The Rhyme and Rhythm
This article first appeared in the November edition of The Inner Circle Writer's Magazine.
The Rhyme and Rhythm When I was a little boy, my grandmother Lee Ellen would read poetry to me to calm me down after asthma attacks or simply to relax me before bed. Looking back, I think it might have been therapy for her as well. The first poem I remember hearing read to me was ‘Life Ain’t No Chrystal Stair' by Langston Hughes. My grandmother only read poems to us that had been written by African-American poets, as her goal was to instill in us the pride of being Black, as well as the knowledge of how America has treated us over the last four hundred years. ‘I too Dream America' was much more than just a poem to my family, it was a mantra by which we set our life’s course.
Of course one is exposed to limericks and the poems of Dr. Seuss as a young student. Dr. Seuss was mostly silly rhymes to me, and I am ashamed (not really) to admit I never read ‘Green Eggs and Ham' or anything else by him until I was grown with a child of my own. I was a precocious little boy, proud of the fact that I read novels or at least books with very few illustrations. I read a poem about a caged bird singing, and the thoughts provoked by Maya’s poem changed my prepubescent outlook on life. Freedom to do whatever I’d like, to fly where I’d like, and to sing only if I wanted to sing, and to not be happily caged in my thinking. Poetry, unlike any other art form, became my go-to for inspiration, rejuvenation, and salvation.
I won’t say it was the rhyming factor that captured me. I think it was more so the gift of encapsulating one’s emotions and thoughts into a few meaningful words and sentences. Naturally, I began writing my own little ditties and rhymes, and my mother still has the first poem I ever wrote… at age five. Yes, I was a poet and didn’t know it.
During the summer of my seventh year, my cousin and I were playing outside under the spray of an opened fire hydrant along with dozens of other kids. We were all too young to walk to Lake Michigan by ourselves and there were no pools available in my urban landscape. Not even the inflatable ones, because we lived in a high-rise complex, and people with inflatable pools usually had backyards. That hydrant was all we had, with two long pieces of wood inserted into the mouth of the hydrant causing the water to cascade like a waterfall. It was perfect for us.
On that day, someone had a boombox radio blasting music from a popular Chicago radio station. A song came on that none of us had ever heard before, and we stood silent and transfixed beneath the water, mesmerized by the song that was being played. The artists were not singing. They were talking and speaking rhymes over a beat. The song was called ‘Rapper’s Delight' and that was the day I fell in love with hip-hop.
This new art form wasn’t new at all, not really. Gil Scott-heron and The Last Poets had been speaking their poetry over music for years, but the song I heard that day beneath the fire hydrant created a movement which swallowed up my generation, at least as far as I could tell. At that age I had the lessons and Black poets given me by my grandmother and I had hip-hop. I loved poetry without knowing I loved poetry.
I read a book about teenaged social classes in Oklahoma by a writer named S.E. Hinton titled ‘The Outsiders.’ It’s a classic book and it features a poem called ‘Stay Gold' by a man I hadn’t heard of before, some dude named Robert Frost. I looked him up at the library and I became a fan of an old White guy from New England. I had nothing socially in common with him, but the magic of poetry connects people because of what’s in their hearts, the shared experience of being human. To add Frost to my poetic education led me to wonder about other places, places with forests and sunsets, away from my urban landscape. It was like reading someone else’s dreams.
In sixth grade, I wrote a short story based on a prompt about a man’s hat blowing off of his head. My story was about a spy and an invasion, and I received an ‘A' on the paper. Apparently, my story was passed on to the Language Arts coordinator at my school who saw something promising in my short story. I was selected to attend the Gifted Writing Program at another school one day a week. The class was made up of a about twelve sixth graders from different schools, and we attended that program until we graduated from eighth grade. In that program we learned about meter, iambic pentameter, how to write haiku, and I was introduced to the English poets. I formed lifelong friendships with those kids, and my love of poetry was cemented. We wrote poetry, short stories, and plays, and I doubt if I’d be where I am if a Chicago Public School teacher had not saw a glimpse of promise in my first short story.
I wrote poetry constantly, all through high school and into my early adulthood. I would only show it to my love interests, conveying my emotions with written words instead of spoken ones. I was a closet poet, scared to share my words with the world, and not knowledgeable as to how to get it out there. I still read poetry, loved hip-hop, and I never thought of myself as a for-real poet.
One day, a friend of my wife’s, asked me if I’d be willing to recite one of my poems at an event she’d put together. I was nervous, but I agreed, and I started practicing ‘Spoken Word' poetry, where a poet speaks his poem from memory, not from a notebook, enunciating high points, and engaging the audience. I practiced one poem over and over until I saw the flyer for the event. The picture was of me, as I was the featured performer for the event. My wife’s friend Ria Harris pulled me out of the closet and put me directly under the spotlight. I was scared and nervous but I practiced and learned twenty of my poems, which I performed in front of a paying audience, backed by a jazz ensemble. I was paid for the event (which was a hit!), which kind of made me a professional poet.
I started writing even more poems, along with the occasional short story. I also attended open mics at bars, as well as performing original poems on demand for weddings and fundraisers. It was rewarding in that I was getting paid to perform my art. Then a day came when my wife told me to do something with the poems and short stories on our computer because it was slowing down. I did a tiny bit of research and I cobbled together a collection of poetry and short stories, separated into chapters based on my perceived colors of human emotion. I published ‘The Colors of My Mind' in 2013.
It’s what one would expect from a neophyte with no outside help, i.e. editing. Yet I refuse to unpublish it because it shows where I began, and it illuminates just how far I’ve come since then. The evolution has been nothing short of incredible. Five more collections, numerous anthologies and magazines, and multiple novels under contract, all as a direct result of my love of poetry.
Poems became epic poems, then short stories and novels, with each paying homage to my first love. Homage. Like Maya Angelou’s poem ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings' paying direct homage to Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem ‘Sympathy,’ which is about a caged bird. Or Lorraine Hansberry’s play ‘A Raisin in the Sun' being titled after a line in a Langston Hughes poem, ‘A Dream Deferred.’ Each step in my life and career as a writer harkens back to my grandmother reading me poetry.
Poetry is evident in the rhythm of my casual walk, the calm cadence of my words as I talk, the practiced way with which I use my hands, the reckless freedom embodied as I dance. It’s in the smile I wear when chasing daydreams, it is the blood of everything I am, it seems. A life without poetry, might be vanilla, or black and white, no hints of purple or green or shining stars at night. It flows in me, rejuvenating and invigorating my soul, a forever love affair, which will never grow stale or old… Marlon S. Hayes marlonshayes@gmail.com Marlon’s Writings on Facebook Marlonhayes.wixsite.com/author Marlon S. Hayes on Amazon
