(MUSIC PLAYING)

Jacqueline Allen Trimble:

(READS EXCERPT FROM “This Is Why People Burning Down Fast Food Joints and Whatnot”)

Shall I sing “We Shall Overcome” while
I swing? I have wanted so long
to believe in justice

Ashley M. Jones: Welcome to the Poetry Magazine Podcast. I’m Ashley M. Jones. When I first heard the work of Dr. Jacqueline Allen Trimble, or Jackie, as I call her, I heard something Southern, unapologetically Black, fierce, sweet and strong in the way all Black women are sweet and strong. In this episode, I talk with Jackie about Alabama, activism, and the underrecognized power of historically Black colleges and universities in America. I first heard her poetry at the Magic City Poetry Festival in Birmingham, Alabama. I had invited Jackie and Kiese Laymon to discuss the legacy and representation of the South in the wake of the civil rights movement. That’s where the conversation begins.

Ashley M. Jones: Y’all just laid out all of the truths that everybody needed to hear—

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: (LAUGHS)

Ashley M. Jones: —about being from the South and about the false progress narrative that we hear about so often. And even, I think, breaking down some barriers around being Southern and being outspoken.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Right.

Ashley M. Jones: You are very clearly Southern.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Right.

Ashley M. Jones: A deep Southern.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: No apologies.

Ashley M. Jones: Exactly. And there’s even, there’s this, you know, this false, we’re all polite, kind of narrative.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: (LAUGHING) Right.

Ashley M. Jones: Which we are, but also … there’s truth.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: There’s truth, there’s truth.

Ashley M. Jones: And I definitely see that so much in your first book, American Happiness, and in these new poems. And I wonder if you would read “This Is Why People Burning Down Fast Food Joints and Whatnot,” which is in the July/August issue, and we can talk a little bit more about that politeness versus activism dichotomy.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: All right.

(READS POEM)

“This Is Why People Burning Down Fast Food Joints and Whatnot”

Q. How do others sin against you?
A. By cursing me—telling lies about me—or striking me.
Q. What must you do to those who thus sin against you?
A. I must forgive them. *

See, I learned my catechism well.
Learned to offer my cloak and coat, my cheek
again and again as the skin was splayed
from my body. I can quote
Martin Luther King Jr. with ease,
praise the Americana of his martyrdom,
the sweet, unselfish beauty of that bullet’s velocity.
Shall I sing “We Shall Overcome” while
I swing? I have wanted so long
to believe in justice, to think of each blow
as recompense for my wickedness.
How can I continue?
How can I continue?
How can I continue
to take and eat this image
of myself, choke on the eloquence
of my dissent, speak love fluently
to someone with his knee
on my neck, his bullet in my child?

Ashley M. Jones: Thank you. Yeah, we could go line by line. I’m not going to do that to our listeners here.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: (LAUGHS)

Ashley M. Jones: We could do it, however.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: We could do it.

Ashley M. Jones: But this poem, it reminds me a lot, actually, of another poem of yours that I love called, “Everybody in the World Hate the South” or “Everybody in America Hate the South.”

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Yeah. “Everybody in America Hate the South.”

Ashley M. Jones: Yes. I mean, what you say in this poem takes it a step further, the way that people expect us, as Black people, and I would say, as Southern Black people, and especially as Black women, too, to just swallow all of this poison—

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Right.

Ashley M. Jones: —and turn around and bless your heart. I mean, yes, bless you, but also, get off my children.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Well, you know, it’s an occupational habit. I’m a professor of American literature, so, one of the things I teach all the time, I’m fascinated by the catechisms that came out from the churches that were aimed at enslaved people in how enslaved people should behave, the gratitude they should have for their enslavement, etcetera, etcetera. And this is the way they often were inculcated into religion. And so, I’m fascinated by the way religion, particularly in the South, has been used as a mechanism to keep people enslaved way after slavery. And how these narratives of kindness and peace and justice, which are great, and I believe in kindness and peace and justice too, but how they are used to make people be quiet.

Ashley M. Jones: Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: And all of that history, I see all of that history is of a piece. And that if you make certain kinds of comments or make certain kinds of connections, you’re being too harsh or too rude, or you should just be, you know, have love in your heart. And so, I want to have love in my heart. I do have love in my heart. I have a deep love for the South. But I think you also, if you really love something, then you question it. That’s why, to me, this poem ends with a question, because I think it’s very important to question what we love and to question the way religion has been used. And the Martin Luther King narrative has been used. The narrative is different from Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King was a strategist. He was trying to make a difference, and he was trying to figure out the best way to do that. It wasn’t that, “Oh, just take it.” You know, just take it and people will love us. It wasn’t about love, you know. It was about economics. It was about freedom. It was about justice.

