Dwayne Betts is the Man...

My friend and fellow poet, Dwayne Betts, is having a very good year. So many wonderful things are happening with his work and I just wanted to post a few links in case you've been living under a rock and haven't heard any of the buzz:

• Dwayne in Essence: Essence Magazine highlights some of Dwayne's achievements by way of another wonderful writer, Abdul Ali.

• Dwayne on Tavis: Tavis Smiley was so impressed with Dwayne and his memoir that he invited him to be a guest on his radio show and on his television program. Watch the full television interview here.

• Dwayne in the Washington Post: Check the Post for Dwayne's story about being saved by literature and read a review of his book, A Question of Freedom.

• Dwayne as Poet Extraordinaire: Shahid Reads His Own Palm, Dwayne's first book of poetry is already award-winning and will be published by Alice James Books in 2010.

• Dwayne in the news: See what parts of Dwayne's story CNN has been tracking.

• Dwayne's space: Check out his personal website for reading dates, reviews and more ways to keep track of all his success.

If you haven't read Dwayne's memoir, do yourself a favor and get with the program. It's poignant, honest, and makes you re-evaluate how fortunate we are to be given second chances.

Sweet Suite...

This weekend, I spoke at length with poet Lamar Wilson about the way he's been moved by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers' third book, Red Clay Suite. Later, while deep in conversation about the past with another sweet, sweet man, I couldn't help hearing the echo of one of my favorite pieces from the book ringing in my ear:




Lexicon
for my mother


This is the end for you two, though he doesn’t see
it or that he’ll be dead in four years,
heart just stopping, but not this day

when he sits in the armchair
which sags under his will, reads a book.
You speak a simple word to him—

we are leaving for good this time—
but I lose what it is,
so quick to be gone.

Something to indicate that we won’t be coming back,
no last chances
like his assuming he can show up at the shelter

or drive further down south
to Grandma’s house to collect us.
Or, I get the moment wrong and he goes down

to the basement first, puts on a record
—Rachmaninoff, loud—
walks upstairs, and then he sits down,

opens up his book, ignores you,
stops, cocks his head in the fine, sensitive
way that I continue to adore, ignores you some more,

tries to find blues in that European music.
A paradox,
but that is my father, kind to strangers,

slapping one of us upside our heads
at home, searching for beauty
in everything except his family

or his own reflection,
not bothering to plead with you
like he has the other times,

I’m sorry, baby.
Don’t go. Please don’t go.
The way a man is supposed to in the best songs.

I want you to toss something hard at him.
I’m scared we will return.
I’m scared we won’t return.

I’m so angry with you and I haven’t yet learned
how much weaker than a girl a woman can be.
How silly I am to assume you are stronger than he.

How arrogant I am to assume you are not.
The point is that I live, you live,
whether my father’s music plays or doesn’t play,

and we are driving off in the truck,
Mama,
leaving him turning the pages of his book.

What is that word? Forget about it.
We leave him there.
We left.



--Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

The first thing that arrests me here is "the armchair/which sags under his will." This could just be a simple surface image, but since it is clear from the poem's first line that this is the end of a relationship, the final end of whatever was or could have come, the image is indicative of what has been the plight of this man's household. Everything here has been distorted, re-shaped, maybe even broken, "under his will."

Next, this idea of the missing word, some forgotten lexicon, is a subtle push throughout the poem. The speaker can't remember exactly what the final word was or how it was said, but none of this is of any importance. That small detail escapes but the fact is that, regardless of what was spoken, things were different this day in the familiar house. Much like the few words the mother spoke to ensure their leaving, they, too, would be "so quick to be gone" once she'd decided this was the end.

I can't help but imagine the missing lexicon is a piece of the puzzle that might explain the paradox of the man depicted here. He contradicts himself in the speaker's memories--at times he is silent and at other time he finds that pleading works best. Maybe he reads the mother the way he does the books that reappear in his hands. Maybe he plays her the same was he spins a record, dropping the needle gently then leaving it be.

