Remica L. Bingham Blog

What's the word???

2011-02-11T09:39:00.000-08:00

Thanks to lover of poetry and poet Rafael Alvarado, I did a blog talk radio interview yesterday about Conversion and my writing process. Billy Burgos was a great host and I answered a few questions I've never been asked before. Click here to listen to the full interview and let me know what you think!

All Kinds of Good...

2011-02-01T06:43:00.000-08:00

This is a busy, busy time! There is so much going on that I thought I'd add a few links here to keep folks abreast of some of the excitement:

I just love the book t-shirts (Harper Lee might wear the one above) that fierce poet Nicole Sealey hipped me to. Check out the other styles here.

All the writers are gearing up for the annual AWP Conference this week and the line up is bananas! Hopefully I will be able to contain one of my Road Dawgs (who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty) when this featured Pulitzer Prize winner steps up to the mike in Chocolate City.

I'm especially fond of AWP these days because they took such care with the interview I conducted with the incomparable Lucille Clifton. It is the cover story of the current issue of the Writer's Chronicle (pictured below) and the article contains a wonderful selection of Ms. Lucille's poems as well.

Two of my favorite writers have books that hit the shelves recently. One is a posthumous collection from Ai entitled No Surrender and the other is from Afffrilachian poet Nikky Finney entitled Head Off & Split. To make matters better, Finney is promoting her new work the 21st Century way.
To kick off Black History Month (and send up more 'celebration' for Ms. Lucille), another poet is putting Youtube to use as well. Don't miss a day of Ayodele Heath's performance project 28 Days of Poetry: Poets Make Black History.

I taught one of Doug Kearney's books in my Craft of Poetry class last year because he is innovative, brilliant and insane...but mostly brilliant. Check out his commentary here at the Poetry Foundation Blog.

A few years ago, when I had a poem published in Essence, a poet and friend Jarvis Deberry wrote me a note that said, "The only thing better would be the JET!" Now, I don't have a poem in the most recent issue of JET magazine (pictured below), but Nikki Giovanni did mention me by name in her article about the importance of black poetry! My Nana is going to be so proud...especially after I send her 10 copies of the issue :-) Make sure you pick it up too!

Pre-Order this Book! Demetrice Worley's "Tongues in My Mouth"

2011-01-05T06:31:00.000-08:00

I was working on another post when I got the news that a fierce poet and good friend, Demetrice Worley, may have a delay in the release of her debut book, Tongues in My Mouth. Do yourself a favor in the New Year and pre-order a copy today! Check out the details from the poetess herself:

My book publisher has informed me that because of slow advance orders for my poetry book, he will be forced to move back the publication date for my book by several months UNLESS advance orders are received within the first two weeks of January 2011.
Advance copies of Tongues in My Mouth are only $9 (+2.50 for shipping and handling), and you can order them on-line at the Main Street Rag Bookstore's Coming Soon page.
According to Nikki Giovanni, national and international poet, “What an opus Demetrice Anntía Worley has created with Tongues in My Mouth. The stark and beautiful truths she explores are ones we ought to know and begin to view. This book needs to be on every desk. Thank you Demetrice Anntía Worley, for your insight. For your bravery. For your soul stirring. Tongues in My Mouth is an important book.”

More detailed information about my book is available on my Tongues in My Mouth blog and ont my Main Street Rag Author's Page.
Without your support, I will not be able to do three book readings in March and April 2011 and the wonderful book launch party I am planning will not occur.

Please order your advance copy today and send me a message letting me know you placed your order. When I receive your message I will send you a Tongues in My Mouth 2011 Calendar. In addition, I will have solid advance book order numbers to show my publisher the interest in my poetry.
If you have already ordered a copy, please send me a message and I will send you the Tongues in My Mouth 2011 Calendar, and I will add your order to the number of advance orders placed.

Please share this information with any of your friends that you think might be interested in buying my book.
Thank you in advance for your support.
Yours in Poetry and Peace,
Demetrice Anntia Worley

Art After 5 at Peninsula Fine Arts Center on Thursday, 11/18 @ 5:30 PM

2010-11-15T07:05:00.000-08:00

From www.remicalbingham.blogspot.com

Hey Hampton Roads, we're bringing the poetry across the water! The PFAC in Newport News is hosting a wonderful art after hours series this season and is featuring the words of four area poets: Shonda Buchanan, Luisa Igloria, Toni Wynn and me. We'd love to see you there! Details are below:

WHAT: PFAC has a special Poetry Night component of Peninsula Fine Arts Center’s Art After 5 this week. Noted poet and author Toni Wynn has organized some tremendous talent to read for us: Shonda Buchanan, Remica L. Bingham, and Luisa Igloria. Come out for some fine poetry, hear great music by Gina Dalmas and the Cow Tippin’ Playboys, enjoy wonderful food by Blackdog Catering, witness artist Brian Murphy at work, see lots of great art, meet new friends, and be part of the Peninsula’s most happening scene!Third Thursdays are free for Art After 5--a live music, poetry, and art happening with refreshments.

WHEN: Thursday, Nov. 18 from 5:30 - 7:30 PM

WHERE: Peninsula Fine Arts Center 101 Museum Drive Newport News, Virginia, 23606 757-596-8175

Novel Nights Program at Chesapeake Public Library on Friday, 11/12 @ 6:00 PM

2010-11-11T09:20:00.001-08:00

From www.remicalbingham.blogspot.com

WHAT: In the tradition of the great intellectual salon experiences, wander the library sampling gourmet delights from Chef Donnie Franklin, talk literature with a variety of writers and poets, and listen to the sounds of Virginia with musician Bill Gurley.

**Share the passion of celebrated New York Times Bestselling Author Mary Alice Monroe as she tells about writing Southern novels highlighting coastal living, fly fishing, love, and family.

**Thrill to USA Best Selling Author David Poyer, as he vividly captures the excitement and drama of the Civil War, military history, and espionage.

**Engage with local authors and poets Kwame Alexander, Christy Barritt, Remica Bingham, Tinesha Davis, Booker T. Mattison, Raymond Harper, Judi McCoy and Jon Pineda as they exchange their thoughts on the joys and challenges of the writing life.

The gala evening event is co-sponsored by the Friends of the Chesapeake Public Library and the Chesapeake Public Library Foundation to benefit the Library and celebrate the power of the pen and the creative imagination. Tickets can be purchased in advance at any Chesapeake Library branch for $20.00, which includes the buffet and refreshments, or $25.00 at the door. Block tickets for groups of six or more are available for $15.00 each. For more information and a complete list of the authors visit the library webpage at http://www.infopeake.org/ or call the Library at 757.410.7105.

WHEN: Friday, 11/2, starting at 6:00 PM

WHERE: 298 Cedar Road, Chesapeake, VA

I finally have another reading in Hampton Roads (thanks to Kwame Alexander, writer and organizer extraordinaire) and this time I get to talk about love and loss with fabulous Tidewater poet, Jon Pineda. You get lots of bang for your buck at this one and it will benefit our local libraries. Fun, food, words galore, what more could you ask for! There will be a reception where authors and readers can mingle before the program begins and here's the schedule for the night:

7:30 – 8:15: The Drama Unfolds: Local Novelists Talk about their Writing Lives

Booker T. Mattison
Debbiann Holmes
Tinesha Davis

7:30 – 8:15: Who Did It? Reading by Local Mystery Novelists

Christy Barritt

Judi McCoy

800 – 8:30: Storytime: ReadingKwame Alexander, author of Indigo Blume and The Garden City, And Then You Know: New & Selected Poems

8:30 – 9:15: Poets and Writers on Love, Loss, and Literature

Jon Pineda
Remica Bingham

8:30 – 9:15: The Rest is History: A Talk with Writers

David Poyer
Raymond Harper

It should be a wonderful night. I hope to see all the local word-lovers there!

Reading in NY on Thursday, 10/21 @ 7:00 PM

2010-10-19T10:00:00.001-07:00

WHO: Indigo Moor, Joanne McFarland and Remica Bingham

WHAT: Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize Reading

WHEN: Thursday, October 21 · 7:00pm - 8:30pm

WHERE: New York University Lillian Vernon House, 58 West 10th Street
New York, NY

WHY: Because Cave Canem and Northwestern University Press joined forces to create a much needed second book prize for African American authors. In 2009, my second book, What We Ask of Flesh, was a finalist for the prize.

So come one, come all! I hope to see the NY folks for the reading and the after gathering, too :-)

Oh! and I've been told I better not hit NYC without taking in a performance of Fela! (guest staring THE Patti LaBelle), so if you can't make the reading but still want to hang out, you can catch me dancing in the aisles to this:

What we should be teaching our children...

2010-08-19T05:43:00.000-07:00

From www.remicalbingham.blogspot.com

Now, to be fair, I must admit that I am not the biggest fan of Billy Collins' work, but I am a fan of teaching our children the wonder of words right from their start. Obviously, this three-year-old boy's parents feel the same way:

And here is the poem as you'd encounter it on the page:

Litany

You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine...
-Jacques Crickillon

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine.

--Billy Collins

Honoree Jeffers mentioned this video to me yesterday and, when it appeared in my inbox this morning, I watched it and marveled at how precise and filled with emotion this child's recitation was/is. How many of us--even those of us who call ourselves poets--can recite poems we love this way? I'd like to imagine I can embody poems by several of my beloveds--Lucille Clifton, Sharon Olds, Derek Walcott, Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes--at the drop of a hat, but have I taught any of the children in my life to embrace words this way? I doubt that I have. Of all the workshops and reading classes I've taught that have included poetry, I haven't once used memorization as anything more than an extra credit exercise, and I don't believe in all my years of schooling that recitation was taught to me either. But this has not always been the case.

I routinely hear folks who have come one or two generations before me talk about how they were made to memorize poems and speeches during their formative years. At one time, this was a routine part of the educational system. What happened to this tool? Surely, we can make the argument that memorization and repetition help bolster critical thinking skills, so how and why has 'progressive education' all but abandoned this technique? Being an educator, I have a strange suspicion that, because there is no room for oral presentations when administering standardized exams, this learning tool has been deemed unnecessary and a waste of properly used classroom time. But what a shame that is. Imagine what children might learn, retain and grown to love (or at least remember fondly...) if we taught them to pour over words until they stuck. The toddler in the video above gives us a small glimpse of the opportunities we're missing.

You have to read this poem...

2010-07-22T06:37:00.000-07:00

From remicalbingham.blogspot.com

This is the best poem I've read in weeks, and it is truly terrible in its beauty (as the formatting is flushed left below, please click the poem's title to see it formatted correctly):

Prayer for the Man Who Mugged My Father, 72

May there be an afterlife.

May you meet him there, the same age as you.
May the meeting take place in a small, locked room.

May the bushes where you hid be there again, leaves tipped with razor-
blades and acid.
May the rifle butt you bashed him with be in his hands.
May the glass in his car window, which you smashed as he sat stopped
at a red light, spike the rifle butt, and the concrete on which you'll
fall.

May the needles the doctors used to close his eye, stab your pupils
every time you hit the wall and then the floor, which will be often.
May my father let you cower for a while, whimpering, "Please don't
shoot me. Please."
May he laugh, unload your gun, toss it away;
Then may he take you with bare hands.

May those hands, which taught his son to throw a curve and drive a nail
and hold a frog, feel like cannonballs against your jaw.
May his arms, which powered handstands and made their muscles jump
to please me, wrap your head and grind your face like stone.
May his chest, thick and hairy as a bear's, feel like a bear's snapping
your bones.
May his feet, which showed me the flutter kick and carried me miles
through the woods, feel like axes crushing your one claim to man-
hood as he chops you down.

And when you are down, and he's done with you, which will be soon,
since, even one-eyed, with brain damage, he's a merciful man,
May the door to the room open and let him stride away to the Valhalla
he deserves.

May you—bleeding, broken—drag yourself upright.

May you think the worst is over;
You've survived, and may still win.

Then may the door open once more, and let me in.

--Charles Harper Webb

This poem is from the book Shadow Ball: New and Selected Poems published by one of my favorites, University of Pittsburgh Press. (Ed Ochester--head honcho at Pittsburgh and one of my fabulous teachers--never ceases to amaze me with his selections.) The poem above is just one small glimpse into the kind of work they are looking for in the Pitt Poetry Series. The poem is vindictive, bleak, vengeful, nostalgic and mournful all at the same time. In short: it's complex. Just like our lives and all the horrible, beautiful, frightening, enlightening moments that help craft who we are and how we maneuver in the world.

This poem landed in my inbox this morning and hit me in the gut. It made me cringe and tear up, then shake my head and marvel all in the span of a minute or two. This is what good poems can do. I just thought I'd share that power with you...

I love when it gets good like this...

2010-07-15T04:48:00.000-07:00

From remicalbingham.blogspot.com

The summer is well underway and so is all the writing angst/excitement/frustration/pleasure that comes with it. I've begun reading some fantastic books and 'filling the well' always feeds my own work.

Writing is often the most difficult task, actually getting to the page and staying there until some spark pushes you to fill the waiting space. With new family obligations and more demands on my time, I've been finding it especially tough to find that quiet resonance I need to make sense of things I don't understand. I've been flirting with so many themes ideas, some of which have been:

The list goes on and on. The problem is finding a way to settle on one or two (or, really, three) and writing my way into them. I usually start with one poem and that poem grows into sections or a sequence, then that sequence grows into a group of poems connected by theme, then that group flourishes to become part of a larger body of work (Chapbook? Manuscript? Does it matter as long as the work is coming???)

Over the last few days, though, (after a bit of a self-pitying slump about inspiration/ambition and everything else writers find to complain about) I've hit a nice groove. I decided to stop agonizing over a manuscript I've been working to death and seeking publication for and start looking at the work I've completed outside of the manuscript over the past few years. Just as an exercise and as a way of reminding myself that the work is coming and will (try as I might to stifle it) continue to come, I went to the computer and printed out every new usable poem I'd written and hadn't included in any larger body of work. To my surprise, by the end of the day, I'd "discovered" at least one hundred poems and even started piecing together another manuscript (or two). All this tangible work sitting in my hands gave me some hope. This morning, I woke up exciting about researching, discovering, putting together pieces of new puzzles and heading back to the page, which is all I could ever really ask for.

I'm sure most writers would attest to that fact that living this writing life is mostly about resolve. The rejections arrive but as long as the writing continues, there's a reason to keep going. This--this questioning, this need to make sense of the havoc around us each day--is what you do; it's how you live.

From remicalbingham.blogspot.com

Back on the Block: Summer Reading List

2010-06-01T11:55:00.000-07:00

from remicalbingham.blogspot.com

So, I took a few months off to teach some grad workshops and get married (see the hubby and I trying to dash away in the photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths above...) but now the summer's looming and I'm ready to dive headfirst back into all things literary. Here are the books I'll be exploring in the months to come:

All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward P. Jones

Dear Future by Fred D'Aguiar

Orange Laughter by Leone Ross

The Shadow of Sirius by W.S. Merwin (Click the link to hear a great NPR broadcast with Merwin.)

Sinners Welcome by Mary Karr

The Washingtons of Wessyngton Plantation by John F. Baker Jr. (Recommended by a student! -- I'm just excited to know they're still reading after the semester has ended!)

Amorous Shepherd by Dante Micheaux (As an added bonus: Here's the link to Dante's fabulous poem and photo at the Poetry Society of America --not to mention the others featured in the Cave Canem/Ars Poetica project.)

So, what's on your summer reading list??? Any good suggestions?

Work in the World...

2010-02-03T08:26:00.000-08:00

Lots of good things happening in my writing life and I figure it's time for me to do some self-promotion, mostly because I'm so grateful for all the interest in poetry that keeps returning...

Podcast on Phillis Remastered:

The ever-sassy Honoree Fanonne Jeffers has a series called "You Gotta Read This" on her blog and she invited me to take part in the program. She also convinced the wonderful Rachel Eliza Griffiths to slip her the photo up above. We talked about Conversion, spirituality as well as my journey as a writer and generally just had a good 'ole time :-) Feel free to listen here or you can subscribe to the Phillis Remastered podcasts on Itunes!

Scholarship Speech at Old Dominion University:

I began teaching a poetry workshop at my alma mater, ODU, this term and was asked to also venture back to speak at their annual scholarship luncheon. The speech is about the fact that all good things find their way back to us in time. You can watch it below:

Black Nature Anthology:

Hard-working poet and editor, Camille Dungy, has helped birth another beautiful anthology that was released in December. Black Nature spans four centuries of writing and includes work from heavyweights and newcomers alike. In celebration of the anthology, I'll be on a panel with Camille Dungy and contributors E. Ethelbert Miller, Greg Pardlo, Thomas Sayers Ellis and Mark McMorris at the Split This Rock Poetry Festival in Washington, DC next month. Click here to get more details on the anthology and don't miss Split This Rock!

100 Best African-American Poems Anthology:

I am honored to have been selected to have work in Nikki Giovanni's newest editing endeavor. The anthology is being published this spring by Source Books. I'm especially proud to have had my poem "Mercy Killing" chosen by actress Novella Nelson to be read as a part of the CD that will accompany the anthology. Pre-order your copy here!

All this seems proof positive that hard work does eventually make its way into the world and good people make their way into your life with each turn. Now, I'm looking forward to all that's coming...

Full post can be found at: http://www.remicalbingham.blogspot.com/

...if we just let it be

2010-01-14T05:26:00.000-08:00

So much going on in the world...we lost another powerhouse voice. Teddy Pendergrass, of his own and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes fame, passed away. Radio has been playing old interviews and I think clips (like the one above) that feature his voice in its purest form are the best testament to his gift.

Listening to "Wake Up Everybody" this morning, I couldn't help thinking about those in Haiti. It's always difficult to tell who can help and how we can do something but there are are few links swirling around the web, so I'll post them here:

American Red Cross

Doctors Without Borders

Save the Children - Donate to help the children of Haiti.

Partners in Health - One of the largest nongovernmental health care providers in Haiti.

Yele - Grammy-Award winning musician, humanitarian and Goodwill Ambassador to Haiti Wyclef Jean founded Yéle Haiti in 2005.

Lambi Fund of Haiti - The fund channels financial and other resources to community-based organizations that promote the social and economic empowerment of the Haitian people.

Event: Bowery Poetry Club's Haiti Earthquake Relief Fundraiser
Start Time: Saturday, January 16 at 10:00pm
End Time: Sunday, January 17 at 4:00am
Where: The Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery (Between Houston and Bleecker) F train to 2nd Ave, 6 to Bleecker
mail@bowerypoetry.com 212-614-0505

I've recently begun teaching another poetry workshop and part of my task this term will be to try to convince my students that poetry is a necessary entity in all our lives. In times of love, in times of distress, in times of fear, in times of elation, everyone turns to poetry. This morning, I've begun re-reading the poems of my friend Phebus Etienne who passed away a few years ago. She was born in Port-au-Prince and wrote often about heritage, family, home. Her attention to detail is what always strikes me the most. I think--in the wake of the uncontrollable and in these last days--more often than not we are forced to piece together what minuscule details we have of those we've loved and lost:

Preparations for the Afterlife

In the doorway of an attic, a daughter stood between guilt and uncertainty. How could she exit, eliminate rent income to an uncle, multiply distance from few living blood relations?Her mother had not been prone to doubt. She had packed for diaspora in one suitcase and left Port-au-Prince with warning to none.

Sirens drowned creaking eaves, but she heard her mother’s voice giving precise direction. Cotton on Main Street should handle the arrangements. Red petals are for the joyful, unprepared to leave. No reception after the funeral. The bedroom set should go to someone in need. Keep the white sheets I bought for last days in Haiti.

