A Poet Is Not a Jukebox
A poet is not a jukebox, so dont tell me what to write.
I read a dear friend a poem about love, and she said,
Youre in to that bag now, for whatever its worth,
But why dont you write about the riot in Miami?
I didnt write about Miami because I didnt know about Miami.
Ive been so busy working for the Census, and listening to music all night,
and making new poems
That Ive broken my habit of watching TV and reading newspapers.
So it wasnt absence of Black Pride that caused me not to write about Miami,
But simple ignorance.
Telling a Black poet what he ought to write
Is like some Commissar of Culture in Russia telling a poet
Hed better write about the new steel furnaces in the Novobigorsk region,
Or the heroic feats of Soviet labor in digging the trans-Caucausus Canal,
Or the unprecedented achievement of workers in the sugar beet industry
who exceeded their quota by 400 percent (it was later discovered to
be a typists error).
Maybe the Russian poet is watching his mother die of cancer,
Or is bleeding from an unhappy love affair,
Or is bursting with happiness and wants to sing of wine, roses, and nightingales.
Ill bet that in a hundred years the poems the Russian people will read, sing and
love
Will be the poems about his mothers death, his unfaithful mistress, or his
wine, roses and nightingales,
Not the poems about steel furnaces, the trans-Caucasus Canal, or the sugar
beet industry.
A poet writes about what he feels, what agitates his heart and sets his pen in motion.
Not what some apparatchnik dictates, to promote his own career or theories.
Yeah, maybe Ill write about Miami, as I wrote about Birmingham,
But itll be because I want to write about Miami, not because somebody
says I ought to.
Yeah, I write about love. Whats wrong with love?
If we had more loving, wed have more Black babies to become Black brothers and
sisters and build the Black family.
When people love, they bathe with sweet-smelling soap, splash their bodies
with perfume or cologne,
Shave, and comb their hair, and put on gleaming silken garments,
Speak softly and kindly and study their beloved to anticipate and satisfy her
every desire.
After loving theyre relaxed and happy and friends with all the world.
Whats wrong with love, beauty, joy and peace?
If Josephine had given Napoleon more loving, he wouldnt have sown the
meadows of Europe with skulls.
If Hitler had been happy in love, he wouldnt have baked people in ovens.
So dont tell me its trivial and a cop-out to write about love and not about
Miami.
A poet is not a jukebok.
A poet is not a jukebox.
I repeat, A poet is not a jukebox for someone to shove a quarter in his ear
and get the tune they want to hear,
Or to pat on the head and call a good little Revolutionary,
Or to give a Kuumba Liberation Award.
A poet is not a jukebox.
A poet is not a jukebox.
A poet is not a jukebox.
So dont tell me what to write.
1981