Vulnerability as Nuance in the Masculine Poetic Voice

KARAN

Ralph, your poems balance fury and love with an impossible grace. They’re alive with the pulse of history, and also with the warmth of friendship, of laughter that brings any room alive. “Life is very long,” you write, “& so full of woe, it’s best we be here.” That might as well be the ethos of this portfolio, or, if I may be so bold, poetry itself. Let’s start here: what does poetry make possible for you that everyday language or conversation can’t?

RALPH

Thank you for engaging with my work and for that beautiful compliment. In musical theater, characters burst into song when what they’re trying to convey feels too big to be spoken. Poems work in a similar fashion for me. Whatever it is I am trying to say probably could be spoken in a more traditional manner, but the addition of music and vocal technique takes that moment to the next level (hopefully). The poem you quoted in your question is part of a series of love poems written for my homies. Poetry invites us to take part in a sort of vulnerability the real world says men have no claim to. I look to poems for wider possibilities. Poems also give us the ability to show a reader something versus telling them about it. When I’m chitchatting with the homies, the only parts of the scene I’ll paint are the parts that add to the point I am trying to make. My poems tend to ask me to fill the canvas with as much detail as possible in an effort to render the most robust picture I can manage.

KARAN

In “Nothing New Under the Sun,” the poem unfolds like both lament and sermon. “The blood on every other headline turns my skin into spiders.” You confront racial violence and the news cycle without ever losing lyric control or tenderness. How do you approach writing about violence, and what’s the role of beauty in that reckoning?

RALPH

Empathy is one of a poet’s most useful tools. My primary concern is to make sure I am not writing a poem about injury that also causes injury. If I hurt you while trying to help you, I have failed you. Beauty is a byproduct of compassion, the residual effect of having a heart that beats for more than one’s self. Which is to say, beauty has a role in my more violent poems, but it is rarely number one on the call sheet.

KARAN

The poems “On our birthday, Thurgood Marshall & I discuss precedent” and “On our birthday, Medgar Evers & I discuss Fear” imagine conversations with historical figures — they’re both elegiac and defiant, like time collapsing into prayer. What draws you to dialogue as a poetic mode? And what does lineage mean to you as a Black writer in America now?

RALPH

Using dialogue in a poem is one of my favorite ways to get further away from myself when I write. One of my main goals for my collection was to try to create space in an autobiographical text wherein I wasn’t the most important subject. Like any poet, I write about where I am, but I am also concerned with everything it took to get me there, and sometimes that has little to nothing to do with me. Dialogue invites other voices into the room, voices who don’t always feel/think/speak how I want them to. There’s a weird sort of freedom in that. Regarding lineage, few things matter to me as much. I recognize that Paper Pistol is a drop in the bucket of Black poetics, but even a single drop of sullied water can ruin the whole lot. So it was important to me that I fashioned a collection which would sweeten the pot. In school we are made to read all the important dead white guys in the American canon, but I knew nothing of June Jordan ’til I was good and grown. I didn’t know I could write poems about protective styling or the n-word or swag surfing until I read poems by folks who were already doing that work. Engaging with the elder’s efforts is what shows us what we can do next, what we must do next. This is why book bans exist, because the powers-that-be know how effective knowing our history is when it comes to designing a more egalitarian future. In an age where history is being sanitized for the comfort of the oppressor’s children, knowing where you fall within the long line of folks who come before is paramount. We are not a flash in the pan, we are a smoldering that has been rolling for centuries.

KARAN

The title of your forthcoming collection, Paper Pistol, is such a beautiful paradox — fragile, childlike, but also dangerous, subversive. What does that image represent for you? Is the “paper” the poem, the body, or something else entirely? Also, tell us more about putting together that collection — what was the process, and how does it feel now that it’s going to be out in the world soon?

RALPH

The image comes from the plot of a not-so-great movie I watched years ago starring Boris Kodjoe called Doing Hard Time. Kodjoe plays a man who, after tragically losing his son to gang violence, vows to avenge his boy by getting locked up in the same prison as the culprit and then killing him. The man comes up with the idea to make a paper mache pistol and have his homie smuggle a single bullet into the prison, the only issue being the fragile nature of the weapon and the fact that it can only be used once. When I first landed on the title, it was because I thought the idea of a paper pistol was absurd, which made it the perfect vehicle to ferry me through my ruminating on the absurdity of masculinity as we know it. The paper represents the innocence we all are born with, and the ease with which that innocence can be folded in on itself to create a weapon. It took me around five years to figure out exactly what this book wanted to be, then two more years to get it there. I was raised by a single mother, and many of my male elders were out of my life by the time I was twelve. In the days before my son was born, I started asking myself ridiculous questions like, How can I raise my son to be a man when I wasn’t raised by one? Am I not a man? Much ado has been made about the supposed impossibility of a woman raising a boy into a man, but there I was, a man about to become a father, letting societal norms inspire a doubt that was never mine to carry. I wanted to untangle that worry, to get to the root of why I felt that way. It sounds all woo-woo and heavy, but I had a great time writing this book. Finishing it was enough for me. For the manuscript to then be read and chosen for publication by an icon was and is an embarrassment of riches. I’m excited for Paper Pistol to finally be out of my head and in the hands of readers.

