OTHER BOOKS BY MARILYN NELSON
The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems (1997)
Magnificat (1994)
Partial Truth (1992)
The Homeplace (1990)
Mama’s Promises (1985)
For the Body (1978)
The Cat Walked Through the Casserole and Other Poems for Children (1984) with Pamela Espeland
Hundreds of Hens and Other Poems for Children by Halfdan Rasmussen (1982) translated from the Danish by Marilyn Nelson Waniek and Pamela Espeland
Copyright © 2016, 2001 by Marilyn Nelson
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, please contact permissions@highlights.com.
Printed in the United States of America
Designed by Helen Robinson
First Word Song e-book edition, 2016
25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nelson, Marilyn
Carver: a life in poems / Marilyn Nelson.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-886910-53-9 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-62979-587-4 (e-book)
1. Carver, George Washington, 1864?–1943—Poetry. 2. Afro-American agriculturists—Poetry. 3. Agriculturists—Poetry. 4. American poetry.
[1. Carver, George Washington, 1864?–1943—Poetry. 2. Afro Americans—Poetry. 3. Agriculturists—Poetry. 4. American poetry.]
I. Title
PS3573.A4795 C37 2001
811’.54-dc2100-063624
H1.1
WordSong
An Imprint of Highlights
815 Church Street
Honesdale, Pennsylvania 18431
Again, and always: for Jake and Dora
I should appreciate it very much if the memory of the great scientist George W. Carver would be honored …
— Albert Einstein
To let oneself seem inferior to what one is is the supreme attribute of virtue.
— Leo Tolstoy
I thoroughly understand that there are scientists to whom the world is merely the result of chemical forces or material electrons. I do not belong to this class.
— George Washington Carver
A personal relationship with the Great Creator of all things is the only foundation for the abundant life. The farther we get away from self, the greater life will be.
— George Washington Carver
I will be with you in power.
— George Washington Carver
Contents
Out of “Slave’s Ransom”
Prayer of the Ivory-Handled Knife
Watkins Laundry and Apothecary
Drifter
The Perceiving Self
Washboard Wizard
Old Settlers’ Reunion
A Ship Without a Rudder
The Prayer of Miss Budd
The Last Rose of Summer
Four a.m. in the Woods
Cafeteria Food
Curve-Breaker
The Nervous System of the Beetle
Green-Thumb Boy
Cercospora
A Charmed Life
Called
My People
Odalisque
Chemistry 101
Dawn Walk
From an Alabama Farmer
Coincidence
Bedside Reading
Poultry Husbandry
1905
Clay
Egyptian Blue
The Sweet-Hearts
A Patriarch’s Blessing
The Lace-Maker
Chicken-Talk
The Joy of Sewing
Veil-Raisers
The Year of the Sky-Smear
The New Rooster
How a Dream Dies
Out of the Fire
The Wild Garden
The Dimensions of the Milky Way
Ruellia Noctiflora
Professor Carver’s Bible Class
Goliath
House Ways and Means
Arachis Hypogaea
Lovingly Sons
Friends in the Klan
My Dear Spiritual Boy
“God’s Little Workshop”
Eureka
My Beloved Friend
Driving Dr. Carver
The Penol Cures
Letter to Mrs. Hardwick
Baby Carver
Last Talk with Jim Hardwick
Moton Field
Author’s Acknowledgments
Publisher’s Acknowledgments
List of Poems
Photography Credits
Notes on First Publication
Out of “Slave’s Ransom”
John Bentley, Diamond Grove, Missouri
There’s a story to the name.
Had her since I was a colt myself.
Oh, I was a wild one,
up to my withers in oats, and
when Moses Carver comes to me
and begs me to go after
their slave-girl Mary and her son,
well, I never was one
to turn down good money.
Tracked the bushwhackers
two days south of here
and caught up with them
down in Arkansas: The girl,
already sold, had left them
holding a bundle of wet rags,
convulsive with fever and shook
by the whooping cough.
They were glad
to be shut of him.
When I handed him to Missus Carver,
you never seen such carrying-on.
All that over a puny black baby.
You’d have thought that Mary
was her sister or something.
Carver give me his best filly
as a reward.