Mandates were delivered with panorama of slights and rivalries. Her mother tallied debts owed, resolving, For any good I did, for being caretaker, no regrets. Her exhausted eyes mirrored the future like a sage reading bones. Mwen pa vlé kité ou pou kont ou. Yo pap aidé ou. The daughter did not accept this prediction of aloneness until divisions solidified, until some became angry when nothing was left in their names, until she embraced legal threats for unpaid medicals, until she listed what was worth selling, until visitor passes to her sick room idled at a front desk while staples burned a horizontal scar on her uterus. You have been present and useful, so love for you will be measured by conditions. Viv tankou moun ki pa gen fenmi.

She played her mother’s last instruction like a favorite ballad. She parceled clothing, unworn shoes to a Miami ministry and hauled mattress and box spring to a friend in Brooklyn. The daughter sealed embroidered linen in plastic as if afraid they would dissipate like clouds. Movers loaded belongings unto a truck and as the October wind rattled oak leaves to the path at her heel, she began saving her own life.

Mwen pa vlé kité ou pou kont ou. Yo pap aidé ou. - I don’t want to leave you alone. They will not help you.

Viv tankou moun ki pa gen fenmi. – Live like someone without a family.

--Phebus Etienne

Seriously...

2009-12-04T08:18:00.000-08:00

Can it get any better than this???

from www.remicalbingham.blogspot.com

Word/Art:Words/Arc

2009-11-17T07:16:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since I had a few moments to reflect on poetry and the way things converge in the world of poetry, as I've been happily busy thinking about the future for the past few months. But this morning, I ran across the picture above of a woman with a Bukowski poem tattooed on her arm and it sparked thoughts of other poems and poets that muse about words made flesh.

In the spring, I'll be teaching the book Fire Wheel by Sharmila Voorakkara in one of my classes and she has a sonnet about what it means to carry someone else with you in perpetuity:

For the Tattooed Man

Because she broke your heart, Shannon's a badge—
a seven-letter skidmark that scars up
across your chest, a flare of indelible script.
Between Death or Glory, and Mama, she rages,
scales the trellis of your rib cage;
her red hair swings down to bracket your ankles, whip
up the braid of your backbone, cuff your wrists. She keeps
you sleepless with her afterimage,

and each pinned and martyred limb aches for more.
Her memory wraps you like a vise.
How simple the pain that trails and graces
the length of your body. How it fans, blazes,
writes itself over in the blood's tightening sighs,
bruises into wisdom you have no name for.

--Sharmila Voorakkara

Re-reading Voorakkara's poem put me in the mind of another piece about body art and how it can create a kind of communion. Marcus Jackson published the poem below last year in the New Yorker:

Mary at the Tattoo Shop

She counted her money
before we went in,
avenue beside us anxious
with Friday-evening traffic.
Both fourteen, we shared a Newport,
its manila butt salty to our lips.
Inside, from a huge book
of designs and letter styles,
she chose to get “MARY”
in a black, Old English script
on the back of her neck.
The guy who ran the shop
leaned over her for forty minutes
with a needled gun
that buzzed loud
as if trying to get free.
He took her twenty-five dollars
then another ten
for being under age.
Back outside, the sun
dipped behind rooftops,
about to hand the sky over to night.
Lifting her hazel hair,
she asked me to rub
some A&D ointment
on her new tattoo;
my finger glistened in salve
as I reached for her swollen name.

--Marcus Jackson

As poets, we seems to be fascinated with scarring and remembrance. We embrace not forgetting. I think this is why so many of us are enraptured, in our lives and in our art, with marking the body. Case in point: poet John Murillo, whose forthcoming book Up Jump the Boogie is an homage to the battering urban dwellers receive each time they brave the world around them.

Trouble Man

--after Brandon D. Johnson

It’s the bone of a question

Caught in your throat,

The first sighs of the next

Day’s traffic, shoulders

Made fists under the skin.

And say it’s raining

This morning. Maybe a car

Lingers at the stop sign

Outside your window.

And maybe you know

This song. How long since

A man you called father

Troubled the hi-fi, smoldering

Newport in hand, and ran

This record under a needle.

How long since a man’s

Broken falsetto colored

Every hour indigo. Graying

Beard, callused hands, finger-

Nails thick as nickels. You

Were the boy who became

That man without meaning

To and know now, a man’s

Life is never measured

In beats, but beat-downs,

Not line breaks, just breaks.

You hear Marvin fading

Into a new day, and it caresses

You like a brick: Marvin, and men

Like him, have already

Moaned every book

You will never write.

This you know, baby. This

You know.

--John Murillo

Of course, looking at these candid portraits of Marcus and John made me think of the photographer. Rachel Eliza Griffiths, an intensely beautiful poet and photographer, is also fascinated with capturing us, scars and all. She honors our true light and terrible beauty with her lens. I've no doubt that she was ecstatic when capturing John's ink since it honored their mentor and brilliant poet, Martin Espada. Espada does the same arduous work that illuminates the fragility of lives and bodies, then makes art of what can and will or has become of us. It's only fitting, then, to let him have the final word here, a praisesong for the unsuspecting shadows that will forever mark us:

Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100

for the 43 members of
Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees

Local 100, working at the Windows on the World restaurant,

who lost their lives in the attack on the World Trade Center

Alabanza. Praise the cook with a shaven head
and a tattoo on his shoulder that said Oye,
a blue-eyed Puerto Rican with people from Fajardo,
the harbor of pirates centuries ago.
Praise the lighthouse in Fajardo, candle
glimmering white to worship the dark saint of the sea.
Alabanza. Praise the cook's yellow Pirates cap
worn in the name of Roberto Clemente, his plane
that flamed into the ocean loaded with cans for Nicaragua,
for all the mouths chewing the ash of earthquakes.
Alabanza. Praise the kitchen radio, dial clicked
even before the dial on the oven, so that music and Spanish
rose before bread. Praise the bread. Alabanza.

Praise Manhattan from a hundred and seven flights up,
like Atlantis glimpsed through the windows of an ancient aquarium.
Praise the great windows where immigrants from the kitchen
could squint and almost see their world, hear the chant of nations:
Ecuador, México, Republica Dominicana,
Haiti, Yemen, Ghana, Bangladesh.
Alabanza. Praise the kitchen in the morning,
where the gas burned blue on every stove
and exhaust fans fired their diminutive propellers,
hands cracked eggs with quick thumbs
or sliced open cartons to build an altar of cans.
Alabanza. Praise the busboy's music, the chime-chime
of his dishes and silverware in the tub.
Alabanza. Praise the dish-dog, the dishwasher
who worked that morning because another dishwasher
could not stop coughing, or because he needed overtime
to pile the sacks of rice and beans for a family
floating away on some Caribbean island plagued by frogs.

Alabanza. Praise the waitress who heard the radio in the kitchen
and sang to herself about a man gone. Alabanza.

After the thunder wilder than thunder,
after the shudder deep in the glass of the great windows,
after the radio stopped singing like a tree full of terrified frogs,
after night burst the dam of day and flooded the kitchen,
for a time the stoves glowed in darkness like the lighthouse in Fajardo,
like a cook's soul. Soul I say, even if the dead cannot tell us
about the bristles of God's beard because God has no face,
soul I say, to name the smoke-beings flung in constellations
across the night sky of this city and cities to come.
Alabanza I say, even if God has no face.

Alabanza. When the war began, from Manhattan and Kabul
two constellations of smoke rose and drifted to each other,
mingling in icy air, and one said with an Afghan tongue:
Teach me to dance. We have no music here.
And the other said with a Spanish tongue:
I will teach you. Music is all we have.

--Martin Espada

And just in case you've never been blessed to hear Espada sing these praises aloud and rattle us with the terribly beauty tattooed across our histories, watch the clip below to see why his words inspire so many others to craft light:

Dwayne Betts is the Man...

2009-09-23T08:20:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-08-27T08:57:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-07-29T06:32:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-07-08T05:08:00.001-07:00

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

2009-06-02T04:38:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-21T04:38:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-05-05T06:59:00.000-07:00

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

That's my dreamworld...

2009-04-13T07:02:00.001-07:00

This is pretty fantastic prank a group of folks pulled off and it's taking the web by storm. All of the taglines are asking things like, "What would you do if you were waiting on train and a full-on musical number erupted around you?" Well, that's my dreamworld! I'd be the one trying to learn the steps and join in! How much would I have loved to be part of this choreographed madness (that's an oxymoron, just to reassure you that this blog is still about language some of the time...)

Sound of Music Train Station @ Yahoo! Video

Speaking of fantasy lives, here's another of my favorite all time musical scenes that I wanted to be a part of. I pray that anyone who actually had the privilege of going to a 'school for the arts' actually had this experience once of twice during their tenure there:

Musicals aren't the only things that fill my dreamworld, well-lit stages abound as well. Last night, I escaped from a bit of Spring semester madness and went to listen to one of my favorites croon about his "Dreamworld" among other things. Robin Thicke is always a vision and his voice was stellar last night. I do long for the B-sides from his first (wildly underrated) album, so my dreamworld would include the likes of him serenading the inhabitants with songs like this:

And because no dreamworld of mine would be complete without an abundance of poems, we'd stock the classrooms, libraries, syllabi, backpacks and bedposts with anthologies like this:

Every month would be National Poetry Month and each day we'd carry poems like this--one's in which we could find music everywhere, even in the everyday lilt of ordinary things--in our pockets and pass them around:

The Healing Improvisation of Hair

If you undo your do you would
be strange. Hair has been on my mind.
I used to lean in the doorway
and watch my stony woman wind
the copper through the black, and play
with my understanding, show me she could
take a cup of river water,
and watch it shimmy, watch it change,
turn around and become ash bone.
Wind in the cottonwoods wakes me
to a day so thin its breastbone
shows, so paid out it shakes me free
of its blue dust. I will arrange
that river water, bottom juice.
I conjure my head in the stream
and ride with the silk feel of it
as my woman bathes me, and shaves
away the scorn, sponges the grit
of solitude from my skin, laves
the salt water of self-esteem
over my feathering body.
How like joy to come upon me
in remembering a head of hair
and the way water would caress
it, and stress beauty in the flair
and cut of the only witness
to my dance under sorrow's tree.
This swift darkness is spring's first hour.

I carried my life, like a stone,
in a ragged pocket, but I
had a true weaving song, a sly
way with rhythm, a healing tone.

--Jay Wright

It's National Poetry Month! -- Readings/Workshops/Travels

2009-04-10T07:51:00.000-07:00

April is National Poetry Month and there is good stuff galore. Here's what I have going on for the next few weeks:

There will be several National Poetry Month readings at Pretlow Library in April. I'll be reading at my favorite Norfolk library on Monday, 4/13, at 6:00 PM. I'll read some from Conversion and give the folks a taste of the new work. Please come out if you're in town! Contact info. for the reading coordinator, Ms. Abraham, is below:

Trinika Abraham

Library Assistant II

Mary D. Pretlow Anchor Branch Library

111 W. Ocean View Ave

Norfolk, Va 23503

757-441-1750

Trinika.Abraham@norfolk.gov

Next week, I'll be doing my part to make the wide world of academics think about poetry in new ways. At the ACTC Conference in Memphis, I'll be delivering a paper on Natasha Trethewey and highlighting poems from Domestic Work, Bellocq's Ophelia and Native Guard. The panel title alone should pique your interest--Poets and Poetry as the Core of America’s Future Memory--but we'll get deep into the reclamation and investigation of images in my paper, “Reclaiming Memory, Inventing History: Barthe’s Punctum in the Poetry of Natasha Trethewey.”

When I return I'll be hosting an Open Mic for the NSU Spartans (details to come) as well as continuing my Teen Poetry Workshop. We've done historical biographies, collage poetry, odes and we'll keep the words flowing for a few more sessions. Even if you're not a teen, you can come out to support poetry and pen some new verses with us. Here are the particulars:

WHAT: Teen Poetry Workshop -- Verse Biographies/Charting Our Own History

Activity Summary: For ages, poetry has been used as a means of charting our history in the world. It is a fast-paced art that pays attention to the minute details of our lives as well as the universality of human emotion. In this workshop, participants will engage in writing exercises that help generate poems that will tell their own stories and, ultimately, will become autobiographies in verse. No prior writing experience is needed. Students should, however, come prepared to write at each workshop and possibly share their work with others.

WHEN: Monday, 4/27, from 4:30 - 6:00

WHERE: Mary D. Pretlow Anchor Branch Library

111 W. Ocean View Ave.

441-1750 ext 323 or 324

Many fellow poets are engaging in a '30 Poems in 30 Days' project this month, I couldn't pull that off because I have so many other things going on. Even so, I'm enjoying reading the poems and have been going back to some of the greats to help my muse get her mojo going. Here is a beautiful poem that inspired me from Mary Oliver's New and Selected Poems: Volume One. I hope it inspires you too:

Sunrise

You can
die for it--
an idea,
or the world. People

have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound

to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But

this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought

of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun

blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises

under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.

--Mary Oliver

Interweaving/Improv...

2009-03-03T15:53:00.000-08:00

Watching Stevie get another much deserved accolade on PBS a few nights ago, I was reminded of the new brilliance of Esperanza Spalding...

and after watching Esperanza, I began thinking about improvisation and how we, as artists, are called on to re-create on a daily basis. Each day, I go to the page to write a poem that, in one way or another, is much like the poem a thousand other poets have already written. Often my task is much like Esperanza's here--to try to breathe new life into a work that has already reached its pinnacle. While I could be extremely biased here, no one will ever be able to re-do "Overjoyed" in any way that substanstially changes the imprint that Stevie Wonder has made with this particular piece of music. Even so, Esperanza found a way to make this song her own. She found a way to honor and uphold its brilliance while breathing her own life and rhythm and sound into a piece built on someone else's fierce life and rhythm and sound. And she did a bang up job of it. And made it look nearly effortless.

So watching Esperanza made me think about yet another Stevie tribute performance that me me think about not only improvisation, but the interweaving of voice and style. Here's a clip of a performance that brought together to very different vocalists, Kathleen Battle and James Ingram, to re-create another kind of sound:

...All this thinking about improv and interweaving made me think about one of my favorite poetry exercises. An exercise I used to use to break myself out of whatever mode I was writing (or not writing) in was to take a short (preferably less than twenty lines) poem by another poet, re-type it and literally write in between the lines to make not one, but two new pieces. First, the piece you create in conversation with another poet is new. Second, the new lines that you write, when separated, can stand on their own as a poem. The poet, then, is asked to improvise on a piece that already has its own life, tone, space, diction, etc. and find some way to break into the piece and create new points of departure within it. This exercise (much like the performances above) are often more useful if the writing style of the original poet and that of the current poet are divergent.

While thinking about this, I pulled some books of the shelf and flipped through until I found a poem that looked interesting on the page and was relatively short. I stopped somewhere in Erica Hunt's book, Local History. Here is her original poem:

Afterword

Curves are sharp and the
noises mysterious. I close my
eyes and I'm still coming around
the curve. Afterimage on retina
park. And I don't know what will
happen next. There is no guide to
context for this leap to land into.
Rigor of rope and railing, failing
that what parallel lines
we keep.

--Erica Hunt

Now, Erica Hunt is known to break the backs of words and sounds and not always in a linear fashion. This is not something I feel like I do much in my work. Therefore, I felt like I was entering new, odd space by trying to write in-between, but still around, Hunt's lines. Here's what I came up with after sitting with her poem (and the music above) for a few moments:

After/Fore/word

“…Over hearts, I have painfully turned every stone…” –Stevie Wonder

Limestone and granite
curves are sharp and the
underbelly, leaden and heavy, makes familiar
noises mysterious. I close my
body to the sound of his turning body, open my
eyes and I'm still coming around
though the sounds are mistaken. I swear I hear, I see
the curve. Afterimage on retina
his back, in reverse, everything backward. We
park. And I don't know what will
keep us from ending up on the underside of what might
happen next. There is no guide to
steer us, no boxes to be checked, no
context for this leap to land into
the curious fall. He says, Climb, but the
rigor of rope and railing, failing
is leaving too much to chance and I doubt
that what parallel lines
string together—the marble beams, unsteady ladder--
we keep. We tether,
but only for so long.

--Erica Hunt/Remica L. Bingham

And here's what I came up with when removing Hunt's lines and trying to create a cohesive poem of my own using the lines I wrote in-between her lines:

Fore/word

“…Over hearts, I have painfully turned every stone…” – Stevie Wonder

Limestone and granite
underbelly, leaden and heavy, makes familiar
to the body the sound of his turning body, open my ears
though the sounds are mistaken. I swear I hear, I see
his back, in reverse, everything backward. We
keep us from ending up on the underside of what might
steer us, no boxes to be checked, no
curious fall. He says Climb, but
leaving too much to chance I doubt
string together—the marble beams, unsteady ladder--
We tether, but only
for so long.

--Remica L. Bingham

This interweaving of words is a useful exercise because I think it helps us create something we never would have created otherwise. By thinking about ways to reside in someone else's artistic space, we probably stretch ourselves and our vision much more than we generally would when we come to the page with our own particular writing style in mind. The clips above are evidence that breaking something open and creating your own mold for it (while still having reverence, respect, maybe even awe) for the original being is a great way to discover what strikes you most about another's art and how you can bring your own unique rhythm to a canvas, then improv some type of harmony.

Since Chicago...

2009-02-20T11:01:00.001-08:00

I've learned a great many things, since heading to the Chi for AWP. Here are a few links to pique your interest:

Frank X. Walker will still get down on the dance floor even with a bum knee
The Affrilachian Poets are not to be messed with
Patricia Smith will put your sonnets to shame, even when you aren't in competition with her. And she won't even apologize for it
Honoree Fanonne Jeffers isn't afraid to tell anyone the truth
Everyone is always there just to see Ms. Lucille
Free chocolate is a great way to promote a smooth, dark, long-playing poem
I want to know Valzhyna Mort
Natasha Trethewey is brilliant and she can rock a killer pair of boots
Cuteness travels...and may come with a personal tailor
Myron Michael Hardy can almost wish dreams into fruition
Facebook is all about business
You can find great new books at book release parties for other great new books
Entering contests - $300; Possible money lost over a lifetime while daydreaming about poems - $1 million; Getting a book of your selected poems translated into Arabic - Priceless!

And here's a quaint little Tate poem that reminds all of us writers a thing or two we might want to remember about ourselves...or maybe not. Nevertheless, the Post might be fond of this one, too:

Teaching the Ape to Write Poems

They didn't have much trouble
teaching the ape to write poems:
first they strapped him into the chair,
then tied the pencil around his hand
(the paper had already been nailed down).
Then Dr. Bluespire leaned over his shoulder
and whispered into his ear:
"You look like a god sitting there.
Why don't you try writing something?"