Ashley M. Jones: Yeah, that’s Dr. Jacqueline Trimble, everybody.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: (LAUGHS)

Ashley M. Jones: I should have said that at the beginning. Put some respect on your name, with all these facts that you’re giving us. But yeah, I think about these things a lot myself.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Yeah.

Ashley M. Jones: Especially the place of God in all of this.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Yes.

Ashley M. Jones: And just like you said, people, since slavery, have been trying to say, “Oh, but God, you can’t fight back against the slave masters, because God.” “You can’t, you know, fight back against Jim Crow, because God.” But to me, it’s like, well, if this is the same God that I’ve learned about, that’s why I should be fighting you. Like, that’s the reason. (LAUGHS)

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Exactly. I mean, people make God in their own image. This has been the problem. And they use God for their own purposes. And so this idea that the Bible is full of justice, right. That we must treat people well, particularly the least among us, we should—all of these things that people seem to sort of overlook and forget when they start talking about the God that allows me to mistreat you. Right, to enslave you, to oppress you. Mm, no, sorry. Not me. I’m not the one.

Ashley M. Jones: The Reverend Dr. Jacqueline Trimble, everybody.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: (LAUGHS)

Ashley M. Jones: Yeah. And then also, the way that you mentioned MLK, too, this is something that I am constantly embattled with.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Yeah.

Ashley M. Jones: Especially on MLK Day, which, I mean, I’m glad that we have the day, but I don’t think people have ever read a single speech that the man wrote, you know, by some of the quotes that are posted.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Right. (LAUGHS)

Ashley M. Jones: It’s just so mind boggling to me that he, as you said, he was a strategist. And he also was a human being. I think that slips through the cracks.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Brilliant and flawed.

Ashley M. Jones: Yeah.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: And that’s okay. I prefer my leaders that way. (LAUGHS)

Ashley M. Jones: Me, too, honestly. And then the other line, “Shall I sing ‘We Shall Overcome’ while/I swing?” Once again, how dare you, Jackie. My gosh.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: (LAUGHS)

Ashley M. Jones: How did that line come to you?

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: That line came to me because, oh, it’s a horrible story. So, my church hosts groups that come through. We have a historic church. And the tourism that happens, that I’m grateful for, surrounding the civil rights history—and I hate to say this—is as romanticized as the Confederate tourism that takes place. You know, it’s a romance. And so people come and they’re so enamored, and they always want to hold hands in the basement of our historic church and sing “We Shall Overcome.” I am a good church woman and, you know, help with these things. So I said to my fellow church member, I said, “I ain’t singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ no mo’, because we ain’t overcome yet. And I’m just not singing it anymore.” And I think it was around the same time that Trayvon Martin had been killed. Maybe it was a little later and the verdict had come in. And I was like, “That’s the last time. I ain’t singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ no mo’. Y’all can keep singing if y’all want to. But I need to do something. I need to do something else, because this is not working. This is insane.” The other thing that I’m always—we always want to make it about feelings and love and “We Shall Overcome” and Kumbaya. But this is about money. It always has been about money, about economic oppression, trying to keep people out of competition. This is not about love. This is not about how people feel about me. Nobody went over to Africa and got people because they ain’t like Black people. It wasn’t about feelings. It was about money. And so, why are we still singing “We Shall Overcome”? You know, I want us to think about how it is we’re going to overcome, and we ain’t gonna overcome by singin’. I’m sorry. It’s a beautiful song.

Ashley M. Jones: Wow.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: But it’s just not working for me.

Ashley M. Jones: No. And it’s so interesting that people want to come—and I assume it’s, you know, a mixed crowd.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Yes.

Ashley M. Jones: It’s not all Black people. It’s not all white people.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: No, no, no. It mostly is not Black people, not African American people. Because, you know, my argument is that this narrative of “We Shall Overcome” is a narrative that often makes people who are not Black feel better. African Americans have been here since 1619. Before the Mayflower. We have been here, and we have provided the raw capital and labor—free labor, mostly—for this country. We have built the wealth of this country. What we tryin’ to overcome exactly? You know, am I trying to overcome my birthright? And I know I’m preaching to the choir, Miss Reparations Now!

