Noctuary: a record of what passes in the night

Recent (re) Reading

2011-10-23T14:52:00.001-04:00

"...Old Jimmy Lyons, who used to tear up the Hammond organ over at Stompit had told him he was a four, and fours were builders, but lots of fours never got around to doing what they were put on earth to do cause they was so busy feeling boxed in by them four sides of their nature that they didn't have sense to look up and appreciate all that space they could build into. And Jimmy Lyons had told him another thing, that the Negro people were fours and so long as they paid more attention to folks trying to pen the in, hem them in, box them in on all four sides thinking they had them in prison than to the work at hand, why then they would never get a spare moment to look up at the sun and build. That Jimmy Lyons was one philosophizing fool..."

Toni Cade Bambara (1939 - 1995), The Salt Eaters (1980)

Blog Action Day 2011: Food

2011-10-17T18:08:00.002-04:00

As can be seen by my waistline, I love food. I think those who can cook are artists, touched by the divine. This goes for both great home cooks as well as superstar chefs. I grew up watching Julia Child, Graham Kerr "The Galloping Gourmet," Martin Yan, Justin Wilson, and my favorite Saturdays are still those when I can curl up on the couch and watch the parade of cooking shows on PBS.

So it was a real problem, for a period of time in Baltimore, I lived in a 'Food Desert.' The quality of our local supermarket got progressively worse, and was eventually closed, meaning that those who lived in the neighborhood had to walk further or take public transportation in order to do their shopping. There was food around - at the corner stores, gas stations, fast food establishments, chicken shacks, Chinese carry out, pizza chains. And there was an amazing weekly Farmers Market...but for 'real' food during the week, not precooked or processed, and at a less than the sometimes expensive Farmer's Market price, you had to travel. We eventually got a new supermarket, practically around the corner from us. But the problem in some areas of the city remains, and was of such a concern that the library partnered with the Health Department to allow people to do their shopping on line and pick up their groceries at their local Pratt Branch.
A really fantastic partnership, and one that I hope gets replicated in many places across the country.

I still think about 'Food Deserts' now, even though surrounded in Brooklyn and Manhattan by fruit sellers on numerous corners, food trucks, pizza parlors, and bodegas. We would seem to be overwhelmed by abundance, and the range of the availability of some items is better, but there are still problems. Bodegas are monuments to packaged and processed food - or perhaps I should say 'food-like' items. And once again I find that the quality of meat and poultry at our closest supermarket leaves a lot to be desired (I'd say it ranges from adequate to poor), with better choices a few blocks further away.

How difficult is it for the average person to eat healthily and inexpensively when surrounded by aisles filled with empty calories and high fructose corn syrup? Or perhaps the better question might be 'Why is it so difficult?' But then, that's gets us into the realm of agribusiness, politics, money....I'm in danger of losing my appetite!

Here, from Michael Pollan, are some basic 'Food Rules'

"Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

Probably the first two words are most important. "Eat food" means to eat real food -- vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and, yes, fish and meat -- and to avoid what Pollan calls "edible food-like substances."
Here's how:

Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. "When you pick up that box of portable yogurt tubes, or eat something with 15 ingredients you can't pronounce, ask yourself, "What are those things doing there?" Pollan says.
Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can't pronounce.
Stay out of the middle of the supermarket; shop on the perimeter of the store. Real food tends to be on the outer edge of the store near the loading docks, where it can be replaced with fresh foods when it goes bad.
Don't eat anything that won't eventually rot. "There are exceptions -- honey -- but as a rule, things like Twinkies that never go bad aren't food," Pollan says.
It is not just what you eat but how you eat. "Always leave the table a little hungry," Pollan says. "Many cultures have rules that you stop eating before you are full. In Japan, they say eat until you are four-fifths full. Islamic culture has a similar rule, and in German culture they say, 'Tie off the sack before it's full.'"
Families traditionally ate together, around a table and not a TV, at regular meal times. It's a good tradition. Enjoy meals with the people you love. "Remember when eating between meals felt wrong?" Pollan asks.
Don't buy food where you buy your gasoline. In the U.S., 20% of food is eaten in the car.

Visionaries

2011-10-09T15:39:00.001-04:00

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. -Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement speech, 2005 (full text and video here)

A very difficult week, filled with losses - and the lessons about how hard you have to push to change the world.

Fred Shuttlesworth

Shuttlesworth, Abernathy and King

may not be a household name to most, but as one of the 'Big 3' of the Civil Rights Movement along with Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy, his influence looms large. He and King were, in a sense, the 'Good Cop/Bad Cop' of the movement, as author Diane McWhorter says, "Shuttlesworth was in the vanguard of direct action, pushing towards confrontation. King was the person who could really deal with white people and was more conciliatory. The two of them together formed a dialectic that drove the movement forward." Such death-defying defiance as his was desperately needed in the horrifying atmosphere of "Bombingham" Alabama in the early 1960s.

Derrick Bell
may also not be a familiar name, but as the first tenured African-American professor of Law at Harvard, and founder of Critical Race Theory, which explores how racism is embedded in laws and legal institutions, he and his legacy loom large (his Race, Racism and American Law is now a standard law school textbook). He may be even more well known for taking an unpaid leave of absence from Harvard in 1990, saying he would not return until the school appointed a female of color to its tenured faculty. I also remember him joining the contingent of Black Gay Men who participated in the Million Man March in 1995 as a 'straight ally.' Author of numerous books, he was also known for his use of stories to illuminate his legal and civil rights points, most particularly in his famous "The Space Traders" which imagines what might happen if aliens offered to solve all the US' problems in exchange for all the country's Black people. As poet, author, and Michigan State University law professor Brian Gilmore commented, "If James Baldwin had been a lawyer, he would have been Derrick Bell."

Much of the week, and the blogosphere, has been taken up with expressions of sadness regarding the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs -- and rightly so for a man whose products and influence seem ubiquitous in this digital age. His name appears on 317 patents, ranging from the Macintosh Operating System to computer mice, to the packaging Apple products come in and the adapters used to power them. Even those of us who don't use Macs owe Jobs a huge tip of the hat for Apple's work on the Graphical User Interface (and many of us have said for years that Microsoft has 'borrowed' Apple's ideas time and time again and applied them to Windows). And I'm sure I'm not the only PC person who would go into an Apple store and swoon at how *beautifully designed* their products are. Purely for making technology attractive and, well, sensuous (note how well the curve-edged iPod fits into the hand) Jobs deserves our unending gratitude. And I haven't even mentioned the animated pleasures of the films of Pixar studios, which he purchased in 1986...

One of the more interesting recent articles about Jobs, and one that in some ways ties each of these three extraordinary men together, is this one, In Praise of Bad Steve by D.B. Grady. As the author says, we want to remember people positively, as always being good, kind, generous...but sometimes in order to get things done right, you have to be a Bad Cop, and push people - into innovation in Jobs' case, into doing the right thing in the case of Shuttlesworth and Bell.Always dissatisfied, always pushing, always innovating, these giants changed our world, and I am greatful to all three.

***

As I was writing this, news of another, perhaps more personal, loss came through as well: professor and fellow Cave Canem poet James Richardson. Sadly I didn't know him well (he was one of the many people who I have a mainly e-mail relationship), but will forever be moved by the generosity of offering his apartment to The Other Half and myself when he was teaching at Morehouse, despite not being familiar with us. This reinforces the messages I have been seeing from fellow poets about his 'beautiful soul,' in addition to his brilliance, and skills as a violinist - and salsa dancer. He will be missed.

Thanks to Brian Gilmore (again!) here is a Richardson poem that appeared in the Autumn 1999 issue of Callaloo.

ON SEEING YOUR PORTRAIT, PHILLIS WHEATLEY

homegirl, I'm thinking: are you really free?

cause in every portrait the very pores

of your wild-black skin scream, wracked with ennui,

trapped in Quaker grays that smother wooden floors.

how often do they pat your defiant hair?

and why are your eyeballs stretched puppy-wide?

your tall, tight collar thwarts sin (and air).

that's no small feat: you've so much black to hide.

i bet in your mind you laugh your thighs apart

on velvet-lush plains, your teeth to the sun.

all soaked in color, you sniff strange sweat and start:

too late. sun-pink flesh, rattling chains, a gun.

they ask: art thou joyful, freed christian lass?

you answer with sugar, with salt, with ground glass.

Recent Reading

2011-09-23T18:04:00.004-04:00

from "Acheiropoietos," Chapter 11 of Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Writer at Work by Edwidge Danticat

...I am even more certain that to create dangerously is also to create fearlessly, boldy embracing the public and private terrors that would silence us, then bravely moving forward even when it feels as though we are chasing or being chased by ghosts....Creating fearlessly, like living fearlessly, even when a great tempest is upon you. Creating fearlessly even when cast lot bo dlo, across the seas. Creating fearlessly for people who see/watch/listen/read fearlessly. Writing fearlessly because, as my friend Junot Diaz has said, "a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway." This is perhaps also what it means to be a writer. Writing as though nothing can or ever will stop you. Writing as though you full-heartedly, or foolhardily, believe in acheiropoietos.

Wikipedia: Acheiropoieta (Byzantine Greek: αχειροποίητα, "not handmade"; singular acheiropoieton) — also called Icons Not Made by Hand (and variants) — are a particular kind of icon which are alleged to have come into existence miraculously, not created by a human painter. Invariably these are images of Jesus or the Virgin Mary. The most notable examples are, in the Eastern church the Image of Edessa or Mandylion, and in the West, the Veil of Veronica and the Shroud of Turin.

Shaking things up Back East

2011-08-23T14:53:00.004-04:00

I awoke when the ground of dreams gave way
beneath my bed. -- Pablo Neruda, Earthquake, from Canto General (translated by Jack Schmidt)

So this is how you welcome someone to New York - the ground literally moves for them?

My thoughts of concern go out to everyone in Virginia, and all along the east coast after today's quake (and how you doin' Colorado?) Buildings shook here in Manhattan, and folks evacuated, but all is well. And it was a lovely day to be outside up here. One office was telling people it was okay to return "If you'd like." Gee, stay out here in the air and sun by the river, or go back into the office....hmmm, that's a tough one....

Three notes:
One - Calling someone via cell phone was nearly impossible, with everyone jamming the circuits trying to get through. Texts, however, seemed to make it.

Two - Facebook never stopped, and many of us got our news from posts and links there. Interesting....

Three - The strangest thing was all of us in the office feeling this movement, then asking each other, "Did you feel that - or is it just me?"

The view toward the East from California with unsurprising snark ("Now you know what it feels like on the West Coast")

Philip Levine

2011-08-10T18:12:00.008-04:00

"I want to bring poetry to people who have no idea how relevant poetry is to their lives." -- Phillip Levine

Heartiest congratulations to Phil Levine, newly appointed U.S. Poet Laureate! I've been a fan of his for a number of years, and his poetry has led me to a little side-project of investigating poems about Work and Workers.

Now, I will say, as an aside, as happy as I am for him, that there has not been a Laureate 'of colour' since Rita Dove stepped down (her years were 1993 - 1995). While I most certainly have nothing against those that followed her ("The Roberts" Hass and Pinsky, Stanley Kunitz, Billy Collins, Louise Glück, Ted Kooser, Donald Hall, Charles Simic, Kay Ryan (the first openly LGBTQ Laureate), and W.S. Merwin: Complete list here), in my admittedly somewhat biased opinion, a great deal of the talent and energy of American poetry now can be found in the work of Black, Latino/a, Asian, and other "Other" writers. I would love to see the Library of Congress recognize this excitement and quality in contemporary poetry by appointing a non-white Laureate - Soon.

In case you were wondering, previous African American "Consultants in Poetry to the Library of Congress" - the historic name for the position - were Robert Hayden [1976-78] and Gwendolyn Brooks [1985-86].

Here is my favorite Levine poem, and one of my all-time favorite poems by anyone. Enjoy

What Work Is

We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work
You know what work is — if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, “No,
we’re not hiring today,” for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who’s not beside you or behind or
ahead because he’s home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you’re too young or too dumb,
not because you’re jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don’t know what work is.

— From What Work Is by Philip Levine (Alfred A. Knopf, 1991

This and other Levine poems can be found here at the New York Times website). Happy Reading

Amy Winehouse, 1983-2011

2011-07-25T18:13:00.002-04:00

Head over to Ernest Hardy's blog for his excellent take on the troubled singer. Anything I could possibly say would only pale in comparison.

"We’ve so romanticized the tortured artist, been complicit in turning her/him into a blueprint pose and commodity, that we’ve forgotten there is sometimes painful truth at the root of the cliché: There are artists whose muse and round-the-clock demons really are one and the same. We, the herd of consumers, cheer the bad behavior, eat up the self-destructive actions, nod theatrically (so everyone around us can see) that we identify with the pain, maaaan. But we grow impatient when the artist who’s genuinely fucked up doesn’t act like a mercenary CEO, keeping just inside the lines of marketable debauchery and edible despair. We laugh and mock, made uneasy when it turns out shit is real. My writing this isn’t an attempt to excuse or glorify bad behavior or the selfishness of an artist showing up (over and over) too wasted to perform. It’s not meant to “enable.” It is an attempt, however, to recognize a broader context of issues (addiction; depression; creativity; the places where they meet) that are deserving of thoughtfulness and some measure of compassion..."

Hello Again - but Goodbye Borders (and don't dispair)

2011-07-20T18:55:00.018-04:00

How ironic: My return to blogging coincides with the end of the Borders Bookstore chain (I had nothing to do with that, btw - except perhaps for tending to want to make most of my purchases from Independent and Used bookstores). While some are saying Borders brought this on themselves, whatever the reason, having one less place to purchase and browse, flip through magazines, hang out and loiter surrounded by texts is a very sad thing. For truly sometimes as much if not more is learned by seeing and accidentally running into those books that surround the item you want than from the particular book itself.

As much as I often repeated the joke "Millions of books - except the one you want" while talking about the big box stores, their range and variety is far greater than what is replacing them in the 'non-virtual world.' A quick (and it will be just that - quick) look at the offerings on the bookshelves at Target, Wal-Mart, or Costco is enough to make most writers slit their wrists.

The big box stores, and these new brick and mortar venues for books (I'm tempted to say "Bric a Brack" venues!) hide the amazing vibrancy that's going on in small press publishing now. There has been some very sad news - the University of California putting it's amazing New California Poetry Series on hiatus as that institution faces uncertainty about its budget, for example - mixed in with some very pleasant surprises, like Akashic Books' unexpected Best Seller "Go The F*ck to Sleep." (Click here for - who else?- Samuel L Jackson's pitch perfect audio version).

Here at Poets House, for example, we're wrapping up the month-long Showcase, an annual event where we display what we hope are all the poetry books published in the US over the past year. This July we are showing 2,458 books from 767 publishers around the country. This includes broadsides, chapbooks, poems published as matchbooks, and in other unusual configurations.

Most people when they see the Showcase say "I never knew there was this much poetry!" and it is true. In most bookstores, the sales of poetry are so small that it doesn't make financial sense to carry a lot of it. But that hasn't stopped writers from writing or publishers from putting out their work. Nor has the e-book revolution hit this segment of the writing world too hard - yet - mainly due to problems with formatting poems. Once that's been fixed, all bets are off).

We were also fortunate to host a celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the astounding independent publisher New Directions here as well, somehow managing to pack around 200 people into both levels of our space (read John K's recap of the event here). I recognize that New Directions is an 'outlier' and that more often than not independent publishers don't make it for very long. But the fact that an uncompromising and defiantly literary enterprise like New Directions has made it - and that others, like Haki Madhubuti's Third World Press, for example which has lasted for 44 years, have done so as well - has to help to reduce one's level of despair.

Sometimes I think, as far as the Book Biz is concerned, we are living through times similar to the last days of the dinosaurs. The small presses are like the early mammals, running around while the huge lumbering (corporate-owned) majors flail around wondering how - or if - they are going to survive. To the small, fast and nimble goes the race -- I hope!

"New Directions was founded to counteract, in its small way, the tendency to treat a book as nothing more than a package of merchandise. Perahps the editor is an idealist. But that species is not yet extinct. Our first years have shown there are a great many people in this country who love the best in literature and resent its degradation. Confident of their support and anxious to deserve it, New Directions enters another publishing year." - James Laughlin, 1939

It's Cold Outside - Let's change things up

2010-12-05T18:49:00.005-05:00

The Fox TV show Glee recently featured a male/male duet of the great 'winter' song, "Baby It's Cold Outside". Its amazing sometimes how the world rolls forward. If only it could always be like this, 'cute', gently, one song at a time.

My all-time favorite version appears on the Ray Charles and Betty Carter album, which is not available on line (WELL worth getting, if you don't have it already. Their Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye never ceases to give me the shakes). Here, however are some other versions on YouTube, showing a bit of the evolution of the song.

First some 'definitive' versions:

Betty Garret and Red Skelton (from the song's debut in the film Neptune's Daughter). This is already a bit of a variation as the song had previously been sung in the film by Ricardo Montalban to Esther Williams.

Margaret Whiting and Johnny Mercer

Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Jordan

Ringing the changes:

Louis Armstrong, fooling around with Velma Middleton (the poster mistakenly thought it was Ella Fitzgerald, hence the images)

The next best thing to Ray and Betty: Ray Charles and Dionne Warwick (it's the way Ray sings 'Roar' that gets me every time:)

Rod Stewart and Dolly Parton

Willie Nelson and Norah Jones

From the UK: Tom Jones and Cerys Matthews (from Jools Hollands amazing show, Later, of course!)

Still cold in the 21st Century: Chris Colfer and Darren Criss

Happy Holidays to All!

Bright Lights, Medium Sized City

2010-11-15T20:07:00.004-05:00

My folks used to joke that Baltimore was an 'over grown small town,' and there is something to be said for it's familial feel. On the other hand, you can hardly get away with anything or go anywhere without running into someone you know:)

Last time I was back in town, I saw another writer on the street, and someone who I know by sight from 'out' (bars and clubs) in Home Depot. This time ('no place like Home for the Holidays') I've run into two former co-workers at Pratt, one in the grocery store, the other at the liquor store (those librarians, always eating well and drinking well!:)

I can't say I've not run into people I knew unexpectedly in New York, because I have, but the number of 'sightings' here in Charm City is pretty amazing. Either we're a small town, or my friends and I travel the city in a repeating circle, going to the same places over and over again!

How YOU Doin'?

2010-10-29T17:45:00.003-04:00

One of the differences I've noticed already between New York and Baltimore is that people don't 'speak' up here.

Not that they are silent -- not at all -- but rather that whole thing of total strangers or neighbors passing you on the street and saying Good Morning doesn't happen very much in New York. Even the "Black Male Head Nod" ™ (with optional opening or closing "Yo!" and/or 'Zup? )as guys pass each other on the street isn't very prevalent here....curious...

But then this is a city with over 8 million people in it, where the streets, subways, and other forms of transportation are seldom if ever empty - you'd be exhausted trying to say something to even every other person within a matter of a block or two. And, once you engage them, New Yorkers are actually helpful and for the most part friendly (although they don't want people to know that - something about that Rough New Yorker Stereotype is appealing, and gets people to leave you alone). Still, I have to say, there's something about the casual camaraderie of quick acknowledgment I miss.

