It is not the primary thrust or purpose of these essays to serve as autobiography. The strictly autobiographical portions are to be approached with caution. This is not to suggest that they are not true, but veracity is hardly the issue or the point. The autobiographical parts often serve the same purpose as notes in a symphony or passage of music: simply to get from one place to another. The personage I am in some of the essays, to borrow Henry Adams’s metaphor, is simply a manikin on which I model some suitable clothes for the occasion… I am a critic and it is best for the reader never to forget that, even if at times I appear to be playing other roles.

I heard several black men on a local black radio call-in program complain rather vociferously the Monday following the Miss American pageant. One caller, who writes for the local black newspaper, thought Ms. Williams to be “politically unaware” because she refused to be a spokesperson for her race, and he considered her “ a liability to the black community.” Another caller voiced the opinion that the selection of Williams as Miss America was further proof that white America wished to denigrate black men by promoting black women. It is with a great degree of dire anticipation that I await the response from these quarters once it becomes generally known that Ms. Williams has a white boyfriend. She will no longer be simply “politically unaware” or “an insulting hindrance to the ascendancy of black men”; she will be a traitor, “sleeping with the white boy just like the slave women used to do on the plantation.”

If he had written nothing but poetry he would have been one of the most renowned writers in twentieth-century America. But Hughes also wrote novels, short stories, travel pieces, translations, plays, scripts, song lyrics, and journalism. And he managed this kind of productivity while still maintaining an extremely energetic social life and conducting extensive lecture tours. Hughes almost never refused to read his poetry at any sort of institution, a college, an elementary school, a retirement home, a cocktail party, on a street corner. And he did not let a little matter like someone’s inability to pay his fee stop him from appearing. He was virtually a literary Johnny Appleseed, dropping poems on the public as if, when he awoke every morning, he could comb them out of his hair.

I do not know how I need the air,

or if it needs me. The lost air,

the air which is smashed, like a red hat.

When the sun rises the amnesty

of the unused animals – the goat, the burrow,

the maroon horses - when the sun rises

the amnesty of these flies its flag: an orchard

with a thumb on top.

Went walking with a few others

in the guarded sunlight of hilly

streets, saw a man through the door,

beyond another man, assumed owned,

bequeathed to the street for only

a moment: saw the fat man sitting

there in black, like a receipt,

a fat black receipt waiting and waiting:

o deliver love and no other word,

deliver flawless feeling to the house,

the feeling that comes once in a lifetime,

then, when least looking, once again.

It was told I could pull

the wagon of death

as long as I chose to pull.

My shoes didn’t tell me,

my cobbler told me.

My cobbler tells me a lot of things.

I turned you into a widow,

I was that tough on myself,

the two of us effaced

like stones you might erase

the miles from, the journeys

of the names and other stars

and evenings.

In the locker room we unhooked our bras, hoping

shower steam kept us invisible,

but our souls showed, our prepubescent fuzz.

Stockings hung from shower rods like biblical snakes.

Who would learn first? we wondered, and drew breasts

in goofy loops until Sister Angelica banged

her ruler, and we printed the same confession

a hundred times, her shadow crossing

our spiral notebooks, her eyes like old

spiders. Ginnie learned and got a heart-shaped

locket, then a shotgun wedding ring.

Heather gave birth so often she forgot,

she said, what caused it. Becky’s womb was lost

in an abortionist’s garage. We said good-bye

in the Immaculate Conception parking lot.

Still, nuns click their beads in memory of us,

how we strolled, arms linked, singing,

into the world of women where all deaths begin.

I’m sorry we missed each other, but that’s the story

two poets write. Your taxi screeched away

as I arrived, your numbered door swung open

to an empty room. I questioned the hotel clerk.

He gave me your envelope,

the box with the single pearl,

strung now with the rest, your gifts,

my abacus of love and hate.

I sat in the hotel bar placing each stone

with its occasion, my birthdays, your infidelities,

the boat trip to Japan where we bought

the Utamaro print that hung above the bed.

A woman diver perched on a slimy rock,

black rope of hair, knife in her teeth.

