Counting Descent

“Counting Descent” is a narrative poem driven by collective memory and commentary. The speaker tells the story from his own perspective, bringing in other voices to add commentary where he can’t. Much of the story happened before he was born, so he uses a combination of other people’s accounts of the past with his own observations. Take his grandparents’ marriage, for example. They were “four years younger than I am now / & were twice as sure about each other / as I’ve ever been about most things” (Lines 6-8). He emphasizes the fact that they were young when they got married by comparing their ages at the time to his present age. He also comments on their certainty by noting how rare it is that he’s so certain about anything in his own life. That level of certainty is rare and special to the speaker, and it conveys his respect for their relationship.

The speaker also quotes other people’s versions of the story, inviting them into the conversation and giving them co-authorship of the story. His grandmother only took one day off of work to give birth to his mother. According to her, this was enough: she “said” herself that “the Good // Lord only got one day off when He built / the world, so one day is all she needed too” (Lines 20-21). By quoting his grandmother here, the speaker gives his grandmother ownership over this part of the story. When the speaker was born, he had a big head. He quotes his mother here. She “said that my / head was big because I needed enough / room to read all the books in the library” (Lines 33-35). Although the speaker was present for this moment, he was just a baby—too young to have any good storytelling observations. His mother’s comment adds color to the simple fact that he had a large head.

The speaker in “Counting Descent” is a young person coming of age in today’s America. He never explicitly states the current year or even the country his family is from, but there is evidence throughout the poem that situates his family in space and time. His grandmother and grandfather moved their family across “one Mason-Dixon line” (Line 10), confirming the location as the United States. His grandfather is “a quarter century / older than his right to vote” (Lines 1-2), so he must have been a Black man born in the United States around 1940. The speaker becomes concerned with the idea of breath in the last three stanzas of the poem: his breath, the breath that was stolen from other boys, and whether or not there’s enough breath for all of them. A reader encountering this poem in its original 2015 publication would immediately connect this subtle language to the public conversation about systemic violence against Black people—specifically the recent killing of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and Eric Garner, and the burgeoning Black Lives Matter movement.

The word “descent” in the title can be read a few different ways, depending on the reader’s interpretation. The title is the first thing that a reader encounters in a poem, so their understanding of the words in the title can have an enormous impact on how they read the poem as a whole. Merriam-Webster’s first listed definition for descent is “a derivation from an ancestor,” with synonyms such as “birth” and “lineage” (“Descent Definition & Meaning.” Merriam-Webster). This use of the word emphasizes the ancestral aspect of the poem. Coupled with the first two words of the poem (“My grandfather” [Line 1]), the reader with this interpretation can predict that the speaker will move down the family tree to his parents and eventually himself.

Another definition for descent is “the shaping or development in nature and character by transmission from a source” (“Descent.” Merriam-Webster). This reading emphasizes the speaker’s inheritance from previous generations. Using this interpretation, the reader would understand all the characteristics of the speaker’s relatives as facets of the speaker’s own identity. Finally, the word descent can mean “an inclination downward” or a “slope” (“Descent.” Merriam-Webster). This carries the foreboding implication that the speaker is counting down and will eventually reach the number zero. The speaker looks to the uncertain future at the end of the poem, fearing the prospect of dying prematurely like too many other Black boys his age. This reading emphasizes the speaker’s anxiety in this moment that the family history will end with him.