But, of course, a couple of days ago, as I was thinking about writing this, a guy passing by me in Brooklyn nodded and said, 'Zup? So there! Exceptions always prove the rule I guess...

Poem of the Week: Charlie Howard's Descent by Mark Doty

2010-10-22T12:55:00.003-04:00

Passing along Split This Rock's 'Poem of the Week', "mourns the gay and lesbian young people who committed suicide in the past weeks: Justin Aaberg, Asher Brown, Raymond Chase, Tyler Clementi, Aiyisha Hassan, Billy Lucas, and Seth Walsh."

Charlie Howard's Descent

Between the bridge and the river
he falls through
a huge portion of night;
it is not as if falling

is something new. Over and over
he slipped into the gulf
between what he knew and how
he was known. What others wanted

opened like an abyss: the laughing
stock-clerks at the grocery, women
at the luncheonette amused by his gestures.
What could he do, live

with one hand tied
behind his back? So he began to fall
into the star-faced section
of night between the trestle

and the water because he could not meet
a little town's demands,
and his earrings shone and his wrists
were as limp as they were.

I imagine he took the insults in
and made of them a place to live;
we learn to use the names
because they are there,

familiar furniture: faggot
was the bed he slept in, hard
and white, but simple somehow,
queer something sharp

but finally useful, a tool,
all the jokes a chair,
stiff-backed to keep the spine straight,
a table, a lamp. And because

he's fallen for twenty-three years,
despite whatever awkwardness
his flailing arms and legs assume
he is beautiful

and like any good diver
has only an edge of fear
he transforms into grace.
Or else he is not afraid,

and in this way climbs back
up the ladder of his fall,
out of the river into the arms
of the three teenage boys

who hurled him from the edge -
really boys now, afraid,
their fathers' cars shivering behind them,
headlights on - and tells them

it's all right, that he knows
they didn't believe him
when he said he couldn't swim,
and blesses his killers

in the way that only the dead
can afford to forgive.

-- Mark Doty

Blog Action (a Day or so late) and some "Brokeback Love" for the Lit Prizes

2010-10-17T11:06:00.007-04:00

Sheesh! Try to get back into the swing of blogging, and immediately fall behind! I was away from computers for much of Friday, and so missed out on participating in this year's Blog Action Day (October 15th). The topic this year is/was "Water".

Almost a billion people around the world don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. And in the industrialized nations, water is tied to technology (an iPhone requires half a liter of water to charge, cotton t-shirts take 1,514 liters of water to produce, jeans an extra 6,813 liters), mass produced food (24 liters of water to produce one hamburger) and our love affair with bottled water. People in the US drink an average of 200 bottles of water per person each year, requiring over 17 million barrels of oil to manufacture, 86 percent of which will never be recycled.
More info on these facts here

(I'm guilty too, but the bottled water thing still seems a little odd because much of it tastes just like tap water to me - and that's before I reuse/refill the bottles city water!)

Please visit the links and take action -- or at the very least THINK before you slap down that $1 for a bottle of H2O or let your faucets run and run and run..

****

Awards season in the book world has started. Congrats to Mario Vargas Llosa for his Nobel Prize for Literature. The award has caused a flurry of discontent amongst Latin American writers because of the author's political turn to the Right, and stance against the movements of native peoples in Latin America since his run for the presidency of Peru in 1990. During our annual 'Nobel Speculatin', John and I were both pulling for Syrian poet Adonis. It seems truly wrong to me that a poet hasn't won since Wislawa Szymborska in
1996 (following "Famous Seamus" Heaney's 1995 award). What did we poets ever do to the Nobel Committee? There also hasn't been an American Nobelist since Toni Morrison (1993), but since at least one Committee is on record as not likin American Literature, I guess that's not as much of a surprise.

The National Book Award Nominees were announced as well. Like the rest of the Cave Canem family I'm very pleased to see our own T-Bone, Terrance Hayes nominated in the Poetry category, and there are other writers on the lists like Shriver, Yamishita, Youn, Williams-Garcia, and Dean of Young Adult Fiction Walter Dean Myers, I'm happy for as well. With the National Book Critics Circle finalists announced in January 2011, and then the Pulitzers in the spring, writers have about six months of waiting for the phone to ring to look forward to.

After having recently participated in a flurry of e-mails about the Yale Younger Prize (congratulations to new judge Carl Philips), I have mixed emotions about them. Sometimes the best book is nominated, and even wins, sometimes not. Sometimes the winner is memorable, at other times one barely remembers the winner a week after the announcement. And don't get me started on issues of race and gender and the Prizes! Ultimately, however I have to agree with Tayari Jones (as usual!) and her take on the whole Awards Biz (in a post titled "I Wish I Knew How to Quit You, NBAs":

I know it's foolhardy, but my relationship with these book prizes is like my relationship with a bad boyfriend that I just can't quit. I know he's trifling, but sometimes he's nice, and I keep telling myself that his heart is good, and that he will change. Silly as it is, I keep holding out for happily ever after.

I know what you mean, Tayari, even though those kinds of guys break your heart everytime, baby....

Finally, unqualified congratulations to Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, currently imprisioned in China for his non-violent human rights work. Since he also writes poetry, I guess a poet DID win a Nobel this year! Here's one of his poems, from the PEN American Center website.

Daybreak

for Xia

over the tall ashen wall, between
the sound of vegetables being chopped
daybreak’s bound, severed,
dissipated by a paralysis of spirit

what is the difference
between the light and the darkness
that seems to surface through my eyes’
apertures, from my seat of rust
I can’t tell if it’s the glint of chains
in the cell, or the god of nature
behind the wall
daily dissidence
makes the arrogant
sun stunned to no end

daybreak a vast emptiness
you in a far place
with nights of love stored away

(Translated by Jeffrey Yang)

Poem of the Week: Pedres (Stones) by Gemma Gorga

2010-10-13T19:04:00.005-04:00

Two Catalan writers stopped by Poets House on Wednesday for a lunchtime reading and chat, Portuguese novelist and food writer Paulo Moreiras and Spanish poet Gemma Gorga.

Any translators out there, PLEASE take a look at their work and help bring it into English, they're both terrific!

Here is a translation of one of the poems that Ms Gorga read for us that I particularly enjoyed, with a video of her reading it in in Catalan.

Stones

If the voice could come out in photographs
in the way shadow or tenderness does -- even while
being more vulnerable realities -- I would hear
once again my father telling me that, before
picking up a stone, you should roll it over
with your foot or a branch to scare away
the scorpions hiding underneath like dry thorns.
I never worried about that. Being six years old
was simple, simple as dying. In both cases,
there was no secret other than the air:
breathing it or not breathing it, as if the soul
were full of tiny alveoli that open
and close. The first scorpion I saw
was in the natural science book,
trapped forever in the severe pincers
of time. On occasion, though, books don't tell
the whole truth, as if they didn't know it
or had forgotten it on the way from the printer's.
Arachnid with body divided into abdomen
and cephalothorax. It said nothing of the burning
sun in the tongue, of fear, of the spike
pierced into the neck. I didn't know then
what words were immense icebergs
hiding beneath their icy waters much
more than they show. Like the word scorpion.
And now, as the phone insistently rings
-- a sharp daybreak cry -- as I get up,
turn on the light, move my hand to its white body
of plastic that shines like a stone in the sun,
as I pick it up and say yes? and someone tells me you're dead,
I only think of scorpions, of what
you wanted to tell me when you repeated roll
the stones over, please, roll the stones over.

(from El desordre de les mans, 2003, Translated by Julie Wark)

Cha-cha-cha Changes

2010-10-12T13:36:00.008-04:00

Okay so I've been TERRIBLE about updating this, but (as if this is an excuse) a number of major changes have been happening with me.

The main one being this: After nearly 20 years at the Pratt Library, and even more than that in Baltimore, I am now in New York City, and working at Poets House. An amazing shift, but one that I think is just perfect for me right now.

I will NOT however, betray my (woebegotten) Orioles by becoming a Yankees fan (I've always had a soft spot for the equally hard pressed Mets) or abandon the Ravens. One has to be True to Their Team no matter where they live after all!

****
Yesterday was National Coming Out Day, and sadly, this has been a terrible season for LGBTQ people - especially young people, with six suicides in the past five weeks (Aiyisha Hassan, 19; Raymond Chase, 19; Tyler Clementi, 18; Seth Walsh, 13; Asher Brown, 13; Billy (William) Lucas, 15) and one young man, Tyler Wilson (aged 11), whose arm was broken by bullies in school because he joined the cheerleading team.

And, most horrifically, there are the nine gang members, who have been arrested for the rape and torture of two 17 year old gang recruits and the 30 year old Salvadoran man they supposedly had sex with, coming less than a week after the leader of a Baltimore gang was given a life sentence for ordering the murder of a gang member suspected to be gay.

Horrible.

I honestly don't know what to say about the intra-gang violence, other than sadness to see that these alternate (and homosocial) families that young people have created are resorting to such violent policing of heterosexuality amongst their ranks.

As someone who suffered from depression for many years, and contemplated suicide more than once, however, I think I recognize a bit of what's going on with the recent rash of self-destructions.

I think many in the mental health field can report that there's an element of 'contagion' in suicide. Those who have contemplated it can, in a sense think, 'Well if they did it, I can do it too' when they hear news of others killing themselves. Hearing about someone else doing it makes it seem more of a valid option. And one thing those who may not have considered this must realize is that the person thinking those thoughts is in a great deal of pain, actual physical and emotional pain, and wants to end their lives to make the pain stop -- or to end the pain they think their existence is causing someone else.

"I was that man, I suffered, I was there...."

Dan Savage created the "It Gets Better" video project, where gays speak to the younger versions of themselves, urging them to 'hang in there' through their teens because Life Gets Better.

Personally, I think that some things in life DO get better -- and others just change. "Bittersweet" seems the best word I can come up with to answer the question "What Is Grown-Up Life Like?"

And also you have to MAKE things better, following the suggestions created by the young people on their website, and not just (to take a phrase from an old Springsteen song that I used to repeatedly play for myself when I was in my teens) "Waste your summers praying in vain for a Savior to rise from these streets." As much as you can, take control of your own life.

It is also imperative that we as adults step in and stop bullying and harassment of young people (and other adults) for being 'different.' And be seen by younger people doing so as well.

And I also want to echo the words of someone who I've grown to admire a great deal, former basketball player John Amaechi, who in his Coming Out Day message said, in part

...I believe you should know that in this climate, there is poison all around. People and institutions who would marginalize and abuse you for being who you are and as such, I would encourage you to come out judiciously. Know that coming out doesn't mean the whole world needs to be told at once - or ever - some people will never earn the right to know the whole you.

Full post, well worth reading, is here.

People do have to *earn* the right to get to know you and be your friends. Try to limit your time around negativity and negative people. Do what you can to retain and hold onto a positive outlook, but don't be blindly optimistic either -- can we say "Trust but Verify" perhaps?

Know that there are people out there that can help you, or that will be happy to just listen to you vent if you like. And there is a community of people out there(gay, straight, both and neither) who will be glad to welcome you.

International Day Against Homophobia 2010

2010-05-17T18:13:00.004-04:00

Today is the International Day Against Homophobia, celebrated in much of the world (...minus the US...). Some astounding things have happened today, from a peaceful rights gathering in Jamaica to the signing of Same-Sex Marriage law in Portugal.

For me however, the people of the moment are Steven Monjenza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga of Malawi, who are now under arrest and facing the possibility of 14 years in jail at hard labor for having a traditional marriage ceremony in their country. It is men, women and trangendered people living through situations like these that are almost beyond our imagining as we live in comfort that we need to remember on this day. And all throughout the year as well.

"If people or the world cannot give me the chance and freedom to continue living with him as my lover, then I am better off to die here in prison. Freedom without him is useless and meaningless." -- Tiwonge Chimbalanga

Poem in Your Pocket Day

2010-04-29T11:42:00.007-04:00

"Bad poet!" I've done little here to commemorate Poetry Month (or Jazz Appreciation Month either!) this April. To remedy this oversight, and in honor of the "Lady Day": The Many Faces of Billie Holiday" exhibit currently at the Pratt Library, here's one of my favorite poems by (born in Baltimore) Frank O'Hara

The Day Lady Died
by Frank O'Hara

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days

I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing.

Frank O’Hara, “The Day Lady Died” from Lunch Poems. Copyright © 1964 by Frank O’Hara. Reprinted with the permission of City Lights Books. Source: The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara (1995) and Poetry Magazine website

Now, to relax with a little Light Reading...

2010-03-25T17:35:00.007-04:00

The First Litterateur stops at an Iowa City Bookstore to pick up a few things for the kids (“Journey to the River Sea” by Eva Ibbotson and “The Secret of Zoom” by Lynne Jonell) ....

....and from the looks of the picture, maybe some Fiction for himself?

Post Oscar Post

2010-03-08T16:00:00.011-05:00

Never once in my life did my parents say, 'What you're doing is a waste of time.' ... I know there are kids out there that don't have that support system so if you're out there and you're listening, listen to me: You want to be creative? Get out there and do it, it's not a waste of time. — Michael Giacchino, after winning the Academy Award for best original score for 'Up'.

Congratulations to all of this years Academy Award Winners, to First Female Best Director Winner Kathryn Bigelow, and most especially of course to Baltimore's own Mo'nique for her ferocious performance in Precious. I wish her very much success in her stated desire to play Hattie McDaniel in a bio-pic in the near future

Congratulations also to professor and screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher for his win for Best Adapted Screenplay for his adaptation of Sapphire's novel Push. He's the first African-American to win a writing Oscar, and gives all of us scribblers of colour some hope!

This was the first time I'd watched the Oscars all the way through in a VERY long time (I'm not a fan of awards shows), and all in all I thought it was a very enjoyable evening. Most of the films and stars I suspected would win did in fact get their awards, and for me the only surprise was the selection of “The Secret in Their Eyes” (“El Secreto de Sus Ojos”) from Argentina over "The White Ribbon" or "A Prophet".

Pre-and Post Oscar, however, things have been less predicable and rather interesting. For example, Mo'nique set off a bit of a firestorm by revealing that she and her husband have an open marriage.

Do we have sex outside of the marriage? Let me say this. I have not had sex outside of my marriage with Sidney. Could I have sex outside of my marriage with Sidney? Yes. Could Sid have sex outside of his marriage with me? Yes. That’s not a deal breaker. That’s not something that we would say, ‘Oh my God because you were attracted to another person and because you happened to have sex let’s end the marriage.’”

Considering the reaction of some people to this 'revelation' (which was old news to New York Times Readers) one would think Mon'ique had confessed that she and her husband spent their spare time as serial killers.

Secondly, the closeness of the stars of the Best Picture Oscar winner The Hurt Locker, provoked this bit of strangeness from NBC Today show co-host Meridith Viera:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Both these instances point out ways in which conformity particularly in issues relating to sex and sexuality continually rears its ugly head. Some people feel the need to police other people's relationships, and or their expressions of warmth, affection, and love. Dominant forms of 'acceptable heterosexuality' must be enforced at all times! And as the author of the "Good as You" blog points out, this kind of reaction is particularly disturbing for gay and lesbian people when it comes from one of our so-called liberal allies, as Viera has been in the past:

'"Because we have so many of our supposedly liberal friends who will be so nice to our lives and our loves when confronted directly with them, yet will so often go for these cheap and, frankly, stupid jokes that traffic solely in anti-gay "worry." In doing so, they foster the idea that same-sex affections are icky, a fear fomentation that's not negated by their niceties when dealing with actual gay people. Regardless of how much the purveyors of this mindset may disconnect these abstract denunciations from actual LGBT human beings or contribute to our cause, the reality is that they're cultivating in the minds of the American public the exact kind of casual heterosexism that keeps people voting against us and then justifying it by saying "some of my best friends are gay," keeps civil unions on the table as acceptable alternative to full marriage equality, and keeps many would-be allies apathetic to the pro-equality fight because they see gays as this odd "other." '

Personally, as someone who has played on sports teams, been in the military, and been through very stressful and sometimes traumatic events with other guys, I didn't see anything particularly 'gay' about the way these actors reacted or were all hugged up on each other. In filming Hurt Locker they experienced a small part of what soldiers on the front lines are experiencing in Iraq and Afghanistan, and one that can create an incredible bond. To make that seem somehow 'wrong' or a 'reason to worry' is in itself a reason to worry about the person who feels that way. So...what's up Meredith?

Although the following poem is old, and written for another occasion, I offer it in honor of all the winners, and urge everyone to express their affection for others however they damn well please.

THE VICTORS
Men's 100 meters
Goodwill Games: New York City, 21 July 1998

Our only enemies are Time,
the unending fall of each
hundredth of a second, and the Air
which holds us back, keeps us from
transforming to pure flight
not those others talking trash.

We do not need words, have caged
Speed itself within the bunched muscles
of our thighs, feel it purr beneath our feet
coiled tight, ready to spring
out with the sharp crackling of a shot.

We train as one, live as one,
push each one on with shared
determination, pull each fiercely
over every finish line.

Awash in applause and screams
beneath a flag too small
to contain all that we are,
this final lap of victory is shared: mine,
my brothers. When I win
he wins, we all win – all swim arm in arm
in glory.

Shirtless in the flashbulbed night,
our bodies gleam with muscles, sweat
and speed, hammered bronze turned
gold in the liquid light of our tripled love.

Help for Haiti

2010-01-13T18:17:00.003-05:00

The Haitian Presidential Palace, before (bottom) and after

From the Washington Post, a list of charities who are assisting in relief efforts after the devastating earthquake in Haiti. Also (included and below) are ways you can donate using your phone/mobile device:

• Text the word "Yele" to 501501 to donate $5 on behalf of the Yele Haiti Foundation, founded by Haitian musician Wyclef Jean.

• Text the word "Haiti" to 85944 to donate $5 on behalf of the Rescue Union Mission and MedCorp International.

• Text the word "Haiti" to 25383 to donate $5 on behalf of the Internal Rescue Committee.

• Text the word "Haiti" to 90999 to donate $10 on behalf of the American Red Cross.

• Text the word "Haiti" to 45678 (in Canada only) on behalf of the Salvation Army in Canada.

Don Belton, 1956 - 2009

2009-12-29T23:13:00.009-05:00

UPDATE:
New Year's Day vigil planned to honor English professor

The Indiana University and Bloomington community is invited to attend a community vigil in honor of Assistant Professor of English Don Belton. The vigil will be held on Friday, Jan. 1 from 5:00-6:00 p.m. at the southeast corner of the courthouse square (the intersection of Walnut Street and Kirkwood Avenue).

And a website has been set up Justice for Don Belton.com

In honor of the late writer, editor and professor, my entry on him in that appears (in slightly different form) in Emmanuel S. Nelson's Encyclopedia of Contemporary LGBTQ Literature of the United States.