--James Tate

Soundtrack of My Life

2009-01-27T06:59:00.000-08:00

IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE? A good friend of mine sent me a (chain) note with this heading the other day. It's supposed to be a random, shuffling game you play with the music you have stored on your computer, but because I am slightly off-kilter, I think about this all the time. Not because I think my life has been so exciting that it's movie-worthy, but because I truly do want my own soundtrack. I've been designing it in my head for years! Anyway, here's how I would write my own personal score:

Opening Credits:

Ascension -- Maxwell

Waking Up:

Happier Than the Morning Sun -- Stevie Wonder

First Day At School:

School -- New Edition

Making Your New Best Friend:

You've Got A Friend -- Michael Jackson

Falling In Love:
Easy Conversation -- Jill Scott

Breaking Up:
Ain't No Way -- Aretha Franklin

Prom:
Get Me Bodied (Extended Mix) -- Beyonce

Graduation:
No Such Thing -- John Mayer

Life's Okay:
The Longest Time -- Billy Joel or these guys

Death of a Close Friend:
Show Me -- John Legend

Mental Breakdown:
Harder to Breathe -- Maroon 5

Driving:
Follow Me -- Usher

Flashback:
It's So Hard to Say Good bye to Yesterday-- Boyz II Men

Getting Back Together:
Let's Stay Together --Al Green

Wedding Scene:
So Amazing -- Luther Vandross

Birth of Child:
Zion -- Lauryn Hill

Car Accident:
Time After Time -- Cassandra Wilson

Final Battle:
Purple Rain -- Prince

Death Scene:
Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer -- Stevie Wonder

Funeral Song:
525,600 Minutes -- Rent (The Musical)

End Credits:
Girl Blue - Stevie Wonder

Liner note: Can I just say that YouTube might be the best thing ever invented...
Hey, I think I'll do the Poems/Books of my life next :-)

Workshop at Pretlow Library on Monday, 1/26 @ 4:30 PM

2009-01-21T10:17:00.000-08:00

Starting next Monday, I'll be teaching a Teen Poetry Workshop at the Mary D. Pretlow Branch of our local library system. I'm so excited to get a glimpse at some fresh faces and spark a few fresh ideas for the new year.

The workshop is open to all teens and will be held on the last Monday of each month up until May. Who knows? If we spark enough interest, we might get to hold a *showcase* for all the work created there by the time we're done.

If you're not a teen, but know some who like poetry, please spread the word! Here are the particulars:

WHAT: Teen Poetry Workshop -- Verse Biographies/Charting Our Own History
Activity Summary: For ages, poetry has been used as a means of charting our history in the world. It is a fast-paced art that pays attention to the minute details of our lives as well as the universality of human emotion. In this workshop, participants will engage in writing exercises that help generate poems that will tell their own stories and, ultimately, will become autobiographies in verse. No prior writing experience is needed. Students should, however, come prepared to write at each workshop and possibly share their work with others.
WHEN: Monday, 1/26/09 from 4:30 - 6:00
WHERE: Mary D. Pretlow Anchor Branch Library
111 W. Ocean View Ave.
441-1750 ext 323 or 324

Reading at B&N in MacArthur Center on Sunday, 1/18 @ 3:00 PM

2009-01-12T07:16:00.000-08:00

Hey VA, if you're in town please, please, please, come out to my reading at Barnes & Noble in MacArthur Center this Sunday. This college bookstore-based B&N is trying to spawn a successful local authors series and is reaching out to area writers for support.

I'll be signing books and premiering new work during the reading. It has been a long while since I've had a reading in town, so I'd love to see some of the folks I'm always missing even though we live so close.

I don't want to call anybody out but if your name happens to be Nicole, Rashad, Princess, Til, Mister House or any number of possibilities, you may want to attend, just to see what new things people will know about you after the reading is over :-)

Here's the pertinent info:

WHAT: Local Author Reading and Book Signing
WHEN: Sunday, 1/18/09 3-5 PM
WHERE: Barnes & Noble at TCC
MacArthur Center
300 Monicello Ave
Norfolk, VA 23510
tel 757-625-3459

Hope to see you there!

Looking Forward, Looking Back...

2009-01-04T17:37:00.001-08:00

So, the new year has already begun and I still haven't processed all that happened at the end of 2008. In short, I had a wonderful trip home and got to write about many of the places I knew as a child. I also got to spend time with some good people that I adore. Here's are some snapshots (along with my weird captions) that I took during my travels. I wrote lots of memory/landscape poems while I was out West. If you'd like to guess what I might have been thinking about at any of the locations below, leave me a note in the comments section and I promise to send you a few of the poems I wrote in return...

San Fran (Thanks to Myron Michael and Sweet James)

The Queendom, Wine Country

Mountains near Laveen

Bright autumn

Early morning skate-park

Brown Street mural

The Lady appears

Preparations

Glow

Okay, okay, maybe that last one isn't too inspirational, but it is proof that I was actually at any of these places and it showcases how gorgeous my beloved friend was on her wedding day :-) I'm glad I got to witness and bear witness to so many beautiful things to close out the year. Here's a poem that always reminds how good it is to start anew:

won't you celebrate with me

won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

--Lucille Clifton

Heading Home (Kind of...)

2008-12-16T12:48:00.000-08:00

Heading back to Phoenix makes me feel like the star in the old Issac Hayes song, but I'm not sure if I'm the one leaving or the one being left. You have all kinds of strange musings when you return to your childhood home. Even as I type I'm sitting in the Velma Teague Library and wondering how I got here...I'm trying to channel some of this distant beauty while I'm back in Arizona.

Much to say, too, about my trip to San Francisco/Napa. My Heliotrope reading was wonderful and I have Myron Michael, the H.E.A.T. poets, Jeannie and Travis, James and plenty of other folks to thank for that. A poem is calling, so I'm off again, but wanted to send a 'thank you' shout out to the folks who have already made this a fabulous getaway...more soon.

Reading at Mama Art Cafe in San Franciso on Friday, 12/12 @ 7 PM

2008-12-05T06:00:00.000-08:00

I'll finally be back on the West Coast for a little fun next week. I'll be reading in poet/MC/teacher/late-night phone guru Myron Michael's HELIOTROPE reading series at Mama Art Cafe on Friday night. I am so excited to see some folks in the Bay and share the stage with Myron's talented students. They'll open the set and I'll feature.

I am especially nervous because I'll be introducing the new work to the world at this reading. Conversion has been out for some time and the second manuscript, What We Ask of Flesh, is floating around out in the world, so I'm ready to break out the poems nestled there. Even I'll be interested to see what kind of connections I find between the two bodies because I've never let them exist in the same space before, as they are so very different.

The flyer is posted below, but here's the main info.:

What: Heliotrope Reading Series sponsored by Rondeau Records
When: Friday, 12/12/08 at 7:00PM
Where: Mama Art Cafe
4754 Mission St. (between RUSSIA and LEO)
San Francisco, CA 94110Mama Art Cafe

If you're in the Bay, please come out to share the word and hang for a little while...

Back INSPIRIT -- NYC Dec. 4 - 6

2008-12-02T07:16:00.001-08:00

INSPIRIT Dance Company is at it again in NYC and they are using one of my poems in their fall show, Dream and Visions. Here are the details:

The choreography of Christal Brown, the music of Farai Malianga, the poetry of Remica Bingham, the costumes of Trebian Pollard, and the performing power of INSPIRIT come together to make a Dream into a Vision.

Get your tickets now! Dreams and Visions runs December 4 - 6, Thursday - Saturday at 8pm. Tickets are $25, $15 students/seniors. BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center is located at the Borough of Manhattan Community College at 199 Chambers Street (between Greenwich and the West Side highway, accessible from the 1, 2, 3, A, C, E , N, R , 4, 5, 6, J, M trains New Jersey Path train and the M20 & M22 buses). For tickets or more information call 212-220-1460 or visit www.TribecaPAC.org.

Check out some buzz on the show here and please go out to support these wonderfully talented artists if you're in NYC.

Whenever, Wherever, Whatever...

2008-11-16T07:50:00.000-08:00

You will not believe what two fabulous writers helped me do last night...so Maxwell (yes, that is him looking all pretty up above) turned out the Landmark Theater and I was determined to get close enough to reach out and touch him. Well, everything came together: averted a few minor crises, got the cameras in working order, landed the most fabulous seats and came with reinforcements. I thought for sure security was going to trip me up, but even they gave in after I reasoned with them for a few seconds.

There is a good reason that I am clearly having some time of conniption fit in the picture below...this is me after I convinced security to let me run down into the orchestra pit and sidle up right below Maxwell...

Here's the full view of the same photo (thanks to Princess). There's me again at the bottom and what's that in Maxwell's hand, you might ask?...

Need a closer look?...

Just in case you're still not sure...

Yes, that is Maxwell, he is in the middle of tearing the house down and he does have an autographed copy of my book in his hand!!! This, of course, just after he reached down and took it from me while thanking me profusely for it...I always knew his Mama raised him right :-)

We had such an amazing time last night and I wouldn't have been nearly as successful at offering up some poetry (he is not going to remember who gave him those flowers or who threw those unmentionables on the stage!) to the man who inspires me in so many ways were it not for my two fabulous friends. Here's a shot of Princess and Lamar, all euphoric and beautiful after the show...

Oh and security wasn't stopping anyone from whipping out the heavy artillery, so I held it together long enough to record this...This Woman's Work is done and done well :-)

Poem of the Month

2008-11-11T06:14:00.001-08:00

Everybody is buzzing about the news that Obama was caught with a book of poetry in his hands yesterday. Of course, the poets were thrilled about this, but were even more interested in what/whom the president-elect was reading. I think we were all happy to hear it was Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, brilliant ambassador of poetry from the Caribbean.

I always teach the same Walcott poem at the very end of every one of my creative writing/poetry classes and it is one of the most important mantras in my life:

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

--Derek Walcott

Even as I am typing this, I am in tears. Walcott is simply stunning here. And as you grow older (or as I do) the words have new meaning each time you reach and surpass a milestone in your life. The poem is about all the things we're ever told but find it difficult to remember: you are good enough; you are worthy; this too shall pass; this is a learning experience; no can love you until you learn to love yourself. This is the same thing we get from parents and self-help books, but Walcott uses a fraction of the space and time to say it so much better. You get the sense that he is convinced this is true and so you are convinced.

First, the opening declarative statement--"The time will come"--as opposed to a less forceful one such as 'The time may come', instantly creates a kind of omniscience on the part of the speaker. This authoritative voice is used throughout the poem to impart clear and essential advice to the reader. Walcott sets up a 'mirror image' in the first stanza. The poem is written using the second person point of view, so the reader immediately gets the sense that they are being given some personal life lesson. All of the action that takes place in the poem is that of the reader looking in on himself. He arrives 'at his own door', looks into 'his own mirror' and dines at his own table.

By the second stanza, the reader has the sense that they are meeting and old friend, but here the "me, myself and i" cliche is handled with more subtlety than it is in other art forms. There is much to be said about the infusion of the meal imagery here. The 'breaking of bread' is a sacred thing in most cultures. We have inferences of it some of our our pinnacle art, especially in the black community, not least of all Langston's reference to the table.

The original use of the term, and the imagery, is biblical. People literally broke bread together and shared not only food, but sustenance, literal and spiritual, around the table. Hence, Walcott's choice of cuisine--bread and wine--are deliberate and important. This particular food and drink has been a staple since ancient times. Everyone, from monarchs to paupers, partook in some form of the two. When Christ instituted the new passover memorial, he used bread and wine to symbolize his pure blood and body; he told his followers to do this 'in remembrance', to continue breaking bread together as a symbol of their devotion to righteousness and their commitment to continue to strive to be holy themselves.

All of this is evident in Walcott's poem. His overarching point is that, eventually, after superficial love, we will begin to recognize our own power and 'holiness'. In time, we will recognize 'the stranger who was your self' and love that person--whom we deny for an infinite number of reasons--as the great love/friend/confidant we've searched for.

By the time we reach the last stanza, Walcott's declarative statements become imperative ones. The speaker commands us to recognize our journey and power. In essence, he says you must "Sit. Feast on your life." The clarity of Walcott's language here is not to be confused with simplicity. His word choices are deliberate and sharp. Another principle example is the phrase "by heart" in the third stanza. Normally, knowing something by heart means merely that we've memorized it, but here it has a layered meaning. The 'stranger' here has not only memorized the mannerisms and choices of person the speaker is referring to but also literally knows this person's intimate thoughts, emotions and innerworkings, because they are one in the same. No one knows 'you' by heart more than you know yourself. And knowing one 'by heart' also means that there is an implicit love, one that is inextricably linked to a person's history--good or bad--that you always have, and eventually re-discover, for yourself.

It's difficult to elaborate critically on such a seamless poem. Walcott has done more in his fifteen lines than I could ever do here. I think it is one of the few perfect poems I have ever read and that may be the reason I've come to cherish it so. Glad to see that others, Obama included, have been mulling over this light. Maybe this will inspire new folks to turn to poetry in times fear or hope or celebration.

Group D -- Doin' the Doggone Thang :-)

2008-11-07T07:36:00.000-08:00

CC '06 Group D is back in full effect. We're on day 24 of a 30-day write (a poem a day for thirty days) and have been encouraging each other every step of the way. I'm not sure who planted the seed (Christina? Dante? Lita?) but we began in the middle of last month and I can't believe we've gotten this far. This is a great exercise because it pushes you to find time for poems, despite whatever else is going on in the world or in your life. I had literally sent out my second manuscript the day before we began and I felt like I was all tapped out. I didn't want to see another poem, much less write one. Of course, we complain (or at least I do) while writing and submitting every poem, but I've been writing steadily and that's not something I am usually able (or willing) to do. The best part is, there are no real constraints. We don't even have a steady stream of comments on each poem--folks chime in when they want to and, most of the time, folks don't say anything at all. This practice has given the whole group time and space to just create freely without consequence or the perpetual fear workshop can create. Though we haven't finished yet, I just wanted to highlight some of the beautiful music we've been making, check out a few of the nice lines I've read from each...

Demetrice Worley:

"my livelihood
concerns--

poetry
lessons"

Dante Micheaux:

"Tell me about the cruelty of the sea."

"When last troops searched the dead, I laid down
on the nearest corpse and shielded the sun with my bare hands."

"Most days my crotch is cleaner than my hands."

"Arrogance is a genuine virtue."

Lita Hooper:

"The fire dims as the pot trembles
soprano."

"I test the dangers of these streets."

"I will lie to him, just as my lover did
about tomorrow's plans."

Hallie Hobson:

"I reject this gift
here is my cosmic no"

"meditate on
wet flesh and time"

"I wish this for you: a handful of ash and a string
of ruined days"

(Reginald) Dwayne Betts:

"Nothing
links men to God.
Not nights sleeping
under another cat’s
dreams, or days knuckling
up with the burden of an hour."

"A bus drove
us towards the country &
myth."

"It is a man. He is someone’s son. A heartache.
When he screams, our eyes open again."

Samiya Bashir:

"This is not a poem
this is a cry."

"sparkle brighter than full
moon's midnight and northern lights"

"It's round about wine-thirty and I
got tail to shake and sense to make."

Christina Archer:

"I had loose arms
and dreams once"

"thirsty for samba at twilight and some honeyed song"

"You come as a nightmare
angry and yelling for our mother"

There has been a glorious bounty these past few weeks. I've even found a small symphony in our complaints. Here's a found poem using the disclaimers we all threw around by e-mail every day:

I Am Not Krunk

I'm so amp'd now.
I've been excited that this day was coming.
I love that it was ushered in by the full moon.
I stink because I forgot about the deadline.
Greetings from Paris. Poem attached.

Here is yesterday's late creation.
I was having a very Harryette Mullen kind of day.
In addition to ignoring the muse,
I am also studying for my finance exam.
I am on the intermittent poetry plan,
slogging through the best I can.

I'm getting confused with all of these
messages, comments, poems.
I'm not taking enough risk in my work.
Just wanted to voice my discontent and boredom.
I did what you said and this is what plopped out.
Even though I've fallen off y'all are holding
me up with your brilliance.

It’s getting heated now.
Man, it’s getting hectic.
This is all I got today.
I'm reaching for poems.
An imitation of sorts.
P.S. I know the titles
are getting pretty generic.
Sorry about that. See attached.

A day late and a dollar....
A poem behind. This joint slums too.
Still on the road, still running behind.
This one was really rough on me.
I’m gonna slush through this.
This one is kind of 'iffy'...but I like it.
Whew! I kicked another one out.
See attached.

Hey, I wonder if this counts as today's poem? :-) Nah, my group is surely not going for that. Anyway, grab some friends and start your own poem-a-day writing project. You'll be dazzled by what you can do.

Workin' Day and Night

2008-11-03T05:29:00.000-08:00

It has been a long time since I had time to post (and truth be told, I'm really stealing time now!) but I wanted to give some updates. Above is a print from a Hale Woodruff painting. His lines and coloration are so lovely. I am now intent on seeing this piece in person.

Over the past month I've been away from the blog, but here are some things I've gotten done:

--"Finished" my second manuscript, What We Ask of Flesh (more on this soon...)

--Sent the manuscript and chapbook, The Body Speaks, out to some contests and book prizes

--Went to court in Emporia (where they still have town-wide fire alarms) and felt happy that I wasn't the woman in the room caught doing 99 in a 55 mph zone

--Began conversing with a talented and enthusiastic young poet named Tierra Key thanks to the fabulous Dr. Joanne Gabbin

--Jumped headfirst into a thirty-day write (i.e. a poem a day for thirty days) with 2006 CC Group D

--Put Robin Thicke's Something Else and John Legend's Evolver in heavy rotation. Currently loving this...

--Read The Secret Life of Bees (which had its problems, but was a lovely read) and read and re-read Jericho Brown's new book, Please, which is nothing short of brilliant

--Worked as a reviewer for a wonderful arts organization in Kentucky

--Tested over 800 students (I am so ready for a vacation!)

--Tried to learn the new Beyonce moves more than once in my full length mirror

--Started prepping for a teen poetry workshop I'll be teaching soon at my local library

So, lots of good things happening and I'm just trying to keep up :-) More soon...

Reading at Pretlow Library on Tuesday, 9/30 @ 6:30 PM

2008-09-30T07:01:00.000-07:00

We're in the middle of Hispanic Heritage Month and the Norfolk Public Library is using its brand new Pretlow Branch to help spread the word. The Hispanic Heritage Poetry Slam is open to the public and will feature area poets reading the work of Latino/Latina poets of choice or original work that promotes an appreciation of Hispanic culture. I'm reading work by two women I love, Naomi Ayala and Sandra Cisneros. The flyer with all the pertinent info. and the contact for the reading coordinator, Ms. Abraham, is below. Come on by if you're in town!

Trinika Abraham
Library Assistant II
Mary D. Pretlow Anchor Branch Library
111 W. Ocean View Ave
Norfolk, Va 23503
757-441-1750
Trinika.Abraham@norfolk.gov

Poem of the Month (well, maybe...)

2008-09-16T05:44:00.000-07:00

So, for Ada's sake, I'm going to try to do a focused reading of a poem at least once a month. She told me that's what she really likes to see on the blog and, since she is fabulous, brilliant, beautiful and wonderful, I'll try to do my part to keep her happy :-)

Poetry Daily is giving us a glimpse at W.S. Merwin's new collection and this is one of the featured poems:

The Pinnacle

Both of us understood

what a privilege it was

to be out for a walk

with each other

we could tell from our different

heights that this

kind of thing happened

so rarely that it might

not come round again

for me to be allowed

even before I

had started school

to go out for a walk

with Miss Giles

who had just retired

from being a teacher all her life

she was beautiful

in her camel hair coat

that seemed like the autumn leaves

our walk was her idea

we liked listening to each other

her voice was soft and sure

and we went our favorite way

the first time just in case

it was the only time

even though it might be too far

we went all the way

up the Palisades to the place

we called the pinnacle

with its park at the cliff's edge

overlooking the river

it was already a secret

the pinnacle

as we were walking back

when the time was later

than we had realized

and in fact no one

seemed to know where we had been

even when she told them

no one had heard of the pinnacle

and then where did she go

--W.S. Merwin

This poem is teaching me so many lessons I need this morning. First, it is one or two long, gloriously built sentences, but neither has standard punctuation or needs it. Merwin masters line breaks and white space here. Also, there is almost a syllabic feel to the way each stanza reads. No line is too heavy-handed. A little over half of the forty-one lines are made up of six syllables, but no line has more than nine. This also helps propel the poem forward and by the time the reader reaches the first stanza break, each description or image builds on the previous one, so it actually feels like the reader is moving up a hill, just like the teacher and child in the poem.