The tone of this poem, especially the speaker's longing and regret coupled with fear and admiration, is its most compelling layer. This is the human way--fear a man and love him just the same; watch a woman leave, even get indignant, then beg her back as soon as you think she'll stay. The fact that the speaker loves her father and finds him beautiful even when he is being hurtful, when he "cocks his head in that fine, sensitive/way that I continue to adore, ignores you some more," is the inexplicable part of our selves. It's the accusation and condemnation of oneself just as it is the accusation and condemnation of the father for all his wrong doing. The mother here is condemned too for waiting so long, for being begged back again and again. This is the quiet, difficult work of the poet: to illuminate our simple, awful human beauty and ugliness too.

By the time we reach the poem's last stanza, the speaker still can't recall the word that got them where they are, "driving off in the truck...leaving him turning the pages of his book." But none of that matters. What does matter, however, is that they have broken free of him, despite this twisted love and hate, despite themselves.

Red Clay Suite is poignant, sharp and fierce, must like its author. "Lexicon" is only one gem among the many housed in the book. If you haven't read it, do yourself a favor and pick it up. It's tragic that there are no YouTube clips of Honorée reading, as she is one of the most brilliant and compelling forces I've ever seen on stage. If you're in the Kentucky area, don't miss her at the Kentucky Women Writers Conference next month. The whole line up, in fact, is incredible (you won't want to miss Affrilachian Empress Nikky Finney or Inaugural Poet Elizabeth Alexander, just to name a few).

When I'm trying to piece together the past, I'm always reaching for this kind of vividness and clarity. I think Lamar was right, poems like these help you write your own story. Poets like Honorée help make clear how complex we really are...

The Wondrous Work We Do...

REVISION re⋅vi⋅sion  
–noun
1. the act or work of revising.
2. a process of revising.
3. a revised form or version, as of a book.

Origin: 1605–15; <>revise ) + -iōn- -ion

Related forms:
re⋅vi⋅sion⋅al, re⋅vi⋅sion⋅ar⋅y, adjective

Synonyms:1. alteration, correction, emendation.

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.


Revision, or re-vision, to re-see something, to re-learn, to find another way to say or say it more clearly, clarification, clarity. This is the work that poets (all writers!) do. This has been my only work for the past few weeks. This morning, my work is finding the best word to suit a particular phrase in a line. One early search went like this:

• Find a word to replace "unravels" (because this word is used at a pivotal point in another poem in the manuscript and that annoys me tremendously, especially when there are so many other--perhaps more fitting--words to be used)
• Go to the Dictionary/Thesaurus
• Look up "unravel" and look up the noun it became an adjective/verb for in the poem
• Decide "unravels" works but there are other alternatives
• List other alternatives: unwind, loosen, untwine, untwist, shake loose, come undone, free, unfold, uncoil, unfurl, untie, slacken, lax, withy-cragged (okay, that one made the list just because it tickled me...)
• Narrow the list, then try each suitable alternative in the poem
• Read the poem aloud twice using each word
• Listen for assonance
• Listen for discordance
• Listen for rhythm and internal rhyme
• Listen for meaning
• Listen for meaning
• Read for meaning
• Listen for rhythm and meaning again
• Think about layering and denotative/connotative meanings of each word (i.e. "untwist" works because the noun literally untwists but it sounds playful and the line highlights a rough action taking place, therefore, "untwist" works sonically and denotatively but not connotatively, so it's out of the running to be the replacement word...)
• Work with the three words that make the cut (loosen, unwind, untwine)
• Shuffle the iPod (selections from Erykah Badu's Worldwide Underground have served me nicely thus far, now it's on to Fall Out Boy)
• Start the search process again using only the three words that made the cut

So clearly the revision process for one word, in one line that makes up one phrase, in one couplet of one poem, can take hours, days, weeks. This is the work we do. There is nothing lazy, haphazard or accidental about decent writing. Oh and did I mention all of this work is going into a poem that has already been published and that I considered "finished" nine months ago? This is the work we do: laborious, tedious, fierce, exacting, hard work. We hunt for clarity, every day, over and over again.