She’d been down deep, and you admired her.

Thank God for the bankrupt drunk with the gold

   American Express. He bought my gin.

He understood my thoughts, punched the saddest

   numbers on the jukebox.

His divorce will join the myths

   in my best Iliad.

And bless the maintenance man, that holy ghost,

   a blue-eyed vet who mops

the four corners of my world, a ring of keys

   that can open any door

singing from his belt. I feel locked up.

   I’m some rigmarole

they hired cheap. I know fine art, the alphabet.

   I don’t know why the screws

tighten in our lives, or how to move a single

    inch beyond myself.

The pond is like a mackerel skin tonight,

the mackerel like a beaded evening bag.

This is like that, that is like this, oh,

let's call the whole thing off and take it straight:

nothing is like anything else.

Even the parrot and the apish ape

mirror, mimic and do like — unmatched.

To begin:  algae, abalone, alewife —

each the spitting image of itself.

Likewise beetles (potato, scarab and whirligig.)

Nothing even comes close to barrel cactus,

nothing is more original than a bog,

more rare than the cougar and crane —

save all the above named.

I've never seen anything like it — dustbowls,

deer, the descent of man and estuaries,

flakes of snow (no two like) fire,

flax, gannets and gulls.

Honeybees and the Hoover Dam

are unique -- there is nothing like a dam.

Ditto inbreeding, ice ages, industrialization,

joshua trees, lagoons and the law

that to liken a lichen is tautological.

Indeed, the rule of diminishing simile holds

that all of these are idiosyncracies:

the Leakeys, legumes, maize, marsupials and moose.

Virtually nothing is extraneous here —

not orchids, ooze, pampas nor peat.

This is the world of plenitude and power —

every bit of it out of this world:

the rain and rattlers, sperm, swamps and swans.

As now we inch toward an end — vectors

and a winter that figures to be like no other,

say the selfsame earth is to your liking,

and let us continue — yeast, yuccas, zoons,

all things like, beyond compare.

When Quiet Woman comes,

she fills my ears

with morning glories.

Morning glories

grow out my ears –

big blue trumpets

in those soft canals.

My hearing is better

than a geezer’s,

but the dog howls

when the telephone rings.

I do not answer

with a flower in my ear.

I hear only wind

and the scuttle of trinkets

she tosses my way:

garters, crosses, scars,

glimmers and brass.

This little line got tongue-tied.

This little line is dumb.

This little line is cockeyed.

This… miracle! A blossom in the stream –

gibble gabble jaw jabber a priori blossom.

Weird how the word works.

BLOSSOM. Brainstem, blowsy,

two syllables, two lips oratorical.

Say Bloss some. Blah, blah, sum.

The blossom drums da Dum within the seed.

Hush, petal ear. Hear the earth’s ambition

creak – orchard to orchard.

Nova, Nova. It is a blooming universe.

Here is a line that opens like a starfish,

like a starfish eating sea blossoms,

embracing the blossoms and slowly,

deliciously, building the body of the world.

The street deserted. Nobody,

only you and one last

dirt colored robin,

fastened to its branch

against the wind. It seems

you have arrived

late, the city unfamiliar,

the address lost.

And you made such a serious effort –

pondered the obstacles deeply,

tried to be your own critic.

Yet no one came to listen.

Maybe they came, and then left.

After you traveled so far,

just to be there.

It was a failure, that is what they will say.

Drowsy with the rain

and late October sun, remember,

we stopped to read the names.

A mile across the valley

a little cloud of sheep

disappeared over a hill,

a little crowd of sleep--…

time to take a pill

and wake up,

and drive through the night.

Once I spoke your name,

but you slept on and on.

I make my way down the back stairs

in the dark. I know

it sounds crude to admit it,

but I like to piss in the back yard.

You can be alone for a minute

and look up at the stars,

and when you return

everyone is there.

You get drunker, and listen to records.

Everyone agrees.

The dead singers have the best voices.

At four o’clock in the morning

the dead singers have the best voices.

And I can hear them now,

as I climb the stairs

in the dark I know.