Ashley M. Jones: (LAUGHS)

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: But I’m saying, why we singin’ “We Shall Overcome”? I don’t understand. I don’t understand. I’ve been here since the beginning. My people been here since the beginning. I can trace my lineage back to my father, my father’s father, my father’s father, you can go on back through the generations. And I’m like, I don’t understand. I don’t see other peoples in this country singing “We Shall Overcome.”

Ashley M. Jones: I mean, this is a sermon, everyone who’s listening.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Sorry, sorry. Don’t, don’t—you can’t get me started on these questions. Because this is like, you know, this stuff is real.

Ashley M. Jones: It is real. And I am going to start calling you the Reverend Dr. Jacqueline Trimble, I hope you know, your new name.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: (LAUGHS)

Ashley M. Jones: But it is so real. Honestly. I was just talking about the whole “We Shall Overcome” thing.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Yeah.

Ashley M. Jones: We were singing that—or, I was not singing it, someone else, my ancestors were.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Right.

Ashley M. Jones: Not because they wanted to do this weird, like, we’re integrated, we’re equal, that’s all we want, we want to overcome. It was, we want to stop being killed. We want to be able to walk down the street and not be afraid for our lives. We want our children to grow up thinking that they are valuable.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Right. We shall overcome being second-class citizens. But it’s taken to mean, you know—and it’s, deep in my heart, I do believe we shall overcome one day. It’s that pushing things off into the future, but what, they were in the throes of a horror movie. They were trying to survive. I mean, people—we just went to the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. And I know the stories, but then we see them again and again, and you always learn something new. And people were being snatched out of cars, killed when they were looking for, for example, James Chaney and the young college student and the other worker in Mississippi and they were dragging the river, they found all these Black men’s bodies. So that meant they found all these Black men’s bodies. Like, not theirs, but all these other Black men that they didn’t know were there. And I’m like, so this was like, routine. This was like Monday, you know? And so, I’m like, that’s what they were singing about. But now, it’s kind of like nostalgia tourism.

Ashley M. Jones: Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: The kinder, gentler Negro singing, you know? So I’m like, eh, yeah.

Ashley M. Jones: Right.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Yeah.

Ashley M. Jones: And if your hands are linked together, singing “We Shall Overcome,” Kumbaya, they’re not holding the fist that you actually deserve. People don’t want us to be angry. Or they’re like, “Why do you care? Slavery is over,” you know.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: But anger is a useful emotion. You cannot stand without friction. So, to just be passive is not to live in the world. And so, yeah, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with anger, particularly anger that is rooted in a reason. It’s not, “I’m just angry.” It’s, “I’m angry about this. And this. And this.”

Ashley M. Jones: People who don’t experience life as a person of color, because I can’t even just say it’s Black people. There’s many of us who are daily witnessing the murder of our people.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Yes.

Ashley M. Jones: Over nothing. Like, I think about Sandra Bland very often. So often.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Because it could be any of us.

Ashley M. Jones: Anybody. Any day, any time.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Any day, any time.

Ashley M. Jones: And I mean, it’s that real. Like, it’s not just a Twitter hashtag. It’s not just a flag that I fly. It’s my literal, actual life could be stolen from me.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Depends on it. I mean, Michael Donald, 1981, walking down the street in Mobile. Walking down the street. That’s it. He didn’t do anything. Nothing happened. He just walking down the street.

Ashley M. Jones: Right. Just existing.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Existing in the world.

Ashley M. Jones: I always try to find the joy, you know, in life and in poetry and pain and all of that.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Yes.

Ashley M. Jones: Because I do think joy is a tool. And part of what I think will be helpful for us, specifically as Black people—

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Yes.

Ashley M. Jones: I’ll just keep it on us cuz I’m Black, that’s what I know—is learning about ourselves.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Yes.

Ashley M. Jones: And surrounding ourselves with ourselves, also.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Oh yeah.