Here's the lesson: the next time you read a great article, stand in awe of a pristine poem or get your hands on a real page-turner, imagine how much hard work went into the piece,then do the author a solid and spread the word about its beauty.

Another Part of Me...

Can it be I stayed away too long?...Every impulse is an MJ song these days. It has been a long month with much excitement and travel, but it all comes back to what's now missing. I was on staff at Cave Canem when we got the news of Michael's passing and, though I missed being home with my parents--the folks who bought me all three of my Michael Jackson dolls, my red walkman, and my multiple Thriller tapes--there was no other place I would have wanted to be. The hardcore crew loaded up in cars and found a bar with CNN and some serious karaoke and sang ourselves into the night. When it was time to head back (since people still had those Off the Wall-inspired poems to write...), we lit up the campus with music and danced (and wrote!) until dawn.

To be among artists when a great artist is lost is truly a gift. No one questions why this work was invaluable and how it shifted lives because they are already assured that this is what art does, what it's meant to do. Music was my first art. My family says there is a reel-to-reel lost in someone's attic that has a clip of me singing Diana Ross' eulogy to Marvin Gaye and others with such feeling and anguish that no one would believe I was only three years old when the song was captured. And while I've always been 'struck' by certain music in a way I could never articulate, there are a few artists--Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, maybe one or two others--who, over the years, became the soundtrack to my life. It sounds strange to think of it that way, but there's no other way to explain it. I can pinpoint every moment of my life by their voices, their changes in style and movement, their lyrics, their harmony, their melodies. Every moment of my life has been punctuated by their work. And, as an artist, the loss of this kind of legacy, affects me so deeply. It's like losing someone who traveled with me every day of my life.

I'm always impressed by artists who live and breathe their work. This is not my life. If it were, I'd probably be a better artist or practicing another kind of art. But I am in awe of those who go unchallenged as some of the greatest artists who ever came to be. The video below shows Michael as that kind of consummate showman. He knew how to work a stage and whip a room into a frenzy. He perfected his art. He loved it, and how it moved us:





In the months to come, just like in all the years passed, we'll hear countless reports about money and drugs and all of MJ's humanness, what we won't hear enough about is his boundless charity and empathy, his 10,000 book library and his love for poetry. Friends say he was reading Tagore just before he passed and that he relished in Emerson. Emerson's words serve as a fitting eulogy the man who gave every bit of himself to art, to love:


Give All to Love

Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good-frame,
Plans, credit and the Muse,—
Nothing refuse.

’T is a brave master;
Let it have scope:
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope:
High and more high
It dives into noon,
With wing unspent,
Untold intent:
But it is a god,
Knows its own path
And the outlets of the sky.

It was never for the mean;
It requireth courage stout.
Souls above doubt,
Valor unbending,
It will reward,—
They shall return
More than they were,
And ever ascending.

Leave all for love;
Yet, hear me, yet,
One word more thy heart behoved,
One pulse more of firm endeavor,—
Keep thee to-day,
To-morrow, forever,
Free as an Arab
Of thy beloved.

Cling with life to the maid;
But when the surprise,
First vague shadow of surmise
Flits across her bosom young,
Of a joy apart from thee,
Free be she, fancy-free;
Nor thou detain her vesture’s hem,
Nor the palest rose she flung
From her summer diadem.

Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Though her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive;
Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Good Poets in Hampton on Thursday, 6/4

Hampton Public Library has a great program called Writers On Writing On Thursdays and this week Toni Wynn and Indigo Moor will share the venue.

Toni's a VA rider by way of Jersey and Indigo is coming all the way from the west coast to take part.

