epiphany at Crabby Jack's


Epiphany at Crabby Jack's



The question about the poem was legitimate and aesthetic in the sense of what is always aesthetic outside of the philosophy of art;  the answer was judicious and aesthetic in the context of American race-drenched conversations.  The poem, Clint Smith's "Counterfactual" -----Counting Descent (Los Angeles: Write Bloody Publishing, 2016), page 25 ---illuminates the aboriginal darkness that ensures the racial question shall never transcend its history in the United States of America.



The psychiatrist, Counting Descent in hand, obviously aware of his New Orleans whiteness, remarked that he found the poem to be sensitive.  He asked Clint Smith's father to explain the provenance of the poem, to explain how Clint Smith overcame the fear affirmed by his father's having "the talk" with him and deriding him "for being so naïve" and telling him he



"…couldn't be out here

 acting the same as these white boys----

can't be pretending to shoot guns

    can't be running in the dark

can't be hiding behind anything

    other than your own teeth."



A patient man, a lawyer, Clint Smith's father contextualized the genesis of the poem, detailing how the counterfactual emerged from his expert knowledge of racism and its consequences.  The question obligated him to teach the psychiatrist in the guise of providing biographical information for the sake of literary history.  Crabby Jack's became a classroom.



What ultimately came to the surface was why white aesthetic questions too often fail to deal with the implications of themselves and betray the integral dangers they pose for everyone.  After Clint Smith's father provided an excellent answer, I tapped a fellow poet on his arm and said: "  I am so weary of the obvious.   Do you think the psychiatrist is now prepared to confront his Tribe of Trump male kinfolk with their insensitivity  in failing to have 'the talk' with their sons, in failing to humanize their sons with devastating knowledge about perpetual American racism?"   The smile on the face of my fellow poet told me the answer is "No."



A poem such as "Counterfactual" is a very powerful aesthetic document.  It is enshrined in America's literary history to remind us what is beyond resolution or  transcendence in our fragmented nation.



Jerry W. Ward, Jr.                            October 12, 2017

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