Second, various meanings and the way they're hinted at throughout the poem is "a special speech (Check out Ms. Brooks...) to me" today. The Pinnacle is the perfect title for this poem. I think the best titles are the ones that capitalize on as many definitions of the word, phrase (or theme of the poem) as possible. The pinnacle is obviously the central place in the poem. However, if we examine the other definitions of the word pinnacle, we see shadings of the poem's many allusions. Just to illustrate the title's complexity, I've copied some of the definitions of the word from my favorite dictionary and related them to the poem:

Pinnacle (noun)

1. a lofty peak. -The mountain the speaker and teacher visit.

2. the highest or culminating point, as of success, power, fame, etc.: the pinnacle of one's career. -The teacher, and her noted career, serve as a pinnacle to the speaker. He, (and assuredly the rest of the town) admires her years of service. She taught "all her life" and was revered for it. She was, in the speaker's mind, the pinnacle of success. Also, a smaller and less formal consideration might be the "different heights" of the small child and the seemingly giant adult; Miss Giles is a pinnacle to the child, in stature, manner and in life.

Miss Giles is also at the pinnacle of her life, as evidenced by the fact that "this kind of thing happened so rarely," this kind of open interchange and honesty between would-be student and educator, child and adult, seasoned veteran and adolescent still learning how things can disappear so quickly in life, and this walk up to the peak signals the climax of it all. Her denouement begins as soon as they travel back down from the place "no one had heard of" and she begins to be a fading memory in the speaker's life.

3. any pointed, towering part or formation, as of rock. - The highest point of the the pinnacle itself, which was the apex of the "the Palisades... at the cliff's edge."

What is never said in the poem is exactly how or why Miss Giles disappears and the reader is left to ponder this, just like the speaker. I would love to believe the teacher just fades from memory, like most people do who leave an imprint, then move on, but I'm inclined to think that Miss Giles has died. Of course, since the speaker is much older, recounting the story and Miss Giles was at least middle-aged when the memory begins, she would most likely have been long gone. However, her death, and its cause, is alluded to throughout the poem in subtle ways. The speaker mentions that they they had to take this walk because the opportunity "might not come round again" and that they went their "favorite way/the first time just in case/it was the only time" and if Miss Giles already knew her life would be ending (and part of it, possibly the largest part, had ended when her career reached its pinnacle), she would go the distance because this might be her only chance to do so, especially with a child, or anyone, again.

By the time I reach the last line of the poem, I deduce that Miss Giles has taken her own life at the the pinnacle, since the "walk was her idea" and "her voice was soft and sure" heading up to the place, "even though it might be too far." The pinnacle would have been the perfect location for her to commit suicide because "it was already a secret" and even when they returned, " no one/seemed to know where they had been." If Miss Giles had disappeared and the speaker was too young to really know or comprehend what had happened, it would be easy for to him to remember Miss Giles simply disappearing, or fading away, as the last line suggests when the speaker asks, "and then where did she go."

Though the poem is a simple narrative, there are a few images that are really well-constructed. One that stood out is the phrase "autumn leaves" that appears in the second stanza. On the surface, it also simply means that she is stylish and beautiful; her coat reminds him of the ochre color of leaves as they turn in autumn, as they transpire and fall to the ground or get carried away with the current. I find it interesting that the "camel hair coat" is the catalyst for this image, as a coat's connotative meanings can be interpreted in many ways. A coat can symbolize the changing of the seasons and hence, change in one's life; it can be a cold and harsher period; it can signal the beginning of a migration or long journey, etc. The "autumn leaves" image and phrase itself creates an subtle but effective double entendre here, the teacher has retired in spring, right before summer. They take this walk at the end of summer, just before the young boy will start school, and she is gone soon thereafter. She leaves in autumn, at least in his memory, and autumn leaves as well, there's nothing permanent about the seasons or life as either of the two knows it.

Simply stated, this is a beautiful poem. Merwin's constraint and precision help sustain the memory for the reader and asks, in a child's voice, one of the same questions we ask ourselves over and over: Where did they go? People disappear for various reasons--we fall out of love, we move away, we grow apart, we get married, we grow older, we take our lives and we lose them to 'time and unforeseen occurrence.' At some point, we are all the child speaker and we will all be someone's Miss Giles. We will all be looking and looked after, we'll be missing and missed. Merwin, in all his years as a poet, has never forgotten this lesson and has learned to frame the question as sharply as any poet I've ever witnessed. Beautiful work he does here, asking--without answering--the question of all our lives.

AAAHHHH! MAXWELL IS ON TOUR!

2008-09-12T07:33:00.001-07:00

...and if you had any idea which tickets I just landed, you'd already be sending gifts to bribe me for them! I am infatuated with Maxwell and decided he was my future husband about the nineteenth time I cried myself to sleep listening to "Whenever, Wherever, Whatever" when I was 16.

I've really had a few glorious years as far as music is concerned. I finally saw Stevie tear the house down last September, I got a glimpse of Prince on his Musicology tour and now I get to finally see Maxwell again. It can't get much better...unless that Jackson Family reunion in Vegas pans out, Michael and Janet join up, and I win some tickets to opening night!

So, music is clearly my muse and I use it all the time when I'm writing, especially as I get nearer to the end of a major project. Sometimes I stay up well into the wee hours of the morning, blasting the same song/album over and over again until I feel like I've made some real progress. There's no doubt that Maxwell's newest will be on blast this winter while I write. In anticipation of the cold (and the blues you probably have now that you know your seats aren't as good as mine), here's something to keep you warm...oh and you're welcome for the extra eye candy thrown in courtesy of the movie The Best Man. This is one of my favorite favorites from Maxwell. It's always good to know when a brotha ain't playin :-)

Exciting News!

2008-08-29T09:10:00.000-07:00

I have a poem in the September Collector's Edition of Essence. Thanks to fabulous fiction writer Jamey and brilliant poet and photographer Rachel for letting me know, because neither the press nor the magazine did! (That's a much longer story than I have time to tell...) Even so, I love Essence, always have, and am extremely excited about this, especially since they chose a poem about my Nana. Now that I think about it, it's the perfect month for it because the poem is about another historic event, the anniversary of which coincided with Obama's speech last night. So, if not for the inside look at the Obama family, pick it up for the poetry, but don't go to Border's in Eatontown, New Jersey because my Aunt Robin already bought every copy they had on the shelves :-) Gotta love family.

The next bit of exciting news is that Conversion has been nominated for the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award. This is a huge honor and I'm humbled by it--just check out the other nominees and the past winners of the award. It's a long shot, but I can't wait to get dressed up and step out for the gala in D.C. Macy's here I come!

The Drama: Poetry Contests and the Poets Who Love/Hate Them...

2008-08-26T05:41:00.000-07:00

So, some parts of the poetry world are in an uproar again. Two book contests have recently done some things that confound the poets who entered and those who eagerly await the birth of new books. First, poet Stacey Lynn Brown has started a blog and is recounting her seemingly horrendous experience with Cider Press Review. The nuts and bolts of the story are that she won their annual poetry contest and, after a battle with the press, had the prize revoked. She even had to hire a lawyer to settle things. After the fallout began, the press did eventually give their own explanation for what happened with this year's prize.

Second, the Cave Canem recently announced that there was no winner chosen for their annual first book prize. The whole community is a little fuzzy because we all personally know poets who submitted to the prize and believe that there was infinite potential in the manuscripts submitted, but we're not sure what the judge's process was and/or why the ultimate decision was made. In fact, the buzz has spread beyond the CC fellows. Everyone seems thoroughly confused, while some are just plain angry and disgusted.

All this talk makes me think about the value and validity of book prizes. I know this may seem rather strange because I won a book prize (more on this later) and have certainly benefited because of it. However, I think some poets who protest against the book prize system have valid points. For instance, check out my fellow Bennington alum Reb Livingston's take on things. Poets are definitely the step-children of the American literary (publishing) system. Most of us don't have a prayer of getting published unless it's through a book prize and, for the most part, the final final decision for a book prize comes down to one person's aesthetic taste and eye. When you enter a prize, you are a needle in an ever-growing haystack, and you might get thrown out with some of the hay just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Case in point: I won the 2007 Naomi Long Madgett Prize. I was excited and honored when I found out that Dr. Long Madgett had judged the prize herself that year and had personally chosen my manuscript. Now, this was fantastic, but certainly not the way the press (Lotus) planned things. As it turns out, there was another judge, but a problem with scheduling prevented him/her from judging the prize that year. So, the onus (or privilege, I'm not really sure which) eventually fell on someone else, if the press wanted the prize to be presented that year. After the field was narrowed down to finalists, fortunately Dr. Long Madgett found my work compelling and believed in its potential (as DeLana would put it), so she chose it to be published and my book was born. However, had things worked out as the press originally planned, it is very likely that I would not have won the prize and my book would still be floating in the ether, like so many other promising manuscripts.

And this is really my main concern and the thing I stress the most when talking to other writers (especially those who are discouraged by, leery about or not momentarily enamored of the book contest process): at best, contests are a crap shoot (yeah, I said it) and should be taken with a grain of salt whether you win one or not. Here lately I've been telling myself the same thing, as I'm about to embark on another foray into the world of book contests now that I have a real handle on my second manuscript.

Now, let's be clear, I do believe that there are some things people can do to increase their chances of winning or placing in a book contest. Here's a short list of tips that I've received (or just witnessed) that I think will always remain true:

Follow the presses' guidelines. If you buck their rules, they'll simply discard your work, and they have the right to do so. If you hate this concept, don't enter or start your own press and make your own rules.
Write a good manuscript. It may not be absolutely, positively "finished" when you submit it (i.e. you will probably want to tweak it some more before it's actually published), but it has to be polished and stand out from the hundreds to thousands of other manuscripts in competition.
Check your grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc. before you send the manuscript off and be consistent.
Don't enter a contest, if the judge is someone you know. There is so much drama about contest rigging that you should just steer clear of anything that could be perceived as favoritism by a judge.
Research the press before you submit your work. How else will you know if you even want them to be privileged to have your work?
Be prolific. Write while you're sending things out and revise while you have stuff out there.
Be persistent and keep track of all of your submissions. Yes, postage and contest fees can get expensive, but it often takes a few rounds of submitting to many contests to even get a little bit of interest in the work, mostly because of the reasons cited above.
Don't give up! Rejection is part of the writing life. If this is really what you want to do, unfortunately, you have to get used to it. Despite this, those small glimmers of hope and recognition are often sweeter because of what you did to get someone else to take notice.

2008-08-15T05:30:00.000-07:00

I just love Johnny (and many Jon, John, Johnnie, Johnny's , as the case may be...clean it up kids, I'm talking about folks like John Legend (despite what my beautician says about him), Johnnie Knight (my grandfather), etc...). Notice I call Mr. Mayer "Johnny," as we are on very personal basis now. We've been together since before anyone ever cared about Room for Squares and certainly before the Grammy Awards and all the Hollywood hotties came calling.

And though I am always on the fence about remaking classics (on the one hand, I love the idea of paying homage to those artists who came before us, but, one the other hand, why remake something that was already wonderful?), I think even Tom Petty would have to give this one a nod. Such a subtle, sharp and enchanting acoustic mix. Thanks, Johnny, for helping me write today...

I am such a sap...

2008-07-30T08:01:00.000-07:00

I cried for twenty minutes this morning after someone sent me a version of the video above from MSNBC. I don't know if it was the story or Whitney, but I just couldn't help myself. I did some research on the backstory and got to thinking about Isa. 11:6 and Disney's The Lion King (I know, I know the three seemingly have no correlation whatsoever, but that's the way my mind works!)

I'm telling you, PETA should option the story and this video. Showing it would be a lot more effective than throwing paint at people who wear furs. Click the picture above, watch the video and try, just try, not to be moved!

Ms. Carrie...

2008-07-29T05:17:00.000-07:00

She would want you to get up at sunrise and write poems.
She would want you to dance and not help her to the car.
She would want you to know her mother, her sisters, her brothers.
She would love, even at 93, she would accept a proposal.
She would send e-mails in ALL CAPS to get your attention.
She would say, You young people teach me so much, and mean it.
She would walk with us in Greensburg, pick flowers and smile.
She would tell you about us--beautiful and ugly--like Langston.
She would want you to know Ota Benga, how he was loved, lost.
She would covet our music and our words.
She would cook for you and brag about it.
She would gain another son and inspire him to immortalize her.
She would say, Thank you.
We all say, Thank you and Thank you and Love.

Ms. Carrie wrote the poem below as part of her long series about Ota Benga, but I think it's also fitting today:

Lamentations

The - Night Birds sing sorrow songs.
Joy - is no more, they walk
in - the woods alone, singing,
our - hero has gone away, our
hearts - are sad. No one
has - told us why our nights of fires
ceased; - no more days of the hunt with
our - friend, no more nights of the
dance - with the moon. Our teacher
has - closed his books and
turned - our dance
to
mourning.*

*Lamentations 5:15; King James

She'll be deeply missed...

It's That Time Again...

2008-07-24T10:36:00.000-07:00

Every two years, the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival takes place in Stanhope, NJ and over 100,000 poets and poetry lovers descend on the space. Of course, I'm heading up north with my girls and we get more and more excited each time they add a new poet to the schedule.

My favorite poet, Lucille Clifton, has been at every Dodge Festival since the festival began. There's even word that she packed 10,000 people into a venue there once. Another one of the poets I admire most, Sharon Olds, will also be back this time around. I cannot wait to hear her get down. (I'm secretly hoping to hear "The Premonition" or, at least, "Sex Without Love"...)

In addition to Clifton and Olds, Dodge has booked a slew of poets I know and love. Check out the entire list here.

The only problem is, this year, there are so many fabulous things happening here that conflict with Dodge! First of all, I have a bone to pick with my alma mater because they've planned their annual Lit Fest during the same week at the Dodge Festival! This is sacrilege! The Lit Fest is always in October and now (because we've already paid for Dodge, and poets do not have money to throw away) I'm going to miss one of the coolest brothas that ever stepped to the mic or the page: Mr. Doug Kearney. I'm pretty darn mad about this, as I have been talking him up with friends in Norfolk for an entire year, and now I won't even be able to see him bless the space with his fire, brilliance and general all-out insanity. Still, I can't boycott the Lit Fest because I've just fallen in love with Late Wife and the Lit Fest tapped the Pulitzer Prize-winning author to read as well.

And, if that isn't enough to drive all the writers here crazy, the city is also holding its first ever "Books in the Park" Day. They're asking all area authors to brings their books to sell. A write up that poet Toni Wynn forwarded me says this of the event: "Our event will be a paired with the 3rd Annual AT&T Sunrise to Sunset Acoustic Music Festival. The 'Books in the Park' Festival will be held on approximately 2 acres on the western end of Town Point Park. The area will have a village feel with a Children’s Pavilion, Poet Lounge, and larger tented areas with fiction and non-fiction genres..." A Poet Lounge?! I don't even know what's in a Poet Lounge, but I wanna be there! Alas, I won't be able to go because it's on the same weekend as Dodge :-(

My dream for Dodge weekend would be a marriage of both worlds or to find a way to be in two places at once, but I doubt that either of those things will happen. Nevertheless, below there's photo of Sekou Sundiata during his last performance at Dodge, but if you click on it, you'll find another poet waiting :-) This is as close as I could get to having the best of both worlds at my fingertips...

Get on the Good Foot!

2008-07-16T07:20:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of one brilliant, good-hearted poet and journalist, L. Lamar Wilson, you too can check out the items famed auction house Christie's has up for sale from the Godfather of Soul. Just click here to get an eyeful of what helped brand him the hardest working man in showbiz.

PBS also has a wonderful write up about James Brown in their American Masters series. James has to be considered when you think about groundbreaking artist who single-handedly helped change the face of America and its language. I remember reading Sammy Davis Jr's second memoir (which is fantastic, by the way...hey, Pop-Pop, did I ever give that book back to you?) and he discussed the way Brown's anthem "Say It Loud--I'm Black and I'm Proud" spearheaded the shift from colored to black, and how it's influence was felt from the street to the White House and beyond.

Click the picture below for some poetry in motion from Soul Brother Number One...watch me!

TORCH is here! Read, enjoy, submit!

2008-07-14T10:28:00.000-07:00

TORCH: poetry, prose, and short stories by African American Women

Spring / Summer 2008 Issue Available Online
In this issue:

FLAME Tayari Jones interview by Ana-Maurine Lara

SPARK Kamilah Aisha Moon

POETRY / PROSE

SHORT STORY

Keli Stewart

ARTWORK

Nicole Goodwin

Torch is currently accepting submissions. Please visit http://www.torchpoetry.org/ for guidelines.

Torch was established to promote the work of African American women. We provide a place to celebrate contemporary poetry, prose, and short stories by experienced and emerging writers alike. We prefer our contributors to take risks and offer a diverse body of work that examines and challenges preconceived notions regarding race, ethnicity, gender roles, and identity.
Within Torch, we offer a special section called Flame that features an interview, biography, and work sample by an established writer as well as an introduction to their Spark, an emerging writer who inspires them and adds to the boundless voice of creative writing by Black women.

My new favorite superhero: WordGirl!

2008-07-08T07:11:00.001-07:00

Leave it to PBS to create the superheroine of my dreams. Her name is WordGirl, and I love her madly. I discovered her flipping channels the other day where I found her nestled between Arthur and Clifford the Big Red Dog. She is a superhero that fights her enemies by using, explaining and defending the power of words!

In the episode above, WordGirl meets the Butcher, master of meat and mangler of words, and tries to prevent him from robbing a bank. She's funny, cool, brilliant, strong, beautiful and everything I want little girls (and boys!) to know they can be, plus she reads books!!! The only way they could possibly make this cartoon better is if, next season, she has a bevy of brilliant sidekicks with names like Sestina, Hyperbole and MetaForce. That would be astounding, amazing, astonishing, absolutely ostentatious and awesome :-)

Cave Canem: Round Four

2008-07-07T06:30:00.000-07:00

All I have to say is, Dante Micheaux is one hard-working brotha! Nobody knows how much he was missed from this year's CC summer retreat more than the Blue Collar Scholars--Amanda Johnston and I. What a fantastic experience it was (of course), but we definitely earned our keep. Still, we found a little time to play hard, too :-)

Just a few of my highlights from the week in Greensburg:

The fellows readings ( I was brought to tears by Joy Gonsalves, Ross Gay, Lamar Wilson and several others)
Meeting, reading and talking with Tommye Blount (Detroit always comes hard...)
Hearing Carl refer to himself as Carl "Mica Mica" Phillips (You have to track down Amanda for an explanation on this one)
Seeing Kelly Norman Ellis' mothering skills firsthand (Benadryl is a lifesaver)
Photos with Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Riding in the car with Colleen McElroy after workshop which she compared to a "one night stand"
Ed Roberson walkin' it out on the dance floor
The last ditch, roundhouse poem reading on Sunday morning
Claudia Rankine's high-tech reading at the Westmoreland Museum of Art
The bus ride and bus driver that got us to the Westmoreland (Rain, shine, sleet or wrong turns...)
Sarah Micklem
Making infomercials with Stacy Tolbert
Writing new poems
Watching Myronn Hardy work it to "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough"

The week was full and all-encompassing. So glad Alison, Toi and Cornelius saw fit to let me be a part of it all. Thanks fellows, for fellowship, laughter, and CC love. Til soon.

