The Heart as Ever Green: Poems

by Carolyn M. Rodgers

Genres: Poetry

82 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Carolyn Marie Rodgers (December 14, 1940, Chicago, Illinois – April 2, 2010, Chicago, Illinois) was a Chicago-based American poet and a founder of one of America’s oldest and largest black presses, Third World Press. She got her start in the literary circuit as a young woman studying under Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks in the South Side of Chicago.

Later, Rodgers began writing her own works, which grappled with black identity and culture in the late 1960s. Rodgers was a leading voice of the Black Arts Movement and authored nine books, including How I got Ovah (1975). She was also an essayist and critic, and her work has been described as delivered in a language rooted in a black female perspective that wove strands of feminism, black power, spirituality, and writerly self-consciousness into a sometimes raging, sometimes ruminative search for identity.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Cedric · Rating 4 out of 5]

really enjoyed this book. couldn't find a copy of her Nat'l Book Award nominated "how I got ovah" (1976) I could afford, so got on the next book she dropped. been a long time since I read black arts movement work (though this was a little later for her, she'd come up w/ S. Sanchez & Giovanni)...the style is still there-shorter, accessible, memorable pieces concerned with Black identity and racism. I love the lack of self-consciousness and honesty...I guess I really love how unapologetically unworkshopped she seems be, though as much as much as she taught I'm sure she workshopped.

so many faves, but here are a couple:

For the Others

Since I've found out that you really don't care
and that you like it
when I tell you I don't like
you
and you often want to know
just specifically what it is I don't like
I've also found out that it can
bother me more than it can bother you--
and that you can know me much too well
by me telling you what it is
I dislike about you. therefore,
it is time I think, that
I keep some of that information to myself
That way, you won't know me
the way you might--
and you won't know what
it is I see when I am looking
at you.
--------------
Walk Like Freedom

she turned to me
and said
the weather's bad, isn't it?
and underneath it all
i heard her saying
i'm white and
we run
the world.
the train can't be late,
he said
i have a business appointment to keep
in only 40 minutes/the train mustn't be late.
and underneath it all he was
clearly saying
i'm white and i/we
run
the world.
they stand around sometimes
with their faces stolid and impassive
no smiles or frowns
the sum total of often exchanges
just them saying
with/or without words--
we're white
and
we run
the world.
how
do we
dare/we must
go on
we dare to
walk the ways of freedom.
--------------------
In Response

their eyes accuse me.
their eyes deny me,
and with their prestigious degrees
from the prestigious schools in progressive
B-L-A-C-K studies pro-grams:

color them successful.
color them "relevant."

and i, the "militant" gone mild?
well i'm mellow in my meanings, ain't I?
i love my people, i relate to their, welfare.
and even though my picture was in
the hawkeye news-times
it do not doesn't mean you can now
colore me whitened/for I could never be.
blackness is, it has to be
more than skin and picture deep here
there or where you appear;
color me

aside from all of it

just heah.
-----------------
highly recommended.

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

we competed
for hurts,
measured our
pain.

like empty spoons,
we filled ourselves
by telling each other
that the door to inner alliances

was our flesh breaking
our façades, falling away.

now,
we huddle together
like mesh.
in the silence that spills between us

the dead ends do not
scream to die.