Memphis

It is a quiet summer night in the city a few years ago. There is a light rain. I am walking the narrow streets of the Village with Susie, a delicate Korean woman who I met in my writing program. Susie has moved here from California with her boyfriend, and they don’t yet know a lot of people. And so Susie is slumming it with me. She likes to tell me about her degree from the University of California at Irvine; and because she feels compelled to remind me of this so often, I know my response disappoints her. I did my undergraduate work at the University at Albany, I tell her, with appropriate emphasis, but she rubs her nose. Suggests we stop for tea. Which we do. Susie and I are in the writing program in Brooklyn—a flunkie program with an old bearded director who neither reads our work, nor pretends to. But that night as we walk down the West Village street, we are writers, Susie and me. Talking about writing. And we are going to see Lucille Clifton read…

We find the place and step through the wrought iron gate and down several cement steps. It is an auxiliary building of NYU. Inside, off the foyer, is a room benignly set up for us--and already a number of people have settled themselves into their seats. There is the rumble of hushed discussion, nervous anticipation. By the door, Ms. Clifton has her books on display on a small table. I own all but the newest one—the Terrible Stories—which I know I will purchase tonight. Susie does not know Lucille—perhaps they do not study her at Irvine—but we are writers, and so she is here with me tonight.

I pick a seat a few rows back from the lectern where Clifton will stand to read. Susie wants to move closer, but I have never liked sitting in the front row in these situations. When I want to hear something, feel something, I like some distance. I need room to move my response around a bit. And so I tell Susie to go ahead and sit up front, but that I am going to sit right here. Instead, she settles into the seat beside me.

Many months later, Susie and I will sit at a long wooden table in a pub in Park Slope. There are a number of writers clustered around the table that night—including Suki, a young woman newly admitted to our program. Suki is all long black hair, all scarves, all things Japanese, all things Asian. Susie sits beside her, and I overhear her tell Suki that her real name is Sujin. Sujin? I say. You told me your name was Susie. And she is fierce that night in claiming her identity, sitting next to Suki and all those scarves; she laughs haughtily and says, Did you really think my name was Susie?

People continue to filter in that night in the West Village, until all the chairs are filled with people needing whatever Clifton has prepared to give us. She is not a scary poet, like Olds. But she delivers truth as she knows it, as she has lived it. A truth delivered in single syllables, in just 4 or 5 lines. She trusts the reader, Clifton. And she is a confident poet. A confident writer. In the way that Susie and I will never be…

We fidget. Tug at our pant legs, clear our throats, look around the room. Wait. Then finally Clifton appears from somewhere, and she is at the lectern—and her white hair surprises me. Whatever she says by way of introduction, I do not recall. I remember only that a lump immediately lodges itself in the back of my throat, like one of those lottery balls that gets spit up into the cylinder. I try to force it down, but it lets me know who’s boss, and so there it stays.

And Lucille Clifton reads… Her voice is what I imagined it would be. Not like seeing Gwendolyn Brooks, who sang her poems in hills and valleys—when I had read them flat and measured. Clifton reads from Good Woman, New Poems, The Book of Light. She is courageous in her revelation. In this room full of strangers…

Then Clifton reads poems from her new book: consulting the book of changes: radiation; 1994; scar; amazons… The lump in the back of my throat sits there quietly, not moving, not causing any disturbance. Until. Clifton reads her Memphis poems. The room is silent, all eyes directed toward the imposing figure with the shock of white hair and her quiet, husky voice. She reads, “in the latter days/you will come to a place/called Memphis…” Which is a city I have visited many times. Walked Beale Street up and down. Heard music. Ate BBQ and pecan pie. Felt the history. But. Not. Like. Her. When she reads her Memphis, her Beale Street, I see right away that it is not mine. I sense her antennae—palpable in this sterile room tonight—sprinkled like tiny, sensitive hairs along her fingertips, her toes, her tongue. She tells us she feels the footsteps of her people “throbbing up through [her] shoes” on auction street; that she understands the mud of the Mississippi hides what should be revealed; of another “dusky woman/weakened by too much loss.”

Beside me, Susie Irvine sits as still as stone while the inside of me tumults, while my legs quiver, while stubborn tears drip saltily into the corners of my mouth. And I am ashamed. Self conscious. Try everything to make myself stop…

Later, I wait in line for my book to get signed. My nose runs and I am without tissues. I am mad at myself for this response. I keep my head down. Hand Clifton my book. Utter my name. And when I am composed enough, back on the West Village street, I open the book to find that she has written “For Rachel. Joy!” with her lovely name--Lucille Clifton--spelled out below.

***