Thomas and Beulah

"We were good, though we never believed it" 

Somehow we became the curator of the family photographs.

When a relative died, or time needed to be revisited, out came these mammoth leather-bound books and worn manila envelopes that now occupy an already stuffed secretary, awaiting my lethargic ass to get in gear and assemble them in some cohesive, chronicling fashion. Crammed in the plastic and glued atop yellowed paper is a captured history of intertwined lives, of greeting cards, of pressed flowers, of announcements, of varying faces, and its this history that I stem from.

Whenever I look at these photographs, I wander into daydreams about who these people were. Who is this man in the baseball uniform that I got my nose from? Who is this woman with the pensive stare, cascading pressed waves, and corsage who I should thank for this thick mane atop my head? Who are these light-bright girls in cotton shift dresses standing, squinting, and smiling in the Texas sun? How did they live as they did? How did they thrive in times of transition? How did they cope when the world was even a bigger ball of confusion and conflict than today? These sepia-toned images of varying sepia-toned individuals accompany stories, stories that as the years crawl and rush by are as fading as the images themselves.

Reading Thomas and Beulah by acclaimed poet laureate, Rita Dove felt as if I was rummaging through piles of family photographs, uncovering stories and recapturing a unique history. Though Dove's roots aren't mine, but her words made me feel as if it could've been, that the individuals she crafted weren't strangers.

I know a Thomas: he is my Grandfather.
I know a Beulah: she's my Granny.

It's this act of unearthing familiar familial roots that made this collection such an enriching read for me.

Thomas and Beulah is, on its face, a love story, a story that was intended to mirror the union of Dove's own maternal grandparents. These poems also double as a historical document of the Black American experience, this told through the eyes of two individuals who see the world unfold at the turn of the century, with wars, the Great Migration, and the Civil Rights Movement charting their course. Due to Dove's lyrical flair the prose cloud rolls into forming a fable, where ordinary tasks and events such as Thomas arriving by riverboat from Tennessee to a new future up North, and Beulah rearing four girls take on a mythical sheen.

Organized in two parts, the dual perspectives Dove fashions for her characters gives depth to these ordinary lives. Here we have two people who occupy a similar world and are conjoined in their biography, but both have a unique and contrasting viewpoint, and it's Dove's careful, tender wording that gives us this delicate dance between the two of them. With her enriching word meals, it's truly no wonder that this won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1987.




Seeing the world from Thomas' eyes explores the an optimism that even when met with strife (haunted with survivor's guilt after a friend's tragic death; of the difficulties of being an industrial worker at a Zeppelin factory) is salved by hope, and the music he sings in the church choir or strums on his mandolin.

Beulah's is a quieter struggle, an internal one, where she often escapes her realities with dreams of the past and of an unreachable trip to France, but of the two, Beulah is the fierce activist, silent though she may be. Through Thomas' poem "Nothing Down" is where we're introduced to her resilience, from how she proudly and thoughtfully picks the color of the family car (a optimistic sky blue) to her slicing protests when the family is harassed while out driving.

Her section of poems lies in a "strong Black woman" sensibility, but Dove cleverly extracts the constant Teflon heart that often comes with that stereotype. Beulah, while forced by society to be seen, and not heard, gets her last say as what lies behind her small smiles, the wipe of her brow, a woman of steeled grace and intellect shaped by desire. She's not just doing laundry --- she's dreaming of being loved and in love before Thomas. She's not just fixing greens --- she's aligning it with the cuisine of the French. Even when she has all the labels of the world piled on her she's not allowing herself to be boxed into them. Her and Thomas, together, rise above the sadness and disparity that too often befalls on Black Americans, and shows how we dream, do, love, live, and do it wholly.

During the 2016 election I heard a lot of "we are not our ancestors/I'm not my grandparents" talk, a chastisement that our ancestors just sat passively by and let white people just do whatever to us, hence how we ended up with police shootings, and a raging orange terror in the White House. I found such propaganda insulting, deflective, and simply untrue to the root of how Black Americans have been operating in this country since we were brought here in chains.

True, my 30-something eyes are accustomed to seeing activism done by proactive, tangible means, by way of street marches and social media outcry. We often forget in the demonstration of change the quieter acts of resistance. Thomas and more so Beulah are the reflections of that other "silent generation", of Black Americans whose advocacy rested in the day-to-day, the rearing of families, of fashioning lives even where there was prejudiced resistance towards such a normality.

Once again I was reminded of my own ancestors, how they didn't pick up a picket sign or deliver a rousing speech to millions, but the act of them making a life, and making it possible for me to live and thrive as I do is something I marvel at and honor. I'll never forget when my father asked my great-aunt a couple of Thanksgivings ago how my great-grandfather, raised nine children, and maintained a farm in East Texas during the Great Depression, her response was thus: "He, we, just did it. We didn't think about it, we just did it and lived."

from the margins

• Rating: *****
• Pages: 80 pages
• First Published: January 1st 1986 by Carnegie-Mellon University Press
• Anthologized In: Collected Poems 1974 - 2004
• Visual Display: 

When I first dove into reading this, I didn't catch a lot of the prose intricacies of the poems or the rhythms that were essential to understanding the complex characters Dove created on first read. I admit that I'm terrible at interpreting poems, and often find that a lot of acclaimed poems go over my head no matter how many times I re-read them. Sometimes I feel there is a conspiracy with poets, that they are out to screw with us by just throwing words on a page, and the more indiscernible it is, it's obvious we have just read The Most Brilliant Game Changing Poem Ever Written!!!

Rita Dove (thankfully) isn't on that tip. She doesn't leave you scratching your head wondering where you mislaid your dunce cap. She's is coherent enough to experience, and wants you get the most out of her work. This late 1980s documentary aided towards my reading experience, as Dove recites almost every poem, and explains the context behind each, providing background and intricacies that further liven the text. Yeah, it's a bit of a cheat, but Thomas and Beulah is such a detailed work, and Dove is such a pleasant and insightful narrator that it truly felt as if she was leading a warm hand up the front steps of Thomas and Beulah's home, allowing me to make acquaintance.

The documentary is about an hour, but it flies, and enriches your experience of this enchanting collection.