Belton, Don
b. 1956

The major themes of the work of African American writer and editor Don Belton include the gulf between real and represented masculinity, the impossibility of living without love, and home and the quest for sanctuary. His friendships with black gay writers James Baldwin, Melvin Dixon, Randall Kenan, Essex Hemphill and the filmmaker Marlon Riggs influenced the exploration of the potential of a range of caring relationships between men in his writing.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Belton’s family valued stories, songs, and the art of conversation and encouraged him to express himself from an early age, supplying him with books, paper, art supplies, music and his own desk and chair. He graduated from Bennington College in1981, and received a MA from Hollins College in 1982. He met and was befriended by James Baldwin in New York while an undergraduate at Bennington, a further encouragement for him to write.

Belton published the novel Almost Midnight in 1986. Set in the Hill section of Newark, New Jersey, the novel details the conflicting attempts to determine the truth about a legendary light-skinned African American preacher, ‘Daddy’ Sam Poole by the various women in his life. Founder of the successful “Metaphysical Church of the Divine Investigation,” the mystery of Daddy Poole remains unanswered by the novels’ end, and the women cannot separate themselves from their memories of him.

Belton’s peripatetic teaching career has lead to extensive travel in the United States and abroad, including Ireland, France, Brazil, England, Italy and the Ivory Coast. The friendships he developed during this period with African American novelists Melvin Dixon and Randall Kenan, the filmmaker Marlon Riggs, and poet Essex Hemphill encouraged him to focus his work on black male relationships, leading to the anthology Speak My Name (1997).

A reaction to a number of issues concerning African Americans in the 1990’s from the ‘cultural wars’ and the Million Man March of October 1996, to the violence and despair in US cities and the “New Male” movement led by Robert Bly and Sam Keen that held little interest in African-American male representation, Speak My Name feature a range of short fiction and essays which counter distorted images of African American men. Including work by established and emerging writers and scholars Amiri Baraka, Henry Louis Gates, Robin D. G. Kelley, Walter Mosley, John Edgar Wideman, August Wilson and others, the anthology explores unconventional, nonmainstream expressions of black masculinity. An interview/conversation between Belton, gay British filmmaker Isaac Julien, poet Essex Hemphill also critiques heterosexism and debates whether traditional visions of ‘black unity’ can include gay men.

A former reporter at Newsweek, Don Belton has also written articles for Black Film Review, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Advocate and Utne Reader. His short stories have appeared in the Indiana Review, Black Literature Forum, Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Short Fiction, and Calling the Wind: An Anthology of the Twentieth Century African-American Short Story. He has been a Fellow at the McDowell Colony and Yaddo. His awards include a Lila Wallace International Travel and Research Grant, a Bellagio/Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, and a Dance Advance/Pew Charitable Trust Grant for Dramaturgy. Belton has taught literature and fiction writing at Macalester College, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Bennington, Temple University and lectured widely abroad including in the Ivory Coast (sponsored by Arts America/United States Information Agency), at the Sorbonne, and at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Currently at work on his second novel, Belton lives in Bloomington, Indiana, where he teaches in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at Indiana University.

Sources:

Anderson, Elijah. "Manhood Under Pressure." (Book Review of Speak My Name). New York Times Book Review, March 03, 1996. pg. 22

Baker-Fletcher, G. Kasimu. "Macho Deconstructed." Cross Currents Volume 46, Number 4 (Winter 1996/97) pg. 565

Belton, Don. Almost Midnight. New York: William Morrow/Beech Tree Books (1986)

Belton, Don. "How to Make Love to a White Man." Transition: An International Review. Volume 7.1 [Number 73] (1998), p.164-75

Belton, Don. “Introduction.” Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, editor. Gary in Your Pocket: Stories and Notebooks of Gary Fisher. Durham NC: Duke University Press (1996)

Belton, Don. “Voodoo for Charles.” Charles Johnson and John McCluskey, Jr., editors. Black Men Speaking. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press (1997)

Belton, Don, editor. Speak My Name: Black Men on Masculinity and the American Dream. Boston: Beacon Press (1997)

Harris, Reginald. "Greetings and Questions" (Personal Interview via e-mail to Don Belton). August 7 – September 9, 2008.

Hogue, W. Lawrence. “Chapter Ten: Voodoo, A Different American Experience, and Don Belton’s Almost Midnight.” The African American Male, Writing and Difference: A Polycentric Approach to African American Literature, Criticism, and History.
New York: SUNY Press (2003) (p 225 -251)

Seaman, Donna. "Speak My Name: Black Men on Masculinity and the American Dream." (Book Review) Booklist. Volume 92 Number 9-10 (January 1, 1996) p756.

Tate, Claudia. “All the Preacher's Women” (Review of Almost Midnight). New York Times, August 17, 1986.

Rest in Peace Don

Black Action Heroes

2009-11-13T09:57:00.016-05:00

Attended a conversation between artist/photographer Hank Willis Thomas (my super-fuzzy photo of him signing copies of Pitch Blackness, at left. Check the Johns Hopkins link below for a much better look at him!) and at the Baltimore Museum of Art last night -- and also attempted my first Live Tweet from the event as well! Visual artists fascinate me, how they turn ideas into images, how they 'speak' in colors and textures. Thomas has been in residence at Johns Hopkins this semester, and the discussion was very good. Some quotes from the evening I found/find particularly fecund, like his use of 'appropriated' images from advertising and considers himself a "visual culture archivist" when doing so because "certain things can only be said by re-presenting them...how do I make this (ready-made) image my own?"

"I didn't realize I really wanted to BE an artist until after going through ten years of art school. Up to then I was just figuring stuff out."

And my favorite line of the evening: If he were stranded on a desert island "I would make art out of sand. Sand is infinite..."

As a poet of course I was particularly fascinated by his explication of the "I Am A Man" series, based on the famous placards from the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike -- and how it should be read. I mentioned after the talk that I had read the texts first image upper left, next image lower left, back up to the second image on the first line...up and down all the way across. He presented them from to right across the first line as a history of the way blacks have been looked at (3/5 of a man, are we men?, Ain't I a Woman coming into the picture with the rise of the Woman's movemnt, etc) with the second row of texts, some of the popular riffs on that text, like 'I Am The Man' or 'What A Man') "reading like a poem." The final image "I Am. AMEN." ends the work with a statement of how we all want to be seen.

One of Thomas' projects, on display in Baltimore until the end of November is "Winter in America" a short film he did in collaboration with Kambui Olujimi uses GI Joes to dramatize the murder of his cousin Songha Thomas Willis in 2000 (can be seen by clicking 'The Film' under the 'Winter in America' link on his website). It is disturbing, sad, powerful, and very moving, and does indeed make you think about the role violent 'play' might have in real violence.

Henry Willis Thomas will be doing one more event before he leaves Baltimore, a Community Salon where he'll discuss his participation in the Artist-in-Residence Program at the Johns Hopkins on Saturday, November 14, 2009 (3:00 – 5:00 pm) at Galerie Myrtis (2224 N. Charles St). Those in the area should try not to miss it.

Interestingly enough, and speaking of violent play....Just in time for the Holidays (thanks to the Bronze Buckaroo), I've learned of other Black 'action figures' recently, like the figure of Brazilian superstar Anderson "The Spider" Silva here, one of a series of Mixed Martial Arts Figures now on sale. I am old enough to remember there being NO black or brown action figures (aka "Dolls for Boys") when I was growing up, so items like this still amaze and fascinate me.

Even more amazing is this set of
History In Action Toys, featuring past achievers Bessie Coleman, Matthew Henson, and the recently blogged-about Benjamin Banneker, complete with almanac and compass!

And finally, plugs for other kinds of action figures, and members of the "Harris Family Extended": Thomas Allen Harris, who I was fortunate enough to meet recently in Austin Texas, and whose film Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela can be seen on PBS stations around the country, (he talks about the film here); and vibraphonist Stephon Harris, whose 1999 album gives this post its title. Click on the album cover to enjoy.

Poem: Benjamin Banneker Sends His “Almanac” to Thomas Jefferson by Jay Wright

2009-11-08T09:35:00.011-05:00

At Left: Holding Benjamin Banneker's 1796 Almanac, Pratt Library Special Collections Dept, Saturday November 7, 2009

Benjamin Banneker Sends His “Almanac” to Thomas Jefferson
by Jay Wright

Old now,
your eyes nearly blank
from plotting the light's
movement over the years,
you clean your Almanac
and place it next
to the heart of this letter.
I have you in mind,
giving a final brush and twist
to the difficult pages,
staring down the shape of the numbers
as though you would find a flaw
in their forms.
Solid, these calculations
verify your body on God's earth.
At night,
the stars submit themselves
to the remembered way you turn them;
the moon gloats under your attention.
I, who know so little of stars,
whose only acquaintance with the moon
is to read a myth, or to listen
to the surge
of songs the women know,
sit in your marvelous reading
of all movement,
of all relations.

So you look into what we see
yet cannot see,
and shape and take a language
to give form to one or the other,
believing no form will escape,
no movement appear, nor stop,
without explanation,
believing no reason is only reason,
nor without reason.
I read all of this into your task,
all of this into the uneasy
reproof of your letter.

Surely, there must be a flaw.
These perfect calculations fall apart.
There are silences
that no perfect number can retrieve,
omissions no perfect line could catch.
How could a man but challenge God's
impartial distributions?
How could a man sit among
the free and ordered movements
of stars, and waters, beasts and birds,
each movement seen or accounted for,
and not know God jealous,
and not know that he himself must be?

So you go over the pages again,
looking for the one thing
that will not reveal itself,
judging what you have received,
what you have shaped,
believing it cannot be strange
to the man you address.
But you are strange to him
—your skin, your tongue,
the movement of your body,
even your mysterious ways with stars.
You argue here with the man and God,
and know that no man can be right,
and know that no God will argue right.
Your letter turns on what the man knows,
on what God, you think, would have us know.
All stars will forever move under your gaze,
truthfully, leading you from line to line,
from number to number, from truth to truth,
while the man will read your soul's desire,
searcher, searching yourself,
losing the relations.

From Transfigurations: Collected Poems (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000)

Roy de Carava 1919-2009

2009-10-29T16:34:00.006-04:00

“It doesn’t have to be pretty to be true. But if it’s true it’s beautiful. Truth is beautiful. And so my whole work is about what amounts to a reverence for life itself.”

Ketchup Bottles, Table and Coat
(After a photograph by Roy DeCarava)

Just a moment after: The darkness
has one story left to tell -- of what is left behind
the genesis of night and all its

grandeur: the action is
elsewhere, some other room, not this
inked way station of the heart

abandoned by its essence. Good-byes already
said, footfalls barely heard. And
what is waiting there.

Just seconds before: A universe expecting
to be born, open hand hovering beyond
the frame poised to sweep the plain plane

clean of things not spoken, heard within,
the spaces between sound, barely seen. The
slightest veil of presence

out the door. A story yet to tell. And what is
waiting there. What left behind: Spare scene.
Perfumed remnants of romance.

Obsidian III 4.2 (Fall-Winter 2002)

TSE @ UB

2009-10-23T16:22:00.004-04:00

In honor of Thomas Sayers Ellis and his reading and thrilling Q & A at the University of Baltimore as part of their MFA Reading Series, one of last night's poems (Hear him read it here, in imitation of the famous Caedmon Recordings)

All Their Stanzas Look Alike
by Thomas Sayers Ellis

All their fences
All their prisons
All their exercises
All their agendas
All their stanzas look alike
All their metaphors
All their bookstores
All their plantations
All their assassinations
All their stanzas look alike
All their rejection letters
All their letters to the editor
All their arts and letters
All their letters of recommendation
All their stanzas look alike
All their sexy coverage
All their literary journals
All their car commercials
All their bribe-spiked blurbs
All their stanzas look alike
All their favorite writers
All their writing programs
All their visiting writers
All their writers-in-residence
All their stanzas look alike
All their third worlds
All their world series
All their serial killers
All their killing fields
All their stanzas look alike
All their state grants
All their tenure tracks
All their artist colonies
All their core faculties
All their stanzas look alike
All their Selected Collecteds
All their Oxford Nortons
All their Academy Societies
All their Oprah Vendlers
All their stanzas look alike
All their haloed holocausts
All their coy hertero couplets
All their hollow haloed causes
All their tone-deaf tercets
All their stanzas look alike
All their table of contents
All their Poet Laureates
All their Ku Klux classics
All their Supreme Court justices
Except one, except one
Exceptional one. Exceptional or not,
One is not enough.
All their stanzas look alike,
Even this, after publication,
Might look alike. Disproves
My stereo types.

From The Maverick Room by Thomas Sayers Ellis (Graywolf Press)

Blog Action Day 2009: Climate Change

2009-10-15T16:37:00.004-04:00

I'm very happy to join bloggers around the world today to use this medium to talk about global warming and climate change

Rather than talking about Global Warming, perhaps we should call what's going on now "Crazy Weather". It may make more sense to the average person, for whom the notion that shorter seasons, increasingly worse storms, crazy-making heat in the Summer (and Spring, and Fall) cannot possibly be due to 'Global Warming.'

Global Warming Facts & Figures

The Top 100 Effects of Global Warming (no more French Fries or Wine but More Mosquitoes!)

The planet is changing around us, and because of us. One might almost think that it has had enough of this virus called 'human beings' and is trying to get rid of us.

My own personal facination (since I've actually been there, amazingly enough) changes in the ice sheet in Antartica

Fortunately, there are things we can do, both small and large, regardless of age, to pull us back from the brink. For example (and considering my energy bill), I've become a BIG fan of increased insulation!

10 Solutions for Climate Change

One thing I would suggest is to lobby your elected officials to do more to help your jurisdiction reduce its carbon footprint (various carbon footprint calculators can be found here). And vote out those pols, most in the pockets of energy companies, who continue to insist that there's no such thing as Global Warming. For example can our friends in Oklahoma start with Senator James Inhofe, who will be attending the upcoming Global Warming Summit in order to deny that there is such a thing as Global Warming ? I mean, really? Come on....Sometimes doing our part to solve the problem of climate change can be as simple as entering a polling booth.

Mid-Lits

2009-09-26T11:43:00.004-04:00

Last weekend in September = too much of a good thing in this area (why is it always Feast or Famine when it comes to things to do?). The Baltimore Book Festival started yesterday (Friday 9/25) and runs through tomorrow (Sunday 9/27). Down the road a piece in Washington, the National Book Festival is today (Saturday 9/26). As I had to remind someone, the Library of Congress poached on OUR date....that darn encroaching Big Gubmint strikes again!

While DC has more Big Names, Baltimore's event gives people more of a chance to talk to authors and to check out what's going on here in the local scene. Like most things Baltimore it's smaller scale, relaxed, slightly scruffy, with (more than?)just a dash of eccentricity. After a few years of not doing any events at the Baltimore Festival, I'm paying for my past slackness by being part of a couple of programs, both on Sunday. First I'll be playing host to fellow Cave Canem Fellows Derrick Weston Brown, Kyle Dargan, Jadi Omowale, Venus Thrash, Jacqueline Jones LaMon, Tara Betts, and Kamau Rucker in the Creative Cafe (Kamau on guitar 12 Noon, reading 12:30 pm). Then at the CityLit tent at 5 pm I'll be moderating a dissussion with poets John Pursley III, Sue Ellen Thompson, Charlie Jensen and Rachel Eisler.

Cave Canem actually makes its first weekend appearance at the festival today (Saturday) at 4 pm with a panel asking "To Form or Not To Form" when writing poetry with Derrick Brown, Kyle Dargan and Tara Betts, moderated by Jadi Omowale -- and with me standing in the back cheering them on.

Ya'll Come!

Summer Reading

2009-08-24T20:37:00.006-04:00

Whatever you may think about President Obama, everyone can agree that he's ambitious. For example, here's his 'vacation reading list' during his week in Martha's Vineyard

-- Thomas Friedman's "Hot, Flat and Crowded"

-- David McCullough's "John Adams"

-- Richard Price's "Lush Life"

-- Kent Haruf's "Plainsong"

-- George Pelecanos's "The Way Home"

I can understand the desire for self-improvement over the summer. Every year I think about tackling some literary behemouth (this year is was going to be Anthony Trollope's Victorian triple decker The Way We Live Now)...but what can I say? It was hot. And humid. And unlike the Prez I don't have all those briefing books to go through every day. Or two children to deal with. Or the allure of the beach to draw me away from the pages. I wish him a lot of luck!

I have read a mix of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry since June, and will probably finish at least one or two more books before Labour Day (guess I'm one of those people on whom our annual Summer Reading Program actually 'took'). But yeah, those 100 chapters of 19th Century financial scandal still becon...Well, there's always the Holidays!

Also in a reading mood: Tayari Jones asks for Poolside reading suggetions

Lynn

2009-07-28T16:08:00.007-04:00

E Lynn Harris relates the folllowing incident with a favorite family member in his memoir What Becomes of the Brokenhearted: It is October 1991, and Harris is just about to self-publish his first book, Invisible Life. In talking to his 'Aunt Gee' he,

...mentioned that I was becoming comfortable with spending my life alone since I was gay. As I have said before, my aunt has always been supportive of me, no matter what. But during this talk, she said something that hurt me deeply.

'Baby, if I had raised you, I don't think you would have been gay.'

A chill went though my body, and after a few moments of silence I said, 'No Aunt Gee, you're wrong. I might ahve learned to love myself sooner, but I would still have been gay.'

...

The next day I delivered a copy of my novel to my aunt. A couple of days later, just before midnight, I got a call from her. This was very strange, because for as long as I could remember my aunt was always in bed by ten, unless you count the holidays when she was up late preparing meals.

When I made sure everything was all right with Uncle Charles and my cousins, I asked why she was calling me so late, and she said something that warmed my heart.

'Baby, I just finished your novel, and it's beautiful. Will you please forgive me for what I said the other day? Now I finally understand what you were trying to tell me,' Aunt Gee said. Through my tears I told her that of course I could forgive he and thanked her for calling. That night when I went to bed, I knew nothing was going to stop me from publishing my book.

Call it the "E Lynn Harris Effect." For many readers, gay and straight, E Lynn Harris' novels were windows into the lives of black people they'd never seen written about before. For many non-black and heterosexual readers, Lynn's books provided their first encounter with black, Same Gender Loving men. For both younger LGBTQ people as well as his contemporaries, the first time they encountered stories from their world, by and about themselves were in the pages of E Lynn Harris' novels. Over ten years ago I remember seeing a young man furtively but intently reading one of our well-worn copies of Invisible Life at the Pennsylvania Avenue Branch of the library here, concerned, no doubt about others seeing him reading it, but intensely involved in the book nonetheless.

Lynn Harris also had an impact on the larger world of publishing as well. Starting out as a self-published author placing books in beauty parlors and selling them from the trunk of his car, the amazing success of Invisible Life caught the attention of mainstream publishers, which republished it and its sequels. Lynn was one of the first black authors to 'cross over' going from self-publishing to the top of the New York Times bestseller's list. (This was the point when I stopped jokingly referring to him as "Cousin Lynn": I figured enough REAL relatives would start showing up now that he was a success that he didn't need a fake one running around) Together, he and Terry McMillan helped to brake the stereotype that 'black people don't read.' He was a 'pop fiction' author, with no pretenses to 'literary' stardom: he simply wanted to continually improve at being a good storyteller and have as many people as possible read his books.