Connections/Ars Poetica

2008-05-15T06:21:00.000-07:00

So, I was thinking about art (Irmagean's "Movin On" is pictured above) and poetry this morning and went to the Academy website and saw a feature on the art of the ars poetica, which got me thinking about how I would define the term and an ars poetica poem. And because I'm thinking about other things happening in my life and the "po biz", I was drawn to this poem:

Ars Poetica (cocoons)

Six monarch butterfly cocoons
clinging to the back of your throat—

you could feel their gold wings trembling.

You were alarmed. You felt infested.
In the downstairs bathroom of the family home,
gagging to spit them out—
and a voice saying Don’t, don’t—

--Dana Levin

Which, in turn, led me to this poem:

The Poems I Have Not Written

I’m so wildly unprolific, the poems
I have not written would reach
from here to the California coast
if you laid them end to end.

And if you stacked them up,
the poems I have not written
would sway like a silent
Tower of Babel, saying nothing

and everything in a thousand
different tongues. So moving, so
filled with and emptied of suffering,
so steeped in the music of a voice

speechless before the truth,
the poems I have not written
would break the hearts of every
woman who’s ever left me,

make them eye their husbands
with a sharp contempt and hate
themselves for turning their backs
on the very source of beauty.

The poems I have not written
would compel all other poets
to ask of God: "Why do you
let me live? I am worthless.

please strike me dead at once,
destroy my works and cleanse
the earth of all my ghastly
imperfections." Trees would

bow their heads before the poems
I have not written. "Take me,"
they would say, "and turn me
into your pages so that I

might live forever as the ground
from which your words arise."
The wind itself, about which
I might have written so eloquently,

praising its slick and intersecting
rivers of air, its stately calms
and furious interrogations,
its flutelike lingerings and passionate

reproofs, would divert its course
to sweep down and then pass over
the poems I have not written,
and the life I have not lived, the life

I’ve failed even to imagine,
which they so perfectly describe.

--John Brehm

Which, in turn, made me think of this:

Myron Michael (or Mystro) has a track called "i am" on his new CD, Masters Thesis, that reminds of this poem. The gist of one of the verses runs along the same lines as the poem above.

Reading the poems and listening to the CD, in turn, made me think of this poem (though I didn't quite remember the expletives), which is also a type of ars poetica:

I Like My Own Poems

I like my own poems
best.
I quote from them
from time to time
saying, "A poet once said,"
and then follow up
with a line or two
from one of my own poems
appropriate to the event.
How those lines sing!
All that wisdom and beauty!
Why it tickles my ass
off its spine.
"Why those lines are mine!"
I say
and Jesus, what a bang
I get out of it.

I like the ideas in them,
my poems,
ideas that hit home.
They speak to me.
I mean, I understand
what the hell
the damn poet's
talking about.
"Why I've been there,
the same thing," I shout,
and Christ! What a shot it is,
a shot.

And hey,
The words!
Whew!
I can hardly stand it.
Words sure do not fail
this guy, I say.
From some world
only he knows
he bangs the bong,
but I can feel it
in the wood,
in the wood of the word,
rising to its form
in the world.
"Now, you gotta be good
to do that!" I say
and damn! It just shakes
my heart,
you know?

--Jack Grapes

Which, in turn, made me think of Lucille Clifton, who once said, 'If I'm the person that said the smart thing, then I'll repeat it', when discussing why she used one of her own lines as an epigraph to a new poem. I often think of this poem as one of Ms. Lucille's ars poeticas:

i am accused of tending to the past

i am accused of tending to the past

as if i made it,

as if i sculpted it

with my own hands. i did not.

this past was waiting for me

when i came,

a monstrous unnamed baby,

and i with my mother's itch

took it to breast

and named it

History.

she is more human now,

learning languages everyday,

remembering faces, names and dates.

when she is strong enough to travel
on her own, beware, she will.

--Lucille Clifton

So, what is an ars poetica? Well, Horace would have his say, but I'm still not sure how to define it in concrete terms. Generally, though, I believe when the term is used in contemporary poetry it simply means a poem about poetry or why one is or has been drawn to writing poetry, though I think it can be applied to other art forms as well. Since, in many ways, I deem the ars poetica a defining and connecting piece, this, in turn, leads me to believe that I am still writing/finding/mining mine...

Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre -- Wade in the Water

2008-05-04T18:49:00.001-07:00

Front row. Center. Alvin Ailey. Revelations. Need I say more? Well, I guess a little more...

I finally scored tickets to see the Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre in Norfolk and they were phenomenal. When they unvelied the first memorable stance from Ailey's most famous piece, "Revelations", the audience went mad. We were all waiting for Ailey's 1960 masterpiece that helped solidify him as one of the most talented dancers/choreographers of the modern dance era. The Alvin Ailey Theatre is celebrating their fiftieth year in 2008. Fifty years of this timeless beauty.

While the entire performance was stunning, I found myself most entralled by the "Wade in the Water" section of "Revelations". You can watch the entire section in the clip above. I truly believe that, in another life and time, I was meant to be an Alvin Ailey dancer (stop laughing, Mom)...

I'm sure I was almost the last person on earth to get to see the Ailey ensemble live, but, in case you've somehow missed them, don't let them pass you by again.

Reading at Hampton Public Library on Thursday, 5/1 @ 6:30 PM

2008-04-30T05:57:00.000-07:00

Thurs. May 1, 6:30 PM @ the Main Library: Writers on Writing on Thursdays - An evening with local poets Remica Bingham & Matilda Cox. We're also going to sneak some fiction in there with special guest Princess Perry. Please come out if you're in the area!!!

Jason Shinder/Wide Spirit

2008-04-29T09:17:00.000-07:00

Jason Shinder was my last teacher at Bennington. I was told--by all of the poets, repeatedly, especially by my friend David--that I had to work with Jason and I had to save him for last. He was the man who could take a hundred seemingly distant poems and spin them into one coherent masterpiece, or so went the myth. The strange thing was that, with Jason, the myth was almost true.

The first time I entered Jason's workshop, he began by quoting an unbelievably long poem--some lovely verse by Dylan Thomas, I think--and we all sat astounded by his memory and the way he infused his own wide spirit into the words. If he would have said he'd written the poem, labored over it for years, we would have believed. Jason encouraged us to "feel" poems, move into them and through them. Memorization would help us do this, he said, and, though I struggle with this myself, I've found that he was right.

Jason was also an advocate for using our own words to spark new ideas. He told us never to throw anything away, all poems--good, bad and ugly--could spark more poems. He asked us to go back to old notebooks and highlight good lines or lines that struck us in some way and start the poem again, from there, without any of the reservations we might have had in the past.

When it was time to send Jason my work, I was hesitant. "I don't know how to put this thesis together. I have no idea how to order a book or even if it's a book," I told him one afternoon during a private meeting in one of the dining rooms. "Don't worry," he said, "I do. Send everything to me. You're a poet. Let's see what you've got." Throughout that semester, I learned more than I could have ever imagined form Jason. I did send him everything, and he sent me a back a manuscript complete with the essential poems, sections, clear divisions, comments and a blessed title. CONVERSION was scrawled across the top page in blue ink, beneath it, a handwritten letter praising my work. Of course, there was still much work to be done, but after receiving the manuscript and letter form Jason, I felt like there was a t least direction, something concrete and valuable to work towards finishing. I still have the letter and that manuscript and I take them out and look at them every once in a while.

Four years ago, when I sat down to meet with Jason, I could never have imagined what an impact he'd have on my work and life. He taught me about being honest with myself as a writer and about revising a body of work, not just individual poems. He also stressed the importance of being true to my own voice, despite that fact that some would say it was redundant or invalid or unimportant or uninteresting, and he assured us all that someone would, indeed, think or say all of those things about our work.

Writing wasn't enough, he said, we had to be community activists as well. We had to start writing programs at our local schools and neighborhood centers, we had to sit on arts boards and councils, we had to edit anthologies (lots of them) and never be afraid to move our own work. Jason taught me that a good poet is never without books, that a good poet doesn't turn down readings, that a good poet will share a poem on a street corner at midnight with anyone who seems to be in need of a good poem. Jason taught me to live poetry, to breathe it. I listened and am still listening.

When I got the news that Jason had passed away last week after a long (and mostly hidden, as was his way) bout with cancer, I sat and thought about all the things I learned from him, all the things he valued, big and small. He was friends with James Baldwin and told us once that Baldwin died thinking he hadn't accomplished much. I pray that Jason knew how much he impacted my life and the lives of those that knew him. He was a true poet who believed in the power of light and movement (Did I mention that one of my favorite tidbits about Jason is that he was a principle dancer in the film Grease? He lived so many different lives...) and sound, in all its manifestations.

Here's a beautiful poem about his own loss. How he'll be missed...

Living

Just when it seemed my mother couldn’t bear

one more needle, one more insane orange pill,
my sister, in silence, stood at the end

of the bed and slowly rubbed her feet,

which were scratchy with hard, yellow skin,
and dirt cramped beneath the broken nails,

which changed nothing in time except

the way my mother was lost in it for a while
as if with a kind of relief that doesn’t relieve.

And then, with her eyes closed, my mother said

the one or two words the living have for gratefulness,
which is a kind of forgetting, with a sense

of what it means to be alive long enough

to love someone. Thank you, she said. As for me,
I didn’t care how her voice suddenly seemed low

and kind, or what failures and triumphs

of the body and spirit brought her to that point—
just that it sounded like hope, stupid hope.

--Jason Shinder

Remembering Dr. King at Boston U

2008-04-28T09:28:00.000-07:00

So, I had a crazy month. I have been all over the place and done/saw some very cool things. I've been meaning to blog about this panel I managed to catch while I was at a conference out side of Boston early this month. Boston University is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s alma mater. His papers are housed there and they recently hosted several panel to commemorate his life and legacy. On April 4th, forty years to the day that Dr. King was assassinated, they assembled an impressive panel of artist to speak about their relationship to Dr. King and his legacy. The panel was moderated by Callie Crossley (whom I met in the airport a few days later and had a lovely discussion with about the way she wrangled the folks on stage). The panelists were: Sonia Sanchez, Derek Walcott, Nikki Giovanni, Simon Estes, Chuck D, Sam Cornish and Talib Kweli. I took several pages of notes and just wanted to list some random quotes (in no particular order)that struck me as a listener that night:

Sam Cornish said his major influences were Gwendolyn Brooks, Dudley Randall and Broadside Press, and especially Amiri Baraka. Quotes from Cornish:

"I think it's important to be dangerous, to be critical."

"The international language (art) is yours if you work for it."

Quote from Simon Estes:

"Hatred and war have never solved anything."

Simon Estes opened the panel with a beautiful rendition of the spiritual "Go Down Moses." He also mentioned that he had a close, personal relationship with the King family. Even so, Estes seemed wildly out of place on this panel and every time he had a chance to speak he ended up off-topic, usually encouraging the 1,000+ audience members to renew their faith in God...preachy but heartfelt, nonetheless. His real contribution, though, was his voice. Listen to him perform here.

Quotes from Sister Sonia:

"Resist!"

I spoke with Prof. Sanchez not long after the panel and she told me that she felt that it was one of those instances where she could sit back and observe more than speak. And that's pretty much what she did. I think, after all the work she's done, she's entitled to just observing at times.

Quote from Talib Kweli:

(Upon being asked if artists have the responsibility of being political in their art) "The job of the artist is to be honest with themselves. My job as a man is to be responsible to my community."

(As a disclaimer about the language in his song "Hostile Gospel") "Hip-hop is an aggressive art."

No real quote from Callie Crossley, but she did a fantastic job of handling all of the egos up on stage. The panel was hastily constructed, ran much too long and had many kinks, but Ms. Crossley was the saving grace of BU that night. They should thank her, book her again and put some extra cash in her pocket for keeping things running smoothly (especially when she had to keep Chuck D and Sam Cornish from trying to outdo each other verbally...)

Quotes from Chuck D:

"I don't like history punkdefying Dr. King's legacy."

"Dr. King taught me that we have to protect those that want to do right."

"If you take the music away from the people , you take the history away by default."

"Be a nerd about what you about."

Walcott was pretty laid back, too. I guess once you've won the Nobel, you don't have to prove anything to anybody!

Quote from Derek Walcott:

(Upon explaining why he uses the word "black") "African-American is one of those hyphenated things that doesn't face the truth."

Quotes form Nikki Giovanni:

"The hero is misunderstood, though right in the end."

"If you're not dead, be alive."

(On being a fan of Hip-hop) "If you're not offending anybody, you're not doing something right."

All in all, I was glad I took the hour-drive (in the cold and rain) to witness the panel. Even so, here are some other notes I took for myself while I was there:

One thing I've learned: Artists really like to talk about themselves.
Chuck D talks loud and long but never really answers the questions. Callie cuts him off.
Question from a student that saddened me a bit: "I was raised by an older generation and I know they are supposed to teach us, but I've given up on that. So, tell me, what can we (the younger generation) do to educate ourselves."

Things...Today

2008-04-23T06:43:00.000-07:00

I am having a weird day already; I got up early and managed to plow through the million things that seem to need to be done before work in the morning, but am still a bit out of it, whatever "it" is. Some random things for today:

1.) Things I'm reading today:

Chapters from the Book of Luke
Poems from all the National Poetry Month e-mail lists (namely Poetry Daily, Knopf, and the Academy of American Poets)
The Undomestic Goddess - Sophie Kinsella (Given to me by Jane--my best friend since eighth grade--as a present)

2.) Things I can't stop singing today:

Homecoming - Kanye West ft. Chris Martin (from Coldplay)
Feels Good - Rahsaan Patterson (Thanks to Dr. Campbell, who reminded me what a soulful voice Rahsaan has)

3.) Things I want my parents to get to do today:

Capital Jazz Fest Cruise
All-inclusive trip to the Big Island
Any kind of vacation this year

4.) Things I'm looking forward to today:

Jon Pineda's reading/book release party this Thursday
Finally seeing the Alvin Ailey Dance Company (While Ms. Jamison is still director...)
Salsa Bootcamp (or some dance class) with the Road Dawgs

5.) Things I've browsed on the internet today:

We seem to even prefer dieting in the womb, girls.
You think you know Big Will, but you have no idea...
The Bluecast Variations on Funk Reading sponsored by Indiana Review. Take a listen.

You MUST see this...

2008-04-18T10:25:00.000-07:00

The hardest working man in poetry is back at it again. He's completed a new groundbreaking interactive project that we all need to look at and learn from. Click the picture below to find out what all humming is about:

So You Think You Can Write?

2008-03-26T06:06:00.001-07:00

This Saturday, 3/29, I'll be participating in a one-day publishing festival sponsored by Old Dominion University. They have a bang up MFA program and fabulous teacher/writers like Tim Seibles, Sheri Reynolds, and Luisa Igloria. The festival will run all day and will have a series of panel son publishing in small and large venues and on techniques to get your work noticed by editors. Please come out to the festival if you're in the area. You'll find all of the pertinent details here.

You might even get more tips like the ones below ( I just love these, especially 4, 6 and 9):

Been thinking about all kinds of writing things this week, got a lot on my plate. I'll be at the ACTC Conference next week delivering a paper on August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone. Wilson is certainly one of the best and, arguably, the most prolific playwright the United States has ever produced. My paper deals with identity and spirituality, so contemplating those things on the page has made me think about the definitions I've set for those things in my own life.

Benn reading some great books in preparation for the upcoming Emerging Writers Festival at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA. Right now, I'm in the middle of Emily Rapp's memoir Poster Child and I am riveted. I can't wait to hang out with some of these fantastic writers. More on that as it approaches.

I also have a big exam coming up at work, so my students are getting antsy. Breathe guys, breathe. The comic strip below is just for them (though they better be studying and not on the computer reading my blog!):

Reading at William & Mary on Tuesday, 3/11 @ 7:00 PM

2008-03-10T08:34:00.001-07:00

The Ringing Ear at The College of William & Mary, Tucker Hall 120, Williamsburg, Virginia. Remica L. Bingham, Matilda Cox, and Kendra Hamilton, with guest poets Tim Seibles and Toni Wynn, present an evening of poetry at the nation's second-oldest institutions of learning. Professor Hermine Pinson hosts. The event is co-sponsored by The Patrick Hayes Writers Series. If you're in the area on Tuesday, 3/11, please come out to hang with us!

Dance, Dance Revelation

2008-03-10T07:47:00.000-07:00

This weekend's performance with INSPIRIT and VTDance was amazing. The movement of the body is such an intense and introspective art. I was awed by the fact that company directors Christal Brown and Vincent Thomas (pictured above) both found ways to mold their dancers into one continuous form, but not make them a homogeneous unit. Each dancer moved in his or her own skin precisely the way it was made to move, but each dancer was in unison with the others as well.

Both Vincent and Christal used various artistic mediums in their work. I couldn't help but think of Venus Thrash during INSPIRIT moving piece "Past Her Rites", in which the dancers begin their magnificent choreography to the voice of Nina Simone. Later, during the "Isms" piece that tackles various social boxes we find ourselves relegated to, INSPIRIT used some poignant lyrics from Goodie Mob and allowed me to recite my poem "Initiation" and pen a new, extemporaneous poem during the piece. There was constant music--live and recorded--even a saxophonist who was lifted into the air while still playing during a VTDance piece. There were media images--photography, newspapers, even conglomerate ads flashed at a dizzying pace across the stage's far wall. In short, I was blown away by the constant beauty and was blessed to spend time with so many brilliant artists.

Shoutouts to some of the cool folks who came to the show, touched base or hung out while I was in D.C.: promising poet Patricia Biela, Pat Washington (of the Poem-cees), my good friend Anita Taylor, Derrick Brown holding it down at Busboys, Kyle Dargan (check out his new venture), Thomas Sayers Ellis who loves to scream a poet's name while hanging out of a car window on U Street, and my Aunt Eunice and Uncle Frankie. You know family always shows love.

Thanks again to Christal for allowing me to be a part of something bigger than all of us.

Reading in D.C. with INSPIRIT Dance, March 8th and 9th

2008-02-22T11:47:00.000-08:00

Something very cool has happened--I've been asked to be a part of a performance with INSPIRIT Dance Company in the next few weeks. Big ups to poet John Murillo ,who put me in touch with Christal Brown, the founder of INSPIRIT, after I made a trip to NYC last year.

The Company is using a few of my poems--about womanhood and sensuality, I believe--from my book, Conversion, in their new piece. I'm so excited to finally get to meet them and see the words come to full-bodied life. Needless to say, I am thrilled :-)

If you're in D.C. or will be there the weekend of March 8th and 9th, please come out to the performance. Details about the location are below:

Dance Place

3228 8th Street NW

Washington, DC 20017
Ticket Prices: $20 general admission;

$15 members, students, teachers (Pre K-12), professional artists & seniors;

$7 for children
For more information and directions, call 202-269-1600

It's only appropriate to end this post with a poem about dance that dances...

American Smooth

We were dancing – it must
have been a foxtrot or a waltz,
something romantic but
requiring restraint,
rise and fall, precise
execution as we moved
into the next song without
stopping, two chests heaving
above a seven-league
stride—such perfect agony
one learns to smile through,
ecstatic mimicry
being the sine qua non
of American Smooth.
And because I was distracted
By the effort of
Keeping my frame
(the leftward lean, head turned
Just enough to gaze out
Past your ear and always
Smiling, smiling),
I didn’t notice
How still you’d become until
We had done it
(for two measures?
Four?) – achieved flight,
that swift and serene
magnificence,
before the earth
remembered who we were
and brought us down.

--Rita Dove

Tina Turner and Beyonce -- Grammy Awards 2008

2008-02-11T10:47:00.001-08:00

Tina Turner will be 70 years old next year. She was born in Nutbush, Tennessee. She wears four-inch stiletto heels and silver lame'. My mother and I agree that we both want to be Tina Turner when we grow up...or at least get personal trainers now and hope for the best.

