A Conversation with Marilyn Nelson

An interview by Ben Palpant

I want to be remembered 
as an autumn under maples:
a show of incredible leaves.

From "Cover Photograph" by Marilyn Nelson

Marilyn Nelson wrote that when she discovered poetry as a child, "it was like soul-kissing, the way the words filled my mouth." In the years since, she has not lost that intimacy with words, with life itself. It has been my impression that she holds life in her mouth so she can taste its many flavors. Even in my initial greeting, she expressed that wonderful eagerness.

"I'm so grateful for the chance to meet you, Marilyn," I say. "Thank you for being willing to spend some time with me."

She laughs and says, "Well, thank you, but sometimes you don't know where conversations will go. Who knows what surprises or ideas a conversation will bring? I have this little notebook, just in case."

"I can't wait to be surprised together," I say. "Let's start with your faith journey. You were born in 1946. Your father was a Tuskegee Airman and served in the United States Air Force. Your mother was a teacher and pianist. Was church a part of your growing up?”

"Military life means you move around a lot, so we didn't have a home church,” she says. “I grew up attending the Protestant chapel on base. I remember having a pre-teen crush on one of my Sunday school teachers. He was a lieutenant from Montana or Wyoming. In fact, I recently searched the internet for him and found that he is known for his Christian service and commitment. I was glad to hear that. When I was in high school, my mother joined a Lutheran church in California. It was a little church that decided to integrate when the neighborhood became racially diverse, which, as you know, was uncommon for a church to do in those days. So I became a Lutheran. Over the years, I became known by those in leadership as a smart African American who was interested in poetry, so they invited me to work on a Lutheran hymnal. My Lutheranism is deep and long-lasting."

"So your faith has traveled with you through life."

"Well, mostly, I suppose. I don't think one's faith journey is a straight line. It's a meandering, confusing maze. I've been thinking lately about the phrase 'accepting the nos.' You beg God for something and he says no. It's hard to accept the nos. It leaves you with many questions."

"Indeed, and some are harder to accept than others."

"Yes, exactly. Some of them change the entire direction of your life or your sense of who you are."

"You've had many life-changing experiences. What were some of those when you were younger?"

"I spent the summer of 1967 in Chicago," she says. "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. moved the Civil Rights Movement north that year. I supported myself by working with a little community organization on the west side of Chicago and spent whatever time I could get free marching. It was a summer of marching. It was also a summer of revelation for me. One of those revelations was the unmasking of the human heart. We would march by a little church on a Sunday morning. I remember the doors opening and people filing out. Little old ladies with gray hair walking out to the sidewalk where we were mostly praying, you know? And they would spit at us and yell sexual profanities. I was shocked. I didn't even know what these things meant. And I remember Dr. King standing at the front of the line, reminding us that ours was the power of love and that we needed to find that power."

"You don't soon forget experiences like that."

"No, you don't. They still come to mind quite often."

"You would have been around twenty or twenty-one years old, right? That's a formative time of life." 

"Yes, indeed."

"Over the years, I've wondered if people kept God's law as He intended—if we treated each other the way God told us to treat each other—would racism go away?"

"Maybe," she says. “All I know is that this hostility we see around the world today has been with us from the very beginning, brother against brother—from Cain and Abel all the way to the crucifixion. That's what the Bible shows us. I grew up with probably ninety percent white kids because we were a military family. What I learned from my time in Chicago is that those kids had to make conscious decisions to be my friend. One of my best friends from middle school was a wonderful white girl named Kim. I used to sleep over at her house, eat dinner with her family. I remember camping out on their driveway.” She laughs. “Kim told me years later that she had to fight with her parents to be my friend. I never dreamed of that possibility. She covered it up, but so did they. Eating dinner with them at least once a week, I never saw a hint of it. I'm not sure what to make of all of that, but it was a revelation to me."

"Was she fighting her parents because she knew it was right? Or was it because of something less complex?"