Ashley M. Jones: And so I think about you teaching at an HBCU—shout-out to Alabama State University, where my parents met.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: The Alabama State University. (LAUGHS)

Ashley M. Jones: That’s right. (LAUGHS) And so yeah, I think about that a lot. I did not have the fortune to attend an HBCU. I attended a PWI. Two PWIs. Yeah, and I’ll say for anyone who’s listening who’s international, or who just isn’t familiar, an HBCU is a historically Black college or university. And a PWI is a predominantly white institution. But I’m just wondering if you think, or what you think the HBCU’s role is in reparations, liberation, all of that.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: So, I think—I also did not go to an HBCU. I went to PWIs. I think the HBCU is essential. And I think even more essential than even when I went to school, because I grew up surrounded by Black people, Black church, Black business owners. You know, my whole life was an HBCU. And I can’t say that same thing for my children. You know, we lived in very integrated neighborhoods. They went to schools that were not always predominated by Black people. And so, it was very important to my husband and me for them to go to a HBCU. Because what we think is that, what they get there, surrounded by all this Black brilliance, is a sense of themselves at a formative period in their lives. It’s that time between 18 and 22, when you sort of become that adult, you know. And we wanted something to not just educate them, but to steel them against the onslaught of what they were going to face in the world alone, without us, right, without Mom and Dad, because Mom and Daddy can’t, are not there. You have to live your own life, you have to fight your own way. We knew that they would be going out into corporate America and into all of these spaces that were not always the most sensitive to who they were as people, that would not always be welcoming. And we wanted them to have all the tools they needed. And we knew they would get an education, because HBCUs, I know, we have been educating people forever.

Ashley M. Jones: Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Black people forever. We know how to do it. I have so many students who we’ve sent off to Harvard and, you know, Cornell and all the Ivy Leagues and this that and the other, and they come back and they said, “I got no better education at those institutions than I got at Alabama State University, and I’m so grateful.” Because they needed that to be ready for the other part. And so, I think it’s more important now, particularly as we are engaged in these culture wars, for African American students to arm themselves with information, with research, with a sense of who they are as important, as significant in the world. And nobody can tell you anything different. You don’t have to listen to somebody else’s evaluation of you. Because a lot of times that evaluation comes out of a place of fear or mediocrity: I just want to make you feel small, to make myself feel bigger. And it’s been incredibly important for me—I taught at a PWI for a long time, but it was very important for me to teach at an HBCU. I love my students, and I have students of all types, you know, many different countries and many different ethnicities, even at HBCUs. But I think it’s important that all students be nurtured and be given a sense of themself, and an understanding of the forces—economic, social, cultural—at work, that are designed to erase them.

Ashley M. Jones: So, hearing you talk about the role of HBCU, and especially in a student’s formative years, I think that’s really key. And, again, it makes me kind of wish that I had gone that route, because I had to sort of create it for myself as a college student. But it makes me think very specifically about a moment in my early teaching years. I had some Black students, and the topic came up in the classroom about Black Lives Matter. Everybody at my school already knows that I’m very like, you know, about the people, you know, it’s, they know it from jump, the students as well. These particular students were very young, maybe eighth grade, and as I said, they were Black. And something they said really disturbed me. They said, “Well, you know, now they even have Black colleges.” HBCUs is what they meant. “Now they even have Black colleges to further separate us. We’re integrated.” And I had to stop the class. I said, “Wait a minute.”

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: (CHUCKLES) No.

Ashley M. Jones: “I can’t let you leave here thinking that that’s what this is. That’s not why these schools exist. They were not formed yesterday. Okay, we could not go to any other schools. We had to make our own schools, because we were not allowed.”

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Yeah.

Ashley M. Jones: But you’re Reverend Dr. so maybe you have more facts and figures.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: No! I mean, we, the enslaved people, former enslaved people put their nickels and dimes together. And then the AMA, the American Missionary Association, a lot of that money—some of the money that was raised for the Amistad case, ended up being the foundational money for HBCUs. Right in Alabama, Talladega College was one of the recipients of AMA money. After slavery ended, I think there was something like ten percent of enslaved people could read and about five percent could write, something like that. But people began to form schools everywhere, under trees and basements in houses, anywhere you could gather, people formed schools. And they also wanted to form normal schools, you know where you would take the normal curriculum, because they wanted African American children to get the same education. They saw education as a way into full citizenship. And so, they began, you begin to see all of these schools pop up. And you can see when—Alabama State is 1867, you got Talladega, you’ve got Stillman, you’ve got—and it just goes on and on and on and on. And the reason is because they really wanted Black people to get an education. And it was not possible at PWIs, because they were not allowed in, particularly in the South. And so, they made their own schools. And the literacy rate shot up. You know, in like thirty years, we went from a largely illiterate people to a literate people, a very well-educated people, because our desire for education was so great. And amazing people taught at these schools—I remember John Hope Franklin would come through and teach—because they couldn’t teach at other schools. There’s a wonderful picture of Einstein teaching at an HBCU, because people who also believed in the cause would come and they would teach there. And so, many of these people who went to HBCUs, early, early on, got a phenomenal education. And their job was to go and to educate others. One of the main focuses of HBCUs was to create Black teachers, who would then go out into the community and educate others because schools were segregated. And so, Black children often received a subpar education. But because of HBCUs, Black children began to receive an outstanding education in these little one-room schoolhouses that popped up all over. And so, HBCUs were vitally important to the production of an African American middle class, which then later is able to support a civil rights movement that leads to voting rights and housing rights and all of these other rights that people enjoyed. So, it’s a big deal. You know, George Washington Carver went around raising money saying, “Oh, we can be separate.” And then he produces all of these generals and, you know, corporation presidents and entrepreneurs and everything else. So, you know, Booker T. knew how to get that money saying the right thing. And then he went back to his little school in Tuskegee, and created Blackwell. You know?

