Thank You and Good Night

"My formula for success has three elements: the talent you're given, the hard work you do to get better at whatever it is that you do, and a certain amount of luck. And I always found that the harder I worked, the better my luck was, because I was prepared for that. I will not go into a story unprepared. I will do my homework, and that's something I learned at an early age."

We lost one of the most polished and professional men in the world today, Ed Bradley of CBS News. I'm feeling bereft.

Thank you Mr Bradley for the years of reports and interviews -- and for showing us how to age with grace, beauty, and style. Just about every Black man I know wanted to be (or at least look like) Ed Bradley when we grew up (and we're still working on it!)

LA Times Obit

NBC's Ron Allen on Why Bradley Mattered

The Best of Bradley from CBS.com


Watch more video on the CBS News website, and see how what television journalism is supposed to be.

Mid-term Correction

So...it turns out the Democrats were right to start measuring the Congress for new drapes last week! What a Tuesday...Democrats take back both Houses in Washington, and you can hear the breaks starting to be pressed on the Bush Administration's fast track to disaster both hear and abroad. I could not be more pleased.

African American Governor in Massachusetts.

African American Muslim congressman elected -- to represent Minnesota?!?

Arizona rejects a ban on Gay Marriage...but is sadly alone in that move.

Pennsylvania sends the evil Rick Santorum home -- where ever that is.

Rhode Island restores voting rights to those convicted of a felony

South Dakota says no to a total ban on abortion, while Missouri says yes to stem cell research.

(...also does Florida have a Gay Governor? Don't ask, don't tell....)

And Dubya finally 'gets it' and shows Donald Rumsfeld the door. Of course, he admits that the decision was made toward the end of last week, and he saying Rummy was going to be at the Pentagon for as long as he was in the White House was perhaps a little white lie...

Since our first female Speaker of the House has a Baltimore connection -- does this mean the old pols will be gathering at Sabatino's again, just like in the good old days?

Here in Maryland, I and a number of others I've talked to were pleasantly surprised by the victory of both Martin O'Malley (shown here with new Lt Governor Anthony Brown) and Ben Cardin in their races for Governor and Senator respectively. Many of us suspected that perhaps Bob Erlich would be returned to Annapolis, but he too got caught up in the Blue Tide flooding the country last night.
(Interesting note here in Maryland: So long as your numbers are good in the more conservative counties to the East and West, if you win the I-95 corridor from Baltimore County to the Washington bedroom communities, you win the state)

We also heaved a major sigh of relief over the loss of Michael Steele. Trying to position himself as an "Independent", and urging African Americans to vote for him just because he is Black, most didn't fall for it. Bravo us.

I noted with interest last night how some (white) commentators were attempting to access the meaning of the losses by black Republicans Steele, Lynn Swann in Pennsylvania, and Ken Blackwell in Ohio. Some were patting the GOP on the back for putting up African American candidates ("You found one! Good for you...."). To me their loss, and Patrick's victory in Massachusetts, shows a greater maturity on the part of the electorate when it comes to those running for office. Black and other voters pulled the leaver (or pressed the touch screen) for those who best represented their interests, not (just) because they looked like them. Or not.

Unless you happen to live in Tennessee. We all say we hate those attack ads on our TV sets, but the "Call me, Harold" ad seemed to have worked to remind viewers that yes, Mr Ford really WAS black, and they needed to lock up their blondes. Fortunately after his poised and classy concession speech, I'm pretty sure we've not seen the last of him. Although he's a bit too Conservative for my Socialist tastes, he should take a page from the re-elected (thanks to his shift to the left) Gubernator of California and say "I'll be back"

All Saints Day

"Merece lo que sue~nas"/"Deserve your dream"

As John reminds us, it is All Saints/All Souls/Dia de los Muertos. And although he's not 'tagged' me, I'll counter his Octavio Paz poem with a Paz selection of my own, from one of my favorite books of all time, the prose poem masterpiece, "?Aguila o Sol?" "Eagle or Sun?"

from "The Poet's Work"

VIII
Escribo sobre la mesa crepuscular, apoyando fuerte la plima sobre su pecho casi vivo, que gime y recuerda al bosque natal. La tinta negra abre sus grandes alas. La lampara estalla y cubre mis palabras una capa de cristales rotos. Un fragmento afilado de luz me corta la mano derecha. Continuo escribiendo con ese mu~non que mana su jeta de piedra, grandes tempanos de aire se interponen entre la pluma y el papel. Ah, un simple monosilabo bastaria para hacer saltar al mundo. Pero esta noche no hay sitio para una sola palabra mas.

