no markings or name holders but this one had large rocks and stones used as markers. The stones had strange symbols and markings on them. These stones were moved from the graveyard to make a wall for the main house and suddenly the beautiful/religious/or symbolic language on the stones became nothing more than slaves "attempting to create a language". With Clifton uprooting theses fallacies she plants such deep seeds of substance and history, I can see the Mulberry Fields and those who said goodbye to their loved ones and marked them with the faith and culture that originated with them, in them, and could not be translated by those who felt slaves had nothing of those two (faith&culture). Clifton's poem are so large in concept and memory I feel her poetry exceeds the space on the page. Clifton plays with poetry and pursues a line of inquiry through her poetry.
They thought the field was wasting
I say the stones marked an old tongue and it was called eternity
They thought, I say, this dialogue creates this binary or reinforces one that already exists. It also gives Clifton room, she can now create narrative move around her poem. Move us back and forth, between them and us, what is told what I believe, what is seen with ordinary vision and what can be seen through the eyes of something much larger.
crops refused to grow
wild berries warm a field of bones
It's amazing how I can see these things through both lenses, the history of those who own the field of bones, and those whose bones are buried beneath the ground they themselves tilled.
I feel so awful because I don't do nearly as much research as I should for every author I come across and the information you shared is so hauntingly beautiful. It's interesting to see how people transform another peoples' intentions and twist them into something completely opposite of the original intent. I think one of the last points you make about Clifton's work is brilliant: "Clifton's poem are so large in concept and memory I feel her poetry exceeds the space on the page." Which is SO. TRUE. There's so much space on the pages of her poetry, yet her words fill and overflow the physical space.
ReplyDeleteI'm diggin' both these points. Eden, the overflow, is the thing---the load of history and of art. So true. I appreciate, too, Llesenia how you make history present, in the dialogue that doesn't end, doesn't dissolve any more than those stones can.
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Oh, Lles, you filled me up with this. Clifton's words alone were enough to piece together a story rooted in history and a struggle for identity and visibility. Your background work rounds out the piece so wholly. It makes me think about the plantations of my own family history throughout Louisiana. I have visited one of the still existing plantation sites and graveyards where my ancestors worked in the fields or in the house. To see these partially marked graveyards is something else. It's an entirely new level of spiritual connection. I imagine Clifton had some sort of connection as well to write such a haunting piece.
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