I don’t read much poetry now that I’m out of the formal educational system. Not because I don’t enjoy it, but because I’ve never been a very confident poetry reader so having a little guidance from a group or a class made all the difference. For the past two weeks though I’ve been unable to sit down and read any prose – no novels or history books or mystery novels have been able to pull me into their spines. Instead, I’ve only had Langston Hughes’ poem Harlem on my mind.
“What happens to a dream deferred?”[1]
Hughes gets straight to the point that sits in everyone’s heart and mind and even manages to break down how we all react to it. I’m currently living in:
“Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.”
Because I do think everyone, everywhere has some dream that has been deferred. Some are big, some are small. Some are for your whole family and some are personal. Some face social and institutional obstacles and some are blocked by health, wealth, or family. Some just get deferred because you are afraid. Anytime a piece of writing covers so much truth for so many it’s not a surprise it beats at the heart of American literature.
So, these deferred dreams… why are they not realized? Maybe because you’re told a dream is stupid or a fantasy or not for you. Or maybe you’re told it’s perfectly possible – the only thing getting in the way is you. Unless your circumstances are really terrible or your life seriously impacted, you’re just supposed to follow your dreams. Oh, but we’re also supposed to work and socialize and have a perfectly clean house and never miss a payment deadline and exercise and make meals at home to save money and be healthier and get seven to eight hours of sleep each night. No big deal, right?
So, what’s my dream? Writing. It has always been my dream. For a long time, it was my full-time occupation at school but ever since then it has been a struggle to fit it into the life where the bulk of my day is about traditional work, family, and making sure I have things like car insurance and my pets are healthy. In the last year or so I was able to elbow some other things out of the way and start to feel the beginning of a dream take shape and be more than just a rare opportunity but an actual part of my day.
But now life and work and responsibilities have shifted, and I am accepting the dream will probably need to be deferred again… hopefully not for a long time but definitely for some time.
So, what does that mean for this little corner of the internet? I’ve only read one novel so far this Summer so the first change is instead of my usual monthly book journals it will likely be a summer book journal re-cap. Hopefully then I can read and think about and write about the books with enough time and attention they need to make it worth reading. (After all, as a reader who thinks about if a book was worth my time it’s only fair to think about my own reader’s time when I write.)
Maybe things will shift again, and I can tackle some of the list of things I’m desperate to write about. Maybe not and they’ll keep sitting in my scratchy handwriting in a notebook on the shelf. All I know is I can’t change much at the moment but, with Hughes still in my mind, maybe I can keep my dream from drying up or festering… maybe one day I can make it explode.
lost in the dust jackets 