How does staying up until 11:30 watching the Grammys help one to write??? Well, I am still inspired by this performance and am thinking the eternal questions. How do you reinvent yourself (in song)? What are the extended metaphors in the Turner catalog? I always imagine that singing "Private Dancer" was especially painful for Tina, so she'd beat that song down every time she came to it. How did Ike's being gone, really gone, affect the way she showed the stage no mercy last night? Where are the odes for Tina? What line(s) can I use to write her Bop? Plenty of inspiration in tradition and history, the melding of classic and new.

Oh, and stop hatin' on Beyonce. She worked it, too. And girlfriend had to work pretty hard to keep up with Ms. Turner.

Something poetic from Tina:

PRIVATE DANCER

All the men come in these places
And the men are all the same
You don't look at their faces
And you don't ask their names
You don't think of them as human
You don't think of them at all
You keep your mind on the money
Keeping your eyes on the wall

I'm your private dancer, a dancer for money
I'll do what you want me to do
I'm your private dancer, a dancer for money
And any old music will do

I want to make a million dollars
I wanna live out by the sea
Have a husband and some children
Yeah, I guess I want a family
All the men come in these places
And the men are all the same
You don't look at their faces
And you don't ask their names

I'm your private dancer, a dancer for money
I'll do what you want me to do
I'm your private dancer, a dancer for money
And any old music will do

Deutch marks or dollars
American Express will do nicely, thank you
Let me loosen up your collar
Tell me, do you wanna see me do the shimmy again?

A Few Things I Learned...

2008-02-06T06:56:00.000-08:00

at (or from) the AWP Conference last week:

Natasha Trethewey is working on winning another Pulitzer Prize with her poems about the Castas paintings, one of which is pictured above.

The prose poem is a way of "imprisoning" the reader. I think Beth Ann Fennelly said that while three other fabulous writers, Patrick Rosal, Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Kim Addonizio, sat near her.

Forest Hamer is a brilliant poet with a day job that can teach you a thing or two about your own psychosis if you listen long enough.

Jericho Brown's book Please, soon to be released from New Issues Press, might just change the way we think about the standards for great poetry, especially if he's in front of us reading the poems aloud.

Tupelo Press publishes some fantastic boks and you will spend an hour (and all your money) at their table in the bookfair if you are not careful.

Inside joke: Truth or dare is as much about the mafia as it isn't, at three o'clock in the morning, with a bowl of steaming chili, in a cute apartment in Harlem.

Here's a poem by one of my teachers, the beloved Ed Ochester, who was there, and who taught me to laugh and cry in equal measure whenever necessary:

What the Frost Casts Up

A crown of handmade nails, as though
there were a house here once, burned,
where we've gardened for fifteen years;
the ceramic top of an ancient fuse;
this spring the tiny head of a plastic doll--
not much compared to what they find
in England, where every now and then
a coin of the Roman emperors, Severus
or Constantius, works its way up, but
something, as though nothing we've
ever touched wants to stay in the earth,
the patient artifacts waiting, having been lost
or cast away, as though they couldn't bear
the parting, or because they are the only
messengers from lives that were important once,
waiting for the power of the frost
to move them to the mercy of our hands.

AWP in NYC

2008-01-29T05:36:00.001-08:00

The off-site events at the AWP Conference are almost better than the on-site events this year! You'll find a meager sampling from the conference website of some of the things (and people) I'd love to catch below:

LITERARY EVENTS

If the 500 exhibits of the Bookfair and the 300 events on the official schedule of the AWP Conference are not enough for you, you should consider a few of the off-site alternatives, listed below.

Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

8:00PM
Page Meets Stage8:00PM
Page Meets Stage: Paul Muldoon & Thomas Sayers Ellis

Bowery Poetry Club308 Bowery (btn Houston & Bleeker)

Cost: $12

The reading series known as Page Meets Stage is like no other poetry reading series anywhere. Each month two different poets, one who writes primarily for the page and another who is more performance oriented, take the stage together and read back and forth, poem for poem. The current schedule includes Pulitzer Prize winners, Macarthur Fellows, poetry slam champions, and other spoken word icons. Co-produced by Words Worth Ink & Blue Flower Arts.

10:00PM

2nd Annual Cave Canem Fellows Reading

The Bowery Poetry Club

308 Bowery (At the foot of First Street, between Houston & Bleecker, F train to Second Ave, or 6 train to Bleecker)

Admission: $10

Readings by Michelle Berry, DeLana Dameron, Jacqueline Johnson, LaTasha Nevada Diggs, Krista Franklin, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Richard Hamilton, Myronn Hardy, Randall Horton, Marcus Jackson, Amanda Johnston, Jacqueline Jones LaMon, January O'Neal, Ernesto Mercer, Dante Micheaux, Indigo Moor, Nicole Sealey, Shia Shabazz, Evie Shockley, and Bianca Spriggs.

Thursday, January 31st, 2008

6:00PM
The Affrilachian Poets @ The Nuyorican Poets Café

236 East 3rd Street, between Avenues B and C(Closest Subway Stop is "2nd Avenue" on the F Train)

Admission: $7 student, $10 general

Featuring: Kelly Norman Ellis, Ellen Hagan, Parneshia Jones, Amanda Johnston, Hao Wang, Mitchell L. H. Douglas, Bianca Spriggs, Natasha Marin, Marta Miranda and special guest Rane Arroyo.

Persea Books Poetry Reading
McNally Robinson Bookstore
52 Prince Street in SoHo

Readings by Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Alena Hairston, Kate Northrop, Patrick Rosal, Anne Shaw, Sidney Wade, and Rachel Wetzsteon read. Introduction by Gabriel Fried, Persea Poetry Editor.

7:00PM - 10:00PM
Courting Risk: Multicultural, Multi-genre, Multidimensional Women
Macaulay Center
Macaulay Honors College
35 W. 67th Street
Cost: Free

Complimentary refreshments will be provided. There might even be some music and interactive performance art thrown in. Stick around after for a book signing and art sale. Featured Readers: Esther Belin, Naomi Benaron, M. L. Brown, Ching-In Chen, DéLana R. A. Dameron, Ashaki M. Jackson, Anne Liu Kellor, Natasha Marin, Maureen Owens, Khadijah Queen, Susan Southard.

Friday, February 1st, 2008

6:00PM - 9:00PM
Celebrating New Asian American Poetry
New York University19 University Place, The Great Room (101)

Please RSVP at http://www.apa.nyu.edu/

In recent years, there's been a palpable increase in books published by Asian American poets. A flight of fancy? A movement? Has our time finally come? One thing is certain: Asian American poetry is thriving with a panoply of enigmatic individual voices. The participants will read from their respective collections published in 2007 and forthcoming in 2008. Authors include Kazim Ali, Rick Barot, Jennifer Chang, Lisa Chen, Oliver de la Paz, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Joseph O. Legaspi, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Jon Pineda. This event was funded in part by Poets & Writers, Inc. with public funds from The New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. Supported by Kundiman and the Asian American Writers' Workshop.

6:30PM
ACENTOS: A Gathering and Celebration of Latino and Latina Poets
The School of Social Work at Hunter College
129 E. 79th Street (Corner of 79th St. and Lexington Ave.)
Presented by El Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños and Acentos Bronx Poetry Showcase.

To coincide with the AWP conference, Acentos and El Centro present a celebration and reading of more than twenty emerging and established poets of Latino/a descent. Scheduled readers include Martin Espada, Rafael Campo, Aracelis Girmay, Willie Perdomo, and many more. Hosted by Rich Villar. Directions: #6 Train to 77th Street. Walk two blocks north to 79th Street and Lexington Avenue. The School of Social Work is located on the northwest corner of 79th and Lexington.

Saturday, February 2nd, 2008

1:00PM - 3:00PM
Book Celebration: 1:00PM - 3:00PM
Book Celebration: "On the Road to Freedom: A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail"

NYPL, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Join Charles E. Cobb, Jr. in celebrating the publication of On the Road to Freedom: A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail. With real grassroots stories in the words of those who lived it, Charles E. Cobb leads us from Washington, D.C., through eight Southern states to visit the places where the pioneers of the Civil Rights Movement fought for freedom. A book signing will follow the presentation.

7:00PM
Not for Mothers Only Anthology
NYU Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House

58 West 10th Street(between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas)

Free and open to the public.

Featuring poets Lee Ann Brown, Gillian Conoley, Beth Ann Fennelly, Miranda Field, Annie Finch, Akilah Oliver, Alicia Ostriker, Molly Peacock, Eleni Sikelianos, Anne Waldman, Zhang Er, Rachel Zucker, and more. Fence Books Party following the reading.

Check out Ms. Patricia Smith

2008-01-28T07:38:00.001-08:00

I am gearing up for the AWP Conference happening this week in NYC and the highlight of my trip will be interviewing Patricia Smith.

The poem Smith is reciting/performing (What is the precise language for this kind of music? We'll discuss this and other things in the interview...) here is "Building Nicole's Mama", the first poem in her award-winning collection Teahouse of the Almighty.

I'm looking forward to getting an earful of her and many, many others this week. More to come about AWP soon...

I Love Kids

2008-01-22T11:15:00.000-08:00

I got this e-mail the other day and am really hoping it's true. I believe it is. Have you talked to any six-year-olds lately? ( My absolute favorite one in the world is pictured above.) They are brilliant! Here's the e-mail:

A first grade school teacher had twenty-six students in her class. She presented each child in her classroom the 1st half of a well-known proverb and asked them to come up with the remainder of the proverb. It's hard to believe these were actually done by first graders. Their insight may surprise you.

1. Don't change horses ... until they stop running.
2. Strike while the ... bug is close.
3. It's always darkest before ... Daylight Saving Time.
4. Never underestimate the power of ... termites.
5. You can lead a horse to water but ... How?
6. Don't bite the hand that ... looks dirty.
7. No news is... impossible.
8. A miss is as good as a ... Mr.
9. You can't teach an old dog new ... Math.
10. If you lie down with dogs, you'll ... stink in the morning.
11. Love all, trust ... Me.
12. The pen is mightier than the ... pigs.
13. An idle mind is ... the best way to relax.
14. Where there's smoke there's ... pollution.
15. Happy the bride who ... gets all the presents.
16. A penny saved is ... not much.
17. Two's company, three's ... the Musketeers.
18. Don't put off till tomorrow what ... you put on to go to bed.
19. Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, cry and ... You have to blow your nose.
20. There are none so blind as ... Stevie Wonder.
21. Children should be seen and not ... spanked or grounded.
22. If at first you don't succeed ... get new batteries.
23. You get out of something only what you ... See in the picture on the box.
24. When the blind lead the blind ... get out of the way.
25. A bird in the hand ... is going to poop on you.

And the WINNER and last one!
26. Better late than ... Pregnant.

How do children know so much??? And what happens to all that knowledge???

New Year, New Thoughts, New Beauty

2008-01-09T12:03:00.001-08:00

A friend, who shall remain nameless, accused me of having some lame images on my blog, so I'm getting my gameface on in the new year. This is a painting by John Biggers--a fabulous painter/muralist that doesn't get his due, if you asked me. My dream is to have his work grace the cover of one of my books someday.

Well, the new year is already underway and I am just catching up. No resolutions, just thoughts and goals in the midst of a new beginning. Here are a few:

Goals
1.) Finish second book of poetry
2.) Finish critical book
3.) Submit new work to at least three journals each month
4.) Cook more
5.) Shop less (this is at the bottom, because it is the least likely goal to be met)

I also did an end of the year survey with some friends and here are some of my answers. I wonder how they'll change throughout the year to come...

Favorite Things of 2007

Favorite books:
1. Blue Front - Martha Collins
2. Repair - C. K. Williams
3. Teeth - Aracelis Girmay

*I didn't read much fiction/non-fiction that blew me away last year.

Favorite authors:
1. Dick Gregory (I had no idea his writing would be so lyrical in places)
2. Martin Espada (He gave a great reading, too...)
3. Lucille Clifton (I just love her all the time)

Favorite places to write:
1. My office (surprisingly)
2. My car
3. On planes

Favorite movies:
1. Music and Lyrics (I know it's cheesy, but I bought the DVD!)
2. The Great Debaters

Favorite television shows:
1. Grey's Anatomy
2. Independent Lens
3. A Different World (I am so grateful for re-runs...)(And where is the reunion show?!)

Favorite music:
1. Stevie Wonder (He's still bad)
2. Chrisette Michele
3. Chris Brown (I hang out with teenagers sometimes, sue me!)
4. Fall Out Boy

I've been writing for the past couple of days, so that's a good sign. Looking forward to the madness that is AWP coming up at the end of the month and readings all over throughout the year. All in all, I'm hoping for a bang-up 2008. Here's to all reading well and writing fire!!!

TGIF -- The Links

2007-12-14T05:42:00.000-08:00

I'm stealing an idea from super-blogger, novelist Tayari Jones. She often sends her bloggers a slew of cool links to check out and, since so much is happening in the world, I decided to do the same.

1.) Check out the list of forthcoming African-American interest books from Publishers Weekly. Some interesting and others just ridiculous. It's disheartening when the tiny children's book list looks better than the long one for adults.

2.) My Nana will be happy to hear this news. Walter Mosley has just agreed to give birth to a new mystery man. He signed a three-book deal with a new publisher and we'll all reap the benefits. The rumor mill is churning about a literary novel that is to be part of the deal as well.

3.) Riverhead Books (Mosley's new home) is having a bang up year, as another wunderkind on their hefty author list has just been given the highest of honors by New York Magazine. Princess will be happy to hear the long-awaited comeback of Junot Diaz seems to have come full circle.

4.) On a not so literary note (but kind of one, at an angle) Denzel is looking good this year and got some huge nods from The Golden Globes. I cannot wait to see his portrayal of poet Melvin Tolson in The Great Debaters, his labor of love debuting this month. Go see it!!!

5.) Baby, it's cold outside, but Poetry Daily's pick for today is all about the summertime. Check out R.T. Smith's poem of the day. Intimate portrait with a little Gershwin thrown in for good measure.

6.) Last but not least, art for art's sake. Visit these artist blogs to see what genius has been finding its way to the modern canvas:

Didi Menendez - Cuban painter and editor of MiPOesias is looking for poet models. See who she's already immortalized.

Carolyn Beard Whitlow - Sister poet and Lotus Press author. Preserving our patchwork history through her beautiful hand-stitched quilts.

Krista Franklin - I carry one of Krista's journals everywhere I go. It helped give me voice. Her collages speak as well.

Happy Friday! I hope this is your first day in a long line of days to breathe easy for a while...

Can't Stop Listening To...

2007-12-04T07:14:00.001-08:00

this fabulous Chrisette Michele song, Is This the Way Love Feels.

We need more female vocalists moving in the old tradition--using their voices as intruments and perfecting the swing between piano and forte, the slide into and out of crescendo.

Love the instrumental bridge/breakdown. The music reminds me of Prince, and Michele's howl is a soul-blues-gospel mesh.

Love it. Praising it for helping me make my way through a poem about the changing of the seasons today.

Yes, Yes and Yes

2007-11-29T05:51:00.000-08:00

"To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go."

--Mary Oliver

let it go-the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise-let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go-the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers-you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go-the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things-let all go
dear
so comes love

--E.E. Cummings

If truer words have ever been spoken, I have not yet heard them. Each of us would do well to keep these things in mind. If we all could, really could, think of the world we'd live in, the forgiveness we'd carry with us each day.

POEMS/POET OF THE MONTH

2007-11-26T11:36:00.000-08:00

How sad that I'm only managing a few posts a month rather than the few a week I aspired to when I began blogging. Time does slip away...

Anyway, this fantastic ghazal was featured on Poetry Daily and I thought I'd share it, since I've been working with formal verse quite a bit:

By Accident

First she gave me the wound by accident.
Then the tourniquet she tied unwound by accident.

Your friend may want to start running.
I gave his scent to the hounds by accident.

Balloons on the mailbox, ambulance in the driveway.
Bobbing for apples I drowned by accident.

Did someone tell the devil we were building Eden?
Or did he slither on the grounds by accident?

I said some crazy things, but I swear, officer,
I burned her place down by accident.

Only surfaces interest me.
What depths I sound I sound by accident.

"What should we look for in a ghazal, Amit?"
Inevitabilities found by accident.

--Amit Majmudar

While I was copying this poem, I realized that the poet's name sounded familiar. More than a year ago, I saved another poem that a friend sent to me because it was sharp and had such lush imagery. As it turns out, it's by the same poet. Here it is:

Riches

My mother when she feared that we might starve
would give us candy taking up her violin
and playing each of us a bar
My mother when we danced the winter from
our boots and kicked the walls of circumstance
would write the needed letters over newsprint
and crinkle crackling fire till our hands
came back to us attracted to her gift
My mother painted us a still life and we peeled
and ate the fruit for lunch my mother sculpted
my sister earrings out of pebbles sculpted me
out of abandonment and earth my mother said
you are not poor until you’re at a loss
for worlds you are not rich until like Alexander
you’ve conquered foreign languages
somewhere a rich man pokes his fireplace
reminding it to give him heat she said
somewhere a rich man’s hand lunges in search
of sweetness down his horn of plenty
but there is not a fruit his fingers recognize

--Amit Majmudar

It is quite a gift to be able to write with humor on one hand and devout seriousness on the other. I'm now on the look out for more poems by the brilliant Dr. Majmudar. Here's all I could dig up on him:

Amit Majmudar is a resident physician in diagnostic radiology living in Cleveland, Ohio. Check out his website for a bit more info.: http://web.mac.com/majmudar/iWeb/Site/Poetry.html

Reading at JMU on Thursday, 11/8, @ 7:00 PM

2007-11-02T07:57:00.000-07:00

I'm reading with Hermine Pinson and E. Ethelbert Miller at the Furious Flower Poetry Center next Thursday. The reading is part of Cave Canem's The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South anthology reading series. I'm not sure if anyone is in Harrisonburg, VA or is close to it, but if so, please come out to hear some poetry.

If you haven't heard of the Furious Flower Conferences or Dr. Joanne Gabbin, you are missing out on a huge part of American literary history. I was fortunate enough to attend the second Furious Flower Conference in 2004. I remember sitting in a room before one of the big readings began and seeing a force of nature everywhere I looked. Elizabeth Alexander was sitting behind me, Amiri Baraka was walking up the aisle, Thomas Sayers Ellis was across the row to my left and Lucille Clifton was right down front. It was a remarkable conference and Dr. Gabbin is the only reason it ever happened and happened again.

Click here to check out the Gwendolyn Brooks poem that Dr. Gabbin says
inspired all of this:

http://www.groovdigit.com/authors/brooks/warpland2.html

Who Reviews Reviews???

2007-10-31T08:14:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I was very excited to find that my book had been reviewed in the Fall 2007 edition of The Antioch Review. This was exciting for a number of reasons:

1.) I really like The Antioch Review.

2.) I've only had two other book reviews.

3.) Those two other reviews were both written by people I know.

4.) The review published in The Antioch Review was done by a complete stranger.

5.) I would have never known the review was done had my press not sent it to me in the mail. Therefore, it was a nice surprise.

After I'd read the review and got excited about it and told my dad and my friends, I started thinking about the value of book reviews. This is an on-going conversation in the poetry world. In fact, I can recall having spirited conversations with the eternal laureate Rita Dove and Mr. Uprock himself Patrick Rosal about book reviews in the past year or so.