If not for Toni's promise of a little get together after, come out to hear some fantastic poetry. Here are the particulars:

WHO: Toni Wynn and Indigo Moor

WHAT: Writers On Writing on Thursdays, Poetry Reading

WHEN: Thursday, June 4 at 6:30 PM

WHERE: Hampton Public Library -- Main Branch, 4207 Victoria Blvd.

Hampton, VA, 23669 Phone: 757/727-1154

And just to whet your appetite, here's a poem from Toni that would please most mommas, mathematicians and phrenologists alike:

from Cornrow Calculations

If I see your hands flying though my child’s hair

and I’m holding your baby and the telephone

is silent and the television is not on,

can we talk about what you’re doing? It starts

out regular, then whoops, turns science fiction—

the range of your skills is fantastic. The geography

of the head—you the cartographer

negotiating roads through these thickets.

We get to art (go ahead and smile),

which is where you were coming from anyway.

Then uh oh,

you’re at math, using an ancient matrix

and twenty-first century knowledge to make bank.

I pay you well because you know how it’s done

in formulas/soulscape/exchange,

living for living.

A power move putting braids in hair. A path to beauty.

Using the tools, the braider with sweet breath

and some laughter crowns a new queen.

Power glimmers, glides into vision

for seeing more, seeing deeper. We know

the promise of infinity

and you are the Plus One.

--Toni Wynn

Living/Writing for the Summer/Weekend

The long weekend and the unofficial beginning of summer is nearly upon us and the that means a little more free time to read, write and listen to my heart's content. I've been digging into some good books lately, namely Craig Werner's Higher Ground and Philip Schultz's Failure.

Higher Ground (a quick nod to one of Stevie's classics) is a book of connected critical essays about the rise and fall of American soul music. Werner highlights three of the all-time greats: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin and Curtis Mayfield. I bought the book while I was at the Stax Museum in Memphis and couldn't put it down. Nothing like some brilliant and passionate non-fiction to make you re-think what you love about art and its message. If you think you know anything about these artists and their impact, and especially if you think you don't, you should absolutely run out and get this book.

Failure won Philip Schultz the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and it contains some of the clearest and most unaffected language I've seen out of the Pulitzer camp in years. Even clearer than Stephen Dunn, and I firmly believe Different Hours is a book the masses should be forced to read. There are some outstanding poems in Failure (two of my favs are "Husband" and "Kodak Park Athletic Association, 1954") but I did take issue with some of the characterization/dialect in "The Wandering Wingless" poem which makes up half of the book. Schultz excels beyond belief when recounting his own experiences, highlighting familiar failures, poverty and all it's havoc. But, despite the fact that there are numerous similarities in his upbringing and the circumstances of black men that he finds himself working with later in life, he creates caricatures of his workmates instead of fleshing them out the way he does all others in the book, even the animals he's come to love. It's a sad shift and especially disappointing because Schultz clearly possesses the skill and depth to paint meaningful, round, full-bodied portraits and, apparently, chooses not to do so in some cases.


Not really in any order, here are a few miscellaneous asides for the long weekend:

• Marilyn Hacker does a beautiful job of expounding on three of poetry's greats: Gwendolyn Brooks, H.D., and Muriel Rukeyser.

• Speaking of Rukeyser, isn't The Life of Poetry a classic??? I wonder why isn't it being used in more classrooms?

• I can't stop spinning Chrisette Michele's newest. Here's the video for the lead single:

• The guy making a cameo in the video might look familiar, but the real surprise is his flow. Is anyone else fascinated that this is the same person? That's what I get for watching TeenNick and listening to college radio stations...

