Tayari's Blog: EVER WONDER WHY POETS WEAR BLACK?

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Matt said. This after I told him I’d be flying to Maine (after two nights in Baltimore and a night in DC) with only carry-on. “I’ll go ahead and pick you up with the station wagon,” he said. “In case you show up with even half the stuff you usually haul up here.”

Normally, when I visit Maine I bring a whole bag, a large bag, in which I stow 15 or 20 of my favorite pairs of shoes, and another bag in which to haul a wide variety of coats and jackets. I bring a couple pair of jeans, a party dress, several skirts, some pants, t-shirts, nice shirts, casual dresses, a few different sweaters. I’ve never stayed with Matt more than three days at a time, but always before I’ve been traveling in a way that allows me to bring a substantial representation of my wardrobe.

But this time I’m on book tour.

The book tour has me hitching rides into, out of, and around any number of mildly familiar towns; taking one-way flights to airports as notoriously difficult as Logan; renting cars in one city and depositing them in another; spending a single night in one strange state and flying to a different region at 6 the next morning. The book tour requires much lugging of luggage and offers every imaginable opportunity for that luggage to be lost. The book tour demands I travel light.

The book is called WHAT TO EAT, WHAT TO DRINK, WHAT TO LEAVE FOR POISON. Touring with the book, as I have been for a month now, I have learned a thing or two about what to pack, what to wear, what to leave behind. I wear my black boots, black velvet jeans, and red sweater when I travel, and I pack one pair of black suit pants, one black skirt and a few space-friendly tops (most of which contain some amount of the color black).

You thought poets wore black in pursuit of some sort of mystical allure? Poets on book tour wear black because it goes with everything and therefore we can run up to our hotel room after a day of student conferences, revive ourselves with pick-me-up spray and a glass of Emer’gen-C, throw on just about any top/bottom combination, and head back out for dinner and our reading. We wear black because it shows fewer stains and rather than worry about whether the butter sauce we’ve spilled is noticeable, we can worry about whether the mussels we’ve eaten will make us sick while we’re on stage. We wear black because it makes us feel reasonably slim even when we can’t go running for a week because our running shoes take up too much space in a carry-on that must also accommodate several copies of, say, WHAT TO EAT, WHAT TO DRINK, WHAT TO LEAVE FOR POISON, and so we’ve had to leave the running shoes at home. We wear black because it helps us travel light.

Of course, when I go to Maine I’ll be wearing brown. I’ll only be home from one 8-day trip (Charlottesville, Boston, Wilmington, NC, and Greensboro, NC) for 36 hours before I start another round of readings, and I won’t have time to dry clean my black pants or my red sweater. That means the brown boots, a brown dress, a tan skirt, and a different set of highly-interchangeable tops. The running shoes still won’t fit, nor will the tan-and-red shoes I so adore, nor the brown hounds-tooth heels I bought specifically for that little brown dress, nor the vintage pumps that go so well with that skirt and the persnickety top I love so much but will have to leave at home as well.

Despite my old friend’s doubts, I will arrive in Maine for my Bowdoin College/From the Fishouse reading series event pulling behind me only carry-on. The small, black bag will hold just those few clothes I have allowed myself, and I will be wearing the only pair of shoes I’ll wear all week. I’ll wear my green sweater on the plane, and my one pair of comfortable pants. I’ll be wearing my long, black felt, Anna Karenina coat. It keeps me very warm, goes with everything, and has thus become my book tour coat. I am sad that a whole winter will go by without my having had the opportunity to sport my red plaid jacket, my royal blue swing coat, my tan-and-grey trench, my purple vinyl blaxploitation wonder, or the wool coat with the real fur muffs and collar, but I’m on a book tour. I’ve gotta travel light.