Walking Down Park

In “Walking Down Park,” the speaker invites the reader to imagine a different America, one where Indigenous- and African-descended people evolved without the interference of colonizers. The speaker presents a greener picture, one where people are freer, happier, in harmony with nature, and able to openly love themselves and one another. The poem both directs the reader’s attention to what has gone “wrong” in society and what people can and need to do to make it “right.” It begins asking the important questions and imagining a better world.

The poem opens with a direct address. Presumably, the speaker is speaking to African American readers specifically, though she does not say it. Using the second person, she encompasses a general audience, meaning any and all humans across time, saying,

do you ever stop

to think what it looked like

before it was an avenue

did you ever stop to think

what you walked   

before you rode   

subways to the stock (Lines 3-9).

With these lines, the speaker sets up her premise. She invites the reader to think about life before subways and roads. When she notes that “we are the stock / exchanged” (Lines 12-13), she is talking to African Americans who once were exchanged like livestock in New York and elsewhere. This acknowledgment makes “Walking Down Park” a poem that is critical of America’s history of violence and exploitation of non-Europeans. This critique indicates why it is important to imagine another reality, and why it’s important to remind readers there was a time before Europeans and their descendants dominated the American landscape.

In Lines 14-18, the poem again critiques the effects of colonization. These critiques include the previously wide and wild landscape that colonization made smaller. Condemnation continues in the next lines with “syphilitic dogs” (Line 19) and their “two-legged tubercular / masters” (Lines 20-21) who “fertilize / the corners and side-walks” (Lines 21-22) of New York. This language shows how people have tried to become masters over nature, making both nature and themselves more sick. The term “master” also recalls the term enslaved people were forced to call their white enslavers.

After presenting this critical picture of a modern world made sick by domination, the speaker quickly shifts to asking the reader how they’d feel if a loved one fulfilled the reader by returning their love. The next stanza continues to present a positive image of an imagined New York but takes idealism one step further. When the speaker asks, “ever look south” (Line 28), she alludes to southern states, where Black people faced enslavement. The “look south” (Line 28) connotes looking back at a painful history, yet Giovanni’s speaker asks readers not if they see their past but rather if they can imagine a harmonious, natural world (Lines 28-36). These lines present an imaginative alternative to the present. Whereas the previous stanzas envisioned a realistic past, this stanza poses what some might think impossible. Animals living in buildings, having as much authority and respect as people, and prey playing with predators. It is a utopian world in which plants, animals, and people are safe and free.

In the next stanza, the speaker declares, “it’s so easy to be free / you start by loving yourself / then those who look like you” (Lines 40-42). There is a slight irony in these lines. Though it may sound easy, many are challenged to love themselves. African Americans have historically been denigrated by people in authority or denied representation by advertisers and those who sell beauty products. So, to love “those who look like you” (Line 42) may present many readers some difficulty.

The speaker alludes to the degradation of non-European people in the next stanza, suggesting that the value of Indigenous people and the land they lived on have been covered up. The memory of those people and their example of how to live with the land was intentionally erased by colonizers and city-builders, so people “would forget” (Line 48) their importance. The act of remembering is therefore an act of resistance and revolution, and it can point the reader in a new direction.

In Lines 52-56, the speaker invites readers to think about a different version of Harlem, one where African Americans celebrate their culture and incorporate the natural world into their lives. The natural world would parrot the belief that “black is beautiful” (Line 56)—a phrase popularized in the 1970s by the Black Power Movement. In this alternate Harlem, the speaker presents a world that is bountiful, full of fruit and trees. People have the time and inclination to make love and “just [sit] in the sun” (Line 58). Their only problem is “trying / to find a way to get a banana tree from one of the monkeys” (Lines 58-59), but this effort would still be listless, suggesting no real need for hurry, anxiety, or struggle.

The last question, in which the speaker asks if its ever possible for African Americans to be happy, moves from the external, which is quite fantastical at this point, to a more abstract but relevant question. Though the image of a Harlem where antelope bark from apartment buildings may not be realistic, the question about happiness is relevant. By paralleling these ideas, Giovanni suggests that the thought of happy African Americans seems farfetched, yet the poem encourages the reader to imagine it anyway. Through remembering a time when people had a free landscape, when Indigenous people could “caress / the earth” (Lines 50-51), and through reminding African Americans specifically that they came from a continent with herbs, plants, parrots, beautiful animals, and fruit trees growing in the sun, the speaker suggests that there was a time when people were happy. Remembrance of this past encourages the reader to believe in a future where they will be happy again.