A wonderful collection of poems about fatherhood from the talented Clint Smith, a book I discovered, appropriately enough, at Busboys and Poets in this fourth installment of my exploration of independent bookshops in the Washington region.
(NOTE: If you are reading this post via email, click on the title to see the online version, so you can read the entire poems included here.)
As part of my year-long exploration of independent bookshops, I knew Busboys and Poets would be high on the list. I’ve been in half of their eight locations in the DC area at some point in the past twenty years and I pass the Takoma store several times a week, occasionally stopping in for a meal (I am partial to their chili) and to browse the community-focused bookshop. For the fourth installment in this series, * I made two stops very convenient to the Metro Red Line—Takoma and Brookland—to take a deeper dive into the socially-conscious literature that is a hallmark of these small but well-stocked stores.
The name Busboys and Poets refers to American poet Langston Hughes who worked as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel in the 1920s when he famously left his poems at the table of poet Vachel Lindsay, who then helped launch his career. It pays tribute to the idea that a “busboy” (working class) and “poet” (artist) can be the same person, reflecting the venue’s focus on connecting art, activism, and community.
Not only a restaurant, Busboys and Poets aims to be “a space in which intellectual, cultural, political, and social issues can come together for a discussion that benefits everyone.” They do this “through access to socially-conscious literature, programs, healing conversations and a respectful exchange of ideas.”
The first store, founded by artist Andy Shallal, was on 14th & V streets NW in Washington. 14th & V is located in the U Street Corridor neighborhood, known as “Black Broadway” in the 1920s, and is a major center of DC’s cultural, artistic and progressive activist scene. The Takoma store continues that theme of location in vibrant, progressive communities, and it was there that I found a wonderful book of poems by a gifted Black author and poet so appropriate to the shop’s name and themes.
Above Ground: Poems (2023) by Clint Smith explores the emotional terrain of fatherhood in works that are touching, light-hearted, gripping, loving, insightful, disturbing, and delightful. In other words, they are just like being a parent. Smith is a gifted writer who looks deeply at lineage and the history surrounding being black in America. He is also discovering the world anew through the eyes of a child, with the curiosity and joy that often comes when one encounters life for the first time. As the publisher notes, Above Ground “wrestles with how we hold wonder and despair in the same hands, how we carry intimate moments of joy and a collective sense of mourning in the same body.” I had a range of emotions reading the collection: delight, laughter, and recognition of life with children, certainly. But also sadness at the world our children—and especially children of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, and children of immigrants—inhabit today. Smith has captured the joys and sorrows of life through vibrant poems that look at the everyday occurrences of parenting.
In “Waiting on a Heartbeat” Smith captures the anxiety that begins even before childbirth. He imagines his son telling him from the womb that “there is joy in being a father to a mystery.” There is the reading of Dr. Seuss each night while his son is still in the womb, and Smith comes up with choice lines such as
“I read a sentence | and watch you kick, and I tell your mother | that you are laughing and she tells me you | are trying to let me know that my turtle | voice is subpar.”
Smith also shares the fear of all expectant parents of having a doctor who tells the mother that the problem is all in her head only to discover—when returning to the hospital and demanding a different physician who will run some tests—something that occurs in one out of one thousand pregnancies that could have been fatal to mother and child. Into this period he drops a poem “When People Say ‘We Have Made It Through Worse Before'” that reminds us—as well as the poet—that “We are not all left | standing after the war has ended. Some of us have | become ghosts by the time the dust has settled.”
New birth is a mixture of science and mystery, as Smith reminds us as he writes “What is the difference between science | and a miracle other than discovering new | language for something we don’t understand.”
Something else we don’t understand is how absolutely tiring it can be to raise a child. Smith finds this truth in the delightful “Ode to the Electric Baby Swing.”
Throughout this lovely collection, Smith reminds his children, himself, and his readers of where we come from.
ROOTS
Your great-grandfather was born in 1930 Mississippi
You were born five months ago in Washington, D.C.
Your life is only possible because of his ability
to have walked through this country on fire
without turning into ash.
You come from his deep voice,
you come from his thick bones,
you come from the curl of his Ls
when he says hello.
The first time I handed you to him, I watched
as you settled on his lap. I saw the way your brows
furrowed just like his, how your eyes carry the same
pools of wonder, how when both of you smile it begins
on the left side of the mouth and then blooms
into chrysanthemums at each edge.
I first came to know Smith’s nonfiction work when I read How the Word is Passed. Smith’s masterful book is told with a poet’s ear for the story. Which is as it should be. In that 2021 book he takes the reader to landmarks and monuments all across America, places where guides, local citizens, and activists tell stories to those who visit. Some of the stories are true. Some are willfully false. Others work with less than complete information to try and point towards truth.
As a historian and preservationist, I was exhilarated and challenged by How the Word is Passed. Exhilarated that a writer of Smith’s talent and background would take on public history in such a thoughtful and respectful way, while recognizing the importance in saving the places where history happened. Challenged by the realization yet again of how far we have to go just to a true examination of the past.
As a father, I had similar reactions in reading Above Ground. Smith’s poetry makes the ritual of Sunday morning French toast a marvel. His eye for the absurd leads him to wonder why, on Halloween night, he has chosen to “bundle you into a costume of cured meat.” He doesn’t know, but the scene is creates with the hot dog costume is priceless.
“But your mother | is dressed as a pickle and I am dressed as a bottle | of ketchup and together we make a family of ballpark | delicacies.”
Because “who are we to deny anyone the joy of an infant wrapped in processed meat.”
But Smith can also write about the tragedy of another school shooting and say that “I don’t know how I am ever | supposed to let you | out of my sight.”
Joy and grief. Laughter and sorrow. It is all there in fatherhood. In Above Ground. In life.
More to come . . .
DJB
*To see the most recent installment in my year of visiting the DMV’s independent bookshops, click here. Four down, twenty-one to go!
Photo by Atharva Whaval on Unsplash
MORE TO COME... 