I have told the following story many, many times but never written it down. And this writing follows a circuitous path involving two poets celebrated in the Video below: Ada Limon and Major Jackson. The Video shows two of their more recent work. There was no video of the classic traffic stop story I’m about to tell.
Ada Limon’s Startlement: New and Selected Poems was published in 2025. Major Jackson’s A Bowl of Goodness: Nourishing Poems with a Side of Soup, an anthology of poems and soup recipes, came out in October 2026.
The circuitous path to this writing begins at our downtown bookstore, Yellow Bird Books in Aurora, Illinois. I’m there to buy a couple of books for a baby’s second birthday. They’re out of Where the Wild Things Are, which is what I really wanted, but I buy two other classics instead. “Anything for yourself?” asks the store owner. “No.” “Well, you’re not treating yourself very well, then!” So I say I was kind of looking for a book of poems by Ada Limon, especially if it included a line that had been in my mind for months: “I cannot tell anymore when a door opens or closes, / I can only hear the frame saying, Walk through.” I hadn’t seen a book by her, and didn’t remember what poem the line was in. But the owner walks over to the poetry section and returns with Limon’s Startlement: New and Selected Poems, which I page through quickly, finding the line in the title poem to her book Sharks in the Rivers. It was an easy sale.
The book’s cover also carries the information that Ada Limon was the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States, which I hadn’t known, and digging a little deeper I found that when she took on that role she gave up hosting the podcast The Slowdown, a short, daily broadcast in which a poem is read and reflected upon. I’d never heard of that show either. She hosted 1,091 episodes before handing the show over to Major Jackson, who hosted the next 443. Today Major Jackson holds the Gertrude Conway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University, and is professor English and Creative Writing. Ada Limon is not in the story I’m about to tell. Major Jackson is.
I wish I could remember the exact year, but I know that in the late-90’s / early 2000’s Major Jackson came to Naperville, Illinois, for a job interview at North Central College, where I had taught since the late 1970’s. I remember telling the policeman who stopped us that he was a professor from Tulane University interviewing for a job at North Central.
He had arrived later in the day, and after a group of us had dinner with him, I asked if he wanted to take a quick tour of the city. “Are you crazy? This late?” said my wife Linda. “It’ll be ok,” I blithely said but was soon to be corrected. I’m Filipino, Major Jackson is Black, my wife is white and was sitting in the backseat of our car. The policeman followed us for a several blocks and finally stopped us because late in the evening, turning slowly out of a completely empty parking lot into a street completely empty except for us and the police car, I had failed to use my turn signal. “You tell him who you are and what you’re doing!” Linda—who is often more sensitive to race issues than I am—almost hissed under her breath. I waved back over my shoulder, trying to calm her down, having been in such situations enough to begin pulling out my ultra nice, safe voice. “I’m Richard Guzman, a professor at North Central College, and this is Major Jackson, who’s here for a job interview. I was just doing a quick tour of the city’s downtown.” “Well, welcome!” the policeman said. “How do you like it?” To which Major Jackson just replied, “Well, it’s dark.”
The policeman disappeared inside his squad car for 10—15—20 minutes, maybe more, and when he came back said, “Who’s car is this anyway?” It was actually Linda’s car, registered to her name. Exasperated, I almost said—Hey, you can check my license and her license and see we live at the same address. But I didn’t. After disappearing for another 5 minutes or so, the officer came back and sent us on our way.
So the next day I said, “That thing with the police isn’t going to sway you too much away from us, is it?” “No,” Major Jackson said. “It wasn’t as bad as the last time I was stopped. My girlfriend is also white, and a brother and I were in the front, and we got stopped for nothing at all. And the policeman didn’t even bother with us. He just went to the back window and knocked on it, shouting “Are you ok? Are you ok?”
The Video below has nothing to do with all this. We move beyond it. Always. But things just stick. Always.
Poetry and the Police
I have told the following story many, many times but never written it down. And this writing follows a circuitous path involving two poets celebrated in the Video below: Ada Limon and Major Jackson. The Video shows two of their more recent work. There was no video of the classic traffic stop story I’m about to tell.
Ada Limon’s Startlement: New and Selected Poems was published in 2025. Major Jackson’s A Bowl of Goodness: Nourishing Poems with a Side of Soup, an anthology of poems and soup recipes, came out in October 2026.
The circuitous path to this writing begins at our downtown bookstore, Yellow Bird Books in Aurora, Illinois. I’m there to buy a couple of books for a baby’s second birthday. They’re out of Where the Wild Things Are, which is what I really wanted, but I buy two other classics instead. “Anything for yourself?” asks the store owner. “No.” “Well, you’re not treating yourself very well, then!” So I say I was kind of looking for a book of poems by Ada Limon, especially if it included a line that had been in my mind for months: “I cannot tell anymore when a door opens or closes, / I can only hear the frame saying, Walk through.” I hadn’t seen a book by her, and didn’t remember what poem the line was in. But the owner walks over to the poetry section and returns with Limon’s Startlement: New and Selected Poems, which I page through quickly, finding the line in the title poem to her book Sharks in the Rivers. It was an easy sale.
The book’s cover also carries the information that Ada Limon was the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States, which I hadn’t known, and digging a little deeper I found that when she took on that role she gave up hosting the podcast The Slowdown, a short, daily broadcast in which a poem is read and reflected upon. I’d never heard of that show either. She hosted 1,091 episodes before handing the show over to Major Jackson, who hosted the next 443. Today Major Jackson holds the Gertrude Conway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University, and is professor English and Creative Writing. Ada Limon is not in the story I’m about to tell. Major Jackson is.
I wish I could remember the exact year, but I know that in the late-90’s / early 2000’s Major Jackson came to Naperville, Illinois, for a job interview at North Central College, where I had taught since the late 1970’s. I remember telling the policeman who stopped us that he was a professor from Tulane University interviewing for a job at North Central.
The policeman disappeared inside his squad car for 10—15—20 minutes, maybe more, and when he came back said, “Who’s car is this anyway?” It was actually Linda’s car, registered to her name. Exasperated, I almost said—Hey, you can check my license and her license and see we live at the same address. But I didn’t. After disappearing for another 5 minutes or so, the officer came back and sent us on our way.
So the next day I said, “That thing with the police isn’t going to sway you too much away from us, is it?” “No,” Major Jackson said. “It wasn’t as bad as the last time I was stopped. My girlfriend is also white, and a brother and I were in the front, and we got stopped for nothing at all. And the policeman didn’t even bother with us. He just went to the back window and knocked on it, shouting “Are you ok? Are you ok?”
The Video below has nothing to do with all this. We move beyond it. Always. But things just stick. Always.