Lucille:And I think, I really do think, that
one of the things people ought to do in class-
rooms is model being a whole human. And you
have to allow yourself to be vulnerable...to
pain, to hurt, so that you can love. Otherwise...
Michael: We don’t take those risks?
Lucille:No! We use the word, but we don’t
take the risks.
Michael: A while ago, you told me that some-
one had mumbled that you had played the race
card when you read the poem about James Byrd,
the black man who was dragged to his death by the
truck in Texas. And you said you were happy to
know that people respond that way. Why is that?
Lucille:Because it made clear to me what I
suspect sometimes: that for me, who has to some
degree been accepted in the world, people don’t
expect me to talk about race or think about it.
Except in a positive kind of way.
Michael: That’s your dues for being
accepted?
Lucille:Yes, yes. It’s like, because I can
speak about race, and because I have friends
who are not African American, it must be that
I think everything is OK, that I don’t feel racism
because, after all, I’m OK. But I’ve got a cousin
who’s not OK, you know what I mean? And I
have friends who are of my race who are not OK,
and I am not always OK.
Michael: You’re also part of a human family.
Lucille:Exactly.
Michael: Which is something that poetry, and
your poetry especially, is about.
Lucille:Absolutely. My poetry is not about
‘‘how does it look.’’ It’s about ‘‘how does it feel.’’
You know?
Michael: Talk about that...
Lucille:Well, it’s not about the surface of
things. I hope it’s more than that. I hope it is
about humans who are deeper than that. And it’s
certainly not about forgetting—it’s about
remembering, because memory is what we
have. I’ve started writing a poem about what so
often happens with memories. I was thinking
about that because I was beginning to forget
some things about my mother. Now, she’s been
dead forty years, and I’m forgetting some things
about how it felt when her hand touched my
hair. I know that she touched it, I’ve seen the
pictures of it, you know what I mean?
Michael: You don’t remember how it felt?Lucille:Once the sensation of it, the feeling
of it goes, the photo becomes the memory. And
that’s not good because the photo isn’t the
memory.
Michael: I was thinking about your mother
the other day and the poem that you wrote about
her burning her poems. I’ve heard you talk about
your father forbidding her to publish, and how you
watched your mother go to the basement and burn
her poems in the furnace, but I’ve never heard you
talk about how that felt and how that impacted on
you, watching that. You were sitting on the
steps...
Lucille:I was standing on the steps of the
basement, and I don’t even know if she knew I
was there. I was a young girl, and to me this was
just another strange thing that was happening in
that house. You know?
Michael: Did you hear what your father had
said to her?
Lucille:Yes. Well, I don’t remember that
conversation, but I had heard that, ‘‘Ain’t no
wife of mine going to be no poetry writer.’’ And
I think that it did impact on me. I think it had
something to do with the reason I never stopped
writing, and I’ve been writing since I was a little
girl. I think maybe that’s where that came from,
as I think back.
Michael: And your mother knew that you
wrote?
Lucille:Oh yes. She would...
Michael: She encouraged that?
Lucille:Oh yes. Well, they both encouraged
me, believe it or not, to do whatever I wanted to.
They thought I could do whatever I wanted to.
Clearly, that wasn’t true [laughter]. And I knew
that it wasn’t true. But it was very nice of them.
Michael: They believed in you.
Lucille:They did, very much.
Michael: So here’s your mother burning her
poems, and your context is, this house is always
crazy...
Lucille:I knew that she was an unhappy
woman. I used to think that she was the most
unhappy person I had ever seen in my life. But
I’m not that sure now...What was it Camus
said? ‘‘In the midst of winter I found myself in a
wonderful summer,’’ something like that. There
are moments of great joy. I have known those
moments too.
Michael: Moments of happiness?homage to my hips