The Line that Form Our Community: The Poetics of Black Joy
This essay is part of The Headlight Review’s series, “The Process,” which features writers describing the steps they take to develop and realize a literary work. Writers discuss their inspirations, stages of their drafting, the swings and misses, and the messes they’ve made.
A narrative can focus on the story of a single creation or may instead frame a process the writer employs on a regular basis. We dig hearing writers talking about writing and understand not everything can result in success. Failures can tell a story, too.
In addition to a submission call, we asked a quartet of our favorites—Jason Crawford, John Henry Fleming, Robin Silbergleid, and James Whorton Jr.—to participate. These essays will kick off our series.
We hope to continue publishing narratives on “The Process.” Any writer interested in participating may contact THR with a pitch, or we’ll be glad to look over a submission in its entirety.
Word count: 1500 or thereabouts. Multi-media essays are encouraged.
When I switched from fiction to poetry in my undergrad Creative Writing program, I was sure I gave up joy for misery. To be clear, I figured any writing would require me to dig into my misery bag to be a “successful author.” As many are taught to believe, I believed compelling stories come from strife. Moreover, I thought Black poetic stories needed to have a martyr, that someone must be the lesson for the poem to exist. Being Black is tiring. Being Black and watching people being Black and murdered is tiring bordering on unknown levels of fatigue. Being Black and expected to relive your trauma is possibly the most tiring thing of all.
We fail to teach joy as a writing praxis because the concept of joy is something we seek, whereas grief is something we sit in. Around us, joy does not seem as abundant as does the weight of grief. We are often told in customer service positions that it takes ten good interactions with customers to undo the effects of one bad customer service experience. In this way we are taught how to react to the negative experiences far more than the positive. We are also taught to be grateful for the positive experiences rather than to expect them. When coupling this with the mundaneness of joy and the fact we are also taught that mundanity is not a viable writing praxis, we are left with the understanding that joy is not a serviceable venture for poetics, which is absolutely incorrect. Mundanity and joy both have a place within the poetry space.
When looking at Jonny Teklit’s poem “Ode to the Ice Cream Line,” there are a few ways he is exploring joy. We open with a heat that is forgiving, subtle but enough to reawaken the skin: “it is april & the weather this evening, god, / the weather is caramelizing us.” Here, we are approached by “god” in the first two lines. This is divinity as savior, not as persecutor. A lot of Black Joy poems I have read or have written center around the summer or the sun/the heat. There are a few reasons for this. First, is the sun’s healing and rejuvenating properties, which we know to enhance mental health. Second, the summer is a space during adolescence where we get to be carefree; no school, parents often gone for the majority of the day, which means we get to experience unabashed joy. School is usually a counter agent to Black Joy, both in the childish desire for freedom and the oppressive roots that connect it to prison culture, a direct derivative of slave culture. Because of this, many Black writers, including Teklit, start by defining a place outside and the heat as a healer. The second space of joy within the poem speaks to both the warm April day and the snowless winter. Both are examples of climate change and how we have to adjust our behaviors to survive. Days are “hotter” sooner. April, which used to be forty-five “degrees,” now sits around fifty degrees. But this vehicle opens us up to the realization that seasonal ice cream shops such as Dairy Queen will also open sooner, giving us a chance to enjoy.
Even in joy, we often notice harm. Part of being joyful is remembering what could have been hurtful in the past. Usually, when I write about exuberance, I must start from a place of hurt or hardship. Joy is layered in this harm; when creating a story, readers are more drawn to the conflict and its resolution than the overall feelings of the character. Going through my old drafts, I found an attempt at joy, and it centered around everything that had gone wrong that day, but I still, in fact, lived. An attempt to replicate Lucille Clifton’s “won’t you celebrate with me,” in which Clifton juxtaposes celebration with what has tried to kill her. But here, the joy comes from what has kept us alive in spite of what has tried and failed.