VIII
I write on the glimmering table, my pen resting heavily on its chest that is almost living, that moans and remembers the forest of its birth. Great wings of black ink open. The lamp explodes and a cape of broken glass covers my words. A sharp sliver of light cuts off my right hand. I keep writing with this stump that sprouts shadows. Night enters the room, the opposite wall puckers its big stone lips, great blocks of air come between my pen and the paper. A simple monosyllable would be enough to make the world burst. But tonight there is no room for a single word more.

(translation by Eliot Weinberger)

Quote: Bill T Jones

The great dancer's April 28, 2006 keynote address on Culture and the role of the Artist in Society to the Tides Foundation (full text available on "Bill's Blog")


I desire to be no slave to fear, to be clear in thought and action, to be compassionate and, yes, to be safe, loving and loved. I want to hold up my end of the
social contract - to be an effective citizen. And you?

Boo!

A very interesting All Hallows Eve here in B-town. A group of African American politicians from the DC suburbs have thrown their support to Republican candidate Michael Steele (mainly it seems because he's black and his Democratic opponent is white -- certainly can't be because of what Steele stands for, since it seems he doesn't stand for anything beyond the Bush party line). Trick or Treat?

Yesterday a friend sent a photo of a white couple on their way to a party: the guy was in blackface, wearing a dreadlocked wig, beliving himself the image of the perfect 'Rasta'.

To be fair, I did see a young white kid today wearing dreads also -- but he also had a fake sword and was dressed a la Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Carribbean. He was sitting not far from a young black kid in black face -- which matched the rest of his all black "Ninja" outfit.

Older kids, however, seem to be auditioning for episodes of everyone's favorite reality show "Whites Behaving Badly"

Johns Hopkins University and Hospital are my neighbors on two fronts. My neighborhood is within walking distance of the University campus, and part of their Kennedy Krieger Institute is directly down the street from us. At work, one of our locations is almost literally surrounded by the growing Hospital complex, and will be moving in 2007 to make way for another Hopkins building.

It is something of an open secret, particularly when it comes to the Hospital, that they are not 'good neighbors.' Both are extremely insular organizations, and their relationship to the surrounding neighborhoods is weak at best, and filled with condesention at worse.

So the following news item doesn't surprise me in the least:

"Johns Hopkins University suspended a fraternity Monday afternoon following a racially themed Halloween party Saturday night at an off-campus house.

The uproar began shortly after the “Halloween in the ’Hood” party was advertised on the Web site Facebook.com. The invitation encouraged racial-stereotyping costumes, included references to the late attorney Johnnie Cochran and O.J. Simpson, and prefaced descriptions of Baltimore as “a ghetto,” “the hood” and “the HIV pit” with a four-letter epithet"

From The Baltimore Sun:

"A picture of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accompanied the posted invitation, BSU members said.

"ps we STILL don' discriminate against hoodrats, skig skags, or scallywhops," it read.

Rob Turning, the university's coordinator of Greek Life, told the chapter president, Richard Boyer, that the advertisement was "racist and offensive" and asked him to withdraw it, according to a statement from Johns Hopkins officials.

The ad later reappeared in an "altered but still offensive form" without the coordinator's knowledge, said the statement.

The BSU students, who met Saturday night, agreed to send a contingent to the party, said Christina Chapman, 20, a senior and BSU president.

Ten students went to the party, at the fraternity's house at 235 E. 33rd St. Ashlea Bean was one. Bean said she expected to be upset but when she and the others saw the skeleton-cum-pirate dangling from the roof of the fraternity's house in a rope noose and heard fake gunshots, she was outraged.

In a statement, President William R. Brody said he was "personally offended" and called the incident "deeply disturbing."

"The invitation to this party represented a serious and unacceptable misjudgment on the part of the fraternity chapter that organized it," said Brody. "We will move quickly to address that appropriately with the chapter."

More than 100 students attended a lengthy campus forum last night before a panel of the university's top administrators.

A wide range of topics surfaced during the meeting - which at times became heated - ranging from discrimination against gay and lesbian students to the scarcity of tenured minority professors."

There was one JHU frat that seemed to have a rolling party, with brothers and others beginning to gather on Friday afternoon, leading to the main blow out bash on Saturday night, and a little 'hair of the dog' follow up Sunday afternoon (once the unconscious had awakened). I also once had the odd experience of having a Middle Eastern cab driver pick black male me up rather than a group of white JHU students. He expressed to me ("his brother") his dislike of the students, how those he had carried in the past had acted, treating him as if he were stupid, 'probably a terrorist', and something less than human.

