The dawn of a new era beckons everyone to forget the past and focus on the future. The hardships and discriminations of the past have lost their foot and the society is now emerging based on equality and sovereignty. The poem, "Litany on the Tomb of Frederick Douglass" by Martin Espada is just one attempt by the poet to welcome this dawn and the winds of change. The poem focuses on how the racial barriers of the past centuries have broken their bind to usher a new era where a Black man is chosen as the president of United States. The symbols all through the poem represent the victory of the "Black" within the society and how years of hardships borne by these people are now a thing of the past.
In his poem, Martin Espada is celebrating the victory of an African American candidate for the post of President. The poem has the image of a slave being contrasted with the image of Barrack Obama as the President of United States. The contrast in imagery is to assert the long way that the American politics and society have come from the days where the slave boy had to run away to escape slavery, to the present where the slave boy is but the President of America.
Frederick Douglass is one of the most iconic personalities in the history of America who fought for the rights of the immigrants and social justice (Biography.com, n.p.). In the poem "Litany on the Tomb of Frederick Douglass", the poet has sought reference to the life of the legendary Frederick Douglass, comparing his life and work to the victory of Barrack Obama as the first African American President of the United States.
The poem begins with the use of words such as "impossible", "unthinkable" and "unimaginable", clearly implying the humungous feat achieved by Barrack Obama in winning the US Presidential elections. As the poet says, "The world is spinning away from the gravity of centuries" (Espada 5), he clearly highlights how years of oppression and slavery are a thing of past and a new era is being defined where immigrants and African-American are also being held as equals in America. It is at this point in time that "the grave of a fugitive slave has become an altar", for this man -- Frederick Douglass -- was the one who began the task of bringing equality within the society. Douglass rests in peace with his name written "on the anvil-flat stone", where the "o" in his name has been filled by a button that reads "Obama". The imagery presented here is sufficient to make the readers understand the importance of Frederick Douglass in the life and career of Barrack Obama, even though Barrack Obama was born much later than Frederick Douglas's lifespan. It is entirely through the efforts of Douglass that such a phase in society was ushered where an African American was chosen as the President of United States. The manner in which "Obama" is set in the "o" of Douglass is, therefore, an apt imagery.
Further on in the poem, the poet asserts the impact that Frederick Douglass had on the common people -- "now a labour union T-shirt drapes itself across the stone, offered up / by a nurse, a janitor, a bus driver. A sticker on the sleeves says: I Voted Today" (12-13). It is due to these labour unions that any form of exploitation by the industrialists is avoided and the welfare of the workers (which incidentally are the common people) is ensured. It is, hence, the common people who were most inspired by Douglass and it is because these common people voted in the elections in favour of Barrack Obama that America got its first Afro-American President. The poet, again, brings up an imagery where the past is intermingled with the present: Frederick Douglass is presented as wearing his glasses and peering over "an abolitionist headline" (Espada 15), which is then taken forward to present day where his tomb has a newspaper with the headline "Obama Wins" (Espada 16). Thus, the implication that Douglass's movement had on the present of American politics is much explained.
In the poem to follow, the poet brings up images of how Douglass escaped to America in a ship and how he taught himself to read and write. The poet mentions that he can feel a kind of "stillness at the heart of the storm that began in the body / of the first slave, dragged aboard the first ship to America" (17-18). By saying that the tomb has stillness is asserting the fact that the efforts of Frederick Douglass have paid results now. Hence, his efforts did not go waste in any way and his vision is being projected in reality right now. It is in front of this person's tomb that the poet prays his first prayer for it is here in this tomb that the "impossible, the unthinkable, the unimaginable" lies at rest for "now and forever" (Espada 24). The poet immortalises Frederick Douglass here for his politics and reformist thoughts are forever here to stay and people are going to remember Douglass forever for his contribution to the emerging of the equal world of today.
The Critique Analysis
Just like all forms of literature, this poem by Martin Espada was also subjected to a number of critique opinions. One of the critique opinions discussed here is by Edward J. Carvalho (2014). According to the author, the poet was inspired by his visit to the tomb of Frederick Douglass, who was an "abolitionist and women's suffragist African American leader" (Carvalho 110). The author further states that Espada almost always documents in his works the locational markers and the date. The same pattern is followed in this work, where the date, "November 7, 2008" and the location "Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochestor, New York" is mentioned. The importance of the date within this poem is that it helps interweave the important event of Barrack Obama becoming the first African American President of United States along with "the political activism of Frederick Douglass" (Espada 110). The author is of the view that the poem attributes the win of Barrack Obama, his political and historical career to the utopian foundations of politics laid down by Frederick Douglass. According to Carvalho, the poem begins by withdrawing the limits that defined impossible and pushing the society and political leaders to what is considered as "normal". Carvalho further thinks that by placing Obama within the poem, the poet actually establishes a ground where the political journey of Obama represents the changes which have happened within our society, a "democratic quest for transformative politics and reengineering of the traditional places allocated to men and women" (110). Carvalho also explains that the poem is concluded by saying that the history has liberated itself from the shackles of slavery and ignorance, while also appealing to the "creative redefinition of the oppressed" establishing how one of the minority few of the nation has now become one of most influential persons in the world politics as well as American politics (Carvalho 110). The attempt at the poem is further explained as a way to establish a future political ground where all men and women would be treated as an equal. The author explains that it is on this day that everyone sends out a prayer for it is today that we "bury what we call / the impossible, the unthinkable, the unimaginable, now and forever. Amen" (Espada 23-24).
My position on the motive behind writing the poem by Martin Espada stands at the similar level. I too believe that the poem was written to bring to attention the fact about how the society has emerged over the past several years and is lowly evolving into a ground where all are equal and regarded on the basis of merit instead of colour. The past oppression and division of people on the basis of their colour is fading and the poet is trying to revel into the positivity of this change. In order to establish the huge achievement as a society in electing an African American as the President of United States, the poet wrote this poem. However, this is not the only reason for the poet to write the poem. He also wanted to acknowledge the efforts of the social reformers like Frederick Douglass and therefore, the background of the poem is the tomb of Frederick Douglass.
The poem is basically a glorification of the event, that is, the winning of an African American candidate for the post of American President, while indicating that the key person to be thanked for such an "unimaginable" event is Frederick Douglass.
Works Cited
Carvalho, Edward J. Acknowledged Legislator: Critical Essays on the Poetry of Martín Espada. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 110. Print.
Espada, Martin. "Litany at the Tomb of Frederick Douglass". The Trouble Ball. New York: WW Norton & Company, 2011. Print.
"Frederick Douglass Biography." Biography.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 20 Mar 2016. <http://www.biography.com/people/frederick-douglass-9278324>.