In Ross Gay’s “Sorrow Is Not My Name," he mentions, "a vulture / nodded his red, grizzled head at me, / and I looked at him, admiring / the sickle of his beak.” There is a mention of harm here, the sickled beak, a weapon of Death. But Gay is not finding the danger in this bird, who also signals death; rather he admires its beauty, which we often overlook. Even the harm added from “names so generous as to kick / the steel from my knees” is more reminiscent of the joy of a dirt bike kickstand rather than a blunt blow to the shin. Gay offers us a new way to look at the world, a more joyous rapture. So when I am met with the Google dictionary definition of joy, where joy is explained as a tool for shame, stating, “I felt shame that I had ever joyed in his discomfiture or pain,” it is slightly disappointing. Joy is more than a vehicle for harm; it is the culmination of satisfaction.
We must remember that poems about joy cannot be devoid of the circumstances surrounding that joy. Allowing the reader to understand the stakes of the poem enhances the overall effect. If we are writing about our friends, we should also include the hardships we faced as friends that brought us closer together. My poem, “Essay on YEET!,” although I am talking about how glorious my friends are, is a poem about depression and how sometimes loneliness is louder than friendship. Yet, even at the turn, we are brought back to the joy we experience with our friends. So, this is not to say the entire poem needs to hinge on this hardship, but we can understand why this joy exists, and it is so present when we allow the reader to experience the harm as well. Like Gay, Teklit’s poem teaches us how to find beauty. He starts, “it is april & the weather this evening, god, / the weather is caramelizing us / in only the way the first warm night after / a cold, snowless winter can.” There are two spaces where we are given the stakes of this poem. The more obvious is where we are given the “cold, snowless winter(s).” The plight here is the human rejection of the cold, especially among Black folx. When it is cold outside, we are less likely to go out and see our friends, this human interaction. Even if we make it outside, there is still a chance our friends do not.
In Teklit’s verse, the next signifier of joy is the noticing, mainly of the people in line. It is the collection of people all waiting in line. Often we attribute waiting in line as negative due to the human characteristic of lacking patience. Having to wait for a thing is not joyous, it is annoying at best. Teklit interrupts this annoyance with the addition of other beings all waiting on a common goal. The entire line is there for the joy of ice cream. It is not the line itself. It is the company. Noticing the group and their differences levels the poem. Being in line with groups of people you often would not associate with allows the poem to feel more eclectically communal. The businessperson, most likely making a large salary, waits behind a child with a soccer ball to order his scoops. This common goal and the fact that everyone agrees, creates the poem’s joy.
We end this poem with an embrace of joy or friendship. Cleaning the mouth of a beloved who has spilled with their cone. This act is about community care, which brings us back to the line, how we are all here for the same goal, to invoke a memory from childhood. The same memory that is being built in the child with the soccer ball. Joy, in its purest form, is just another lens through which we express childhood. This breaks our joy down into three different parts within this poem: the sun or summer (even though we are speaking of spring), ice cream, and communal gathering, all things we as children cherish until we can no longer enjoy them. Until they are too far from our grasp.
To craft a poem about joy, we must understand why the joy must exist within it. About Teklit’s poem, we understand the heat as both unyielding and nourishing, we need the joys of a sweet, cold treat to both soothe punishment and enhance pleasure. We understand that the line is filled with like-minded people no matter their age, race, financial or social background. Everyone in this line is here for a common goal, and this goal makes them a community. The lovers are open to small acts of tenderness because there isn’t a fear underlying this line. The child stands in praise of the ice cream line. The joy works in this poem because it’s necessary and genuine. The foundations built in this poem make this joy believable. Something mundane but worthwhile to reach toward. I find best practices in joy start from understanding the need and abundance. I have stopped telling myself that joy is more challenging to write and harder to sell. I have stopped believing that I must be joyful to write about joy. The practice is a meditation on how we wish to be and what we want to obtain. For Teklit, this is not ice cream, but rather a communal experience. For Gay, it is a recognition of everything alive around him. For me, joy comes from a celebration of my friends despite our sadness. It is writing to a room I wish I could stay in forever.