The school has a long standing problem in both recruiting and maintaining black instructors. I know from an African friend who was in one of their Language programs, that the head of that department was quite hostile toward him as he was working toward his PhD, and has continually refused to hire minority instructors. A few years ago Hopkins hired a brilliant young black (gay) professor -- then let him go and committed 'sin of omission' by not informing him of the fact that funding for his position was available and he COULD have stayed on if he wanted to. In talking to a number of black staffers and others on campus, many consider the atmosphere there toxic. However, because of their small numbers, and the fact that they need their jobs, they are loathe to say or do anything to jeopardize their positions.

Of course the somewhat ironic thing about JHU is that there's been an increasing number of South Asian and Indian students attending the school in recent years. With their dark skin color, some of them would be as unwelcom in some neighbhorhoods here as I would be. But then, I suppose, one of the functions of Black People in America seems to be to act as the floor upon which everyone else stands (or walks all over).

So this Halloween Party doesn't surprise me in the least. IMHO it's just an example of how well many of the students at JHU are being educated.

One part of this incident, however, that also disturbs me is this: If we as Black people have problems with these objectifications of our community by others, how much responsibility do we also have for the negative images of Black people some African Americans traffic in as well? If we have negative attitudes toward ourselves, expect the worse of our brothers and sisters, pour big bucks into the pockets of minstrels and fools, how can we expect those outside our community to behave any differently toward us?

All Saints Day UPDATE: The story continues as the Hopkins Black Student Union uses the incident to discuss broader issues on campus (some of which I've mentioned above). Also be sure to check out the growing 'Comment on this article' section: some people 'get it' others think this is an example of the Political Correctness Police at work...

Steve Reich, "Classical" Father of Sampling?

I am a major fan of the form of 'classical' music known as Minimalism. As with the visual artists we now know as "The Impressionists" that term, Minimalist, has as often been avoided by the composers creating these works as it has been embraced. In any case, the repetitions, the stasis and slow evolution of changes, even the occasional way in which the music might be seen as 'boring' more often as not engages and transports me. My CD collection is heavy with the work of John Adams, Michael Nyman, Philip Glass -- and Birthday boy Steve Reich.

Reich, along with LaMonte Young, Terry Reily, Glass, and Pauline Oliveros, is one of the founding figures of the music. Holding to his convictions the creater of a once reviled music is now the subject of a major retrospective at that temple of the musical establishment, Carnegie Hall. Ah, to be back in New York again!

One of the things that has consistently fascinated me about Reich's music is his use of 'sampling' (while most Hip Hop artists were dreaming of big wheels for Christmas) and its relationship to African and African-American music and speech. In 1970 he studied drumming at the Institute for African Studies at the University of Ghana in Accra (before heading on to study Balinese gamelan music and the singing of Jewish cantors). But even before that, in early Process Music pieces like It’s Gonna Rain (made up of recordings of a sermon about the end of the world given by a Pentecostal minister, 1965) and Come Out (a line of testimony given by an injured survivor of a race riot, 1966), he sampled African-American voices to create music. 1972's Clapping Music always struck me as a 'highbrow' version of the kind of rhythmic clapping I grew up watching the girls in my neighborhood doing (Think Miss Mary Mack goes to Juliard) There have been any number of Reich's pieces I've found myself bopping my head to.


I've also been to a party where the art school student DJ showed up with his masterwork Music for 18 Musicians in the milk crate along with his other records. DJ's Coldcut, Mantronik, Spooky (That Subliminal Kid) and others have returned returned the favor on Reich Remixed.

Personally, I was somewhat disapointed by the Remix CD, and continue to like my Reich 'straight'. Here's a VERY short list of some favorites for the uninitiated:


African Rhythms A mix of works by Reich, the late great György Ligeti, and the singing of the Aka Pygmies. A haunting and glorious recording.

Drumming

Music for 18 Musicians

Different Trains A True Masterpiece of 20th Century music.

City Life

Triple Quartet

Happy Listening! And get ready for next year's celebration of the 70th Birthday of Reich's friend and former roomate, Baltimore's Own Philip Glass!

Who Needs Freedom?

