originally published in CatheXis Northwest
Writing Race– Tony Hoagland’s “The Change”
When I was in an MFA workshop, one of my teachers—on at least three occasions— characterized poet and essayist Tony Hoagland as a misogynist and a racist. That was not the only time I was privy to such accusations. On another occasion a young graduate from Bennington spied Hoagland’s National Book Award finalist, What Narcissism Means to Me, on my desk and said something to the effect of “You read that racist bastard?” Indeed, it is difficult to discuss Hoagland’s work without mention of his incendiary poem “The Change.” A quick Google search brings up the heated exchange between Hoagland and his colleague Claudia Rankine from the 2011 American Writing Programs’ conference. In an open dialogue, Rankine accuses Hoagland of racism and asks for an explanation. He responds with a glib dismissal of her claim and a defense of his work.
Hoagland died in October 2018 at sixty-four. His passing sparked a spate of tributes, but none of the elegiac articles I read tackled the problematic nature of “The Change.” I agree with the accolades heaped on Hoagland for his exhilarating honesty and craft, but I would like to take a moment to examine the controversy concerning Hoagland’s “The Change.”
Let me be clear, I am a fan, and I am white. I read all of Hoagland’s books during my MFA, wrote essays on them, studied his craft— his elastic lines, his imagery, his distinctive voice, his ability to turn the lens on his failings. I admire how he unites the personal with the political, how he speaks frankly about America and his own participation in its legacy. Toward the end of his life, I marveled at his resolute commitment to facing his decline; his final poems are existential, beautiful and sad. Moreover, he influenced my thinking and writing. Reading his poem, “Lucky,” for example, where he examines his relationship with his mother, helped me decipher my ambivalence about my family. Simply put, Hoagland showed me a way to admit my complicity, to be resolute in my honesty.
At the final residency of my MFA, in a discussion with Kwame Dawes about Hoagland, Dawes said this: “Hoagland thinks it’s enough to be honest about his worst thoughts, but it’s not.”
With that in mind, let us look at “The Change”:
——————————–
Sometimes I think that nothing really changes—
The young girls show the latest crop of tummies,
and the new president proves that he’s a dummy.
But remember the tennis match we watched that year?
Right before our eyes
some tough little European blonde
pitted against that big black girl from Alabama,
cornrowed hair and Zulu bangles on her arms,
some outrageous name like Vondella Aphrodite—
——————————
like some contest between
the old world and the new,
and you loved her complicated hair
and her to-hell-with-everybody stare,
and I,
I couldn’t help wanting
the white girl to come out on top,
because she was one of my kind, my tribe,
with her pale eyes and thin lips
and because the black girl was so big
and so black,
so unintimidated,
hitting the ball like she was driving the Emancipation Proclamation
down Abraham Lincoln’s throat,
like she wasn’t asking anyone’s permission.
There are moments when history
passes you so close
you can smell its breath,
you can reach your hand out
and touch it on its flank,
and I don’t watch all that much Masterpiece Theatre,
but I could feel the end of an era there
in front of those bleachers full of people
in their Sunday tennis-watching clothes
as that black girl wore down her opponent
then kicked her ass good
then thumped her once more for good measure
and stood up on the red clay court
holding her racket over her head like a guitar.
And the little pink judge
had to climb up on a box
to put the ribbon on her neck,
still managing to smile into the camera flash,
even though everything was changing
and in fact, everything had already changed—
Poof, remember? It was the twentieth century almost gone,
we were there,
and when we went to put it back where it belonged,
it was past us
and we were changed.
As Rankine points out, Hoagland’s speaker favors the “European blonde” over the American. Why? Because the American is “so big/ and so black,/ so unintimidated…” He ends his lines on “big,” “black,” and “unintimidated” as if to emphasize the narrator’s misogynist, racist, and entitled stance. However, his statement goes deeper than racism or misogyny, it is tribal and primitive. Hoagland’s speaker states he “couldn’t help/ wanting/the white girl to come out on top,/ because she was one of my kind, my tribe../” In other words, Hoagland’s speaker is refining his template of who his (female) people are: compliant, slender, White and of European heritage. Then he simply moves on. He does not question his thinking. He does not connect it in any meaningful way to larger American or personal issues. He does not question this erroneous notion or provide any discovery to grapple with the abhorrent disclosure.
So I would have to respond to Kwame’s query with, No it is not enough to simply express vile thoughts.
That being said, the difficulty and necessity of admitting one’s worst presumptions cannot be overestimated. Indeed, how many white writers are able to do it well, if at all? Very few. We can hint at it, as Sharon Olds does in “The Subway.” But tribal thoughts are atrocious and violent; Hoagland addresses that. He dumps a doozy on us— evoking slavery, colonialism, and genocide— when he employs the word Zulu in a derogatory and dismissive way. He digs deeper than Jim Crow or our current issues into the very root of domination and disdain. His speaker sounds just as bad as a racist should. But to quote Stan Lee, “With great power comes great responsibility.” After his powerful disclosure, Hoagland leaves the reader on a limb, he impugns African Americans, especially women; and he does not satisfy with his ending. If I were in a workshop with Hoagland, I would suggest he talk more about that tribal impulse, and, as Joe Millar puts it, “keep his nets in the water” a little longer. Learn something. Teach something. Really change. Take us deeper into this prehistoric and historic tribal impulse that defines our species. Why is this narrator such a tribalist that his loyalties extend beyond nationalism? His companion in the poem admires the Black tennis player, why doesn’t the speaker?
Hoagland asks none of those questions. Instead, he relates that after watching the Serena avatar defeat the tough European blonde— after watching the humiliated “little, pink judge” place the medal around her neck…
everything had already changed—
Poof, remember? It was the twentieth century almost gone,
we were there,
and when we went to put it back where it belonged,
it was past us
and we were changed.
Ignoring the idea of putting “it back where it belonged”– which is yet another opening for an exploration— the truth is, we know that post-Serena and post-Obama, “we” indeed, are not changed. Racial issues persist at the forefront of American politics. Furthermore, if the assertion is the speaker is changed, the reader is likewise unconvinced. An astute reader knows such blatant tribalism runs too deep for a tennis match to fundamentally change it. That’s an absurd idea.
So the problem is not that the poem is racist. The problem is, although the piece graphically describes a racial issue, it does not dissect it. The work is a strange combination of brutally honest and facile, and, despite being honest, it is not true. If the point is insight, the poem fails.
Calling Hoagland and the poem racist and misogynistic, unfortunately, ends the conversation and does not permit greater understanding of craft as a form of well-considered, progressive concepts. It appears that Rankine was shocked by this poem partly because she did not previously perceive Hoagland or her workplace as racist, She was surprised at his defensive attitude because she was “so used to everyone reassuring everyone that everyone accepted everyone and race didn’t matter.” And, to the extent that anyone can be not-racist, I would assert that, most likely, Hoagland was not-racist— that he was sincerely attempting to say something important about race. However, craftsman that he was, why didn’t he work toward a peripeteia? Why didn’t he provide a true revelation?
If his detractors had raised that question, perhaps the conversation would have been more edifying and less divisive. Still, I can understand why African Americans would not feel a responsibility to school Tony about his insulting prosody. But as a White writer and an admirer of Hoagland, I’m saying the following: As difficult as it is, let’s speak our shameful truth. Like Hoagland, let’s speak it with clarity and power, but let’s not pretend that is enough.
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