For poetry.
And for the women we’ve lost.
I teach poetry as often as I can, and when I do, I become a bit of a poet myself. The thing about poetry is that it only rewards you when you’ve given it enough time and effort, when you’ve let it into your head to rest for a while. Only then does it seem to spread to the tiny crevices and memories of your brain. If you are resistant to poetry, it’s very hard for it to blossom and convince you. Your shadow blocks its sun.
I know this from watching students’ reactions. Some people say they like poetry, but they often assume it’s going to rhyme, and I usually don’t select those poems for class. (An uninspired rhyme scheme bores me.) Others–most, in fact–say they “don’t get it,” and I go about making my case.
But sometimes, the poetry makes the case for itself, even to a self-proclaimed poet or teacher. In fact, if you read enough of it, poetry will make its case again and again.
Recently, my son has become interested in money and its history. He’s been taught in preschool the story of George Washington, who couldn’t tell a lie (though he still lies), and sees that same George Washington appearing on coins. He brings his quarters and nickels and pennies with him into the dining room, sets them out on the table, looks at them. He likes the weight of that money in his hand, the faces of those respectable men. Once, he got a five-dollar-bill in the mail, and my husband and I were tickled at his fascination with the pictures, with Abraham Lincoln, with the way that history walked into our room.
So on Saturday morning, when I was in the upstairs bathroom, wiping down the vanity, I heard Mr. B ask his dad the name of the man on the nickel. (If he were to ask me, I’ll sheepishly admit, I would have to look. And maybe that ignorance is purposeful.) “It’s Thomas Jefferson,” he said, and helped a four-year-old sound out a mouthful of a name.
Jeff-er-son.
This is how it begins, I thought. This passing down of men’s names. This early learning of men, of men, of men.
That’s when Lucille Clifton’s “The Lost Women” finally clicked for me.
The Lost Women
by Lucille Clifton
i need to know their names
those women i would have walked with
jauntily the way men go in groups
swinging their arms, and the ones
those sweating women whom i would have joined
after a hard game to chew the fat
what would we have called each other laughing
joking into our beer? where are my gangs,
my teams, my mislaid sisters?
all the women who could have known me,
where in the world are their names?
Listen to the late Lucille Clifton read “The Lost Women” on Poets.org.
*And feel free to share a memory of a lost woman in the comments section, a woman whose name has fallen among the leaves.
Happy National Poetry Month!
Image: “Woman on Street” by alfstorm via Flickr using a Creative Commons license.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Lovely poem! I’d never heard it before–thanks for sharing it with us. Happy National Poetry month!
To me, my mother and grandmother are the lost women. My daughter will never know them. She won’t know their laughs, their amazing hearts, or the characters they became when telling a story. I will pass down as much as I can to my children, but I wish they could have more.
Happy National Poetry month. Fantastic view and post to introduce this poem. Clifton is amazing.
Like Kameron, there are women who are literally no longer with me that I miss, but now, at 47, I look back on all the women I was too insecure to befriend who could have given and and taught me as much as the women I’m now brave enough, and love myself enough to allow into my life.
I love men, but not one of them has ever given me what another woman has, the look that says,
“I see you. I know you. I am you and we are just fine.”
This post is very very good.
This is a really interesting way of looking at it, Tracy. And I love the way you invoke the idea of sisterhood, that there is something that passes among women that is so often in another realm.
This is gorgeous. Got chills reading the poem. I’ve though much about the lost women, too, the women whose names fall away, trumped by patriarchy and tradition. I love the idea of honoring their stories as a way to let them live.
Oh the history of men. The powerful women are often sidelined, excluded, swept aside. I speak the names of my own matrilinial line. And find examples for my girls. But what of now? Perhaps we are building our own circles, where we can joke into our beers (or wine)? One can dream.
A nit quite lost woman poet whose poetry has haunted me for years is Anna Akhmatova.
A lost woman in my family was my aunt Carmen, who didn´t marry the man assigned to her when she was 18 and ran away with the one she loved. Nobody in the family talks about this story, and when it is mentioned still everybody says she was crazy.
I lost my mom but that’s not what I want to say. When I read that poem, I thought of all the names of my best friends – the ones who will laugh with me over beer, walk arm-in-arm, my mislaid sisters. And I am deeply grateful for their friendships – and that I am a woman with friends who are relegated to the kitchens unless, of course, we want to be there.
I love this, and I wish I could take your poetry class. I know I would learn a lot!
This is such a poignant post, Jana. It made me think of women I’ve lost, specifically, alongside the ones I keep and some that the world has nearly left behind, and the names that sometimes die with them.
This is beautiful Jana. I love the tie in with your son, the history of men and ultimately the legacy of women. Thanks for sharing that particular poem with us.