For Richard Wright's Birthday, Part 1

 

September 4, 1908------September 4, 2020

 

 

 

 

It is September,

The month in which I was born;

And I have no thoughts.

 

Richard Wright, Haiku 508

 

The "I" in the poem invites readers to think differently about time and memory.  Usually we think about  our birthdays as moments of celebration.  It is uncommon to assert, as does the third line of the haiku, that the expected celebration is displaced by a surprising confession about an absence of thoughts.  Wright jolts us out of complicity with expectations we assume to be normal and punches us with his emotional truth.  All birthdays are not happy occasions, and some of them may lead us to believe we "have no thoughts."  The poem is one of many warnings  Wright issued in the final months of his life. His  inscription of emotional truth in Haiku 508 is subversive: the writing of a poem is evidence we can't escape thoughts.  In 2020, it is difficult to  escape thinking about what 1908 was in the United States and how racial contracts were designed to dehumanize African Americans.  Wright helps us to remember those contracts have not been demolished by the cosmetics of American "progress."  In September, Haiku 508 forces us to remember.  On September 4, 2020, we should celebrate Wright's extraordinary intelligence and imagination, his spinning of tales.

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