Some people have turned their noses up at Lynn's work saying they were little more than "Romances" (like Romance is a bad thing....), and they may not be everyones cup of literary tea. However, we should remember that before McMillan and Harris, the number of 'popular' or mid-list black authors was miniscule. Judith Krantz, Danelle Steele, and the Collins sisters (Jackie and Joan) were the authors many African American women read voraciously. There were few representations of black people in 'popular fiction' or on the paperback shelves. Lynn and Terry's success helped to change that, leading to the rise of the "Girlfriend" book, and now -- for better or worse -- "Street Lit" (although I do look forward to the next black gay or lesbian author to approach his level of sales)

(Photo: E Lynn Harris with Lamar Wilson) Lynn was also a great supporter of other writers, particularly other black -- sometimes gay, sometimes not -- authors just starting out. At his own events, Lynn always gave his fans a list of books by other authors they might enjoy while waiting for his next novel. He was co-editor with Marita Golden of the anthology Gumbo: A Celebration of African American Writing, helping to raise funds for the Hurston/Wright Foundation and guest editor of the Best African American Fiction 2009, and sometimes held 'launch parties' at his home in Chicago for other authors. Lynn was a major friend and supporter of the nation's public libraries -- I'm not sure he ever said 'no' when a library asked him to give a reading.

One of the most inspiring things about E Lynn Harris was how little he seemed let fame change him. He was the same friendly, courteous person he was when I first met him while buying one of his self-published copies of Invisible Life back in 1992, as he did the last time I saw him, almost 10 years later at a reading at the library. Every time I saw him he was genuinely grateful and appreciative of his adoring fans and everyone who read or purchased a copy of one of his books. As someone recently said to me, he was a True Southern Gentleman. He loved his fans and readers -- and we loved him right back.

Blog Action Day: 10 Ways to Support Charity Through Social Media‏

2009-07-14T11:51:00.002-04:00

I'm very proud and happy to participate in this blogosphere-wide event. This post, being simultaneously published across more than 100 blogs, is a collaboration between Mashable's Summer of Social Good charitable fundraiser and Max Gladwell's "10 Ways" series.

Social media is about connecting people and providing the tools necessary to have a conversation. That global conversation is an extremely powerful platform for spreading information and awareness about social causes and issues. That's one of the reasons charities can benefit so greatly from being active on social media channels. But you can also do a lot to help your favorite charity or causes you are passionate about through social media.

Below is a list of 10 ways you can use social media to show your support for issues that are important to you. If you can think of any other ways to help charities via social web tools, please add them in the comments. If you'd like to retweet this post or take the conversation to Twitter or FriendFeed, please use the hashtag #10Ways.

1. Write a Blog Post

Blogging is one of the easiest ways you can help a charity or cause you feel passionate about. Almost everyone has an outlet for blogging these days -- whether that means a site running WordPress, an account at LiveJournal, or a blog on MySpace or Facebook. By writing about issues you're passionate about, you're helping to spread awareness among your social circle. Because your friends or readers already trust you, what you say is influential.

Recently, a group of green bloggers banded together to raise individual $1 donations from their readers. The beneficiaries included Sustainable Harvest, Kiva, Healthy Child, Healthy World, Environmental Working Group, and Water for People. The blog-driven campaign included voting to determine how the funds would be distributed between the charities. You can read about the results here.

You should also consider taking part in Blog Action Day, a once a year event in which thousands of blogs pledge to write at least one post about a specific social cause (last year it was fighting poverty). Blog Action Day will be on October 15 this year.

2. Share Stories with Friends

Another way to spread awareness among your social graph is to share links to blog posts and news articles via sites like Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Digg, and even through email. Your network of friends is likely interested in what you have to say, so you have influence wherever you've gathered a social network.

You'll be doing charities you support a great service when you share links to their campaigns, or to articles about causes you care about.

3. Follow Charities on Social Networks

In addition to sharing links to articles about issues you come across, you should also follow charities you support on the social networks where they are active. By increasing the size of their social graph, you're increasing the size of their reach. When your charities tweet or post information about a campaign or a cause, statistics or a link to a good article, consider retweeting that post on Twitter, liking it on Facebook, or blogging about it.

Following charities on social media sites is a great way to keep in the loop and get updates, and it's a great way to help the charity increase its reach by spreading information to your friends and followers.

You can follow the Summer of Social Good Charities:

Oxfam America
(Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube)

The Humane Society
(Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Flickr)

LIVESTRONG
(Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/livestrongarmy" target="_blank">Flickr)

WWF
(Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr)

4. Support Causes on Awareness Hubs

Another way you can show your support for the charities you care about is to rally around them on awareness hubs like Change.org (NOTE: Your humble blogger hangs his hat here at Change.org) , Care2, or the Facebook Causes application. These are social networks or applications specifically built with non-profits in mind. They offer special tools and opportunities for charities to spread awareness of issues, take action, and raise money.

It's important to follow and support organizations on these sites because they're another point of access for you to gather information about a charity or cause, and because by supporting your charity you'll be increasing their overall reach. The more people they have following them and receiving their updates, the greater the chance that information they put out will spread virally.

5. Find Volunteer Opportunities

Using social media online can help connect you with volunteer opportunities offline, and according to web analytics firm Compete, traffic to volunteering sites is actually up sharply in 2009. Two of the biggest sites for locating volunteer opportunities are VolunteerMatch, which has almost 60,000 opportunities listed, and Idealist.org, which also lists paying jobs in the non-profit sector, in addition to maintaining databases of both volunteer jobs and willing volunteers (NOTE: Your humble blogger can be found here on Idealist) .

For those who are interested in helping out when volunteers are urgently needed in crisis situations, check out HelpInDisaster.org, a site which helps register and educate those who want to help during disasters so that local resources are not tied up directing the calls of eager volunteers. Teenagers, meanwhile, should check out DoSomething.org, a site targeted at young adults seeking volunteer opportunities in their communities.

6. Embed a Widget on Your Site

Many charities offer embeddable widgets or badges that you can use on your social networking profiles or blogs to show your support. These badges generally serve one of two purposes (or both). They raise awareness of an issue and offer up a link or links to additional information. And very often they are used to raise money.

Mashable's Summer of Social Good campaign, for example, has a widget that does both. The embeddable widget, which was custom built using Sprout (the creators of ChipIn), can both collect funds and offer information about the four charities the campaign supports.

7. Organize a Tweetup

You can use online social media tools to organize offline events, which are a great way to gather together like-minded people to raise awareness, raise money, or just discuss an issue that's important to you. Getting people together offline to learn about an important issue can really kick start the conversation and make supporting the cause seem more real.

Be sure to check out Mashable's guide to organizing a tweetup to make sure yours goes off without a hitch, or check to see if there are any tweetups in your area to attend that are already organized.

8. Express Yourself Using Video

As mentioned, blog posts are great, but a picture really says a thousand words. The web has become a lot more visual in recent years and there are now a large number of social tools to help you express yourself using video. When you record a video plea or call to action about your issue or charity, you can make your message sound more authentic and real. You can use sites like 12seconds.tv, Vimeo, and YouTube to easily record and spread your video message.

Last week, the Summer of Social Good campaign encouraged people to use video to show support for charity. The #12forGood campaign challenged people to submit a 12 second video of themselves doing something for the Summer of Social Good. That could be anything, from singing a song to reciting a poem to just dancing around like a maniac -- the idea was to use the power of video to spread awareness about the campaign and the charities it supports.

If you're more into watching videos than recording them, Givzy.com enables you to raise funds for charities like Unicef and St. Jude's Children's Hospital by sharing viral videos by e-mail.

9. Sign or Start a Petition

There aren't many more powerful ways to support a cause than to sign your name to a petition. Petitions spread awareness and, when successfully carried out, can demonstrate massive support for an issue. By making petitions viral, the social web has arguably made them even more powerful tools for social change. There are a large number of petition creation and hosting web sites out there. One of the biggest is The Petition Site, which is operated by the social awareness network Care2, or PetitionOnline.com, which has collected more than 79 million signatures over the years.

Petitions are extremely powerful, because they can strike a chord, spread virally, and serve as a visual demonstration of the support that an issue has gathered. Social media fans will want to check out a fairly new option for creating and spreading petitions: Twitition, an application that allows people to create, spread, and sign petitions via Twitter.

10. Organize an Online Event

Social media is a great way to organize offline, but you can also use online tools to organize effective online events. That can mean free form fund raising drives, like the Twitter-and-blog-powered campaign to raise money for a crisis center in Illinois last month that took in over $130,000 in just two weeks. Or it could mean an organized "tweet-a-thon" like the ones run by the 12for12k group, which aims to raise $12,000 each month for a different charity.

In March, 12for12k ran a 12-hour tweet-a-thon, in which any donation of at least $12 over a 12 hour period gained the person donating an entry into a drawing for prizes like an iPod Touch or a Nintendo Wii Fit. Last month, 12for12k took a different approach to an online event by holding a more ambitious 24-hour live video-a-thon, which included video interviews, music and sketch comedy performances, call-ins, and drawings for a large number of prizes given out to anyone who donated $12 or more.

Bonus: Think Outside the Box

Social media provides almost limitless opportunity for being creative. You can think outside the box to come up with all sorts of innovative ways to raise money or awareness for a charity or cause. When Drew Olanoff was diagnosed with cancer, for example, he created Blame Drew's Cancer, a campaign that encourages people to blow off steam by blaming his cancer for bad things in their lives using the Twitter hashtag #BlameDrewsCancer. Over 16,000 things have been blamed on Drew's cancer, and he intends to find sponsors to turn those tweets into donations to LIVESTRONG once he beats the disease.

Or check out Nathan Winters, who is biking across the United States and documenting the entire trip using social media tools, in order to raise money and awareness for The Nature Conservancy.

The number of innovative things you can do using social media to support a charity or spread information about an issue is nearly endless. Can you think of any others? Please share them in the comments.

Special thanks to VPS.net

A special thanks to VPS.net, who are donating $100 to the Summer of Social Good for every signup they receive this week.

Sign up at VPS.net and use the coupon code "SOSG"to receive 3 Months of FREE hosting on top of your purchased term. VPS.net honors a 30 day no questions asked money back guarantee so there's no risk.

About the "10 Ways" Series

The "10 Ways" Series was originated by Max Gladwell. This is the second simultaneous blog post in the series. The first ran on more than 80 blogs, including Mashable. Among other things, it is a social media experiment and the exploration of a new content distribution model. You can follow Max Gladwell on Twitter.

This content was originally written by Mashable's Josh Catone.

History Lesson

2009-07-04T20:43:00.011-04:00

Happy 4th of July!

As shameful as it may be for me to say this, but...I sometimes watch 'Reality' television shows.

I try to 'clean this up' a bit by watching the more 'classy' shows, like Bravo's Top Chef and Project Runway, etc. But yes, well... there was that season of "America's Best Dance Crew" (which I may talk about at some point), and -- reruns only mind you! -- "America's Next Top Model."

While waiting for the new season Project Runway, I've been watching Bravo's fashion knock off show, "The Fashion Show" with Isaac Mizrahi and Kelly Rowland.

A recent show started an interesting discussion at our house. Contestants were first quizzed on various fashion icons from the past, then asked to create a complete look inspired by a signature piece based on these icons.

Others here in our version of the Big Brother house objected to this. "They're there to be designer, to create something new! Who cares if they know these people from the past!" While I agreed that the challenge was biased toward those who had gone to design school where one formally learns about such things, and also thought that it was wrong to give some contestants in the first challenge multiple choice but not do the same for others -- and, I confess, I'd JUST finished reading Nina Garcia's Little Black Book of Style (...umm....don't ask!:) or else I wouldn't have known some of the answers either -- I understand exactly this challenge was coming from.

As a writer, I think it is very important for artists and creative people to know where their particular genre came from, who the major figures from its past are, and how have they influenced what we see, read, and hear now. It always saddens me to talk to younger writers and ask "Who are your favorite poets" and hear "Oh, I don't read other writers - I don't want to get influenced by them." And I don't think I'm the only one who has run into this response.

ALL of us are influenced by the past. While we think we're being "New" and inventing something never seen before, more often than not we are simply recreating a pale imitation of something or someone who has gone before us. All of us can learn a great deal from past masters, about how they solved problems and achieved their goals, and often looking at the past can be a guide or road map for how to proceed in your own work and career.

Finally, it's always good to know that your field doesn't begin (or end) with you. We are part of a continuum, joining in a procession of creative people who went before us, giving insight and support to those who will follow us.

In the end, The Fashion Show judges had to choose between two people to eliminate: someone who knew the work of the past designer they had been assigned, but got it wrong by using incorrect materials and going her own way; or someone who DIDN'T know the history, and created a garment that, because of that, looked very little like something their designer from the past would have done. They (rightly to my mind) decided to let the person who 'knew' go, keeping the one who 'didn't know.' It is never too late to look back, educate yourself and improve.

Real reason for the Military Gay Ban Revealed:

2009-06-29T00:12:00.004-04:00

The sky does NOT fall if you become friends with someone different from you!

In a surprising twist, (Professor Jammie Price) found that the straight men with the most evolved sense of masculinity — the ones who forged the tightest friendships with their gay friends — were from military families or had some military training.

These men were used to being “thrown into different environments where it doesn’t matter whether you’re white or black or Hispanic,” Professor Price said. “You’re going to live in this house and you’re all going to be treated the same and you have to get along.”

It was 40 years ago today...

2009-06-28T11:20:00.015-04:00

Around the house somewhere is a photo of me (taken by the Other Half) taken outside the Stonewall Inn during the Stonewall 25 celebrations in New York. That was a great up-all-night-in-the-streets party, and I'm sure this year is no different. One of my strongest memories of that weekend, however is of a moment of unexpected beauty the next day: being outside the bar as a group of young people danced up and down the street carrying an enormous rainbow flag, and looking down to see the sun shining through the fabric and casting a multicolored shadow on the ground.

That beauty and their joy: that's what 'liberation' is all about.

While the Stonewall Riots were not the first pro-gay disturbance, nor really the beginning of the Gay Rights movement (kudos, for example, to the founders of The Mattachine Society and its annual march in Philadelphia on July 4th, Frank Kameny and other in DC, and others in the 1950s, as well as to James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry for their writings in that decade, and to Richard Bruce Nugent for his short story Smoke Lillies and Jade in the 1920s) the Greenwich Village uprising, coming as it did in concert with the civil rights and Black Power movement and the women's movement, truly galvanized 'queers' all over the country. Too often we tend to forget that Gay Rights was part of an entire cultural uprising at the end of the 1960s. And too often, sadly, many in the movement have forgotten that that connection to other liberation movements.
(Thanks to John for an excellent post and the great image above from the New York Public Library's exhibit 1969: The Year of Gay Liberation)

Sadly, however, as much as things have changed, in some places in the country things appear to be still the same. For far too many young people "That's So Gay" is a slur. For all the positive images of gays and lesbians in the media, it still disturbs me how often we remain the 'comic relief' sidekick (but then I have problems with the depictions of African Americans and 'others' coming out of Hollywood also). Astonishingly, black publications covered LGBTQ events in the 1940's but seem to want to avoid them now. And sadly, our political leaders -- the President included -- seem more behind the times than the majority of the people when it comes to the issue of gay rights. A lot of hard work remains to be done.

The first time gay leaders were invited to the White House 32 years ago, they met a mid-level Presidential aide -- on a Saturday. Tomorrow, there will be a Stonewall 40 commemoration with the President -- quite a change, but we need and deserve more. Who knows how far along we will be in 4, or 40 more years.

Rabindranath Tagore: My Song

2009-06-26T13:23:00.003-04:00

That person (Michael Jackson), whom I considered (at the risk of ridicule) very pure, still survived -- he was reading the poems of Rabindranath Tagore when we talked the last time, two weeks ago. -- Deepak Chopra

My Song
by Rabindranath Tagore

This song of mine will wind its music around you,
my child, like the fond arms of love.

The song of mine will touch your forehead
like a kiss of blessing.

When you are alone it will sit by your side and
whisper in your ear, when you are in the crowd
it will fence you about with aloofness.

My song will be like a pair of wings to your dreams,
it will transport your heart to the verge of the unknown.

It will be like the faithful star overhead
when dark night is over your road.

My song will sit in the pupils of your eyes,
and will carry your sight into the heart of things.

And when my voice is silenced in death,
my song will speak in your living heart.

Endings

2009-06-25T20:36:00.010-04:00

What a day!

As was true for a lot of people, one of my roommates had THE Farah Fawcett poster up on the wall. Of course I watched Charlie's Angels like everybody else, and had a favorite who was NOT Farah, but you couldn't get away from how wonderful and instantly iconic that poster was. Perhaps more impressive about Fawcett was how she made attempts to prove that she was more than just a pin-up, with The Burning Bed and Extremities, moves echoed by Charlize Theron and other actresses, who know in the mad jungle of Hollywood that they have to 'prove' that they have talent.

I also want to say that how wonderful it was that she and Ryan O'Neal were together in a 'non-traditional' relationship for many, many years, and only got married earlier this week.

And then, this evening, the loss of Michael Jackson.

I'm still processing this, but I do want to say that I believe that Michael's music will survive beyond the crazyness of his later years. Watching his videos now (MTV is showing his videos -- an amazing development in and of itself) I'm struck again by his talents as a dancer and showman, by how many references to classic entertainers of the past he incorporated in his work througout his career (Fred Astaire, Bob Fosse, Al Green, Sammy Davis Jr....), and how his work was the Ur-Text for music videos.
Many of us watched Michael grow up before our eyes, then grow strange. He lived so much of his life in the camera's eye: that fact alone had to have had a warping effect on him. I'm also one of those people who thinks that some of the 'blame' for his later apparent discomfort with his body and looks can be placed directly at the feet of his father, Joe.

But more important than all that, we will always have his music, and the images of him performing on stage, perhaps the only place where he ever felt entirely comfortable.

Huffington Post Top Video choices

Roger Ebert on MJ, The Boy Who Never Grew Up

Time Magazine's (Sort of) Celebrating Michael's 50th Birthday by Josh Tyrangiel

Andrew Sullivan, who's penultimate line sums up what a lot of us feel: "I hope he has the peace now he never had in his life."

What Talks & What Walks

2009-06-18T16:49:00.006-04:00

Wednesday night, President Obama issued a memorandum extending some rights to Federal workers who are part of a same sex couple

The memorandum allows same-sex partners to be added to the long-term-care insurance program for federal employees. Employees also can use their sick leave to take care of their partners and non-biological, non-adopted children. Partners of Foreign Service employees will be permitted to use medical facilities at posts abroad, allowed medical evacuation from foreign locations, and counted when determining family size for housing allocations.

Like many, I wished the President had gone further, done more -- like adding health benefits -- but, its a start. And considering the pleased reaction of some federal workers to the memo, including the couple pictured above, Candy Holmes (left), a 33-year federal employee and her partner Rev. Darlene Garner, who am I to be a curmudgeon?