Ashley M. Jones: Y’all better be writing this stuff down. This is high quality educational material. (LAUGHS)

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: (LAUGHS)

Ashley M. Jones: Yeah, I mean, I think, just hearing that history really illustrates how important Black mentorship, leadership, education, and intervention is—

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Yes.

Ashley M. Jones: When I think about that story I told you, I mean, I’m not one to toot my own horn, ever. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t even own the horn that I can toot for myself.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: (LAUGHS)

Ashley M. Jones: But I do feel like looking back at that—and that was such a pivotal moment for me, as just a human, as a teacher. I thought, okay, if I had not decided that I needed to educate all the students in that moment, not just those Black students, what would they have walked out of the room believing? And what would that have led to later on? What image of themselves would they have carried if I had let them think that these schools were started yesterday, in order to separate from whiteness in some way?

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Right.

Ashley M. Jones: And I’m like, well, first of all, we’re already separate from whiteness. There’s no unifying there, like—

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: But those narratives, those competing narratives are out there. And, you know, it’s important that we have counternarratives. That’s why poets are important, to tell the truth.

Ashley M. Jones: Yes, you stole the words literally out of my mouth, Jackie.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: (CHUCKLES)

Ashley M. Jones: I was just about to say, for me, poetry plays the same intervention role for everyone. Whether they know it or not, you have been influenced by the truth telling of a poet.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Right.

Ashley M. Jones: And it makes me think about, as a Black poet—as I said, I didn’t go to an HBCU. And I had to sort of piecemeal my community together. And I remember very distinctly being in college and having been a serious student of writing since I was twelve. And never really having had an education on Black poetry. And it was only when I sought out those poems, I can see myself now, a little Ashley in the library, just grabbing all the books.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: (LAUGHING) Yeah.

Ashley M. Jones: That was when I began to actually awaken in a way that I had not before. And so it makes me then think about the HBCU for writers. And I think the hole that exists there. And I’m asking you a leading question, I hope you know what I, why I’m asking you this question.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Yeah, I get it. (LAUGHS)

Ashley M. Jones: What role do you think is being played, or could be played by the HBCU for writers or in writing?

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Oh, I think a space to write where your tradition is nurtured. And like you, I went to PWIs. You know, the Black writers we read were Langston Hughes, maybe Gwendolyn Brooks, and everybody else I’ve read on my own. I’m older than you are, so it was even worse. Not only were there no Black writers, there were no women writers, there was nothing. And I’m not one that hates dead white men. I love the dead white men, you know, they were fantastic.

Ashley M. Jones: (LAUGHS) Wait a minute.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: I’ve learned—I don’t mean that in a killing way. I mean like Keats and Wordsworth and, you know, Whitman, and Faulkner.

Ashley M. Jones: Yeah.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: These are brilliant writers—Eliot—their politics often aside, whatever. But there’s so many things that we learn as writers from them. And we, whether we like it or not, do write out of that tradition. But the other people I had to learn on my own. When I was a little kid, my mother had these volumes called the Harvard Classics. You know, everybody from Ovid to … probably went up to somebody like Poe. And I would read these things. I had no idea what they meant. It didn’t matter. But I would just read them because it was amazing to me. It was so interesting. I loved the language. I fell in love with TS Eliot. I would recite “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” I would read it every night before I went to bed, and I could just recite it.