Ms. Rita was a guest at Cave Canem and spoke at length about what book reviews--good and bad--meant to her, which was, basically, nothing. She told us a story about a review that ripped one of her books to shreds and was published in a very, very reputable magazine. She said she agonized about it for a while, but eventually tried to forget it. What was strange was that she said people always remembered that she had been reviewed in the reputable magazine, but never, ever recalled that it was a bad review. I guess the incident kind of falls into the 'all publicity is good publicity' category, but it made me think about why some writers value reviews and if they can actually help or harm your career? One bad review certainly didn't hurt Ms. Rita's.

E. Ethelbert Miller once told me that I should write a book review for every book I read and try to publish each review. Ethelbert gives great advice, but I haven't published a single review and I certainly don't write one for each book I read. I'd never have time to write poems if I did! I think he had a valid point, though. He was encouraging me to analyze each book I read and condense my critical analysis to a few hundred words, so I'd have a snapshot view of what I thought of each book. Critical analysis is wildly important as a poet, even if just to find out what you like and why you like it, but how accurate or important is someone else's opinion of a book for the poet who is being reviewed? To make a long rant longer, this and these other questions about reviews have been plaguing me for the last five days:

1.) Who reads book reviews?

2.) Are book reviews important to publishers?

3.) Does a string of 'good or 'bad' book reviews truly reflect on the quality of the writing in the book?

4.) What value is there in poets reviewing books of poetry?

5.) Who is a better reviewer, someone who is primarily a literary critic or someone who is primarily a creative writer?

6.) Why do journals publish reviews without informing the writers that their books will be reviewed?

7.) Can a negative review ruin a literary career? Can a positive review make one?

There Is Always Music

2007-10-23T20:19:00.001-07:00

to write by. I have been in a strange writing rut and haven't been revising like I usually do. I've been on 'house arrest' for a few days because I sprained my ankle pretty badly on Saturday, but still no writing. The music saved me tonight.

Early in the day my lovely mother came over and we watched movies. Watching Diana's Oscar-worthy performance in "Lady Sings the Blues" always inspires me to seek out more music, more of the lush voices of the women who are often forgotten in our discussions of jazz and blues. I spent the evening listening to Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae and finally settled on Cassandra Wilson.

Wilson's version of "Time After Time" is stellar, pristine. She takes a classic and makes it more moving every time you hear it. Her inflection and pacing is better than most of the best poets I know. I guess that's why pitch perfect music inspires me. I never had Cassandra' tension, her silk, on or off the page and still don't, but tonight she helped me write a poem that's been just on the cusp of memory. This is music's gift and why I find myself referring to it so much on a blog that's supposed to be strictly about poetry. Music keeps me sane, but poetry is like air. I can't live without one, but I'd go mad living without the other.

Reading at ODU on Tuesday, 10/16 @ 12:30 PM

2007-10-10T08:47:00.000-07:00

Old Dominion University's Women's Studies Department is holding their annual "Love Your Body" Poetry Reading next week and I'll be sharing the room with Til Cox, Nan Byrne, Lynne Downs and Andrea Nolan. The reading will be in the newly renovated Batten Arts and Letters Building (Room 9024), where I spent nearly my entire undergraduate career at ODU, so I'm looking forward to checking out the new digs :-)

The reading is in celebration of Love Your Body Day and in conjunction with the 2007 Love Your Body Campaign. Find out more about the campaign by visiting www.nowfoundation.org.

Hope to see you there!

What a long, strange (beautiful) week it has been...(Pt. 3)

2007-09-24T21:01:00.001-07:00

And then there was Stevie. When a friend of mine called a few months ago and left a frantic message about Steive being back on tour, I knew I had to be at at least one show. Last Sunday night, I walked into Baltimore's Pier Six Pavilion shining; I left aflame.

In case you were wondering: Stevie Wonder is the epitome of black American music, SOUL music. He is still every bit the performer he was here. This was recorded in Detroit in 1984. It's been more than twenty years since this was taped and he was still pure electricity. The crowd was on their feet and on fire. Genius is all there is here, there are no other words. I was thankful, my dreams bright and heavy with song, all night and the night thereafter.

What a long, strange week it has been... (Pt. 2)

2007-09-24T20:52:00.001-07:00

On Thursday, Martin Espada made an appearance at Busboys and Poets in D.C. I was happy to finally get to witness him live. This i a clip of him reading his poem "Alabanza" and feeding the crowd. He fed us on Thursday, too. Listen and watch.

What a long, strange week it has been...(Pt. 1)

2007-09-24T20:01:00.000-07:00

Gravy

No other word will do. For that's what it was.
Gravy.
Gravy, these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving, and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going
nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that it was all gravy, every minute
of it, up to and including when he was told about,
well, some things that were breaking down and
building up inside his head. "Don't weep for me,"
he said to his friends. "I'm a lucky man.
I've had ten years longer than I or anyone
expected. Pure Gravy. And don't forget it."

--Raymond Carver

Bob Shacochis read this poem at the memorial service for Liam Rector on Saturday. It was a poem Tree, his wife, gave him early on, a poem Liam came back to years later after he'd beat cancer, heart disease. It seemed so poignant at the service. So many people came and mourned or at least paid their respects. I had friends there; I saw people I loved there. At least that--even in grief, we had to acknowledge that he brought us together again.

The following is a poem from Poetry Daily. It's appropriate here, too:

There Was No Farewell

We did not weep
when we were leaving—
for we had neither
time nor tears,
and there was no farewell.
We did not know
at the moment of parting
that it was a parting,
so where would our weeping
have come from?
We did not stay
awake all night
(and did not doze)
the night of our leaving.
That night we had
neither night nor light,
and no moon rose.
That night we lost our star,
our lamp misled us;
we didn't receive our share
of sleeplessness—
so where
would wakefulness have come from?

--Taha Muhammad Ali
tr. Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi, Gabriel Levin

Reading in D.C. on Monday, 9/24 @ 8:00 PM

2007-09-19T09:59:00.000-07:00

Hey bloggers, friends, fam, poetry-lovers, if you're in the D.C. area, come and hang out with us on Monday night. I'll be reading in the Burlesque Poetry Hour Reading Series at Bar Rouge in DuPont Circle. It should be a fun reading; every poet has to auction off an item they're wearing to raise funds for the series, which should make for some interesting outfit choices :-) Please do come through if you're going to be around. You can check out the details on the Burlesque blog:

http://burlesquepoetryhour.blogspot.com/

Hope to see you there!!!

Georgia On My Mind

2007-09-07T11:50:00.000-07:00

Last week, I went down to Georgia for the Decatur Book Festival and hung out with some very cool folks. I interviewed Natasha Trethewey, hung out with Dan Albergotti, had lunch with Kwame Dawes, went to a reading featuring Khadijah Queen and pseudo-shopped with Nicole Sealey.

The highlight of my trip, though, was a surprise visit to Georgia Perimeter College where I got to hang out with Lita Hooper's class. She's teaching my book this term and the students were shocked to see me there on Friday. They were sharp and quite attentive during the reading. They asked questions and requested poems, we laughed, we cried (not really), an all-around good time was had by all (at least I hope so).

They were beautiful and carried some serious names on their backs. Of the few I can remember, there was Jacquiese--tall b-baller who got into the word, Tenacity--sweet Southern girl with a wide smile and Teena (yes, as in Marie)--who embraced the music of her name whole-souled. Lovely group, lovely campus. Thanks, Lita, for the push :-)

Entitlement: Books I Love to Hate

2007-08-23T05:57:00.000-07:00

I think, as writers (and avid readers), we are entitled to certain things. Among those things should be: first dibs on the free book table at the university bookstore on the campus where you work, study or loiter, the one spot on the beach that has just the right amount of shade and sun for you to make it through half of _________________(enter your favorite book or whatever book du jour you're indulging in at the moment) before the midday sun wreaks havoc on you, assurance that you will not be bothered after having that long conversation with some great aunt or uncle at the family reunion and scampering off to scribble what you will begin to make of it under a tree in the park, and the right to love and/or hate certain books/poems/authors deemed as "classics". Therefore, after much thought and arguing over the years, I'm ready to publish my own list of BOOKS AND POEMS EVERYONE SAYS I SHOULD LIKE BUT THAT I REALLY, TRULY DON'T. Here's what I came up with:

Author that most people praise who still does nothing for me:

Jane Austen

(I wish I could say that Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility move me in some way, but they don't. I felt such guilt over not enjoying Austen that I ran out and read everything she ever wrote in hopes of finding something that would bring a tear to my eye. Alas, I found nothing, and I had to give away a whole bunch of books.)

Book that is on all of the World's Best Novel lists ever published that I can't stand:

Crime and Punishment -- Fyodor Dostoevsky

(After the murders, I was bored out of my mind. I just don't understand why anyone would torture students with this book. Now, I did like some of the symbolism. I remember a very riveting lecture by a professor who was teaching the book (probably the third or fourth literature class I had to endure with this book on the schedule) about Dostoevsky's abundant use of the color yellow. Seriously, it was a great lecture, but I still don't like the book. )

Book that I'm supposed to love just because I'm a poet but that didn't do anything for me:

Letters to a Young Poet -- Rainer Maria Rilke

(I have to say, I think I felt guiltiest about this one. I still do. I was so ready to be blown away by every word of this little book, but it didn't change my life. In fact, it didn't really inspire me at all. I just felt that the advice was meant for Kappus, not me. I did read Rilke's poems after this, though, in hopes of redeeming myself a bit for not loving his letters.)

Book that gets taught in most Black Arts Movement classes that I hate to see show up on the syllabus and that I would never teach:

Soul on Ice -- Eldridge Cleaver

(I know people have there reasons, but if I was ever forced to teach this book, I would only do so under the condition that I got to teach Sonia Sanchez's fiery review of it during the same class periods.)

Poem that I hate to see anthologized because it really sours students on poetry when I know there are tons of better examples of work by the author:

O Captain! My Captain! -- Walt Whitman

(Hello? Where are the excerpts from Leaves of Grass? "I sing the body electric...", come on people, it was good enough to be turned in to the climatic song for a musical for heaven's sake! Seriously, while I do love Fame and it's use of Whitman, I think if we showed students [myself included when I was stuck in ninth grade English and bored out of my mind] Whitman's "Song of Myself" and told them to write an essay on it or, better yet, their own 'song', we'd have some much more intriguing things to talk about in class.)

Of course, this is not an exhaustive list. And though I am 'raging against the machine' (i.e. I guess in this case the 'man' would be the Academy, the New York Times book critics, I don't know...) here, I really punked out because all of author's are long dead, so I'm really not hurting anybody's feelings. I'd love to see some other lists of hated classics or, even better, contemporary lit that doesn't do it for you. Feel free to leave your own list in the comments, if you dare...

Poem of the Month, Week, Night

2007-08-20T11:00:00.000-07:00

Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me

Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,
what joy
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again
in a new way
on the earth!
That’s what it said
as it dropped,
smelling of iron,
and vanished
like a dream of the ocean
into the branches
and the grass below.
Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing
under a tree.
The tree was a tree
with happy leaves,
and I was myself,
and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves
at the moment
at which moment
my right hand
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars
and the soft rain –
imagine! imagine!
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.

--Mary Oliver

I know this POEM OF THE WEEK is long overdue. Life has been happening, as it will, when you think you have time for rest or peace.

I chose this piece for a few reasons. I have been making my way back to Mary Oliver this summer. Her work is bucolic and wondrous and all the things I only dream of as a poet. I am not now nor will I ever be a "nature" poet. I think Oliver brings honor to the term, as it has taken much flack during the last decade, but what else can you call a poet who sings of egrets and mushrooms and trout and crickets with little 'mouth-caves'? She seems to find her peace in the land around her. I find peace in her peace.

Last night, a Nor'Easter blew through town and gave my little house a thrashing. I woke to all kinds of debris (most notably, two shopping carts from the store across the street and a sign) on my lawn strewn about the yard. The rain beat so loudly I couldn't sleep, and I can always sleep.

But it was good, cleansing, and on time. Each year since I've been here, all through my time in undergraduate school, a Nor'Easter blows through to welcome the first day of classes. It's like clock work and no one else seems to notice. Last night, I was in bed and kept looking out the window--waiting. I couldn't sleep until the rain came and then couldn't sleep because of it. I listened to it, tossed and turned, prayed a bit in the dark.

What a trying week it has been. The good always heaped in with the bad. Bennington lost Liam Rector last week. He was the center of the vortex and much of the community is spiraling now. What a strange and sad loss for all of us.

I chose Oliver's poem because I have been reading her newest book, Why I Wake Early, and have determined that she is the supreme optimist. I am trying to be both those things. In the poem above, everything leads back to everything else; we are all connected whether we know it or not. Every journey is our journey, Oliver is right, and in the midst of thunder and lightning and morning and rain, what a wondrous journey it is.

Sammy Davis jr. - Mister Bojangles

2007-07-26T07:07:00.001-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about Sammy Davis Jr. lately. Every few years, I search for new things I can find that memorialize him. This song has become his quentessential piece for me. I think it represented everything he was and everything he was frightened of becoming.

There are some performers who never really seem gone. Sammy is one of them for me. I think I am a constant fan because of his work ethic and his willingness to defy others for the things he loved. He was never enough and always too much for us. Brilliant man that he was.

The Loss of Sekou Sundiata

2007-07-19T09:56:00.000-07:00

I'm sad to report that the poet Sekou Sundiata has passed away. He has had numerous health problems in the past, as chronicled by some of his work, but suffered a series of heart attacks a few days ago and slipped into death yesterday morning.

The only time I actually had the pleasure of seeing him live was last September at the Dodge Poetry Festival. I'd read Sundiata's poems and heard some of his recordings. I'd been told by everyone that his live perfomances were the only things that did his work justice. At Dodge, his reading was toned down. He read a poem about his experience in New York City post-September 11th. There was no music (though his group had performed earlier in the day) and there was no else behind him. His look was toned down as well. He just wore a shirt and sweatpants, he was clean-shaven and looked a bit tired. But he read the work with precision and used his voice to make the story tangible. The audience was riveted, and it was no small crowd to tame. Indeed, he will be missed.

Below is his obituary written by Louis Reyes Rivera:

On Wednesday, July 18, 2007, at 5:47a.m. (ET), poet Sekou Sundiata passed away. A highly esteemed performing poet, Mr. Sundiata wrote for print, performance, music and theater. Born Robert Franklin Feaster in Harlem , on August 22, 1948, Sundiata came of age as an artist during the Black Arts/Black Aesthetic movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

While attending the City College of New York (CCNY), where he began reciting poetry publicly, Sundiata converged with several other student activists, including once-mayoral candidate of Pittsburgh and longtime friend, Leroy Hodge, to form the basis for what soon became known as the Black and Puerto Rican Student Community of City College (BPRSC). This phalanx of 400 students soon made their own history, closing the 21,000-student campus during the Spring of 1969, to demand, among other things, that CCNY be renamed Harlem University . The net effect of the student takeover culminated in both an Open Admissions Policy that took effect in September 1970, the full legitimization of ethnic studies departments throughout the nation, as well as the requirement that all education majors within the City University take courses in African American History and to have Spanish as a Second Language.

Among his acknowledged mentors at City were Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, and fellow student Louis Reyes Rivera, with whom Sundiata helped to establish the first Black student newspaper in the City University , CCNY's The Paper. Their association would span close to forty years of mutual respect and admiration.

Upon completing his Bachelor's Degree (circa 1974), Sundiata enrolled and completed his Master's in Creative Writing while regularly producing community-based poetry readings that were known to draw SRO crowds. In 1976, his creative sensibilities, his innate organizing skills, and his associations with a convergent generation of excellent poets, musicians and dancers immediately led to a collaborative project he directed that would commemorate 100 years of Black struggle for freedom and Human Rights. Titled The Sounds of the Memory of Many Living People (1863-1876/ 1963-1976) , this production, which included upcoming novelist Arthur Flowers and such poets as Safiya Henderson-Holmes, BJ Ashanti, Tom Mitchelson, Louis Reyes Rivera, et al, was staged in Harlem over a period of two days, signaling much of what was to come from Sekou's sense of vision, steadily breaking ground for what was then a new literary genre, Performance Poetry, fully anticipating elements of both Hip Hop Culture and Spoken Word Art.

In 1977, the aforementioned poets, along with Zizwe Ngafua, Rashidah Ismaili, Fatisha (Hutson), Sandra Maria Esteves, Akua Lezli Hope, Mervyn Taylor, and Sekou, among others, formed the Calabash Poets Workshop, which group signaled the arrival of a new literary heat in New York, regularly producing soirees and forums (1977-1983) that included all of the arts and culminated in a three-year attempt (1979-1982) to establish an independent Black Writers Union.

Upon the release of his first vinyl album (circa 1980), Are & Be, Sekou Sundiata was dubbed by Amiri Baraka as "the State of the Art." Since then, Mr. Sundiata established a longtime relationship with CCNY's Aaron Davis Performing Arts Center , through which venue he intermittently produced new material for the stage, consistently collaborating with musicians, dancers and actors. He was eventually selected for a number of earned fellowships, including a Sundance Institute Screenwriting Fellow, a Columbia University Revson Fellow, a Master Artist-in-Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts ( Florida ), and as the first Writer-in-Residence at the New School University in New York , in which university's Eugene Lang College he remained a professor.

He was, as well, among those featured in the Bill Moyers' PBS series on poetry, The Language of Life, and in Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam on HBO. Among several highly acclaimed performance theater works in which he served as both author and performer are: The Circle Unbroken is a Hard Bop, which toured nationally and received three AUDELCO Awards and a BESSIE Award; The Mystery of Love, commissioned and produced by New Voices/ New Visions at Aaron Davis Hall in New York City and the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia; and Udu, a music theater work produced by 651 ARTS in Brooklyn and presented by the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, the Walker Art Center and Penumbra Theater in Minneapolis, Flynn Center in Burlington, VT, the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and Miami-Dade Community College in Florida. Throughout this period and since 1985, he developed a close association with co-collaborator and legendary trombonist Craig S. Harris.

blessing the boats, Sundiata's first solo theater piece, an exploration into his own personal battles with kidney failure, opened in November 2002 at Aaron Davis Hall, NYC. It has since been presented in more than 30 cities and continued to tour nationally. In March 2005, Sundiata produced The Gift of Life Concert, an organ donation public awareness event at the Apollo Theater that kicked off a three-week run of blessing the boats at the Apollo's SoundStage. in partnership with the Apollo Theater Foundation, the National Kidney Foundation and the New York Organ Donor Network with support from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Since 2006, his the 51st (dream) state has been presented throughout the U.S. and in Australia . Both blessing the boats and the 51st (dream) state were produced in collaboration with MultiArts Projects and Productions (MAPP). In addition to working within community engagement activities at Harlem Stages/Aaron Davis Hall, the University of Michigan and University Musical Society (Ann Arbor, MI), the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC), the University of Texas Austin (Austin, TX), in Miami Dade College (Miami, FL), and the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, Sundiata has appeared as a featured speaker and artist at the Imagining America Conference (Ann Arbor, MI), at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA), and at the Pedagogy and Theater of the Oppressed Conference (Minneapolis, MN), among others. Prior to his demise, he was engaged in producing a DVD documenting the America Project for use by universities and presenters as a model for art and civic engagement.In addition to the 1979 Are & Be album, Sundiata's other releases include a second album, The Sounds of the Memory of Many Living People, and two CDs, The Blue Oneness of Dreams, nominated for a Grammy Award, and longstoryshort. Each of these works are rich with the sounds of blues, funk, jazz and African and Afro-Caribbean percussion, with the latter two featuring Craig Harris.

He is survived by his mother, Virginia Myrtle Feaster, his wife, Maurine Knighton, daughter Myisha Gomez, stepdaughter Aida Riddle, grandson Aman, brothers William Walter Feaster and Ronald Eugene Feaster, as well as a host of relatives, admirers, students and friends.