In spite of the apparent series of talks and negotiations that lead to yesterday's signing, the event had the feel of a rush job. While Obama's silence on same-sex marriage, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", and other issues, and his 'fair' answer to the question of whether they/we have "A Friend in the White House" in him, caused initial grumbling amonst "The Gays", the tone of Justice Department's brief in support of the Defense of Marriage Act lead to what can only be called open revolt, and causing some activists to call for a March on Washington this October.

In the interests of full disclosure, I won't be going to the March in large part because I will be in Austin Texas, with (what I hope will be) 200-300 of my close personal friends and fellow readers and writers at the Fire & Ink Writers Festival for LGBTQ People of African Descent. But I'm not entirely sure I would have gone even if I were still close to DC.

Personally I think the way to go now is with more locally focused demonstrations and marches, as well as phone calls and visits to state and local politicians. If there were to be a march on Washington right into marcher's congressional representative's offices demanding action -- now THAT I could get behind. The glory of the 1963 March on Washington makes us forget how many small local actions and very difficult years of sacrifice by average people it took to get there.

I do, however, think think that there have been some telling lessons from this week's events. For example, as part of the furor over the DOJ's support for DOMA, a number of gay money men decided they would not attend an upcoming Democratic Party fundraiser. While considering the idea to be 'a mistake', Rep. Barney Frank, who had previously said that he was not going to push for it this term, flipped and now plans to introduce a revised version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that will include protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Lesson: When the money starts walking, the Politicians start talking. Bravo/a to those closing their wallets for the time being.

Finally -- at the risk of being called a "Kool-aid drinker," a sell out, or worse (see the comments sections of the Salon.com articles linked below) -- I want to say that some of the comments I've seen on the web have approached same tone as the kinds of ugliness I decried after the Holocaust Museum shooting. Phrases like "He's spit in our faces" and those calling the President homophobe and a fraud, truly bother me. Where was all this bile during the eight years of George W Bush?

And, uh, excuse me but: don't we still have troops in Iraq -- and Afghanistan? Isn't the economy still trying to climb out of the root cellar? Is there or is there not a Health Care Plan making it's way through the Congress. And speaking of that, does anyone remember how Bill Clinton's attempt to repeal the ban on Gays in the Military nearly wrecked his young administration and in part his plans for health care, leaving us with the 'compromise' of DADT?

Barack Obama has been president HOW MANY months (not years but MONTHS) now?

I am very much NOT saying we shouldn't make the President live up to his campaign promises. Obama is far from perfect. For example, I think he should stop or suspend sexual-orientation based dismissals from the military until DADT is sorted out, and I am DEEPLY disturbed by his reverses on transparency and lack of interest in following the torture trail wherever it leads. But then I didn't expect him to be (Uh, well...okay.... maybe I did:)

The man is a politician, surrounded by other politicians, many of whom have a vested interest in keeping the gears of power rolling in exactly the same way they have been for the past 40 years, or longer. President Obama, however, appears to be more 'push-able' or 'pull-able' than the previous occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The move made for federal employees this week? *WE* did that. Those of us who expressed our disappointment and then our anger at the DOJ brief caused things to change. It was hard work on the ground in Iowa and other states brought about same-sex marriage, not some mandate from above. The President has power, but not a magic wand. He can and should do more, but he can't go it alone. We, the people, have to point him in the right direction, tell him where to go (respectfully:), and sometimes (often?) go ahead of him and lead him there.

"No permanent alliances, only permanent interests:" Support for those who support you when they're right, principled criticism and attempts to get them to see 'the error of their ways' when they're wrong.

The Debate on Salon.com John Aravosis vs Chris Geidner.

The Darkness around us

2009-06-10T21:42:00.008-04:00

I've been thinking about writing something about the assassination of Doctor George Tiller, and how terrorism seems to work (Dr Tiller's clinic is closing, getting an abortion is becoming more difficult, other doctors are nervous, and some medical schools are not even teaching the procedure anymore).

Then today, a racist, anti-Semitic white supremacist, walked into the National Holocaust Museum and started shooting.

I refuse to give him any more publicity by writing his name here.

I will, however, name and pay homage to the guard that was killed, Stephen Tyrone Johns (photo at right), who had worked at the museum for six years. My thoughts, prayers, and condolences go out to his family. (I'd also urge everyone to actually NOTICE museum security people and other 'invisibles' who surround us everyday, keeping us safe, cleaning up after us, stocking the shelves around us, etc)

I've mentioned before to friends how disturbed I am about a vibe I feel permeating the air in the United States right now (and I'm not the only one apparently). The often unrelated-to-any-fact attacks on President Obama. The wild bleating by the right wing against Judge Sotomayor. The constant whipping up of "the base" (perfect word there, 'base'). The increasing echo chamber of cable 'news' where the daily meme gets repeated from one show to another, with the same old faces recycling the same tired phrases, yelling and snipeing at each other. It's becoming very frightening.

The Rough Beast of Yeats' Second Coming comes to mind:

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

I knew that things would be 'interesting' during the term of our First Black President. But now, with this country's long history of violence, and (mainly right wing) terror -- and the lack of focus on it for the past eight years (as well as how much certain people screamed when the FBI issued its report on it, as if it were some chimera, and not a real concern) -- I have the uneasy feeling that Pandora has cracked that box open once again.

I hope and pray that I'm wrong. But sadly I feel that we are at the beginning of a period of genuine sadness for this country. We must call both these acts 'terrorism', and focus our justice system on it with increased intensity. Such horrors will happen again and again until we collectively decide to chain the monster up again.

Colette Garrido is a guard with Wackenhut Services Inc., which provides security at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Washington Post photo by Marcus Yam

smartish pace Launch Party @ Cyclops

2009-05-29T12:57:00.005-04:00

With many thanks to Andy at Cyclops for throwing a terrific party, and to Stephen Reichert et.al associated with the fantastic journal smartish pace, here's a rare clip of me, reading last month (May 15, 2009). Poems include my homage to Mike Tyson, and a shout out to Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts, Dream of My Cousin's Wedding.

Full video of other readers and bands at their Issue 16 launch party is on the media section of their website

What's My Name

2009-05-27T13:56:00.004-04:00

An interesting juxtaposition at the newstand today: The Baltimore Sun's lead article talked about President' Obama's Hispanic choice for the Supreme Court, while the Washington Post spoke of the Latina Judge who had been picked.

Looks like us Negro/Colored/Black/African-American people are not the only ones that those outside our community don't know how to name.

Since Judge Sonia Sotomayor's family comes from Puerto Rico, IMHO that makes her....American!:)

Sorry, couldn't resist.

I plan to call her Latina, although she's in fact puertorriqueña (or boricua if your being political). "Hispanic" was a term created by Richard Nixon's administation in 1973 when we all got divided up into either Native American/Eskimo, Asian/Pacific Islander, White, Black, or Hispanic. Most of the Hispanics/Latinos I see (mainly immigrants from Mexico, Central South America or the Caribbean in our part of the world) are EXTREMELY proud of where they come from. You do NOT confuse a Nicaraguan with a Salvadoran, or a Dominican with a Cuban. (Check this for even more confusion). It sort of reminds me of how many Inner City blacks call all Asians 'Korean' or a joke I heard a Mexican comic tell about his dating a Japanese girl who his mother insisted on calling "La China."

To be honest, since she grew up in the projects, I wonder if we can call her Madame Justice from 'round the way? The Boogie Down Bronx in da Court!!

The coming confirmation hearings will be very interesting. Or rather the hearings will be anticlimatic compared with all the posturing and flame throwing going on prior to the hearings, which has already started. A veritable sweepstakes of racism and sexism -- even going so far as to ridicule the pronunciation of her name! I refuse to link to the now-infamous piece of attempted character assination put out by the formerly reputable New Republic about Judge Sotomayor, but will lead you here, to Glenn Greenwald and encourage you to follow his continuing coverage of the smears.

I also find the newest 'meme' on the judge interesting: reading her rulings one can find 'no vision'. She "lacks depth" (this one pains me as I in the main like and tend to agree with Jonathan Turley).

I certainly don't want to limit debate on the merits of Judge Sotomayor, or stop people from looking at her rulings and statements. But the current, low, level of discourse in these opening hours are enough to make me wonder: what does Person of Color (whatever you call them) and/or a Woman have to do to be considered 'qualified' around here?

You are what you....

2009-05-20T15:50:00.007-04:00

I had the good fortune to be part of an overstuffed house at the Pratt Library last week for a visit by writer Michael Pollan (+1 hour podcast of the program here). We somehow managed to put over 800 people into our Central Hall, and 'overflow' space Wheeler Auditorium, and *still* had people begging to get in (although, in all fairness to us, honestly: if you show up for a 7 pm program at 7:45 pm, do you really have a right to complain?)

The program was in support of Pollan's book, In Defense of Food, and co-sponsored by Baltimore Green Works. It came at the end of a period when, somewhat coincidentally, I'd just finished two other books about food, health, and its relationship to the envionment, global warming, and sustainablity: Mark Bittman's Pollan-influenced Food Matters, and Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen by Anna Lappe and Bryant Terry. All have me looking at food labels more closely -- most particularly ingredients lists, as Pollan suggests staying away from "so-called food" with unpronounceable ingredients. Eating more fruits and vegetables, and avoiding packaged products as much as possible, particularly those that contain more than five ingredients, or the notorious High Fuctose Corn Syrup are also some basic but important Pollan/Bittman/Lappe-Terry points.

But two things continue to nag at me about the crowd that came to the Pollan program last week: it was 99% white, and overwhelmingly middle class.

Food, nutrition, food safety, and health are serious issues in this country, and around the world, and poor nutrition disproportionately affects racial minorities and the poor. It is more than just the case that the poor and working class may not be able to afford higher priced 'organic' foods, or shop at stores like Whole Foods aka "Whole Paycheck".
(As an aside, as this article from the Washington Post points out, it's not just food, but just about everything is more expensive in poor areas) It can also be extremely difficult to eat healthily in poor and working class neighborhoods, where choices are limited and the only fresh vegetables around are green beans from KFC or a McDonald's salad.

To my mind, one of the limitations of the current 'locavores' and 'slow food movement', as well as the commentaries by others concerned about these issues is that few of those who are a part of this conversation seem to have made any effort to connect with people below their own socio-economic level. Just like the economy, the health of the nation has to change at all levels, and from the bottom up seems to work better and more effectively than 'trickle down'. The fact that many also praise 'ethnic' foods from second and third world countries as being better and healthier for you, makes this lack of connection even more disturbing on two levels; a) If these traditional foods are healthier, then there's less need to connect with The Other on issues of nutrition 'cause they must already be eating well, right? and b)it sends the message, "You can cook for us, but we don't want to have to deal with you as a fellow human being."

PS: Those interested in eating Local Food should be aware that "local" is fast becoming a corporate buzz word . Another Pollan point: Be wary of the claims on packaging...

There's also -- and I know I'm being unfair -- an air of self-rightousness (a danger for all converts) that wafts off many of the people involved in this issue: WE're eating 'right' -- what's wrong with YOU that you're not? (Thi was noticeable to much of the library staff working on the night of Pollan's talk from numerous people they encountered in the crowd, and Mark Bittman particularly warns against it in his book). Health and nutrition are far too serious issues to for them to be left to only the 'birkenstock and granola' crowd. One hopes more leaders would see how nutrition and access to healthy food and clean water are 'civil rights issues.' Michael Pollan had very high praise for Michelle Obama and her organic garden at the White House (which was attacked by agribusiness), and hopes others across the country follow her lead in growing food at home.

I also hope others follow the example of MacArthur 'Genius award' winner Will Allen and his Growing Power organization , and help to reconnect those in inner cities with nature and the joy of growing your own.

The best way to save the poor and working class is to help them save themselves.

It will be an irony, certainly, but a sweet one, if millions of African-Americans whose grandparents left the farms of the South for the factories of the North, only to see those factories close, should now find fulfillment in learning once again to live close to the soil and to the food it gives to all of us. -- from Allen's Good Food Manifesto for America.

"An e-mail from Walt Whitman"

2009-05-17T08:46:00.002-04:00

Jeffrey Wright reads 'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry' (from his BlackBerry)

Open Book TV: Jeffrey Wright reads Walt Whitman from Open Book TV on Vimeo.

OpenBookTV

In Memoriam: Bly's "For My Son Noah, Ten Years Old"

2009-05-02T19:29:00.005-04:00

Posted, sans comment, in memory of Jaheem Herrera (above) and Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover (right), both aged 11, and both of whom committed suicide in April after months of harassment and anti-gay bullying. Both their schools also either ignored or moved with glacial slowness to act after being told about the bullying being done on school grounds. This poem may not 'fit' -- but then I'm not sure that anything possibly could.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the families of these young men.

For My Son Noah, Ten Years Old
By Robert Bly

Night and day arrive and day after day goes by,
and what is old remains old, and what is young remains
young and grows old,
and the lumber pile does not grow younger, nor the
weathered two-by-fours lose their darkness,
but the old tree goes on, the barn stands without help so
many years,
the advocate of darkness and night is not lost.

The horse swings around on one leg, steps, and turns,
the chicken flapping claws onto the roost, its wings whelping
and whalloping,
but what is primitive is not to be shot out into the night and
the dark.
And slowly the kind man comes closer, loses his rage, sits
down at table.

So I am proud only of those days that we pass in undivided
tenderness,
when you sit drawing, or making books, stapled, with
messages to the world...
or coloring a man with fire coming out of his hair.
Or we sit at a table, with small tea carefully poured;
so we pass our time together, calm and delighted.

Pocket Poem: Muriel Rukeyser

2009-04-30T13:40:00.004-04:00

The Sixth Night: Waking

That first green night of their dreaming, asleep beneath
the tree,
God said, "Let meanings move," and there was poetry.

-- Muriel Rukeyser, from Body of Waking

Celebrating Poem in Your Pocket Day by carrying around the Library of America's American Poets Project volume featuring Muriel Rukeyser, edited by Adrienne Rich, as well as separately the poem below. I realized the other day that we've come to the end of April and I really haven't put up many poems by women, a crushing oversight on my part which I'll have to remedy in future posts. So what better way to begin to fix the problem than with this prolific proto-feminist. I also think her The Life of Poetry should be required reading for all poets.

Here's The Poem as Mask, part of whose most famous line was used as the title for an important early anthology of 20th Century women poets (I've linked to it in the poem).

The Poem as Mask

Orpheus

When I wrote of the women in their dances and
wildness, it was a mask,
on their mountain, gold-hunting, singing, in orgy,
it was a mask; when I wrote of the god,
fragmented, exiled from himself, his life, the love gone
down with song,
it was myself, split open, unable to speak, in exile from
myself.

There is no mountain, there is no god, there is memory
of my torn life, myself split open in sleep, the rescued
child
beside me among the doctors, and a word
of rescue from the great eyes.

No more masks! No more mythologies!

Now, for the first time, the god lifts his hand,
the fragments join in me with their own music.

Poetry in Motion

2009-04-28T12:30:00.003-04:00

RIP Frankie Manning, "Ambassador" of the Lindy Hop

"For Hellzapoppin', I started from the beginning of "Jumpin' at the Woodside" and worked with about sixteen bars at a time, choreographing both the solos and the ensemble section as we went along....I hate to keep saying I choreographed this and I choreographed that because it makes me seem egotistical, but for Hellzapoppin' I set up a routine for each team." -- Frankie Manning

Kevin Young

2009-04-26T20:37:00.004-04:00

Many thanks to the organizers of Johns Hopkins University's annual Joshua Ringel Memorial Reading for inviting Kevin Young to Baltimore today. Here's one of the poems he read (an audio of this and other poems he read in Key West in 2008 can be found here)

Ode to Chicken

You are everything
to me. Frog legs,
rattlesnake, almost any
thing I put my mouth to
reminds me of you.
Folks always try
getting you to act
like you someone else --
nuggets, or tenders, fingers
you don't have -- but even
your unmanicured feet
taste sweet. Too loud
in the yard, segregated
dark & light, you are
like a day self-contained --
your sunset skin puckers
like a kiss. Let others
put on airs -- pigs graduate
to pork, bread
becomes toast, even beef
was once just bull
before it got them degrees --
but, even dead,
you keep your name
& head. You can make
anything of yourself,
you know -- but prefer
to wake me early
in the cold, fix me breakfast
& dinner too, leave me
to fly for you.

from Dear Darkness (Knopf 2008)

J G Ballard

2009-04-19T22:24:00.005-04:00

We take this quick break from poetry, to mourn the loss of British SF writer J G Ballard. Best known to mainstream readers as the author of the autobiographical novel, Empire of the Sun which Steven Spielberg made into a film (with the young Christian Bale as Jim), he was already well known as part of Science Fiction's New Wave of the 1960's. His books and stories are dystopian and intentionally disturbing -- and in some cases sadly precient. His novel The Drowned World, for example, posited an earth where the ice caps have melted, turning cities into overgrown tropical fantasy lands. As always with Ballard, however, the landscape characters move through echo their mental and emotional states.

For those new to Ballard, perhaps the later (somewhat related) novels Cocaine Nights and Super-Cannes might be the best place to start, before delving into the nightmarish, erotic, surreal worlds of, say, Concrete Island, The Atrocity Exhibition, or the literally auto-erotic Crash (also made into a film, by Canadian Auteur David Cronenberg).

Considering his interest in media, mass culture, and the horrors lurking under the seemingly placid, and increasingly anesttitized through technology, surface of the world, Ballard would have relished the irony of his dying on the weekend after the release of the Bush Torture Memos, stunning in both their disgusting disregard for basic human rights and the banality of its bureaucratic language. Somewhere he's thinking "I told you so"

Excellent overview of Ballard from the LA Times (PS: the story referenced in the article, whose title they cannot print in a family paper is, "Why I want to Fuck Ronald Reagan")

"Ballard articulates clearly to me the implications of living in an age of total consumerism, of blanket surveillance, of enslavement designed as mass entertainment. But he also speaks to me of resistance through irony, immersion, ambivalence, imagination — of remixing, recycling, remaking, remodelling."RIP at the Ballardian website

A review of his autobiography, Miracles of Life

Poetry in/on the Air

2009-04-16T23:41:00.004-04:00

Many thanks to Dan Rodericks, Gregg Wilhelm, Mary Jo Salter, and a flood of callers and e-mailers for a great hour of poetry on WYPR (88.1 FM, Baltimore) today (Listen to the podcast here). It was very enjoyable and all of us were suprised by how many people sent in their favorite poems. Looks like former Poet Laureate Robert Pinksy was right: there are a lot of people out there who have favorite poems and long to share them with others. Thank you all

Here's the title poem from Mary Jo Salter's collection A Phone Call to the Future: New and Selected Poems . You can also hear her read it here

A Phone Call to the Future

1.
Who says science fiction
is only set in the future?
After a while, the story that looks least
believable is the past.
The console television with three channels.
Black-and-white picture. Manual controls:
the dial clicks when you turn it, like the oven.
You have to get up and walk somewhere to change things.
You have to leave the house to mail a letter.

