Flowers For Socrates

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD

For several years now, Right Wing think tanks and other revisionists have striven to convince us that “Black Slavery Wasn’t as Bad as You’ve Been Taught.” Since the people putting this theory out there are white, and have no personal experience of being slaves, it’s difficult to understand how they could have acquired this knowledge.

My husband was recently watching a documentary that was supposed to be about General Sherman’s ‘March to the Sea’ during the Civil War, but spent much more time on the filmmaker revisiting his old girlfriends. One of his ex-sweethearts put forth the idea that “If people want to be slaves, I think the government should let them.” I was called into the room so I could see this remarkable footage for myself. Suddenly this documentary about the past became very much connected to our present.

One of the things which makes a story or a poem memorable is the “telling detail,” an unexpected connection between events or ideas or unlikely people, or a single object that becomes the symbol of what’s really under the surface of the poem. Pay close attention to the details in this week’s poems – there’s a lot going on.

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