Ashley M. Jones: Wow.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: I would recite all of these people because their music and their—long before I understood what in the world they were writing about. But, where was my education in the literature of my people? I think it was there. I just did not realize it was there. It was there in church with the spirituals. It was there with the sermons. It was there when people got up and recited Paul Laurence Dunbar. It was there when people got up and recited Langston Hughes. It was there when my mother would recite poems to me when I was a little child. And we would make up words. It was there when I would sit and listen to all of my Black elders tell stories and jokes. It was in the rhythm of the people, the rhythm of the voices, and the messages in the talking of the people that I heard every single day of my life. I just did not realize that I was getting an education there. And then when I got to college and began to become aware, that, wait a minute, I think I have missed a whole reading life. And someone gave me a copy of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. And I—you know, I was a huge Flannery O’Connor fan, Faulkner fan, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think I had read all of Faulkner. And then I got The Bluest Eye, and I read it, and my entire life blew up. And I thought, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. Wait a minute, who is this woman? And why is it that I see people I recognize in here? I have never recognized a Black person in a single thing I’ve read by Faulkner or any of these other folks. But here she is talking about the mama rubbing Vicks salves into the child’s chest and making them swallow.” I swallowed so much Vicks salves, you know, when I was a kid, it’s a wonder I’m not brain dead.

Ashley M. Jones: (LAUGHS)

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: But I was like, “Oh, these are my people!” And then I couldn’t get enough. I read everything. I read every Black female writer, every Black male writer I could find. I’m like, “Where have these people been all my life? What? They’re more Black writers than Ralph Ellison. Are you kidding me? And Langston Hughes? Wow!” And you know, I discovered Zora Neale Hurston, and it was like, over. It was done. I never looked back.

Ashley M. Jones: Right.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: So, but what an HBCU does is, that’s the education they start with, right? It’s like, yeah, here are the folks. See what they writing?

Ashley M. Jones: Yeah. I mean, I have to say I had a similar awakening, for sure. I mean, The Bluest Eye, that that took me longer. Kudos to you for reading that the first time around. I started it and I was like, “I don’t know if I’m ready.” (LAUGHS)

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Oh, it’s a lot. It’s a lot.

Ashley M. Jones: A brilliant book, but like, be patient with yourself on that one. Because, wow. I definitely wish for everybody that when they’re going through their writing journey, that they would have somebody to be like, “Hey, here’s the people who are like you, who are also doing this thing.” You know.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: When I was taking workshop, I wanted to write like Gerald Stern.

Ashley M. Jones: Wow.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Who I still love, as a poet. But Gerald Stern, you know? And it was his sardonic sense of humor. But I was like, but I hadn’t read June Jordan.

Ashley M. Jones: Yes.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: You know, it’s like, okay, I still love Gerald Stern, but, you know, June Jordan. Yeah.

Ashley M. Jones: Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Lucille Clifton. Yeah. But none of my teachers had recommended those people, because that was not—and no shade to them. They were great teachers, that was just not their tradition. And I remember sitting in workshop, and people would say sometimes something like, “Hmm, I don’t really like this speaker.” You know? Of course they didn’t like the speaker, because that speaker might not have been speaking their language. I get that.

Ashley M. Jones: Right. But then I think, too, whenever I think about that question of, “Oh, I just don’t understand it, because it’s not my culture.” It’s like, my whole education was not my culture.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Right.

Ashley M. Jones: And I didn’t say, “Well, I can’t relate. I can’t read this. I can’t give you critique, because I don’t know anything about—” Like, no. You know.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Well, I mean, that comes, that dominion comes in there.

Ashley M. Jones: Yeah.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: I don’t have to understand any of the culture.

Ashley M. Jones: Right. Right. I love the word “dominion” also, it’s a great word. I wanted to pivot a little. We’re talking about writing journeys. And something that you said to me recently has stuck with me for a while. I had occasion to sing your praises, which I do as much as possible. And you said, “Well, there’s a gap in my resume. Let me explain it to you.” And it seemed to me that you were saying, “Well, I’m just, you know, an early career poet.” In my mind, those words don’t make sense when I think about you. But I understand what you’re saying. Because, you know, your first book came out in 2016, right?

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: ’16, correct.

Ashley M. Jones: And you’ve been working at the university level for a while, you know.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Long time.

Ashley M. Jones: And I started to think about—I don’t know how to really word it, like, maybe there’s a belief that the, like, young superstar is the way to go, you know, when you’re a poet. And if you reach a certain age, then it’s over for you.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: You’re done.

Ashley M. Jones: And I just don’t, I don’t think that’s true. I think there’s many more people like you than there are—I will talk bad about myself, about me.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: (LAUGHS)

Ashley M. Jones: You know, I am not that young anymore.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Oh, you’re young. You’re young.