Waiting for letters. The phone rings: you're not there.
You'll never know. The phone rings, and you are,
there's only one, you have to stand or sit
plugged into it, a cord
confines you to the room where everyone
is also having dinner.
Hang up the phone. The family's having dinner.

Waiting for dinner. You bake things in the oven.
Or Mother does. That's how it always is.
She sets the temperature: it takes an hour.

The patience of the past.
The typewriter forgives its own mistakes.
You type on top sheet, carbon, onion skin.
The third is yours, a record of typeovers,
clotted and homemade-looking, like the seams
on dresses cut out on the dining table.
The sewing machine. The wanting to look nice.
Girls who made their dresses for the dance.

2.
This was the Fifties: as far back as I go.
Some of it lasted decades.
That's why I remember it so clearly.

Also because, as I lie in a motel room
sometime in 2004, scrolling
through seventy-seven channels on my back
(there ought to be more—this is a cheap motel room),
I can revisit evidence, hear it ringing.
My life is movies, and tells itself in phones.

The rotary phone, so dangerously languid
and loud when the invalid must dial the police.
The killer coming up the stairs can hear it.
The detective ducks into a handy phone booth
to call his sidekick. Now at least there's touch tone.
But wait, the killer's waiting in the booth
to try to strangle him with the handy cord.
The cordless phone, first noted in the crook
of the neck of the secretary
as she pulls life-saving files.
Files come in drawers, not in the computer.
Then funny computers, big and slow as ovens.
Now the reporter's running with a cell phone
larger than his head,
if you count the antenna.

They're Martians, all of these people,
perhaps the strangest being the most recent.
I bought that phone. I thought it was so modern.
Phones shrinking year by year, as stealthily
as children growing.

3.
It's the end of the world.
Or people are managing, after the conflagration.
After the epidemic. The global thaw.
Everyone's stunned. Nobody combs his hair.
Or it's a century later, and although
New York is gone, and love, and everyone
is a robot or a clone, or some combination,

you have to admire the technology of the future.
When you want to call somebody, you just think it.
Your dreams are filmed. Without a camera.
You can scroll through the actual things that happened,
and nobody disagrees. No memory.
No point of view. None of it necessary.

Past the time when the standard thing to say
is that, no matter what, the human endures.
That whatever humans make of themselves
is therefore human.
Past the transitional time
when humanity as we know it was there to say that.
Past the time we meant well but were wrong.
It's less than that, not anymore a concept.
Past the time when mourning was a concept.

Of course, such a projection,
however much I believe it, is sentimental—
belief being sentimental.
The thought of a woman born
in the fictional Fifties.

That's what I mean. We were Martians. Nothing's stranger
than our patience, our humanity, inhumanity.
Our worrying about robots. Earplug cell phones
that make us seem to be walking about like loonies
talking to ourselves. Perhaps we are.

All of it was so quaint. And I was there.
Poetry was there; we tried to write it.

In Honor of Bo Obama

2009-04-15T15:20:00.007-04:00

Yeah Yeah, I know...he's a Portuguese Water Dog....but still this poem seems apt and I like it...AND the author will be here Saturday. So...."Woof!"

Golden Retrievals
by Mark Doty

Fetch? Balls and sticks capture my attention
seconds at a time. Catch? I don't think so.
Bunny, tumbling leaf, a squirrel who's -- oh
joy -- actually scared. Sniff the wind, then

I'm off again: muck, pond, ditch, residue
of any thrillingly dead thing. And you?
Either you're sunk in the past, half our walk,
thinking of what you never can bring back,

or else you're off in some fog concerning
-- tomorrow, is that what you call it? My work:
to unsnare time's warp (and woof!), retrieving,
my haze-headed friend, you. This shining bark,

a Zen master's bronzy gong, calls you here,
entirely, now: bow-wow, bow-wow, bow-wow.

from Sweet Machine and Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems

Jay Wright....and Jay Wright

2009-04-08T14:37:00.004-04:00

I meant to post this last week, during the NCAA Tournament: much of the time when folks were talking about Villanova Head Coach Jay Wright, my mind kept going back to the poet Jay Wright! Now that we have a poetry-reading, basketball playing President, perhaps this confusion isn't all that odd. Those of us here in Baltimore also know that the (Paul Laurence) Dunbar High School basketball team is called "The Poets," (our Afaa Michael Weaver wrote a great poem about them) and of course there's our Poe Poem-named Football Team....I guess it's no wonder I get sports and literature mixed up!

In any case, here's the opening movement ('Equation One') of one of Jay The Poet's recent books, Music's Mask and Measure:

This ordinary language finds
rhythm in ambiguous flame,
that stable density of one
and one, the urgent displacement
that nurtures light.

Call it dancing in place,
a preparation
for movement, an impulse
that will awaken
a manifest order.

The astronomer has measured
the shadows. The resting body
measures its abrupt intention.
Who now has measured the waters
in the hollow?

Fall unveils the acute
aconitum, blue
light against the garden's
edge. You might hear
a greenish bird in flight.

Does water dream of seven green
saris, or of the melodic
inversion of sorrow, and will
episode and exposition
be love enough?

Return now to the hills
in balance, the field
of turbulent disguise,
the nothing that is,
the mountain's graceful scale.

*

Who would go into the river
to recover a seed, or sit
with a blacksmith and bard in high
lament? There is a universe
of such molecular intent
the water folds.

A cascade of bear at
this spot might bring us
justice, a particle death
and resurrection,
the ambivalent gift
from Artemis.

Seneca praised the conjugal
craft, the thread and disposition
equivalent to a young bride's
fortune, though he had never worn
the peplos nor sworn peace to a
troubled city.

Monday is diffident.
The rosebud ignores
its shy austerity.
But should this bubbling
authority now come
to a quiet end?

The anti-ascetic river
sets no limits upon the tau
or the attributes of lotus,
a water pot that holds the light.
Resignation comes hard on this
side of Being.

Thom Gunn

2009-04-07T22:56:00.004-04:00

In honor of Iowa and Vermont, a poem from the great British/Californian poet Thom Gunn

The Hug

It was your birthday, we had drunk and dined
Half of the night with our old friend
Who's showed us in the end
To a bed I reached in one drunk stride.
Already, I lay snug,
And drowsy with the wine dozed on one side.

I dozed, I slept. My sleep broke on a hug,
Suddenly, from behind,
In which the full lengths of our bodies pressed:
Your instep to my heel,
My shoulder-blades against your chest.
It was not sex, but I could feel
The whole strength of your body set,
Or braced, to mine,
And locking me to you
As if we were still twenty-two
When our grand passion had not yet
Become familial.
My quick sleep had deleted all
Of intervening time and place.
I only knew
The stay of your secure firm dry embrace.

From Thom Gunn: Selected Poems; Edited by August Kleinzahler (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009)

Charles Simic: Sunday Papers

2009-04-06T23:27:00.003-04:00

From The New York Review of Books website, a poem by one of my favorites, former Poet Laureate Charles Simic. Would that the poem's opening phrase were no longer true....

Sunday Papers

The butchery of the innocent
Never stops. That's about all
We can be ever sure of, love,
Even more sure than the roast
You are bringing out the oven.

It's Sunday. The congregation
Files slowly out of the church
Across the street. A good many
Carry Bibles in their hands.
It's the vague desire for truth
And the mighty fear of it
That makes them turn up
Despite the glorious spring weather.

In the hallway, the old mutt
Just now had the honesty
To growl at his own image in the mirror,
Before lumbering to the kitchen
Where the lamb roast sat
In your outstretched hands
Smelling of garlic and rosemary.

Charles Simic

Larkin's Money

2009-04-02T17:46:00.007-04:00

US President Barack Obama, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in London. (AP photo by Kirsty Wigglesworth / April 2, 2009)

In honor of the G-20, a poem by one of England's (dour) greats, poet and jazz critic Philip Larkin

Money

Quarterly, is it, money reproaches me:
'Why do you let me lie here wastefully?
I am all you never had of goods and sex.
You could get them still by writing a few cheques.'

So I look at others, what they do with theirs:
They certainly don't keep it upstairs.
By now they've a second house and car and wife:
Clearly money has something to do with life

- In fact, they've a lot in common, if you enquire:
You can't put off being young until you retire,
And however you bank your screw, the money you save
Won't in the end buy you more than a shave.

I listen to money singing. It's like looking down
From long French windows at a provincial town,
The slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad
In the evening sun. It is intensely sad.

(AP photo by John Stillwell / April 1, 2009)

Queen Elizabeth II poses with delegates of the G20 London summit for a group photograph in the Throne Room at Buckingham Palace London.

Back row from left: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund; Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations; Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organisation; Abhisit Vejjajiva, chair of Asean and Prime Minister of Thailand; Taro Aso, Prime Minister of Japan; Silvio Berlusconi, Prime Minister of Italy; Mirek Topolanek, President of the European Council; Professor Mario Draghi, chairman of the Financial Stability Forum; Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank.

Middle row from left: Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia; Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada; Dr Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany; Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Prime Minister of Spain; Dr Jan Peter Balkenende, Prime Minister of the Netherlands; Kgalema Motlanthe, President of South Africa; Barack Obama, President of the United States of America; Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister of Turkey; Dr Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India; Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission; Meles Zenawi, chair of Nepad and Prime Minister of Ethiopia.

Front row from left: Lee Myung-bak, President of Korea; Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France; King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud GCB GCMG, of Saudi Arabia; Hu Jintao, President of China; Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; Queen Elizabeth II; Luiz Innacio Lula da Silva, President of Brazil; General TNI (Ret) Dr H Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, President of Indonesia; Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, President of Mexico; Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, President of Argentina; Dmitry A Medvedev, President of Russia.

Poetry & Jazz Heritage Month mash-up

2009-04-01T17:28:00.006-04:00

To kick off both National Poetry Month and Jazz Appreciation Month , a poem by Jayne Cortez:

Jazz Fan Looks Back

I crisscrossed with Monk
Wailed with Bud
Counted every star with Stitt
Sang "Don't Blame Me" with Sarah
Wore a flower like Billie
Screamed in the range of Dinah
& scatted "How High the Moon" with Ella Fitzgerald
as she blew roof off the Shrine Auditorium
Jazz at the Philharmonic

I cut my hair into a permanent tam
Made my feet rebellious metronomes
Embedded record needles in paint on paper
Talked bopology talk
Laughed in high-pitched saxophone phrases
Became keeper of every Bird riff
every Lester lick
as Hawk melodicized my ear of infatuated tongues
& Blakey drummed militant messages in
soul of my applauding teeth
& Ray hit bass notes to the last love seat in my bones
I moved in triple time with Max
Grooved high with Diz
Perdidoed with Pettiford
Flew home with Hamp
Shuffled in Dexter's Deck
Squatty-rooed with Peterson
Dreamed a "52nd Street Theme" with Fats
& scatted "Lady Be Good" with Ella Fitzgerald
as she blew roof off the Shrine Auditorium
Jazz at the Philharmonic

from Jazz Fan Looks Back by Jayne Cortez (Hanging Loose Press, 2002)

It was 20 Years Ago Today....

2009-03-13T21:08:00.004-04:00

Happy Birthday Internets!

Tim Berners-Lee inventor of the World Wide Web

Twenty years ago this month, something happened at CERN that would change the world forever: Tim Berners-Lee handed a document to his supervisor Mike Sendall entitled "Information Management : a Proposal". "Vague, but exciting" is how Mike described it, and he gave Tim the nod to take his proposal forward. The following year, the World Wide Web was born.

Shelton Jackson

2009-03-02T22:22:00.005-05:00

I recently had a conversation with a couple of other poets and writers where we talked about an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education on the 'inflation' current poets reputations. The author bemoans the fact that nowadays no poet wants to call another poet mearly 'adequate' -- or worse. Everyone has to be 'significant' in some way -- just in case they prove to be someone who History will prove to be still read and important fifty to one hundred years from now.

I say this in prelude to talking about the very sad news I got today about the passing of the thirty-something black gay poet Shelton Jackson. Author of three self-published books of poetry, I doubt that Shelton will be remembered as A Poet of the Ages. I also seriously doubt that he really would have cared about that. For him, poetry had a highly theraputic function: he wrote as a way to deal with his life as a black, gay, HIV+ man in his 20's, to look back on his past with honesty, and also as a way to map out a future as well. He also used his example and his work, to urge a greater openness among other young African Americans around issues of sexuality and health. These may not be things that matter to literary posterity; they did, however, make a difference in individual lives.

It could not have been easy for him here in Baltimore, to be an 'out' gay man at Morgan University. Like most HBCU's Morgan is very closeted: There are gay students, faculty, administrators and staff there; 'everyone knows this,' but it is not something that is talked about. To be Out there, even now, is to almost ensure being ostracised and marginalized. Shelton, bless him, refused to pretend to be something he was not.

Although we met face to face only a few times, I'm deeply saddened by this young man's passing. He was a very sweet, dear young man, and this just seems so....unfair. He had already faced down more challenges than most young people his age. It angers me that his life was cut so terribly short. He was still growing, developing, maturing. I'm stunned and hurt that he won't be around to help others and further develop his talents.

Shelton Jackson's "Profile in Courage" from HIV resourse website thebody.com.

His myspace page

Random Blog Post: Nor-Easter Edition

2009-03-02T12:38:00.004-05:00

As we on the East Coast dig out from last night's snow (and the ensuing panic some folks here go through...amazing!) some links to recent articles that I've found of interest.

Money Honey:

Some Essential Reading on the current financial crisis, from my favorite blog, JD Roth's Get Rich Slowly

For you visual learners, The Crisis of Credit Visualized

I also found this quote from a recent post on The New Yorker's website 'disturbing' to say the least (and, yes, friends do call me The King of the Understatement):

Many of the country’s biggest banks are in deep trouble — many are technically insolvent, or “upside down,” as they say in the household-mortgage sector — but have not yet been forced to reckon fully with their insolvency. I heard a senior Administration official remark that seventy-five per cent of the country’s banks are probably upside down.....

Tell me again what's wrong with Nationalization? And how that's worse than throwing good money after bad over and over again like we're doing now?

The Baltimore Sun's Jay Hancock on Why The Dow Doesn't Matter.

And speaking of that, even though the Market took a dive today, amazingly enough there are still companies whose stock is now double what it was in 1996 (Obviously someone has to gas up and get something to eat at Mickey D's and the gas station before picking up that computer at Wal-Mart).

Around the Globe

This wonderful primer "How to Write about Africa" by Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina, also echos many of the ways other People of Color have been written about by 'mainstream' writers. (Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat....Taboo subjects: ordinary domestic scenes, love between Africans (unless a death is involved), references to African writers or intellectuals, mention of school-going children who are not suffering from yaws or Ebola fever or female genital mutilation...Establish early on that your liberalism is impeccable, and mention near the beginning how much you love Africa, how you fell in love with the place and can’t live without her.... Hmm...where have I heard something like THAT before?)

Of course, all this madness has ended now that we're in the Age of Obama, right?

And speaking of The President

Zadie Smith shows she is not only a wonderful novelist, but also an amazing critic and essayist. Her take on Obama and being "double-voiced" (as so many of us are) if flat out extraordinary.

And I'm also very happy to post this Coming Poetic Attraction for Samiya Bashir's Gospel. You GO! Gurl....

From The "Not the State of the Union" Address

2009-02-25T00:03:00.004-05:00

My favorite line from a spectacular speech:

"...dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It's not just quitting on yourself, it's quitting on your country - and this country needs and values the talents of every American...."

I love how every time The Prez talks what I hear between the lines is "Ya'll need to step up," but *Damn*!

(Brief aside: I also liked this too -- In this budget, we will end education programs that don't work and end direct payments to large agribusinesses that don't need them.

Happy Black History Month!

2009-02-18T20:26:00.002-05:00

Confession: I love this man....

Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Though race related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race. It is an issue we have never been at ease with and given our nation’s history this is in some ways understandable. And yet, if we are to make progress in this area we must feel comfortable enough with one another, and tolerant enough of each other, to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us. But we must do more- and we in this room bear a special responsibility. Through its work and through its example this Department of Justice, as long as I am here, must - and will - lead the nation to the "new birth of freedom" so long ago promised by our greatest President. This is our duty and our solemn obligation.

Eric Holder, Attorney General of the United States

After the Hearts and Flowers

2009-02-16T16:43:00.009-05:00

Heaven help me for turning into some kind of cock-eyed optimist, but I want to see something positive come out of the horrible Rihanna - Chris Brown case. After this high profile case of (alleged) abuse, I hope that the black community will begin a serious discussion of domestic violence.

I know this is something of a dream. After all, many in our community excused R Kelly for his mistreatment of a minor -- in spite of the fact that it was pretty much an open secret in Chicago and elsewhere that Kelly was/is attracted to underaged girls, AND that bootleg copies of his notorious video could be purchased on the streets in the 'hood there. Already comments from the Brown camp are beginning work on his rehabilitation: he's a 'good kid', young people 'make mistakes'. There are even rumors that somehow Rihanna has some culpability for what happened to her , which we will learn 'once all the facts come out' Fans have begun rallying to his defense.

All this is, quite frankly, disgusting and inexcusable. "Good kids" don't hit women. It is not a "mistake" to bite women. Victims should not be blamed for their being attacked; they do not bring the abuse on themselves, no matter what 'facts' may or may not come out. We all need to remember these things as further information about this incident comes to light.

Many of us know adults who, as children, interposed themselves between male and female relatives and taken the impending attack upon themselves to stop men from abusing women further. At some point, we all -- particularly us men -- need to stop paying lip service to 'respecting the black woman' and actually prove it by saying "No more," "Never again." Let us use this high profile example of what happens far too often in our communities to take a firm stand and come together to stop violence against women. Enough is enough

Happy Valentine's Day

2009-02-14T13:43:00.006-05:00

Photo from Reuters Pictures

Soundtrack:
Rickie Lee Jones, "It Must Be Love" from The Magazine

25

2009-02-10T15:46:00.008-05:00

ACOUSMATIC SOUND
(or 25 Random Things About Me)

For all my friends on Facebook

Born into absence
A waving shadow lurking on every corner
The usual tropes of Blackness: Mississippi, Alabama, Ghetto, Grits
Hercules with a cane
To cut into the world, to scratch at the resistance
I slept like a falling comet, shedding skin

My couplets would not adhere
Declaring Victory in the War on the Body
Men in sequined dresses lip synching to Gospel House
Youngbloods young sons blazing
Spending all my nights in twilight
A song from the second throat

A room full of attributes:
(It's not a hometown story without the Electric Slide)
Create a context for itself, in the context of no context
Smell of dust and day-old sweat
Tattooed ‘A’ above the heart
A gesture undertaken in the face of saturation

Your Greatest Hits ain’t like mine
Cracks in the clouds beyond the yellow prairie
The non-guilty conscience regreting the things undone, underdone
The kinds of silence found in a black man’s face
Yes I am, but I’m not that one
This is not a story to pass on

His standard farewell phrase: Break Free

Taxing

2009-02-03T20:46:00.003-05:00

I think I've figured it out: President Obama has a Secret Plan to revive the economy. He'll nominate someone for a Cabinet post or other position in his administration. This will force them to pay their back taxes, thereby reducing the deficit, and making more money available for his economic stimulus plan.