"I think she wasn't doing anything more than just being a friend to her friend. To make it larger than that is to assume that a young child can generalize. I don't think that's what it was about. You know, in friendship, you give your affection away and it becomes a commitment. How can you turn your back on that commitment? In the long run, it’s these little decisions of love that matter most."

"In an interview a few years ago, you said that every day is a portal to the rest of your life. I love that sentence. Could you unpack that a little bit more for me?"

"I'm afraid I have no memory of the context in which I said that."

I laugh. "You don't have all of your interviews memorized?"

"I'm afraid not, but it certainly sounds good. I suppose every moment is a portal into the future. There's no way of knowing what that future holds, but I feel that probably the best thing to do is find reasons for gratitude in every moment. There are miracles happening all the time. If you're not noticing them or grateful for them when they're small, how will you notice them when they're immense? Gratitude is part of the price you pay for existence. It's not hard, but it's terribly important.”

"These little miracles are not hard to see,” I say, “we’re just not practiced at noticing."

"A few years ago, I read a prayer called, I think, 'The Prayer of the Loving Gaze.' That's all it is, putting your love into your eyes as you look around at the world, at people, at everything. To see with a loving gaze. Gratitude is an entry, a portal into a rewarding life. That's why people who have nothing can be as filled with gratitude as those who have abundant stuff. The gratitude comes from you, not from your circumstances."

"You're touching on a topic that has come up quite often in my conversations with poets. When I started this journey, I didn't have an agenda. I just wanted to meet these poets. I suspected, however, that they might help me grow in gratitude. My favorite poets have gratitude in their eyes. They have love for the details of life. I wonder if that's particularly common with poets."

"That's an interesting question," she says. "If you're any kind of an artist, you know what it's like to have something not only come to you, but through you. When you have experienced that kind of an epiphany, when you write something that taught you something in the process, then you can only be humble and grateful to have received such a gift."

"To be effective, you have to remain surprised and amazed by what comes through your pen."

"I once heard an interview with a great classical composer. He said that he only writes the music that he hears." She laughs. "But how can you hear something that didn't exist until you wrote it down? It’s a marvel."

"Says Marilyn Nelson, who writes moving poems that come to her, but she can't explain where they came from. You only write the music that you hear, too."

"Well, right now, Marilyn Nelson hopes to hear the music again someday. Poems seem to have gone on strike for now."

"I'm sorry to hear that. Have you had many seasons in your life when the poems dried up?"

"I have, but this feels different. I think this is connected to age more than anything. When I was younger and those dry spells came, I would accept it and give it an end date. I would say, 'I'm not going to write for three months,' or something. It became a kind of Lenten fast. I've even taken vows of silence sometimes for that reason. But usually by the time the specified limits have been reached, I've got it again, but not this time."

"To take a farming metaphor, you were letting the soil rest."

"Yes, exactly."

"Do you feel vulnerable and a little anxious by this part of the aging process?"

"Well, yes. In my family, if you reach the age of sixty-five, then you're on your last mental legs. I'm seventy-eight, so every time I don't remember a word—everyone says it's normal, I know—I feel anxious."

"My grandmother was fond of saying that aging is not for the faint of heart."

"Right, it's entirely not," she replies.

"Some writers feel more poetic when things are going poorly than when things are going well. Is joy less inspirational?”

"I don't know how to answer that question. My writing tends to be based on research. It tends to be about lives that are not my own life, so I can fall in love with the subject matter. I can write through the experience as an imaginative act. I'm thinking of my work on George Washing Carver and other historical characters."

"Yusef Komunyakaa says you are the kind of writer who is rooted in the basic soil of redemptive imagination. I think he means that, like with gratitude, you are angling for redemption in your work. Even if you're writing about difficult things, you're not just leaving us in that awful moment."