Ashley M. Jones: Well, thank you. Thank you, I’m holding onto that very tightly. Because I mean, I’ll be thirty-one in a month.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Oh, my gosh.

Ashley M. Jones: And I know that’s not old, but I’ve never been thirty-one before. So it’s like, whoa. (LAUGHS)

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Every age is a great age. Every age has advantages and disadvantages. I would not, for any amount of money, go back. (LAUGHING) And that is the truth. No amount of money. But, by the same token—and I’m happy with where I am now. But I think you have to be the age you are when you are the age you are. I asked Nikky Finney this same question like last week, and I said, “I’m, you know, an older poet, just kind of getting really started. And I feel like I’m writing as fast as I can to catch up.” She said, “Stop writing fast, stop trying to catch up, you have nothing to catch up for.” Basically, write where you are. And I thought that was so smart. And this is something my husband has been saying forever. My poetry is different now than it was when I was a young poet, because my life is different. My interests are different. My knowledge is different. And as my husband reminds me that, “You don’t have to get a job, you don’t have to get tenure, you don’t have to rise in rank. You have done all of that. So all you have to do is write whatever you want to write. And it doesn’t even matter if people like it or don’t like it, because nothing depends upon it except your desire to say something. And so, in a way, you’re free. In a way, you’re free.” It goes back to my theory of Black women. I think that Black women are, you know, have long been touted as always being at the bottom of everything. And I read a survey several years ago that talked about, Black women have high self-esteem compared to other groups. And I said, of course we do. Because when nobody wants you, when you think that nobody wants you, when you’re at the bottom, you just are who you are. And it’s like, love me, don’t love me, whatever, I love myself. And so, it’s a freedom there. You know, there’s a real freedom in not having to please anybody.

Ashley M. Jones: Mm.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: And so I’m trying to lean into the freedom, rather than thinking about, “Oh, I wish I’d done this when I was, you know, 22.” So what. I did some other things. I raised children and nurtured students and nurtured faculty members and did other things. And so, I think I’m okay, I think I’m okay.

Ashley M. Jones: I’m shaking my head, because—and you may have noticed my little Holy Ghost hand go up when you were talking. (LAUGHS)

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: (LAUGHING) Yes.

Ashley M. Jones: You know, when I thought about asking you this question, I was like, okay, great, this is gonna be—it’s gonna go like this, and she’s gonna say this thing. And just like every single time, I’m a broken record, truly, every time I record this podcast, somebody is speaking directly to something that I need to hear. And you have just spoken something to me that I needed to hear, Jackie.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Mm.

Ashley M. Jones: People may think because I am about to be three books in and, you know, thirty years old, whatever, however shiny that may seem, I, too, have those feelings of, “Oh, wait a minute, like, what am I doing?” Maybe it’s the reverse. It’s like, “Am I doing too much? Do I need to slow down? Why am I, you know, out here like this? Should I have, you know, tried to get married, have kids?” Like, these are things that I think I’m missing out on.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: But this is your journey. This is your journey. I think the mistake people make is they try to make the journey look like they think it’s supposed to look. But there’s no such thing as what it’s supposed to look like. It looks like what it looks like. Ashley Jones, you are doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing. You are headed just where you need to be headed. And you’re headed in the time you need to be headed.

Ashley M. Jones: Reverend Dr. (LAUGHS)

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: I’m just saying. Please listen to this, you know.

Ashley M. Jones: Wow, thank you. This is why I said at the beginning, we are so lucky to be able to say, at least, you’re from the same state we’re from. That’s the only thing we can hold onto sometimes, like, well, she’s from the same place I am.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: (LAUGHS)

Ashley M. Jones: Just incredible! You don’t know how important it has been to see your example, here in Alabama, just to see how you carry yourself. And that freedom on the page that you talk about, it’s so palpable. Like, you are saying whatever it is you have to say, and people have to just fall in line. There’s no other response.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Yeah.

Ashley M. Jones: There’s no like, “Well, actually—”. There’s none.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: (CHUCKLES)

Ashley M. Jones: There can’t be. And it’s just so inspiring to so many of us to see you doing it. And this actually goes very beautifully into where I wanted to go next, which was joy. As I said earlier, I do try to find the joy everywhere that I can. And it’s hard. I mean, you live here like I do. It’s difficult. It’s very difficult. But you have a poem in the July/August, and again, if y’all out there have not read or listened to each and every poem that Jackie has in this issue and any other issue of anything, please do so.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: (CHUCKLES)

Ashley M. Jones: Please do so. That’s all I can say. But I would love for you to read the poem, “The Language of Joy.”

