Nocturne
running in place
my tongue has grown strong and hard
my pace is steadier my step surer
measured as circles move around me and define
this frayed self the center of at least one stubborn
cosmos
here i sweat the days
humming because rhythm makes persistence possible
occasionally breaking into song-and-dance
aware of the weight that impedes momentum
aware of wind factor and traction
(to wish i were dead? easy. the one wish that
always comes true)
as the hum of unseen fellow runners
urges me on thru this brilliant fruitless flight
point of departure is a certainty
arrival a myth
as i streak along the beginning turning back on
itself again and again. my focus dead ahead
peering. to see if
this is the dark that precedes dawn
or the darkness before the dark
****
Poet, short-story-writer, novelist, scriptwriter and essayist Wanda Coleman was born Wanda Evans in the Watts area of Los Angeles in 1946. While she achieved some recognition as a poet, this fell short of the reputation her power and originality merited. The Poetry Society of America’s Shelley memorial award was among the honours she had begun to garner towards the end of her life. She died in 2013.
Nocturne first appeared in Coleman’s collection Hand Dance in 1993. It’s among the 130 works included in her selected poems, Wicked Enchantment, Coleman’s first poetry collection to be published in the UK.
The editor of Wicked Enchantment, Terrance Hayes, considers her a poetic mentor, whose innovative American Sonnets lay the foundations for his own. He writes of her work, “Every poem is an introduction to Wanda Coleman. I keep her poems close because they never cease surprising me … She never ceases revealing paths to get free.”
The directness, energy and freshness of her voice suggest there’s some common ground between Coleman and the earlier confessional female poets Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. But there are significant differences. Coleman’s fight is bigger than the struggle with inner demons: it’s fired by outrage against society’s racism, poverty and inequality, experienced at the primary personal level. Whenever she talks about herself, she is also talking about a culture of insult. At the same time, there’s a bracing absence of self-pity. Coleman’s poetry, however angry, characteristically deploys balance. Empathy, emerging from her uncanny peripheral vision, balances outrage. The political critique is not compromised, but it is layered.
Nocturne demonstrates this quality of balance both in its structure and emotional/intellectual undertones. The lines move with a pulse of joy. But the optimism is questioned, too: philosophical pragmatism supplies a corrective. Oppositional forces are registered physically, as “weight”, “wind factor”, “traction”. The argument, basically that of life-force and death-wish, happens so fast it results in an oxymoron – “this brilliant fruitless flight”. And these yoked polarities remind us, of course, that “flight” is about more than running. It’s about running away. It’s about running onwards across time. It’s about the flight of words.
Here’s another example of balance, that of the literal and metaphorical. On one level, we’re looking at a woman out jogging, working up a pace and an exhilarating sweat as she claims the night, the pavements and her body. But the opening line (“my tongue has grown strong and hard”) orientates the reader right from the start to an inner meaning: the tongue is the most important muscle, speaking, writing, running on, helping voice the self. Later, the poem notices the importance of “fellow runners” as motivation. Coleman rejects the writer’s myth of social isolation. Her sense of self is integral, but it’s not experienced as grand isolation.
The absence of punctuation and capitalisation in the poem enhances the pacing and control of its flight. As in the American Sonnets of both Coleman and Hayes, that larger, meta-punctuation of the turn, or volta, gains emphasis. Coleman’s turns demonstrate that the flight is as circular as it is linear: “as i streak along the beginning turning back on itself again and again.” Nonetheless, the speaker’s focus is “dead ahead // peering. to see if / this is the dark that precedes dawn // or the darkness before the dark.”
The concluding lines may allow the speaker to foresee the worst possibility as well as the best, but a more balanced interpretation of “dark” seems required. An earlier poem, included in Wicked Enchantment, and first published in Imagoes, is entitled I love the dark. Coleman concludes:
“I move thru dark
waters quell, free my imagination
i hear sunset/ a lone sax wail/ pulse
compels, tremors
night wakes
i welcome you dark
soft. gentle. My mother’s hands”
Her run in the dark in Nocturne shows Coleman evolving one of her beautiful “paths to get free” – a flight that liberates her readers, too.
The article was adjusted on 20 June to restore the missing first line, “running in place”.