"I suppose that's what I'm trying to do when I write. I have been lucky in having been given subject matter that is redemptive. Some people have other subject matters to write about. My own life has been a good life. I think about what so many people have to deal with, so much suffering in the world. How can I, sitting here with my three cats and listening to a bird chirp in a tree, complain about anything? I have been so blessed.”

An airplane flies low overhead so we have to stop talking. When it passes, she laughs and says, “Except for when airplanes fly over the top of me while I'm talking to people."

"Ah yes, the joys of living near an airport."

"But even these airplanes remind me of my childhood living on the Air Force base. I used to love hearing those planes when I was a little girl because every plane in the sky could have been my father flying up there to protect us. You know, that was my world. Daddy was up there taking care of us. Goodness, I should write a poem about that."

"It sounds like you had a wonderful relationship with your dad."

"Yes, I did."

"In a world devastated by father hunger, you seem to be one of the lucky few who had a good one."

"We need them," she says. "In this society and in this culture, there's a great deal of pain trying to raise men who will become good fathers. It's a growing problem and it's been growing for a long, long time."

"Did your dad encourage your poetic leanings?"

"Yes, he had poetic leanings himself. One of the treasures I inherited at his death was a little notebook he used during military briefings. He took notes, but you would turn the page and find the beginning of a sonnet he was working on."

"Evidence that the briefing got really boring."

"I guess so."

"You once said that you prefer to have poems grow inside you. You said that reading one Rainer Maria Rilke poem can keep you growing for a month, but reading a lot of contemporary poetry is like eating M&Ms. Who are the poets who have made Marilyn Nelson? Who are the poets you keep going back to over the years?"

"Emily Dickinson, Rilke, Robert Hayden, Langston Hughes, Lucille Clifton. There are so many."

"You have a deep affection for kids. How do you encourage their poetic leanings? When they ask you if they're a poet, what do you tell them?"

"I try to dissuade them of any fantasies that they will buy their mother a house with the money they make from their poetry.” She laughs. “Then I tell them to enjoy the ride. As an artist, you don't know where your artistry will lead. If it leads to some place that is fulfilling, then be happy. But don't trust it to lead you to fame and fortune—especially poetry. You have to do it for love, not to be published or even read or so your writing will be memorized."

"Love of words and language, of creation?"

"Yes, but mostly the pursuit of truth."

"Do you see your work as inviting readers into a space where you can pursue truth together, where you can commune together? Do you see writing poetry as an act of hospitality?"

"That's a nice image," she says. "I can't say that I've had that picture in my mind while I work, but I like it." 

"In your poem 'Cover Photograph,' you wrote that you wanted to be remembered as an ‘autumn under maples, a show of incredible leaves.’ Life is hard and the road is perilous, so how do we accomplish that?"

"I think it's by looking with the eyes of wonder. It's by looking with a loving gaze. I had a friend, a Catholic priest, who said that when he rode the subway when he was in graduate school, he would pick someone in the subway car to pray for for the duration of the ride. He had this hope that someday, when he entered eternity, some of those people would welcome him in."

"What a gift to give to a stranger. It's an anonymous gift, but it's a gift nonetheless. It takes intention."

"Intention yes, but not a lot of effort. You know, you're walking down the street and your eyes catch the eyes of a total stranger and they smile with their eyes and you smile back. That's a gift. It's the gaze of love. You don't have to speak, but you've exchanged something that brightens the human experience. I remember once, when I was a teenager, I was walking across a street. An old white man was crossing toward me. He had two or three dogs on leashes. As we met in the middle of the street, we smiled at each other and he said, 'You are beautiful,' and just kept walking."

"What a rare and wonderful moment, Marilyn. No wonder it has stayed with you all these years."

"Yes, it was such a generous thing to say. I have no idea who that man was or what his life was like, but it was an exchange so powerful that I have remembered it for over sixty years. You know, the blessing that man bestowed on me began with our recognizing our union as human beings. It began with our eyes meeting. So much can change in this world when we look with the gaze of love.”