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Oh, sure.

(READS POEM)

“The Language of Joy”

Black woman joy is like this:
Mama said one day long before I was born
she was walking down the street,
foxes around her neck, their little heads
smiling up at her and out at the world
and she was wearing this suit she had saved up
a month’s paycheck for after it called to her so seductively
from the window of this boutique. And that suit
was wearing her, keeping all its promises
in all the right places. Indigo. Matching gloves.
Suede shoes dippity-do-dahed in blue.
With tassels! Honey gold. And, Lord, a hat
with plume de peacock, a conductor’s baton that bounced
to hip rhythm. She looked so fine she thought
Louis Armstrong might pop up out of those movies
she saw as a child, wipe his forehead and sing
ba da be bop oh do de doe de doe doe.
And he did. Mama did not sing but she was skiddly-doing that day,
and the foxes grinned, and she grinned
and she was the star of her own Hollywood musical
here with Satchmo who had called Ella over and now they were all
singing and dancing like a free people up Dexter Avenue,
and don’t think they didn’t know they were walking in the footsteps
of slaves and over auction sites and past where old Wallace
had held onto segregation like a life raft, but this
was not that day. This day was for foxes and hip rhythm
and musical perfection and folks on the street joining in the celebration
of breath and holiness. And they did too. In color-coordinated ensembles,
they kicked and turned and grinned and shouted like church
or football game, whatever their religious preference. The air
vibrated with music, arms, legs, and years of unrequited
sunshine. Somebody did a flip up Dexter Avenue.
It must have been a Nicholas Brother in a featured performance,
and Mama was Miss-Lena-Horne-Dorothy-Dandridge
high-stepping up the real estate, ready for her close-up.
That’s when Mama felt this little tickle. She thought
it might be pent-up joy, until a mouse squirmed out
from underneath that fine collar, over that fabulous fur,
jumped off her shoulder and ran down the street.
Left my mama standing there on Dexter Avenue in her blue
suit and dead foxes. And what did Mama do?
Everybody looking at her, robbed by embarrassment?
She said, “It be like that sometimes,” then she and Satchmo,
Ella, and the whole crew jammed their way home.

Ashley M. Jones: (SNAPS) Yes. I love that poem. (CHUCKLES)

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: (CHUCKLES)

Ashley M. Jones: Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe that mouse.

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: What a mouse. There’s always a mouse. There’s always a mouse.

Ashley M. Jones: There really is. That poem, like the others, when I heard it, I was like, oh my gosh, yet again, here is Jackie. Not only will she give us the hard, cold, burn-it-down kind of truth. But also, she gives us this moment of joy. And that is something, like I said, that I search for all the time. And I do find it in poetry. And I find it in ancestors and in stories like that. And I just wanted to ask you, as we close, what is bringing you joy right now, today, this moment, or in this season of life?

Jacqueline Allen Trimble: Tomorrow is my thirty-sixth wedding anniversary. That brings me joy. My children bring me joy. Friendships bring me joy, because at the end of the day, relationship, you know, to be in relationship with other people, is just a wonderful, a wonderful thing. And poetry, of course, brings me enormous joy. My husband said to me, one day, he said, “You’re not happy.” And I said, “I’m happy.” He says, “No, you’re not happy, because you’re not writing.” And he said, “And if you don’t return to writing, you’ll never be happy.” And I said, “I’m too old to write.” And he says, “No, you’re not. Start writing.” And I started writing again. And I hate that he knows me better than I know me. But he does. And he was right. And I have never in my life been happier than I am right now, at this moment in my life.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Ashley M. Jones: Jacqueline Allen Trimble’s debut poetry collection, American Happiness, won the Balcones Poetry Prize. You can read and listen to four poems by Trimble in the July/August issue of Poetry in print and online. If you’re enjoying the Poetry Magazine Podcast, let us know. Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. And if you’re not yet a subscriber to the magazine, there’s a special rate for podcast listeners. For a limited time, you can get a full year of the magazine for $20. That’s 11 book-length issues for just $20. Visit poetrymagazine.org/podcastoffer to subscribe. That’s poetrymagazine.org/podcastoffer. This show is produced by Rachel James. The music in this episode came from Resavoir and Irreversible Entanglements. All these songs were released by the Chicago-born record label International Anthem. All right, that’s it, y’all. Until next time, be well, stay safe, and thanks for listening.

(MUSIC FADES OUT)