KARAN

In “Sanctuary,” humor becomes a love language. “If I am not insulted within thirty seconds of walking into a room, I know I am not amongst my niggas.” The poem is tender and hilarious, but also profoundly moving — I love thinking of joy as armor in my own life. How do you think about humor as a tool for survival, or even as a sacred act?

RALPH

I am the cousin who cracks jokes during a beloved’s funeral. The sort of man who rolls his SUV into a ditch and chuckles to himself while dangling upside down in the driver’s seat. Humor is a lifeline, a balm, a way to open the drapes and let some light touch our faces. Humor is one of my favorite ways to access joy, which can be hard to come by these days. I once heard a standup comic say something to the effect of “If you can make them laugh, you can make them think.”  I truly believe that. I want to offer more than doom and gloom. No one comes away from a one-note poem changed. It’s the nuance that activates us. Given the fact that poetry is often the vehicle used to dive into life’s darkest realities, it’s important to me that I bring some light along for the trip. I don’t know that I could force myself to exorcise that part of myself from my poetics, so I choose to fully embrace it.

KARAN

I keep returning to “What the birds know” — that yearning for escape, for motion, for safety: “Born both Black & here, I’ve only ever known what wants me gone.” That breaks my heart. The poem feels both resigned and resistant. What does flight represent for you — literal, spiritual, or otherwise?

RALPH

Flight represents hope, the incessant ache for someplace/something/someone better and the gall to work to make it possible.

KARAN

“Three Hearts” also broke my heart. Fatherhood, mortality, and wonder — about trying to stay in the world long enough to witness your child’s joy. There’s such light in it, even as it looks death square in the eye. What has fatherhood changed about your sense of time, or the kind of poems you want to write?

RALPH

That’s one helluva question. My father died when I was young, and I’ve always regretted not having more time to get to know him. I want my children to have well informed memories of me, so I invite my son into my interests like he invites me into his. I want him to know his father is just a person, not some riddle to be solved posthumously. I’m excited for the day when my kid reads one of my poems and starts asking questions. I am always endeavoring to write poems that offer my boy permission to be himself, likely because I wish someone had done the same for me.

KARAN

Patricia Smith selected Paper Pistol as a finalist for the Miller Williams Poetry Prize, and that makes complete sense — your work shares her fierce music and moral urgency. What have been some of your guiding lights or influences, poetic or otherwise?

RALPH

That’s high praise, I appreciate that. Frank Ocean displays a level of relentless honesty that I long to reach in my work. The man is also a master wielder of narrative. Channel Orange is always spinning on the record player in my head. Build yourself a boat by Camonghne Felix, that collection really taught me so much about memory work. I was raised in the Black church, so the rhythm of good preaching is always in my head when I write, particularly as I work on ending a poem. "As" by Stevie Wonder reminds me to search for the truest metaphor or simile I can find. Lucille Clifton’s work reminds me to employ brevity whenever possible. There’s too many to name, so I’ll stop there.

KARAN

This is a question we ask all our poets, though the answers are always wildly different: there’s a theory that a poet’s work tends toward one of four major axes — poetry of the body, poetry of the mind, poetry of the heart, or poetry of the soul. Where would you place your work, if at all? And do you feel it moving elsewhere?

RALPH

I’m not sure exactly, but I feel led to say poetry of the mind. I’m kinda into sociology, and I find that many of my poems are concerned in some way with behavioral patterns. I don’t claim to be an expert by any means, I barely passed that class in college. But I do know what tends to draw me to the page are questions like “why?” and “how?”. The motivations we house in our hearts and heads that push us to our most polarizing positions. That said, the newer stuff I’m writing seems to be more focused on matters of the heart. Writing this book coaxed me into softer territories of myself than I knew existed. I am excited to dig further into those realms and see what comes up. I have been obsessed with writing love poems these last few months, and I have noticed that, in lieu of trying to break it down for the purpose of understanding what it all means, I am simply reveling in the space of love and documenting that experience.

KARAN

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received — something that’s actually stayed with you or shaped your process?

RALPH

I have a bad habit of over-writing a poem because of a fear of not being understood. I know more words doesn’t equal more clarity, but it’s almost like a safety net for me. After reading a very over-written draft, Greg Pardlo looked at me and said “Just say the damn thing.” I listen to lots of writing podcasts, so I’m not sure who said it but “start the scene in the middle.” These two phrases take up so much space in my head because they both remind me that the only words that should be on the page are the words you absolutely need. The audience is not dumb and neither am I. One of the poems in my manuscript deals directly with this, the speaker is held to account for writing poems with “too many Easter Lillie’s and too few exit wounds.” I wrote that to remind myself that I have to trust the heart of the poem, that it will do the work it is meant to do so long as I stay out the way.

KARAN

Would you kindly offer our readers a poetry prompt — something strange, simple, or rigorous — to help them begin a new poem?

RALPH

When I first came across Tariq Thompson’s “Birthday” poems, I was so impressed with the concept that I had to give it a shot. Here’s hoping this prompt gives you something as beautiful as it gave me.

Google famous people that share your birthday, choose one or a few then write a sonnet which imagines a conversation you might have with said person.

KARAN

Please also recommend a piece of art — a film, a painting, a song (anything other than a poem) — that’s sustained you lately or that you wish everyone could experience.

RALPH

Black Radio by Robert Glasper is a fantastic album. My favorite song on it is Afro Blue featuring Erykah Badu. Everyone should listen.