A private funeral service of family and friends is scheduled for Saturday, July 21, and a commemorative celebration of his life and work is scheduled to take place on August 22, his birthday, at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Opera House. Details to follow. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made in the name of Sekou Sundiata to the New York Organ Donor Network or to the National Kidney Foundation.

Poem of the Week

2007-07-09T11:59:00.000-07:00

The Piercing Chill I Feel

The piercing chill I feel:
my dead wife's comb, in our bedroom,
under my heel . . .

--Taniguchi Buson,
Translated by Harold G. Henderson

This poem was written around 1760 and has been anthologized all over the place. Whenever I am trying to find good examples of haiku, I always return to it. This poem is proof that a small poem can capture as much, if not more, emotion than a terribly long one.

The imagery and word choices do most of the work here. Words like "piercing" and the last phrase "under my heel", help ground the reader in the speaker's space. Just for argument's sake, I have to acknowledge the fact that this is a translation and the words here might be more Mr. Henderson's than Buson's, as I've seen other translations that have slightly different word choices and aren't as compelling. Henderson was an avid haiku reader and translator and spent years in Japan studying the works of poets like Basho and Buson, so I'm hoping he's a reliable source. This is always the trouble with translation, the fear that 'the poetry' will be what's lost when the words are taken out of their native tongue.

"The Piercing Chill I Feel" is a death poem, but we are not forced to look at death in it's entirety, at least it doesn't seem that way. However, each dissection of a line brings us closer to the speaker's realization: his wife is gone, he is lonely and there is nothing left of her but the remnants of things he finds in their home. This is the death poem that most of us are trying to write. The fact that Buson got it right in three lines is remarkable.

Punctuation is also used superbly here. This is what I try to get across to my students when they ask if punctuation (or any grammatical tool) is necessary in poetry. I think they ask these kinds of questions because they see good poets using little to no punctuation and wonder why they can't do it too. The key words here, however, are "good poets", meaning, of course, seasoned poets who already know what they are doing. Sure Lucille Clifton can write a poem with no title, six lines with no periods or capital letters and still say anything she wants to say better than you. But she's Lucille Clifton; it took her time to get there. Buson (and Henderson, as I'm sure some of the grammatical adaptation had to be indicative of the language the poem was being translated into) made use of each aspect of language, including good syntax, to make this poem sharp. I am especially impressed with the colon in the first line, which separates that all inclusive phrase and lets the reader know that the definition of it is coming, and the ellipsis that ends the poem, which indicates that much has been said, but much more has been left unsaid.

I know that many contemporary poets are interested in short forms like haiku, tanka, even sonku, but I'm not sure which venues are showcasing them. If anyone has suggestions on where to find some good contemporary haiku, please send them along...

The Caine Prize for African Writing

2007-07-06T10:09:00.000-07:00

My good friend, Ada Udechukwu, has been shortlisted for the Caine Prize and we are all glowing for her. They announce the prize winner in a few days and I am on pins and needles. She was nominated for her short story "Night Bus" which was published in The Atlantic Monthly's annual fiction issue last year. You can read an interview Ada gave about her life as a writer and visual artist and her story in The Atlantic here. Go, Ada, go!

Poetry Foundation Blog

2007-07-06T09:49:00.000-07:00

If you're wondering what poet extraordinare Patricia "Shake it fast" Smith has been up to, check out the Poetry Foundation Blog. They call it Harriet :-) She posted the picture above to rub in the fact that she got to go back to Cave Canem again this year.

Other writers you get to check in with on the Poetry Foundation blog are: Rachel Zucker, Kenneth Goldsmith and Kwame Dawes, among others.

Not only can you get some insight into the lives of various writers, but you can comment on their posts. More often than not, they even take the time to write back. Cool.

The Reasons We Need Cave Canem

2007-07-03T06:03:00.000-07:00

Well, our little poetry project pretty much failed miserably. After the first day, no one in the group could manage to turn in or comment on poems, mostly because life got in the way. Fortunately, we all understood that without having to come out and say it. It wasn't a lost week, though. I know Aracelis has been on the road promoting her new book, John is getting ready for not one, but two trips to Provincetown, Kamilah (Aisha) is teaching and rediscovering the beauty of New York, Samantha is doing readings and writing companion books for a critically acclaimed television show and I managed to get off a few applications for some serious grants.
So, work was being done, we just couldn't manage to do the kind of work we would have done had we been at the Cave Canem summer retreat. But, in a way, I think that's as it should be.

Attending the Cave Canem summer retreat is like entering a different world. It's the only place I've ever been where I turned off my cell phone and ignored my e-mail for a week, survived on less than four hours of sleep per night and still managed to turn out a new poem every single day. I have written six new poems in the past month, and it has been a very, very good month. However, at Cave Canem, six new poems come in seven days and most of them turn out to be pretty good poems. This is part of the beauty of Cave Canem. The isolation and insulation it provides forces and allows you to do things you simply can't do at home. Last week, while we were in the midst of our CC alumni poetry challenge, I thought about writing a poem everyday. Between the forty-hour work week and all the deadlines wrapped up in it, grant applications, journal submissions, family obligations, bible study, cleaning house, friends and sleep, I just couldn't manage to find the time to write, at least not a poem a day. I wrote something everyday and did have a very productive week, mostly because I kept telling myself, "If you don't have a poem to send out today, you better have a darn good reason for it." So, John's challenge actually did help me write, just not in the way he originally proposed.

The Cave Canem retreat gives you the freedom of time and space, but it also gives you the tools you need to continue your work as a poet. It prepares you for submissions deadlines and applications. While I was completing grant applications this week, I realized that, without Cave Canem, I wouldn't have the work or the clarity of craft that I needed to even apply for most artist grants. I had the work and knew how to support it, but still didn't know how to condense it all and churn out a sharp proposal, so I had to call someone for help. Of course, it was a CC alumna. This confidence in our wok and the connections we make at Cave Canem are invaluable. This is why we need the place; it is a necessary gift.

Congrats to the 'newbies' who got their first taste of CC this year, the second years who knew how to tread the waters and the third years for completing the journey. All love to the ever-increasing fold.

Cave Canem Retreat Week

2007-06-25T12:45:00.000-07:00

Cave Canem officially kicked off its summer retreat yesterday and I am immensely jealous. I finished my years as a fellow there last summer and am having a hard time not imagining myself back in Pittsburgh this year. I keep dreaming Dante Michaeux will call and say, "We need you for something! Can you come volunteer?" Even in my fantasies I can no longer take part in the workshop, but I can still be there, running around the campus, delivering poem packets to Toi and Cornelius, maybe jamming it up with Patricia Smith late into the night.

Fortunately, I'm not the only one who feels this way. Got a call from the homie John Murillo who is enlisting other CC alumni to take part in a writing challenge similar to CC's this week. We are to write a poem every day this week and send them to the other participating fellows, via email, by a set time each day. I'm so excited that he's thought of this and asked me to participate. Other fellows caught up in the roll call are: Aracelis Girmay, Samantha Thornhill and Kamilah Aisha Moon. I'll post updates about how things are going throughout the week and mention anyone else who jumps into the mix.

If any 'retreating' fellows are reading this, send us updates please! You know we all have to live vicariously through you now :-(

Use the week to walk heavy with the spirits. Read well, write fire!

Poem of the Week

2007-06-20T09:02:00.000-07:00

LIX

when I see the shadow of the hawk
but not the hawk itself do you know
what it feels like Boss a stone a stone
set on my chest it weighs me down
it's stronger than the horse's strain
against the plow lines Boss it's like
the river after rain I can't
hold back the pull the pull that makes
me like its heft I even like
the shadow's tiny yoke O Boss
I feel its curve around my neck
I see a flap of wings so black
it binds me to the furrows Boss
a shadow smarter than the sting
of a switch though it is lighter than
a feather though it is thinner than
a leaf that shadow stone is one
of many wonders Boss for all
the world it makes me think of you
you heavy thing you never move

--Maurice Manning

This poem is from a book called Bucolics, in which none of the poems have proper titles (the title if this poem and the others are just roman numerals). I haven't read the book. I haven't read any of Manning's books, in fact, but this is an intriguing poem.

Upon first reading it, I was a bit taken aback. It's clear from the onset that it's a persona poem, but by the third line, when I found the word "Boss" (the only word other than "I" capitalized throughout the poem), I became a little leery. I was very leery, cautious even, by the time I reached the twelfth line which reads: "I see a flap of wings so black/ it binds me to the furrows Boss..."

This stops me because of something Ms. Lucille Clifton said to me, to a group of poets at Cave Canem, I just felt like she was talking specifically to me, in a workshop once. She said, "Never use the words dark or black in a negative light. People have already done that enough." Since then, of course, I've been paying rapt attention, maybe too much. By the time I got to these lines in Manning's poem, I'd begun asking the questions. Is this a negative usage? Is that what the author meant? Did he know or think to know? Should I be jolted by it? This continued as I made my way down the page, dissecting each word or phrase as it came.

Some who stumble upon this blog might immediately get the sense of my dilemma, without any explanation, but I think, for my own sake in the very least, I should make sure there is no 'gray space' here. My immediate sense as I am reading this poem is that the persona is that of a black man--a slave perhaps, a sharecropper--stuck in the regiment of the old South. This is not a problem or even strange, until I discover that this poem was written by a white poet, or a poet I am assuming (as I do not personally know him) is a white poet. Now, the fact that I believe the persona is that of a black man is not an issue, I am not sure, however, as I have not read the book, whether it is meant to be one of many voices in a group of voices that rallies against the restrictions of class and economy, etc. or if it is one poem in a group of many that will lean more towards caricature than anything else, that border on appropriation in a way. This isn't a new argument/discussion, we've had it in the past and still have it. As a matter of fact, I was reading a group of poems by a black poet the other day who was writing about issues in another culture and I had to say, though some of them were spectacular poems, Some of these images are becoming repetitive and stale, mostly because you are not in and of this particular culture. You are creating caricatures without knowing it or intending to and this is problematic.

Truth be told, upon my first read, I liked this poem. I was knocked out by the pacing and the ending, but then, as I always do when I like a poem, I checked out the author. I was not so sure how I felt about the poem then. I scoured the Internet for information on the author, what little I found didn't sway me one way or the other. As far as I can tell, no one else has read this poem and asked these questions and the author hasn't spoken much about the poems either. Now, I could be off base on many things here. This poem could have nothing to do with race, the South or any of the other things that have gone through my mind. Some of the word choices and diction evoke images of the old South, whether they were intended to or not (though I can't really say I believe any contemporary American poet could write without intending to do so or at least with some knowledge of the denotative and connotative meanings of each chosen word--the title is Bucolics, for heaven's sake), but this is neither here nor there. I could be projecting my own existence and history, or the history of those who have filled my life and work, onto this work. This in and of itself is not wrong, I think we all do that with each poem we encounter anyway. Otherwise how do we get so many interpretations of the same poem? Nonetheless, in this case, I am beginning to judge the poem based on my 'leeriness ' about the intent of the poet. This is a problem for me.

I moved through five or six poems before I settled on this one as my POEM OF THE WEEK. I am sure I did this for a number of reasons, mainly because I am still not sure what to make of the poet and the poem and because I am jarred by my inability to separate the two. I thought it might be helpful to post the poem and my comments, in hopes of creating some dialogue about it. I might be giving Manning a bad rap here, as many of these assumptions might be as far away from the truth of his poem as he can imagine. (It bears mentioning that, especially given the collection's title, these could be 'God' poems, bordering on midrash in a way and that would put a whole new spin on things, especially for me, as that is one of my biggest interests.) Also, the truth of the matter is, had I went searching for the author and found him a black man, this conversation wouldn't even be taking place. It would have been a good poem and I would have added the book to my reading list without hesitation. The book is still on my reading list, though I hesitated about it before putting it there.

This is what I'd like to talk about, this hesitation, the 'circumstantial' reading of a poem and territory. Isn't even using the term 'appropriation' being territorial? Also can a reader really 'judge' a poem like this out of context. The sparse nature of the punctuation and the fact that it isn't titled may signify that it really can't be read a closely as it should be when it's outside of the collection. Anyway, just some thoughts...

Calls for Submissions

2007-06-13T08:48:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to get some submissions going for the summer and wanted to share a few places that might be of interest...

A call from Honorée Fanonne Jeffers:

I am guest-editing a special black women's issue of the journal PMS: Poem/Memoir/ Story, to be published in Spring 2008. The issue will feature poems, stories and memoirs by black women writers, both established and emerging. In case you haven't heard about PMS, it's a great little journal (with a funny name!) dedicated to all women's literature, edited by Linda Frost, and published out of University of Alabama at Birmingham. PMS is pretty unpretentious, but despite that, in just seven short years, PMS has published such writers as Ruth Stone, Carly Sachs, Remica L. Bingham, Allison Joseph, and Natasha Trethewey. And the journal has received several accolades as well: A reading “pick” by the Small Press Review; poems included in Best American Poetry 2003 and 2004; a story included in New Stories from the South 2005; memoirs included in Best American Essays 2005 and 2007; and a memoir included in The Best Creative Nonfiction 2007. In addition, work from PMS has also received special mention for the 2005 Pushcart Prize and work has been included on former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser's online weekly column, American Life in Poetry.If you identify as a black (or African American) woman and would like to submit work to be considered for this special issue, the deadline is October 1, 2007. Please send up to 5 poems or 15 pages of prose (fiction or memoir) with SASE to: PMS (Black Women Writers’ Issue) University of Alabama at Birmingham Dept. of English, 900 South 13th Street Birmingham, AL 35294-1260. In addition to sending hard copies of your work to the snail mail address, please ALSO send an electronic copy of your submission (word format) to me at honijeff@aol. com. Take care, and please spread the word!

From Poetry Magazine:

http://www.poetrymagazine.org/about/guidelines.html

"In June, July, and August 2007, Poetry will only consider work from poets who have not previously appeared in the magazine."

From Poets & Writers Magazine:

http://www.pw.org/mag/0705/deadlines.htm

There are too many to list, but check the website for updates on deadlines.

My main goal this summer is to try to find new ways to get the work out there and to find interesting places to submit. Are there any new or re-vamped journals that have caught any one's eye lately?

Poem of the Week

2007-06-07T06:07:00.000-07:00

The Boy Died in My Alley

to Running Boy

The Boy died in my alley
without my Having Known.
Policeman said, next morning,
"Apparently died Alone."

"You heard a shot?" Policeman said.
Shots I hear and Shots I hear.
I never see the Dead.

The Shot that killed him yes I heard
as I heard the Thousand shots before;
careening tinnily down the nights
across my years and arteries.

Policeman pounded on my door.
"Who is it?" "POLICE!" Policeman yelled.
"A Boy was dying in your alley.
A Boy is dead, and in your alley.
And have you known this Boy before?"

I have known this Boy before.
I have known this Boy before, who

ornaments my alley.
I never saw his face at all.
I never saw his futurefall.
But I have known this Boy.

I have always heard him deal with death.
I have always heard the shout, the volley.
I have closed my heart-ears late and early.
And I have killed him ever.

I joined the Wild and killed him
with knowledgeable unknowing.
I saw where he was going.
I saw him Crossed. And seeing,
I did not take him down.

He cried not only "Father!"
but "Mother!
Sister!
Brother."
The cry climbed up the alley.
It went up to the wind.
It hung upon the heaven
for a long
stretch-strain of Moment.

The red floor of my alley
is a special speech to me.

-- Gwendolyn Brooks

I've decided to add some weekly features to the blog, so I have a little structure. It helps keep me on track. That being said, this is my first POEM OF THE WEEK, "The Boy Died in My Alley" by Gwendolyn Brooks.

I came across this poem in a wonderful anthology called Cornerstones, edited by Melvin Donalson. All too often, as is done with most prolific writers, we see the same poem(s) anthologized over and over again. Don't get me wrong, "We Real Cool" is a good poem, but it isn't all Ms. Brooks had to offer. It has become her most famous poem, but is not in any way a scope into the complexity of her work.

In "The Boy Died in My Alley" Brooks recounts the story of a boy--perhaps one of the pool players from the Golden Shovel, maybe just some kid who carried groceries in the neighborhood to make spare change--who is killed in the alley outside her home. In the first stanza, Brooks sets up a simple rhyme scheme, a-b-c-b, and tells the story in a nutshell. The police have come, no one seems to know the boy and no one seems to have noticed his death, least of all the speaker. This changes as the poem moves forward. Brooks allows the speaker to reflect on the violence occurring close to home, the lost boy and the speaker's own part in the matter.

One thing that I love about this poem, and many of Brooks' gems, is the spectacular word choice and usage. The lines, "careening tinnily down the nights / across my years and arteries", for example, are wonderfully descriptive without being trite or predictable. "Arteries" isn't a word readers would expect to find at the end of that line, but it's an accurate one. Not only does Brooks call up the physical violence that is taking place here, but also the fact that the violence has become so commonplace that it has infiltrated the speaker's life, even the speaker's body, in an intimate way. Later on in the poem, the boy "ornaments" the speaker's alley instead of just running through it or lying in the street. She acknowledges her responsibility in the matter, though she does not know the boy personally, with the lines, "I joined the Wild and killed him / with knowledgeable unknowing... / I saw him Crossed. And seeing / I did not take him down." The use of the word "Crossed" as a created verb that alludes to the crucifixion is brilliant; the layers are endless.

After my first reading of the poem, the last couplet echoed in my head for weeks, "The red floor of my alley / is a special speech to me." These two lines work on so many levels. First, the "red floor" as an allusion to the boy's blood, the stain of his lost life, etc., seems like a simple. However, usually, an alley isn't a place that one would refer to as having a floor, but a home is. This is the speaker's home--the neighborhood, the block--in its entirety, and now it speaks to her almost as loudly as the shots that ring out so often. The repetition of the consonant sounds in the last line, "... special speech...", slows the reader down a bit. This is an important shift in movement, as the lines have gotten shorter in the last few stanzas and we've been catapulted down the page by the rhythm and the shorter lines and end rhymes create. But when the reader reaches the last couplet, there is space and a quiet shift, a reverence for the Running Boy and his life.

There is no hard and fast rhyme scheme or traditional meter in the poem. The rhythm is fluid, heightened by the scattered rhyme, the use of repetition and the variation of line lengths. Whenever I get up on my free verse high horse (mostly, I'm sure, because I am often intimidated by form) I return to Brooks, who infused her work with elements of form in such an innovative way that it's sometimes difficult to define the technique she uses in poems such as this. Brooks was able to take familiar subject matter and make it fresh by using elements of formal and free verse to create a narrative that captures the scenery and the many of the elements in her neighborhood, in most of our neighborhoods really. We have all "...joined the Wild..."

Clearly, Brooks does more here than I can discuss, but I just wanted to highlight the poem and drum up some discussion on the genius of Ms. Brooks' work. There are some folks holding down the fort as far as Ms. Brooks is concerned. Of course, everyone at Chicago State who had/has a hand in making the Gwendolyn Brooks Center a reality and keeping all of the books--even Maud Martha, Brooks' only novel--in print. Not to be forgotten is the Furious Flower herself, Joanne Gabbin, who always makes sure to uphold Ms. Brooks' legacy and delivered an outstanding keynote address on Ms. Brooks' importance at a non-literary conference (http://www.coretexts.org/) I attended in March, and had the interdisciplinary crowd riveted, I might add.

I'd be interested in hearing about/seeing any poems that allude to the work of Ms. Brooks or to her life from those who'd like to share. Does anybody have any suggestions on where to find poems/poets who following in Ms. Brooks' footsteps?