Q&A: “Did I Know You Back Then” by Colleen J. McElroy

In celebration of National Poetry Month, The Writer's Center is spotlighting the work of Poet Lore contributors. This installment includes a brief Q&A with poet Colleen J. McElroy about her poem, “Did I know You Back then” (Poet Lore Volume 110, No. 1/2).

Photo Credit: Rachel Eliza Griffiths.

DID I KNOW YOU BACK THEN?

BY COLLEEN J. McELROY

when I came home wearing a gélè my mother

looked at me as if I were a stranger

my father said black is beautiful

my mother insisted I remove the gélè

so she could see all that so-called beauty

and my hair released from the wrap

bounded out in the glossy kinks of an afro

when I came home sporting a brand new

passport and a fellowship to foreign places

my mother unfolded her litany of warnings

and Jennie gave me her standard caution

best learn to pee in a coca cola bottle

she said remembering the jim crow limits

of traveling across these united states

when I came home with a new husband

not from any branch of our extended relations

my mother’s first question as he took

off his coat: how’s your finances?

my hazel-eyed Irishman grinned from ear to ear

and sat down beside my father

to talk military politics and jim beam

when I came home with a PhD

and yet another divorce still fresh my mother

said they’ll find you dead some place

nobody has ever been while she plucked

imaginary lint from my clothes and hair       

the wall behind her chair dedicated to me

adorned with photos drawings awards

when I came home to accept an honor

from a local poetry group my mother

complained that there was no one

in the hotel to look after me and those

who recognized her as my mother

said she sat in the back row grumbling

about missing dinner as I read each poem

when I came home on a stop-over

along a transoceanic route my mother

cooked a box lunch of chicken feet

and rice old style with the toes sticking

up like baby fingers escaping the mire

something for the plane she said

like your granma used to make

pressing the dish in my hand

as if it were the final link to family

each time I came home not enough

or too often  too long and might as well not

each time at the arrival gate she tweaked

loose strands of hair  loose threads

all of me out of whack and out of place

the barriers of what kept us at odds

each from the other in the web of our invention

and always I left taking a little of her with me

Sarah Katz: This poem of seven septets centers on the tense and uncertain relationship between a speaker and her mother. The space given to this relationship—it is a long poem—combined with the anaphoric refrains, give me a sense of continuity, and what some might call the "eternal present." I was especially struck by the cleanness of the final stanza—the way you utilized the small space for the anaphora "each" to enact a conclusion. The speaker seems to "exit" the poem at that same moment, releasing herself from the concerns that incited the poem. Tell me about the process of writing this poem—how did you know that you needed to write a long poem?

Colleen J. McElroy: The poem—“Did I Know You Back Then”—holds the duality of a relationship alluded to even in the title, where the indefinite pronoun You can lead to both the speaker and the subject. This reinforces the bond between mother and daughter, the unavoidable link where they separate and co-exist. The anaphoras confirm this duality—“like mother like daughter” is repeated throughout the poem. For me, poetic rhythms are close to dance rhythms—the heart by way of the ear, the music of the poem. So the cadence is also repetitive, that inevitable dance between the two—step step turn return—more tango than waltz—until the last stanza where both remain caught in a web of their own invention. I never think of a poem as long or short when I am writing it. The poem takes me in its own direction as long as it needs to get there. In this instance, my mother was 101 years old when she died. I was in my late 70s at the time – a lot of narrative ground to cover needing more than a short burst of imagery.

Colleen J. McElroy, Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington, has received a Before Columbus American Book Award, as well as two Fulbright and NEA Fellowships.  Her most recent publications are A Long Way From St. Louie (travel memoirs), Blood Memory (poems), and Over the Lip of the World: Among the Storytellers of Madagascar, (nonfiction).  Her tenth collection of poems, Blood Memory, was listed in Brooklyn Magazine's Must Read List for 2016. Her work has been featured in The Oxford Anthology of African American Poetry, Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry, Best American Poetry, and others.