Many’s the winnings I’ve toasted
thanks to her and her colts.
This one’s her fifteenth.
Look at the clean lines,
the sleekness, the self-respect.
His dam’s a quarter Arabian,
and when you see him run you’ll swear
he was sired by the wind.
c. 1864
Carver is born in Diamond Grove, Missouri. His mother, Mary, is a slave owned by Moses and Susan Carver; Mary has an older son, Jim. Shortly after George’s birth, Mary and George are stolen; Moses Carver hires John Bentley to find them. Bentley finds only the infant.
Prayer of the Ivory-Handled Knife
Susan Carver, 1871
Father, you have given us,
instead of our own children, your
and Mary’s orphans, Jim and George.
What would you have us make
of them? What
kind of freedom
can we raise them to?
They will always be strangers
in this strange, hate-filled land.
Jim is a big help to Moses:
Thank you for their joined laughter
like morning mist over new-plowed fields.
And our little plant-doctor:
Now he’s crushing leaves and berries
and painting sanded boards.
Thank you
for his profusion of roses
on our bedroom wall,
for his wildflower bouquet
in the sitting room,
his apples and pears beside the stove.
He ran out before breakfast,
saying he’d dreamed last night
of that pocket knife he’s been
asking us and praying for.
A few minutes later he ran back up
from the garden, calling
Aunt Sue! Aunt Sue!
He’d found it i
n a watermelon,
ivory-handled,
exactly as he had dreamed.
Seemed like he all but flew
into my arms.
Oh, Father, gracious Lord:
How shall I thank you?
George and his brother, Jim (c. 1873). George (left) was frail and small for his age. Jim was a few years older and strong and husky.
Watkins Laundry and Apothecary
Mariah Watkins, Neosho, Missouri
Imagine a child at your door,
offering to do your wash,
clean your house, cook,
to weed your kitchen garden
or paint you a bunch of flowers
in exchange for a meal.
A spindly ten-year-old, alone
and a stranger in town, here to go
to our school for colored children.
His high peep brought tears:
sleeping in a barn and all that,
nary mama nor kin,
but only white folks
he left with their blessing,
in a handkerchief tied to a stick.
I’ve brought a houseful of children
into this world, concentrating on
that needle’s eye into eternity.
But ain’t none of them children mine.
Well, of course I moved him on in.
He helped me with my washings,
brought me roots from the woods
that bleached them white folks’ sheets
brighter than sunshine. He could fill
a canning jar with leaves and petals
so when you lifted the lid
a fine perfume flooded your senses.
White bodices and pantalettes danced
around George on my line.
He was sweet with the neighbor children.
Taught the girls to crochet.
Showed the boys
a seed he said held a worm
cupped hands warmed so it wriggled and set
the seed to twitching.
Gave them skills and wonders.
Knelt with me at bedtime.
He was the child the good Lord gave
and took away before I got more
than the twinkle of a glimpse
at the man he was going to be.
It happened one Saturday afternoon.
George was holding a black-eyed Susan,
talking about how the seed
this flower grew from
carried a message from a flower
that bloomed a million years ago,
and how this flower
would send the message on
to a flower that was going to bloom
in a million more years.
Praise Jesus, I’ll never forget it.
He left to find a teacher that knew
more than he knew.
I give him my Bible.
I keep his letters
in the bureau, tied with a bow.
He always sends a dried flower.
Carver’s school slate
1877
With the blessing of his foster parents, Moses and Susan Carver, George moves to Neosho, about eight miles from Diamond Grove, to attend the closest school for Negro children. This begins his long search for an education.
Drifter
Something says find out
why rain falls, what makes corn proud
and squash so humble, the questions
call like a train whistle so at fourteen,
fifteen, eighteen, nineteen still on half-fare,
over the receding landscapes the perceiving self
stares back from the darkening window.
George Washington Carver (c. 1879)
The Perceiving Self
Fort Scott, Kansas, 1879
The first except birds
who spoke to us, his voice high
and lilting as a meadowlark’s,
with an undertone of windsong,
many-petaled as the meadow,
the music shaped and colored
by brown lips, white teeth, pink tongue.
