Kael Moffat, Department of Honors English
I proposed to fly down to Los Angeles for two weeks and compile notes, take photographs, and conduct interviews with people for the purpose of writing a chapter in a book of poetry about the L.A. area. My intent was to write about the conditions and life-style of inner-city communities.
My project drew upon several well established poetic traditions and theoretical assumptions. American poets of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, have had an interest in what we now call the “inner-city.” Walt Whitman, in his “Song of Myself,” used imagery from nineteenth century Manhattan, Carl Sandburg and Gwendolyn Brooks (both Pulitzer Prize winners) have written extensively, and (in the case of Brooks) almost exclusively about inner-city Chicago. One of the assumptions behind this kind of poetry is the idea that if a poet looks at the more menial “levels” of human existence, he or she can find what makes us “human,” thus shedding light on our own existence, helping us to see meaning in our own lives, as well as letting us know that there are people who are not as fortunate as we might be. It is a very socially conscious type of poetry.
I chose to propose this project because I agree with the contemporary American poet, Ira Sadoff, who writes in his essay “Hearing Voices: The fiction of Poetic Voice”, “Most writers like to listen to strangers.” Actually, I would say that writers not only “like” to listen to strangers, but need to listen to strangers. By “strangers” Sadoff means more than just people we don’t know, he means that writers need to encounter individuals, cultures, landscapes, and ideas that they have never encountered before in order to keep writing well. Encounters with strangers “trigger” Poems (to borrow a phrase from another poet, Richard Hugo), they give the poet material and ostensibly the impetus to write poems. What all this means is that in order to write poetry, a poet must encounter new things often, or encounter old things in a new way.
One other theoretical assumption I based my project on was the idea that good poetry is made up of specific details: street names, shop names, broken windows, the color of buildings, specific words that people speak, etc. Mary Oliver, in her book A Poetry Handbook, writes, “It is the detailed, sensory language incorporating images that gives the poem dash and tenderness. And authenticity.” Detailed, concrete imagery invites readers to mentally and emotionally create the situation of the poem for themselves, to “experience” the poem themselves. This kind of poetry allows the reader to “feel” the meaning of the poem, as well as decipher it.
In conjunction with my proposed project, I contacted Dr. Carol Kellett, professor of home economics at the California State University at Long Beach and member of the Urban Families Initiative task force, and Esperanza Martinez, president of the Washington Neighborhood Association. Both of these women agreed to help me with my project.
I chose to fly to L.A. on April 18, and return on May I (however I ended up staying until May 2). I was able to stay with my sister who lives in Long Beach, which was helpful in keeping costs down. When I got to L.A., I got in contact again with Mrs. Martinez and we decided that one of the best ways to observe inner-city culture was to do volunteer work at a youth center In downtown Long Beach (which is about fifteen to twenty miles south east of downtown L.A. proper). While volunteering at the youth center, I was able to encounter Inner-city kids in an environment they were comfortable In, and was able to ask them questions without putting them on their guard. I was able to learn a great deal about their home lives, their school experiences, their hopes, and their joys without having to be too direct (I determined that the “direct” approach would have made the kids feel very uncomfortable and any answers I would have gotten would not have been “straight forward”). One particular young man I got to know was named Victor. He was a twenty-year-old former gang member who started the youth center. When I met Victor he’d just gotten out of prison, where he’d been for eleven months for “a real bad crime he didn’t commit.” He started the youth center because he was sick of seeing how his younger brothers and sisters were growing up. He was sick of the violence and drugs that he had grown up with. He recognized that It was just getting worse In his neighborhood and he wanted to do something about the situation.
Several times during my trip, I also took walks around different parts of Long Beach to simply “observe” the community and write my impressions in the journal I kept of the trip. While out on these excursions I saw the typical scenes we see on sensationalized TV news shows-broken beer bottles, plastic bags wrapped around two foot tall weeds, graffiti, rusty abandoned cars, bullet holes and blood on alley walls-but I also saw little kids playing in the streets, laughing. throwing baseballs, riding bikes, and chasing the ice cream man.
I was also able to set up a police ride-along. which gave me a whole different perspective on inner-city communities that would have been impossible for me to formulate in any other way. The officer I rode with, Officer Rob Broxton, took me into the most violent sections of the city, Including the “worst street in Long Beach,” which is ironically named Salt Lake Street. One house at the end of the street had a barrier in front of it made up of a tricycle, a shopping cart, 2x4s, and a big wheel. Rob said the street was full of crack houses and had been the sight of many robberies and shootings. While I was actually down in L.A .. I was able to write several good first drafts, which is more than I expected. Since I’ve been home I’ve revised these poems and have begun submitting these poems to national literary journals for publication. I have included one of these poems with this report.
I would like to thank the Office of Research and Creative Work for allowing me the opportunity to complete this project. A project which would have been impossible without their help. I believe that this project will prove to be an important turning point in my development as a writer. Finally I’d like to thank my faculty advisor, Lance Larsen, for his Invaluable advise and encouragement.
The Green Frog
Long Beach, CA 1995
Art deco waves rolling
through the plastered door jamb
above the stairway
leading down
to a cool dark hole in the sidewalk,
my sister pulls me away,
“Down there’s a black restaurantyou
know, peas, collard greens,
chicken an’ that stuff.
I’ve never seen a white man
walk out of there.”
She pulls me next door, into the Blue Cafe
where a blues band
called King Cotton
plays all the standards.
She gets a Coke,
but I go thirsty
watching the sweaty black and white
bodies on the dance floor weave themselves
into a basket of noise and gin.