Tom Daschle: $140, 000

Tim Geithner: $34, 000

Nancy Killefer: $946.69 (every little bit helps)

Seriously -- Is this what goes on in Washington DC and the 'halls of power'? People 'forget', make 'mistakes', are 'unaware' of the amount they are supposed to pay on April 15th? To be honest, I am not and cannot get on a high horse about this -- I've had my own difficulties with the IRS (courtesy of a period of severe depression) -- which have since been resolved. Although it's not accepted by the tax man, at least I have a note from my psychiatrist. What's these folks' problem? Was the late Leona Helmsley right and "only the little people pay taxes"?

Addenda: What also may have nixed Daschile was reporting like this from Salon's Glenn Greenwald. Although his fellow Senators love him, Daschile's ties to the health care industry and his wife's lobbying activity would have had lead to him needing to do some explaining to do to the rest of us.

Stephen Colbert Explains it All for You....

2009-01-22T18:03:00.003-05:00

Thanks to The Colbert Report, Elizabeth Alexander conducted a poetry explication session for what was probably the largest class of students in the history of the world last night....

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Elizabeth Alexander

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

Bravo and Brava!

(A fellow Prufrock Fan!)

Let us begin.....

2009-01-21T12:29:00.004-05:00

"Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off,
and begin again the work of remaking America"

Shortly after noon (EST), the new Whitehouse.gov website appeared.

President Barack Obama's new administration ordered all federal agencies and departments on Tuesday to stop any pending regulations until they can be reviewed by incoming staff, halting last-minute Bush orders in their tracks.

Judge Suspends Guantanamo Cases at Obama's Request

Welcome this New Day

2009-01-20T13:36:00.005-05:00

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply....

Interactive video and transcript

And -- How 'bout That Dress: Wow!!

Praise Song for the Day

A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration

Elizabeth Alexander

Each day we go about our business,

walking past each other, catching each other’s

eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is

noise and bramble, thorn and din, each

one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning

a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,

repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,

with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,

with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky.

A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words

spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,

words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark

the will of some one and then others, who said

I need to see what’s on the other side.

I know there’s something better down the road.

We need to find a place where we are safe.

We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.

Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,

who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built

brick by brick the glittering edifices

they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.

Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,

the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,

others by first do no harm or take no more

than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,

love that casts a widening pool of light,

love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,

any thing can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

Copyright © 2009 by Elizabeth Alexander. All rights reserved. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota. A chapbook edition of Praise Song for the Day will be published on February 6, 2009.

A Prayer for the Nation and Our Next President

2009-01-19T13:50:00.003-05:00

A Prayer for the Nation and Our Next President, Barack Obama
By The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire

Opening Inaugural Event
Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC
January 18, 2009

Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God’s blessing upon our nation and our next president.

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…

Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

AMEN.

New Year, New You?

2009-01-09T20:54:00.007-05:00

(Soundtrack: Charles Mingus' New Now Know How)

Welcome to 2009! While I don't believe in New Years Resolutions (and since they tend not to last past Groundhog Day), I do like to think about goals, possiblities, things I'm shooting for and would like to accomplish in the coming year. One of the big ones is simply to Finish Things.

I have a lot of ideas, thoughts on scraps of paper, projects in various stages of (in)completion -- if I just decided to go ahead and finish some of these darned things, I'd look like one of the most productive mamby-pambys in the universe! It's easy to see how some of these things, both at work and at home, began to pile up. Sometimes the idea of doing them proved more interesting than the actual execution. Some things were just dropped on me, and no one likes to do things they really don't want to do. Various "I need this now!" items showed up, pushing other projects to the side.

And sometimes I just got scared. I didn't think I could do them. Or do them well. Or these items had to be "perfect" (an interesting insight I heard toward the end of 2008 was how perfectionism often leads to procrastination). Done is better than Not Done: Finished is better than Perfect -- especially if it's going to take forever to make it perfect. And there's always the 'revision process' and going back and improving things and making them better later.

So that's it, my Big Hairy Goal for 2009 summed up in two words: Finish it! We'll see how that goes.

Here's another Goal, or perhaps better put, a mantra for the new year, from Zen Habits blogger Leo Babuta: Stop waiting for happiness. Happiness is right here, right now. An interesting thought with intriguing, life altering implications.

Disagreeing -- and feeling disagreable

2008-12-18T15:38:00.006-05:00

Like many same-sexers, I'm none too pleased by the choice of the Rev Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at next month's inaugural. The President-Elect defended the choice today, saying

I think that it is no secret that I am a fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans. It is something that I have been consistent on and something that I intend to be consistent on during my presidency. What I've also said is that it is important for American to come together even though we have disagreements on certain social issues. I would note that a couple of years ago, I was invited by Rick Warren's church to speak despite his wariness that I held contrary views.... that's what this campaign was about....We're not going to agree on very single issue...but what we have to do is be able to create an atmosphere that we can disagree and not be disagreeable....

Well, Okay Barack...but as my partner said this morning, there has to be a limit to all this "Team of Rivals" stuff. And let me be clear: I'm not only disapointed because of Warren's support for California's Proposition 8, but also because of his position against a woman's right to choose as well. If a minister had said "I don't believe black and white people should be able to get married" (and you know I'm not a fan of the "Gay=Black" formua) or, "I don't believe a woman has the right to control her own body" -- how 'agreeable' would we be toward someone with these views?

As The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder points out, some of us have been here before (Remember Donnie McClurkin?)....

One reason the Rick Warren thing is a big deal to gay rights activists is because, after their experience with President Bill Clinton, the gay community is unusually sensitive to getting the shorter angle of presidential triangulation....

Clinton was willing to say the word "gay" in public and appear in black tie at the Human Rights Campaign dinner, but, in the eyes of the gay political community, his commitment to gay rights vanished both times it counted most.

Relative to other minority groups, the LGBT community is disproportionately dependent on the goodwill of the president, because almost all of their big-ticket agenda items are federal laws (the military, DOMA repeal, hate crimes, ENDA, the Permanent Partners Immigration Act, etc.). And relative to other minorities, gays still want and need basic reassurance that they are an ordinary part of American life and politics. So everyone is peering anxiously at Obama wondering if he is going to let them down like Clinton did.

Huffington Post offers differing views on 'What Now/What Next'

Lee Strnanahan: There's something bigger at play here and you can't say Obama didn't warn you. He talked about reaching out, about expanding our politics and that crazy bastard actually meant it. Nobody on the left or right quite knows what to make of it. We want to cram Obama into our old, divisive, two toned ideological and political frame and if he doesn't fit, we'll attack him too. Attacking is what we're used to doing.

Jon Hoadley: If we want to enact pro-equality policy and change, we need to take a page out of Harvey Milk's playbook: we have to give them hope. We need to say what we want, not just what we don't want.

Oh, well, I guess it's 'only a prayer.' And perhaps you'll get some goodwill cover for some of your more controversial choices that would upset the Right. At least the rest of the January 20th program looks like it will be great.

Musical Selections
The United States Marine Band

Musical Selections
The San Francisco Boys Chorus and the San Francisco Girls Chorus

Call to Order and Welcoming Remarks
The Honorable Dianne Feinstein

Invocation
Dr. Rick Warren, Saddleback Church, Lake Forest, CA

Musical Selection
Aretha Franklin

Oath of Office Administered to Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
By Associate Justice of the Supreme Court
The Honorable John Paul Stevens

Musical Selection, John Williams, composer/arranger
Itzhak Perlman, Violin
Yo-Yo Ma, Cello
Gabriela Montero, Piano
Anthony McGill, Clarinet

Oath of Office Administered to President-elect Barack H. Obama
By the Chief Justice of the United States
The Honorable John G. Roberts, Jr.

Inaugural Address
The President of the United States, The Honorable Barack H. Obama

Poem
Elizabeth Alexander

Benediction
The Reverend Dr. Joseph E. Lowery

The National Anthem
The United States Navy Band “Sea Chanters”

Inaugural Poet Elizabeth Alexander

2008-12-17T15:23:00.006-05:00

Dear President-Elect Obama:

Today's choice of Elizabeth Alexander as Inaugural Poet shows not only great poetic taste, but also that you read my blog as well Thank you, sir, I'm honored...(okay so I had Patricia Smith for Poet and Elizabeth for NEA Chair, but, still...).

And, uh, in case you were wondering, yes, I am available to join your team as either White House Poet in Residence, or IT Librarian of Congress....either/or, sir, not a problem: I'd love to say (a la The West Wing) "I serve at the pleasure of the President of the United States"...

Ars Poetica #100: I Believe

Poetry, I tell my students,
is idiosyncratic. Poetry

is where we are ourselves,
(though Sterling Brown said

“Every ‘I’ is a dramatic ‘I’”)
digging in the clam flats

for the shell that snaps,
emptying the proverbial pocketbook.

Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,

overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way

to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)

is not all love, love, love,
and I’m sorry the dog died.

Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice,

and are we not of interest to each other?

Elzabeth Alexander

World AIDS Day + 20

2008-12-01T17:28:00.003-05:00

Can it really be 20 years we've been commemorating World AIDS Day? Sweet Heavens....

In honor of the day, and of the brave, openly gay men who marched in Haiti today (thanks Rod 2.0), I offer this excerpt from poet Kwame Dawes' work on AIDS in Jamaica, parts of which appeared in the Spring 2008 edition of Virginia Quarterly Review

...For Jamaicans survival has always been a delicate and necessary art of deflection. We hear about a murder and go through a series of questions. Where was the person killed? The farther away from where we live, the better. Did the person fight back? Because I would never do that. Did the person have a big car the killer may have wanted? Was it the middle of the night? And the list goes on. Eventually, we find a reason why what happened could not happen to us. That’s not me; that could never be me.

The same has been true for HIV/AIDS. As long as it was seen as a gay disease, heterosexuals could ignore the deaths. It could never happen to them. When news came that heterosexuals were dying as well, we came up with new questions. Did the person frequent prostitutes? Did he have sex abroad, or here with someone foreign? Was he promiscuous? Who exactly did she sleep with? Was it rough sex? Were they somehow perverse? Anything to keep the disease far away, to pretend it could never reach us. But I can no longer live this way. In the months I have spent traveling around the island, this other Jamaica, going to towns I have not visited in years, meeting and listening to countless people, I have made friends—and now I have to accept that HIV/AIDS is a part of my life. I know that in time, I will hear of someone’s passing. I will hear of someone’s succumbing to the illness. I now live with it as a constant presence, not something I can simply deflect. And, fortunately, it has not destroyed the humanity of the people I now call my friends, but rather it taught all of us something about the frailty of human life—and something of our capacity to find hope in the midst of such struggle.

I also want to join the call for President-Elect Obama to appoint an "AIDS Czar" to create a national strategy in the government's fight against the disease. Either of the names mentioned in the Bay Area Reporter article linked above would be great (Dr. Helene Gayle, or Jesse Milan Jr), although, I think appointing the married, openly gay, HIV+ Mr. Milan would be extraordinary and be a pronounced break with the past on many levels.

Oh, The Times, they are a' Changin....

2008-11-20T14:24:00.003-05:00

Judge Orders Five Detainees Freed From Guantánamo

In the first hearing on the government’s justification for holding detainees at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, a federal judge ruled Thursday that five Algerian men were held unlawfully for nearly seven years and ordered their release.

Longtime Head of House Energy Panel Is Ousted

Representative Henry A. Waxman of California ousted Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan from his post as chairman of the influential Committee on Energy and Commerce on Thursday, giving President-elect Barack Obama an advantage in his plans to promote efforts to combat global warming....

Besides seating a committed environmentalist as head of the energy committee, the vote also removes one of the auto industry’s best friends from a key leadership post — further evidence of how much power the American car-makers, whose executives have been pleading for federal money, have lost in Congress.

And here in B-town.....

Hopkins balks at Confederate banner
Changing course after 20 years, university tells groups it won't rent them space for January march

Every January, descendants of Confederate soldiers gather in Wyman Park to march under the banner of the Confederacy, sing "Dixie" and lay wreaths at the monument to Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, legendary generals of the Confederate States of America.

And afterward, for 20 years now, everyone has gone across the street to the Johns Hopkins University for coffee and refreshments, with some of the 200 descendants and observers still wearing the uniforms of Confederate re-enactors and carrying the flag. But next year will be different.

Hopkins has informed the Maryland divisions of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans that it will not rent space to them. The Jan. 17 event is scheduled for only a few days before the inauguration of the nation's first African-American president. The university received complaints after the march last January and says that it no longer wants to see the Confederate flag flying on campus....

(And in case you're wondering why Baltimore has the world's largest double equestrian statue, depicting two Honored Sons of the South, a bit of history: Maryland was a slave state, Baltimore was home to more than 2,000 slaves, and the city was quite the font of Southern Sympathy during 'The Late Unpleasantness', and the first blood of the war was shed here -- by a black man, Nikoles Biddle, of course....)

Now to decolonize some of the MINDS on campus at Hopkins, across the US and elsewhere...That will be some real change!

Please, Please, Please

2008-11-18T22:37:00.006-05:00

Congratulations to a real sweetheart, Jericho Brown, on the publication of his extraordinary and heartbreaking first collection, Please (New Issues Press). An interview with him recently appeared on the National Book Critics Circle blog, and IMHO he's right on the verge of 'blowing up' into a very well deserved major success.

Here's the opening poem, which originally appeared on Post Road:

Track 1: Lush Life
The woman with the microphone sings to hurt you,
To see you shake your head. The mic may as well
Be a leather belt. You drive to the center of town
To be whipped by a woman’s voice. You can’t tell
The difference between a leather belt and a lover’s
Tongue. A lover’s tongue might call you bitch,
A term of endearment where you come from, a kind
Of compliment preceded by the word sing
In certain nightclubs. A lush little tongue
You have: you can yell, Sing bitch, and, I love you,
With a shot of Patrón at the end of each phrase
From the same barstool every Saturday night, but you can’t
Remember your father’s leather belt without shaking
Your head. That’s what satisfies her, the woman
With the microphone. She does not mean to entertain
You, and neither do I. Speak to me in a lover’s tongue—
Call me your bitch, and I’ll sing the whole night long.

Run, don't walk, to your local bookseller and get this fine and moving book.

What's in Barack's Bookbag?

2008-11-18T20:58:00.011-05:00

Hey! *I* was about to do the whole Oprah/Obama line -- and then the NYTimes steals it right from under me!

For Books, Is Obama New Oprah?

When President-elect Barack Obama appeared on “60 Minutes” on CBS on Sunday in his first interview since winning the election, he mentioned having read “a new book out about F .D. R.’s first 100 days” without specifically naming a title or author.

That tantalizing reference set off a scramble for the claim to First Reader rights all day Monday before a spokesman for Mr. Obama disclosed what the president-elect had actually read.

Perhaps we both, ur... 'borrowed' ... the idea from yesterday's "GalleyCat" blog:

Barack Obama can sell books. Yesterday, he admitted to reading two books about Franklin D. Roosevelt, (see below) sparking a major run at the bookstore.

And then there's this:

Yes We Can Sell Out First Printing: Obama Campaign Photo Book Is Pre-Sale Hit

Yes We Can: Barack Obama's History-Making Presidential Campaign, the book of Scout Tufankjian's campaign trail photos, is a pre-publication hit for powerHouse Books. The publisher reports that it has sold out the 55,000-copy first edition of the book nearly a month before its scheduled mid-December release date. A second printing of 25,000 copies has been ordered to arrive at the same time

And please don't forget to stop by the magazine rack on your way out of the bookstore...
Obamas Drive Magazine Sales

Mr. Obama’s status as a recurring cover star is thanks in part to the healthy sales that the Obamas bring in. Last week’s issue sold more than 1.1 million copies on the newsstand, and in June the issue with the Obamas on the cover sold about 900,000 copies. That is just about what the magazine sells when it puts its array of Hollywood celebrities on the cover.

The First Family could revive the publishing industry all by themselves. Who needs a bailout? Detroit should just put a photo of The Obamas on each new car!

BTW: If you want to understand why he's reading Alter's book, check this:

FDR was not a socialist as he is often portrayed today. To the contrary, he was a pragmatist fighting for the survival of free enterprise and individual rights against a rapidly growing populist movement towards socialism or fascism ...This book does a great job of reminding us what FDR faced and who he really was. We can only wonder if another FDR will be able to hold us together in the next downturn when a wave of hungry, destitute, ailing old baby boomers is clambering (and voting en masse!) for government help while the economy disintegrates around them hampered by a mountain of debt.

....Seems I've heard some of that before...

Here's what I remember of mentions of The Prez-Elect's recent reading:

The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria

The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope by Jonathan Alter

F D R by Jean Edward Smith

Selected Poems by Derek Walcott

Just Received:

State-By-State: A Panoramic Portrait of America by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey (Hat Tip: Mark Savaras at The Elegant Variation)

and, of course, the book EVERY political pundit can't seem to stop referring to:

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Stop the H8 Baltimore Edition

2008-11-18T17:37:00.027-05:00

Scenes from Baltimore's Stop the H8 rally, 15 November 2008

Catching up, and trying not to think about Certain People who have aggravated me recently, like the Senate Democrats on the Joe Lieberman issue (Shame! SHAME!!!), or Baltimore's own Cardinal James Francis Stafford and his astonishingly incendiary and idiotic anti-Obama remarks at my Library School Alma Mater, THE Catholic University of America (I need to be careful -- I might run into His Eminence on the street outside work!).

Ah well, at least it looks like one of my picks, Eric Holder, will be the new Attorney General, so all is not entirely wrong with the world today...

“We owe the American people a reckoning. It is our responsibility as citizens to preserve and protect our constitution… Let me be clear: I firmly believe that there is evil in the world, and that we still face grave dangers to our security. But our ability to lead the world in combatting these dangers depends not only on the strength of our military leadership but our moral leadership as well. … To recapture it, we can no longer allow ourselves to be ruled by fear. We must evaluate our policies and our practices in the harsh light of day and steel ourselves to face the world’s dangers in accord with the rule of law.” -- Eric Holder

!!HOORAY!!

Here are a few photos from Baltimore's "Stop the H8" rally last Saturday. Many thanks to Doug Rose, Mark Patro, and Steve Charing (BTW: if the photo is from a long distance away or fuzzy, like the ones above, then they're mine!)

Towleroad is gathering and posting a collection of photos from around the country.

Poet Emmanuel Xavier and actor Wilson Cruz (photo by Leo Toro)...okay so they were in New York, not Baltimore, but Emmanuel is a friend and as for the stunning Mr Cruz, well... a guy can can dream can't he? (Thanks Andres!)

Since the rally, I've been thinking a lot about Wanda Sykes. She took to the podium on Saturday in Las Vegas and took the opportunity to not only come out as a lesbian, but also as married. I was particularly struck by her saying this:

"You know, I don't really talk about my sexual orientation. I didn't feel like I had to. I was just living my life, not necessarily in the closet, but I was living my life...Everybody that knows me personally, they know I'm gay. But that's the way people should be able to live their lives."

