Trust Your Voice – Speak Your Truth
From the wisdom of Soulspeak Asheville, young poets considered the question: “What does it mean to speak the truth in America?”
I was one of three judges at a reading this week. In answer to the question, these poets responded: (I have paraphrased their comments)
- It means to be comfortable being uncomfortable
- Be as brave as anyone in the past.
- Every truth is important.
- Every truth should be spoken.
- Speak until you are hoarse.
- Your voice matters.
- You have what it takes.
Next, there was a list of truth tellers who inspire these young people: James Baldwin, Eleanor Roosevelt, Alice Walker, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Sojourner Truth, Howard Zinn, Cesar Chavez, Chief Joseph, Aldo Leopold, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas, Robert Shetterly, and Rev. Barber.
I’d like to add to this list my heroes and heroines: Yuval Ron, Pablo Casals, Wendell Berry, Jimy Carter, Beethoven, Jeremy Rifkin, Al Gore, Osip Mandelstam, and Anna Akhmatova.
The Soulspeak poets are in flower. Their words bloomed in the dim light of the room. They took on “The” Coffee Shop, sexism, bullying, abuse, poverty, homelessness, and racism.
I recently read a quote from Emily Dickinson, “Truth is such a rare thing it is delightful to tell it.”
When I delved into Stephen King’s book, On Writing, I stopped at the quotes on the front page of his memoir. First came this from Miguel de Cervantes, “Honesty’s the best policy.”
Next was from anonymous, “Liars prosper.” (Sounds like an election year to me!)
Of the poems I’ve studied, the most difficult one involving truth was written by Anna Akmatova, April first, 1957, in Leningrad. She and a crowd of women stood outside a prison trying to get food to their family members. Anna’s son had been imprisoned because of her words, which included a reference to “Yezhovian.” Yezhov was head of the Soviet Secret Police, noted for his ferocity.
Instead of a Preface
from Anna Akmatova
In the awful years of Yezhovian horror, I spent seventeen months standing in line in front of various prisons in Leningrad. One day someone “recognized” me. Then a woman with blue lips, who was standing behind me, and who, of course, had never heard my name, came out of the stupor which typified all of us, and whispered into my ear (everyone there spoke only in whispers):
– Can you describe this?
and I said:
I can.
Then something like a fleeting smile passed over what once had been her face.
Writer, it is time for you to flourish. It is time for passion. Your truth is important. Tell the truth until you are hoarse. You have what it takes. Be Brave.
#1212
from Emily Dickinson
A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.
Write on!