SLC.edu / Magazine / Summer 2003 Issue / Critical Writing

Critical Writing

by Alice Walker ’65

Must-read writing by Sarah Lawrence alumnae/i, faculty and students. This issue: Two new poems by alumna Alice Walker ’65. They’re about food—and much more, as you’ll see from the excerpt from her Preface to the collection, Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth.

Walker's Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth Most of these poems were written at Casa Madre, our ochre red house, my daughter’s and mine, on the central coast in Mexico. I had moved out of the large white room with veranda looking toward the Pacific and into what is usually a guest bedroom. Smaller, darker, quieter; less yang, far, far more yin. It was shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon; I was feeling a deep sadness about the events and an incredible weariness that once again whatever questions had been raised were to be answered by war. Each morning, after sitting for half an hour, I wrote several poems. This was something of a surprise, since I had spent the past couple of years telling my friends I would probably not be writing anything more. What will you do instead? one of them asked. I would like to become a wandering inspiration, I replied. I had an image of myself showing up wherever people gathered to express their determination to have a future or to celebrate the present, speaking, reading, playing one of my very simple musical instruments, and just being around.

I did not think I needed to offer much more than this. I still don’t. It is the best that I have and the easiest to give. Still, obviously, life had more writing for me in mind—if poems can actually be called writing. I have now written and published six volumes of poetry since my first collection, written while I was a student and published in 1968. From that first volume to this, what remains the same is the sense that, unlike “writing,” poetry chooses when it will be expressed, how it will be expressed, and under what circumstances. Its requirements for existence remain mysterious. In its spontaneous, bare truthfulness, it bears a close relation to song and to prayer. I once told someone I could not have written my novel The Temple of My Familiar with straightened hair. I could not have written these poems in a bright sunny room where there were no shadows.

What many North Americans lost on September 11 is a self-centered innocence that had long grated on the nerves of the rest of the world. With time, more of this innocence will be shed, and this is not a bad thing. With compassion for our ignorance, we might still learn to feel our way among and through shockingly unfamiliar and unexpected shadows. To discover and endure a time of sorrow, yes, but also of determination to survive and thrive, of inspiration and of poems. The adventures one encounters will, of necessity, have a more risk-filled depth.

Alice Walker won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for her novel The Color Purple. Her other novels include By the Light of My Father’s Smile and Possessing the Secret of Joy. She is also the author of three collections of short stories, three collections of essays, five previous volumes of poetry, and several children’s books. Born in Eatonton, Georgia, Walker now lives in northern California.