To my ear, that strikes me as the default "Black Position on Homosexuality." We don't care what you do, keep it quiet, live your live, and we'll leave you alone. It's how most black gay people live, I think -- within our communities, as opposed to in 'gay ghettos' like what The Castro, The Village, Boy's Town, or Dupont Circle used to be before being slowly gentrified out of existence by 'trendy' straights. We really don't tend to march or put on t-shirts or demand our les/bi/gay rights. The velvet closet of the black community suits us just fine.

Except when it doesn't:

Syracuse man was killed for being gay, police say
SYRACUSE, NY - Dwight R. DeLee shot and killed Moses "Teish" Cannon with a .22-caliber rifle Friday night because he didn't like that Cannon was openly gay, Syracuse police said.

Cannon's family accepted his sexual orientation. The Post-Standard reports "pictures of Cannon in women's clothing were on display in the family's living room, and the family selected one" for the newspaper to publish."

We can sit in the warm bubble bath of acquiescence all we like, but unless and until we come out, speak up, and stand up for ourselves in our homes, *in our churches*, and in 'da hood', crimes like this will continue to occur. Just as the election did not end racism, so, too, we are not in a 'post-gay' society.

A few other things about the rally: Like most over 30 people who went to these events I was struck by how young most people were. Fresh faced and full of excitement, a very welcome sight for those of us who are veterans of various Marches on Washington and other demonstrations. Everyone had either digital cameras or cell phones, so these were probably the most FaceBooked protests ever. And the first and loudest cheer from the crowd went up at the first mention of the name of our President Elect.

And I saw one person carrying a "Gay is the New Black" sign.

Now, this is not a new idea, as this article from 2003 attests, although it has been updated for our times. Over the course of time, and particularly in the fashion industry where the phrase originate, a lot of things have been "The New Black" (although there are those of us who will insist that Black is ALWAYS Black).

I have problems with this formulation (as a black gay person, does that mean that Half of me is the new Other Half of me?), and I confess I wimped out and didn't engage the person with the sign to ask what it meant (see my opening comments on why that may have been for the best!). So, I'll leave it to someone very much smarter than I am, Mendi Lewis Obadike, to break down why this particular phrase gives many of us pause:

Here are a few of the reasons why that slogan rankles me:

1.Queer people didn't start being gay or start having to fight injustice with the end of Jim Crow, nor with the election of a black president of the US. The struggle is old; "gay" is not "new".

2.Black people didn't stop being black or stop having to fight injustice with the end of Jim Crow, nor with the election of a black president of the US. The struggle continues; "black" is not "old".

3.Queer black people experience discrimination based on sexuality and race at the same time. The struggles are coterminous.

4.Who is the ideal audience for this sign?

(a) Queer black people? Probably not, since the slogan seems not to acknowledge that we exist.

(b) Straight black allies in the crowd? If so, what is the message? Your struggle is over? Seems like a strange way to strengthen alliances.

(c) Straight black people you imagine to be your enemies? Seems like a strange way to pull them in.

(d) Other people of color? Probably not, since, the slogan seems not to acknowledge any other races of people have had struggles or movements of any importance.

(e) Antiracist queer white people? Maybe, but don't anti-racists struggle to make our visions of community more complex instead of narrower?

(f) Queer white people who don't really think about race? Yes, to me it seems like the ideal audience for this sign is white queer people who want permission to think simply and narrowly about what the queer community is and who matters in it.

The most generous reading I can make is that "gay is the new black" is a sloppy way of saying "discrimination against gay people is a serious civil rights issue that we should all care about" or "we have fought problems this big before and won" or "this issue is going to take all of us working together" or "none of us is free until all of us are free". Why be sloppy about it for the sake of a presumption of wit when there is so much at stake and the risk is so big?

The odd thing about the Advocate cover above is that, while the accompanying article makes some good points about how the gay/black equasion is a less than perfect fit, and includes a question mark at the end (Gay Is The New Black?), the cover does not.

Gay is the new black in only one meaningful way. At present we are the most socially acceptable targets for the kind of casual hatred that American society once approved for habitual use against black people. Gay is the dark pit where our society lets people throw their fears about what’s wrong with the world. (Many people, needless to say, still direct this kind of hatred toward black people too. But it’s more commonly OK to caricature and demean us in politics and the media in ways from which blacks are now largely exempt.) -- Michael Joseph Gross

I understand the need to sell magazines by being provovative, but this still makes me uncomfortable (and feels like a bit of a bait and switch). More people are going to see the cover, and either instantly agree or disagree, than take the time to read the more reasoned article. More black people of all sexual orientations, are going to see that cover and be put off by it than will read the article. The addition of a mark of punctuation on the cover might have lead magazine rack browsers to think and consider the proposition, rather than turn them off.

I can only hope that Prop 8 causes "the gay community" to consider its approaches, tactics, and how it talks to all segments of the country in the fight for civil rights.

"Scrum in the Hood"

2008-11-17T17:55:00.004-05:00

I promise to post photos from Saturday's "Stop the H8" rally here in Baltimore very soon...but

Since my partner and I got hooked on Rugby thanks to watching the Wallabies, the All-Blacks, and the Tri-Nations tournament on Fox Sports, I can't resist pointing to this video and article about The Hyde Leadership Public Charter School in Washington DC, from the New York Times.

When the team starts the post-game singing of "Lift Every Voice and Sing," I get all choked up....
Aim High, boys!

Here's a link for those who wish to contribute to Hyde

Advising the President: Patricia Smith for Inaugural Poet‏!

2008-11-13T16:47:00.009-05:00

The President-Elect has a more than a few things on his plate right now, including a number of vacancies in the Executive Branch. One position that needs to be filled relatively soon is "Inaugural Poet‏". True it's only a one-day job -- but what a day!

I'm adding my name to the endorsement list for Patricia Smith for Inaugural Poet‏. One of the Founders of Slam as well as an amazing 'on the page' poet, her new book about Katrina Blood Dazzler is a finalist for this year's National Book Award. And she is from Chicago, and we've already seen how the new Prez likes his homie's:)

Patricia Smith:
XXXL VILLANELLE

We've lost them all beneath their swaddling clothes.
Cavernous sweats and denims droop with air
and hide our loves inside. They strike the pose,

craft the swagger, these boys everyone knows
are surely doomed. And yet they're wrapped with care.
We've lost them all beneath those swaddling clothes.

Inside that hug, they're smaller than their woes.
Their lives can't reach them. They don't fear the air.
Love hides inside—they coil, they strike. The pose,

if strutted right, can shield them from the blows
that must rain down. No, we can't save our heirs.
We've lost them all beneath their swaddling clothes.

That they choose this soft way to drown just shows
despite our touch, our kiss, the ways we cared,
they must hide love inside. They struck the pose

of men—because, as we have come to know,
no babies thrive upon the streets they dare.
We've lost them all beneath their swaddling clothes.
They hide our love inside, then strike the pose.

And since I'm playing 'Acting Adviser to the Transition Team' here, allow me to toss another name out -- how about Poet and Yale Professor Elizabeth Alexander to replace the departing Dana Gioia as Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts ?

Elizabeth Alexander:
ARS POETICA #23: "WHASSUP G"

From the Latin negrorum, meaning
“to tote,” said Richard Pryor
in an etymological mode.

Look it up in Cab Calloway’s
Hepster’s Dictionary, the giant book.
Be negro, be ‘groid, be vernacular, be.

Hey, yo, Hey bro’, Hey blood,
high five, big ups, gimme some skin,
keep it on the QT, the down low, the real side.

What it is? What it look like?
Vernacular: Verna, a house-born slave.
Ask your mamma what it means.

Old school lyin’ and signifyin’.
That chick has a chemical deficiency:
no assatol.

And who knows,
on the radio, what evil lurks
in the hearts of men? The shadow do,

quoth the brethren, and fall out,
cack-a-lacking and slapping,
high-top fade to black.

(From American Sublime)

Power to the Poets!

And Again more happiness: USA Fellowship grants

2008-11-13T00:54:00.010-05:00

From Poets and Writers:

Harryette Mullen and Barry Hannah Among This Year's USA Fellows

United States Artists (USA) today announced the recipients of the third annual USA Fellowship grants. The nine literature fellows for 2008 are poets Forrest Gander, Laura Kasischke, Lê Thi Diem Thúy, Joy Harjo, A. Van Jordan, and Harryette Mullen, novelists Barry Hannah and Tayari Jones, and nonfiction writer Jeff Chang.

Full list with photos here

UberBlogging Ms Jones (shown here with fellow USA Fellow, Cave Canem's own A Van Jordan) in the house! The next award's gonna be for your photographs, right? Stay by your phones, friends -- I'll be making calls asking for a little 'Economic Stimulus Package' from you VERY soon:)

Cheers, ya'll!

I want to give a special Congratulations to two Elders on the list: jazz giant Muhal Richard Abrams, co-founder of the great Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), and the magnificent multi-instrumentalist, composer, and bandleader Henry Threadgill. His 1995 recording Makin' a Move is one of the pieces of music I MUST have with me every time I travel, and is a continuing source of inspiration. I can never seem to get enough of it....

Congrats to all!

Now Back to Your Irregularly Scheduled Poetry News (Awards Season, continued)

2008-11-12T21:22:00.003-05:00

Fantastic news for two dynamic, genre-busting artists.

Congratulations to the 2008 Whiting Writers Awards. I know the work of two of the winners, playwright Dael Orlandersmith (her play Yellowman), and fiction writer Manuel Muñoz, whose beautiful and moving short story collection The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue was a finalist for last year's Lambda Literary Award.

Especial congratulations, however, to my friend Doug Kearney (I'm using a blurry 'action photo' of DK on purpose here, because he and his work truly has to be seen/experienced to be fully appreciated). This well deserved award is the perfect end to a somewhat difficult year for him. Happy, Happy/Joy Joy, boy-ee

Three poems by Doug with must hear mp3 audio from Mipoesias

Good news also for Poet and sound collagest Latasha Natasha Nevada Diggs, who has recently recived an Individual Artist Grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She, also is an artist who needs to be seen and heard to be fully appreciated (Hear her Live at the Knitting Factory here). Both are doing fantastic work that pushes the envelope of sound and poetry both on the page and in performance. It's a thrill to see them getting much deserved support.

Shadowboxer On The Lookout
(Doug Kearney)

they wait for me to turn my back
leave something open they’ll climb in
sooty fingerprints staining drums
push past my dead bolts window
bars chain raise heavy fists
make my home tremble
* * * *
sunday a woman screams
loud enough to stun a cab someone
runs in the street his voice
a flare undershirt blood
his woman all over his hands
it could have been me both of them
* * * *
smoke on the corner
shadows on the porch
niggers in the street
* * * *
. . . broke into a million pieces luck already
bad as it can get now’s no time to stare at
mirrors they’re out there I better . . .
* * * *
nigger eyes rifle through me like some wallet
war drums batter their radios ribcages
swollen with nicotine tough talk I cross

the street

(from Fear, Some, Red Hen Press, 2006)

blank cassette
(Latasha Nevada Diggs)

you showcase the worst of summer
by noon the forest details your scorch
I taste the battery from your match alone, I chase the hum of helicopters. make a melody from the evoke of hum
alone, I sing blue lakes’ dinleave me a rock with some seed. leave me a drop or more.
my name is whyI am here in pink carpenters and ashy palms
while rain purees the soot
I pelican from couch to window

make a melody from the evoke of hum

leave me rocks with some seed. leave me a drop or more
my name is whythe creek keeps me in pulse an elegy for peppery char
I whisper leave me something something
the volcanic rocks are everywhere.

my terrain dead soon newborns.leave me rocks with some seed. leave me a drop or more
my name is whyyou last whispered a sorrel refrain
I forgot to press record

first published in Semantikon, Vol 3, Version 4, March 2005, reprinted (with audio) on the glorious From The Fishouse

... And a few steps back

2008-11-12T00:49:00.002-05:00

I keep hearing this term "re-defining" marriage.

If this country hadn't re-defined marriage, black people still couldn't marry white people. Sixteen states had laws on the books which made that illegal... in 1967. 1967. The parents of the President-Elect of the United States couldn't have married in nearly one third of the states of the country their son grew up to lead. But it's worse than that. If this country had not "re-defined" marriage, some black people still couldn't marry...black people. It is one of the most overlooked and cruelest parts of our sad story of slavery. Marriages were not legally recognized, if the people were slaves. Since slaves were property, they could not legally be husband and wife, or mother and child. Their marriage vows were different: not "Until Death, Do You Part," but "Until Death or Distance, Do You Part." Marriages among slaves were not legally recognized. You know, just like marriages today in California are not legally recognized, if the people are... gay. -- MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, Nov 10, 2008

The sad news from last Tuesday concerns rollbacks in rights for gay and lesbian people across the country

Arizona and Florida approved anti-gay marriage propositions, and Arkansas approved an Initiative barring unmarried people from adopting children.

The big loss, however, was in California, with the passage of Proposition 8, reversing the California Supreme Court's decision approving gay marriage.

Fingers are being pointed over the loss -- many of them pointed at African Americans:

"African American voters in California voted overwhelmingly for Prop 8, writing anti-gay discrimination into California’s constitution and banning same-sex marriage in that state. Seventy percent of African American voters approved Prop 8, according to exit polls, compared to 53% of Latino voters, 49% of white voters, 49% of Asian voters.... I’m done pretending that the handful of racist gay white men out there — and they’re out there, and I think they’re scum — are a bigger problem for African Americans, gay and straight, than the huge numbers of homophobic African Americans are for gay Americans, whatever their color." -- Dan Savage

"Three older men accosted my friend and shouted, 'Black people did this, I hope you people are happy!' A young lesbian couple with mohawks and Obama buttons joined the shouting and said there were 'very disappointed with black people' and 'how could we' after the Obama victory. This was stupid for them to single us out because we were carrying those blue NO ON PROP 8 signs! I pointed that out and the one of the older men said it didn't matter because "most black people hated gays" and he was "wrong" to think we had compassion. That was the most insulting thing I had ever heard. I guess he never thought we were gay." -- "Ronald" at the marriage equality rally in Los Angeles, reported by Rod McCollum (More follow-up from Rod here)

Many Gay Rights organizations continually just don't get it when it comes to people of color, as Andres Duque points out:

"Let me say this: I don't have much money but I have donated to the "No on 8" campaign to support their efforts (as well as "No on 2" in FL and "No on 102" in AZ); I also know that they have attempted to make inroads among Latino communities; but I was less than thrilled by their discourse in media during these last few days on the issue of Latino voters and not too impressed by their ads targeting Latino media."

From the VivirLatino website:

Gloria Nieto had a sense of those demographic forces, too. When Nieto, a lead organizer for the No on Proposition 8 campaign in San Jose, wanted to distribute campaign signs in Spanish and Vietnamese this fall, she had to get them made herself because the statewide campaign only had signs in English.
What this suggests to me is that communities of color have their problems--but largely white organizations seem to not value those communities until the time comes when they need them for their own agendas, and even then not so much.

I have been wanting to comment about this since November 5, but everytime I start I get extremely upset (okay, as La Familia would attest, the right word for me to use here is not "upset" but "livid"). I probably would have come out with something similar to Ernest Hardy's long and 'colorful' response to Mr Savage, or it's followup

I'm upset at the racism of some members of the white gay community

I'm upset at the homophobia of some members of the black community

I am saddened and disturbed by the 'white' "Gay Community" for their lack of understanding of non-white communities. As well as the fact that there's little to no realization from many of them that people can be BOTH black and gay.

And I'm mad at both groups for playing directly into the hands of Right Wingers who would deny ALL of us of our rights if given half a chance.

There's more than enough 'blame' to go around. For example, some folk would have been attacking Catholics if one could tell religion by looking at someone, for, as blogger JoeMyGod points out:

The last Field Poll, conducted a week before the election, showed that weekly churchgoers increased their support in the final week from 72 percent to 84 percent. Catholic support increased from 44 percent to 64 percent - a jump that accounted for 6 percent of the total California electorate and equivalent to the state's entire African American population combined. The shift in Catholics alone more than accounted for Prop. 8's 5 percent margin of victory.

I'm glad to see folks are challenging the Morman Church, which poured huge amounts of money across the border from Utah into California to pass Prop 8. (They should all watch the very moving film "Latter Days" to get some idea of what it might feel like to be a young gay Mormon)

I also agree with some friends who think the idea of having voters decide on the rights others should have is an extremely bad idea. A lot of American's wouldn't vote for the Bill of Rights in the US Consitution either! And I doubt that there would be school desegregation, Civil Rights Acts of 1964 or '65, nor legal-all-across the US interracial marriage if they had been put to a vote either.

So: rather than get mad, lemme DO something

National Fight the H8 rallys at city halls across America, Saturday November 15, 2008
As poet C Dale Young says:

You don't have to chant. You don't have to carry a sign. We just want you to stand with us. If you have ever loved someone enough to want to marry them; If you have ever married; If you thank God every day for your husband or wife; If you ever wonder how you would get through the week without your significant other, stand with us. Everyone deserves the right to love someone and be treated with dignity. Everyone deserves a chance at happiness. None of us want to be treated like second-class citizens. So stand with me for Love. Stand against H8.

Continuing Updates on Prop 8 and protests at Towleroad

Some resources for our us and our Straight Allies to help discuss heterosexism/homophobia within the Black community, courtesy of the all-across-the-spectrum-of-sexual-orientation poets of Cave Canem:

Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack II: Sexual Orientation
Daily effects of straight privilege

How Homophobia Hurts Everyone: A Theoretical Foundation by Warren J. Blumenfeld (PDF)

"Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" by Adrienne Rich

Why I Hate Abercrombie and Fitch by Dwight McBride

Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism by Patricia Hill Collins

Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity and Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South by E Patrick Johnson (Performing part of Sweet Tea here)

Afrekete: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Writing edited by Catherine McKinley & L. Joyce DeLaney

Redbone Press' Spirited: Affirming the Soul and Black Gay/Lesbian Identity

Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent by Thomas Glave

DVDs
Marlon Rigg's Black Is...Black Ain't

Cheryl Dunne's The Watermelon Woman

Brother to Brother

Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin

Last but most decidly NOT least, Keith Olbermann's emotional Special Comment, which asks a question I ask myself -- what the hell's it to YOU if Gays and Lesbians want to get married?

Thank You, Keith

The First Reader

2008-11-10T23:36:00.004-05:00

Some friends and I are doing the 'happy dance' over this:

Obama spotted carrying poetry book
CHICAGO, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- President-elect Barack Obama was carrying a book of poems while leaving the Chicago school of his daughters, witnesses say.

The U.S. senator, fresh off his Election Day victory, presumably had time to enjoy some poetry while visiting his daughters' school Friday, The Daily Telegraph reported Saturday.

While the Illinois Democrat was not spotted reading the book of poems by Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, he personally carried the new-looking book to an awaiting car.

Versifyers around the world rejoice.....