Walking slowly, he talked to us,
touched our stamens,
pleasured us with pollen.
Then he squealed, a field mouse taken
without wingbeat,
with no shadow.
His yellow feet crushed past, running,
his bare legs bruised, he trampled, his spew
burned, his scalding urine.
The icedrift of silence.
Smoke from a torched deadman, barking laughter
from the cottonwoods at the creek.
1879
Carver witnesses a lynching, Fort Scott, Kansas.
Washboard Wizard
Highland, Kansas, 1885
All of us take our clothes to Carver.
He’s a wizard with a washboard,
a genie of elbow grease and suds.
We’ll take you over there next week;
by that time you’ll be needing him.
He’s a colored boy, a few years older
than we are, real smart. But he stays
in his place. They say
he was offered a scholarship
to the college. I don’t know
what happened, but they say
that’s why he’s here in town.
Lives alone, in a little shack
filled with books
over in Poverty Row.
They say he reads them.
Dried plants, rocks, jars of colors.
A bubbling cauldron of laundry.
Pictures of flowers and landscapes.
They say he
painted them. They say
he was turned away when he got here,
because he’s a nigger. I don’t know about
all that. But he’s the best
washwoman in town.
Old Settlers’ Reunion
Ness County, Kansas
When I filed my claim back in April eighty-six,
this country weren’t nothing but prairie grass,
rippling pink, blue, and yellow flowers
as far as the eye could squint.
Six years I cut tough turf from dawn
to way past suppertime, and drove my team back
to the sod house and barn
my first bride and I built together
like children playing with blocks.
Three of my children were born there.
I had two hundred acres, mostly in wheat.
To my north was Bothwick, to my south, Barnd.
To my east,
well, there’s a story to tell.
Every other homesteader for counties around
had at least a wife, and most had families.
And all of us were white
except for the colored boy, George.
I think his name was Carver.
He kept to himself, pretty much,
but was always sort of joyous when you met, and humble,
like he’d just been told
the most marvelous, flattering joke.
He took in wash when he was more
hard up than usual, and played the accordion
so your feet didn’t know where
your backside was going.
We never talked much. He lasted a couple of years,
then Lennon bought his hundred and sixty acres.
Sometimes, in the half-light of a winter’s morning, I heard
George’s clear tenor like a church bell over the snow.
1883
Carver attends high school in Minneapolis, Kansas. He adds a middle initial to his name to distinguish himself from a man in town with the same name; when asked what the “W.” stands for, he jokingly answers, “Washington.” He joins the Presbyterian Church.
1884
He is rejected because of his race by Highland College, Highland, Kansas.
1886
He homesteads on the “sod house frontier” in Ness County, Kansas.
A Ship Without a Rudder
Helen Milholland, Winterset, Iowa, 1890
A new voice in church. I turned around to look.
A colored boy, high-cheeked and handsome,
his head thrown back, his eyes closed,
a well-groomed mustache. Well, it was love,
so to speak, at first sight. I asked John
to speak to him after the service. He was tall,
slender, shabbily dressed but clean
and well-smelling. He wore a snapdragon,
I remember it was yellow and purple,
in his lapel. When our eyes met,
I knew it was mutual. But he looked
at John, and at everyone else
who welcomed him in the doorway,
with the same forever.
We asked him home,
talked with him. Then John,
my dearest John, I’d never known
such pride in him: Yes you will
go to college; yes you will
get an education; God
has something big
in store for you; I’ll talk
to the president of Simpson College
myself if I have to.
When my eyes met John’s
just after he spoke those words,
that was when I knew,
I mean really, really, truly knew,
I meant what I said when I married him.
The Milholland family
The Prayer of Miss Budd
Simpson College, Iowa, 1890
I’d known he was enrolled, but still
the sight of a sepia boy
trembled my foundations,
I must admit. Thanks
for your patience.
They say each teacher
gets one student. Thanks
for giving me mine. Already
I’ve sent him home three times
with ague: Please watch over him.
When they found out he was living
on prayer and five cents’ worth
of beef suet and cornmeal,
so many of our good
Simpson boys gave him
their laundry I’m afraid
for his delicate health.
Keep him warm this winter.
He says he paints to reveal truth,