And a poem for the road...Denise Duhamel is a beast on the page. I try to emulate her versatility and improvisation with form all the time. More often than not, I fail miserably, but she continues to surprise me with her take on various forms. Maybe I'll put her on deck for the weekend. Some good beach reading indeed! Here's her twisted sestina as a parting gift:


Delta Flight 659

—to Sean Penn

I'm writing this on a plane, Sean Penn,
with my black Pilot Razor ballpoint pen.
Ever since 9/11, I'm a nervous flyer. I leave my Pentium
Processor in Florida so TSA can't x-ray my stanzas, penetrate
my persona. Maybe this should be in iambic pentameter,
rather than this mock sestina, each line ending in a Penn

variant. I convinced myself the ticket to Baghdad was too expensive.
I contemplated going as a human shield. I read, in open-
mouthed shock, that your trip there was a $56,000 expenditure.
Is that true? I watched you on Larry King Live—his suspenders
and tie, your open collar. You saw the war's impending
mess. My husband gambled on my penumbra

of doubt. So you station yourself at a food silo in Iraq. What happens
to me if you get blown up? He begged me to stay home, be his Penelope.
I sit alone in coach, but last night I sat with four poets, depending
on one another as readers, in a Pittsburgh café. I tried to be your pen
pal in 1987, not because of your pensive
bad boy looks, but because of a poem you'd penned

that appeared in an issue of Frank. I still see the poet in you, Sean Penn.
You probably think fans like me are your penance
for your popularity, your star bulging into a pentagon
filled with witchy wanna-bes and penniless
poets who waddle toward your icy peninsula
of glamour like so many menacing penguins.

But honest, I come in peace, Sean Penn,
writing on my plane ride home. I want no part of your penthouse
or the snowy slopes of your Aspen.
I won't stalk you like the swirling grime cloud over Pig Pen.
I have no script or stupendous
novel I want you to option. I even like your wife, Robin Wright Penn.

I only want to keep myself busy on this flight, to tell you of four penny-
loafered poets in Pennsylvania
who, last night, chomping on primavera penne
pasta, pondered poetry, celebrity, Iraq, the penitentiary
of free speech. And how I reminded everyone that Sean Penn
once wrote a poem. I peer out the window, caress my lucky pendant:

Look, Sean Penn, the clouds are drawn with charcoal pencils.
The sky is opening like a child's first stab at penmanship.
The sun begins to ripen orange, then deepen.

--Denise Duhamel

Linking/Thinking...

The semester is (finally) coming to a close and I barely have time to breathe, but there are a few interesting things floating around that I wanted to spread the word about. The image above is the logo for this year's, almost lost Calabash Festival. It's the first link on my list:

• Calabash is back on and it you have any sense at all you will head down to Jamaica Memorial Day weekend to take part in a few days of love, literature and leisure. The man himself, Kwame Dawes, is one of the co-founders of the fest.

• Toure thinks Colson Whitehead is post-black. Everyone else seems to unsure of what post-black (as art? as social construct? as ideology? as political statement?) could actually, possibly mean...

• On to more solid news, Maxwell is really coming back this time! The proof is here and here and here. What a lovely summer :-)

• And back to reality, I don't know about you, but I've been having ongoing discussions with my colleagues about the sense of entitlement my students seem to have these days. Clearly--and sadly--we aren't the only ones thinking about this.

• Love Lucille Clifton? If you don't, you should. If you want more information about why she is one of our most celebrated and revered poets, I hear the Furious Flower Poetry Center at JMU still has a few open slots for their week-long seminar on Ms. Lucille that will be held in June. If you can go, do yourself a favor and be present. I know Ms. Lucille sure will be!

Here's one of Lucille Clifton's newest poems, from the Poets.org poem-a-day list, to wet your appetite:

sorrows

who would believe them winged
who would believe they could be

beautiful who would believe
they could fall so in love with mortals

that they would attach themselves
as scars attach and ride the skin

sometimes we hear them in our dreams
rattling their skulls clicking

their bony fingers
they have heard me beseeching

as i whispered into my own
cupped hands enough not me again

but who can distinguish
one human voice
amid such choruses
of desire

--Lucille Clifton