"The president can now, with the approval of Congress, indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions." -- Anthony Romero, President, ACLU

One of the many things I learned reading James A. Monroe's Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History is this: almost every law 'reformers' have passed in order to curb some perceived 'national sin,' has turned out to have far more unexpected consequenses than those reformers could have ever possibly imagined -- and they have succeeded in expanded the role and power of the national government.

Today, President Bush signed "The Military Commissions Act of 2006" and, in the name of pursuing terrorists, kissed habeas corpus goodbye.

Secret Detentions? Sure no problem

Torture? Why not!

Human Rights? Who needs 'em...

The President says 'trust me'. He says he won't use it to toss in jail those who disagree with him (possible and 'legal' under this law). "We're going after the terrorists," he reminds us.

This new law disturbs and terrifies me. To my mind, todays signing means the terrorists have won. Our governemet has survailled us, tapped our phones, ramped up the fear levels, turned us against our better selves and our history, and have gotten us to give away basic liberties, all for the sake of some kind of 'safety.' And no one seems to care (one glorious nightly exception: MSNBC's Keith Olberman)

"The Congress just gave the President despotic powers and you could hear the yawn across the country as people turned to Dancing With the Stars." Jonathan Turley

And again I come back to Hellfire Nation. Even if we agree with these and other moves 'for our own safety', even if we think President Bush will use this law sparingly and judiciously, what about the future? What's going to happen in the next administration, or the next, or the one after that?



My partner and I have always loved A Man for All Seasons, and enjoyed and memorized a number of quotes from that film. This scene is one of our favorites, and seems chillingly apt for our own times:

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!


The United States now appears to be lead by William Roper -- and he's been handed an axe.

Quick Cave Canem poetic photo round up

A Great Day in Manhattan: Cave Canem Faculty and Fellows pose for a 10th Anniversary portrait (photo by Mignonette Dooley)





Till I can get my photos up (and my camera DIED during the Friday evening reception!), peruse these for shots and news from last weekends Black Poetry extravaganza

Thanks to Jacqueline Johnson for these...


Cheezin with Jacqueline Jones LeMon, Dwayne Betts, Tim Seibles, and Tyehimba Jess

Your Humble Correspondent with Herman Beavers and Tracy Morris















From Remica Bingham

"Inner Workings" Panel discussion: Dante Micheaux, Ronaldo Wilson, Gloria Burgess, Phebus Etienne, Jacqui Johnson, and Ross Gay.

















Our takeover of the Harlem restaurant Native Sunday evening






























From Amanda Johnston's blog



An Atmospheric Curtis Crissler










A Regal Toni Lightfoot









Amanda with Cave Canem Office Manager (and Official Muse) Dante Micheaux















From John Keene's blog


Ronaldo Wilson's 25 push up "Closing Statement" at the Inner Workings panel

















And from the Official CC Events Blog Dog Bytes



Cave Canem Prize winners






Tracy K. Smith(Winner of the 2002 prize), Major Jackson (2000), Constance Quarterman Bridges (2005), Kyle Dargan (2003), Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (2001), Amber Flora Thomas (2004), Dawn Lundy Martin (2006)





More beauty and talent all in one place than one can possibly imagine. And these folks/we are also the most the huggin-est, kissin-est, people in the world...I'm exhausted!

Happy Anniversary!

In New York City for the amazing gathering, reunion, readings, panels, and general love fest that is the Cave Canem 10th Anniversary Celebration. The readings have been glorious, the fellowship heartwarming, and its been thrilling to meet so many people I only know as words on the page, on blogs, or via e-mail. Last night's amazingly fleet (30+ poets in 2 hours!) and enriching Fellows reading on the 3rd floor of the NYC GLBT Center (as Leather/Fetish folk gathered for a dance on the first floor -- two aspects of my life in the same building at last!:) did what Cave Canem always does for me: The work took the top of my head off, made me feel honored to be part of such an extraordinary company -- and inspired me to stay up till close to 3 am writing and revising! Thank you (I think:) Cave Canem!

Reading with other GLBQ Fellows and Faculty at the Archive Section of the Schomburg Library in Harlem this afternoon. More on that, the weekend, and photos later. In the meantime, here's a poem I'll (probably) be reading there:


REUNION

Basquiat's on the back steps with my niece
helping her to draw a picture of us all,
tossing back gray dreadlocks as they fall
into his eyes. My sister argues politics
with Martin and Coretta in the back yard
over ribs -- Romare Bearden's cooking --
Malcolm puts his two cents in between
bites of peas and rice. My grandfather
flirts with Billie as tey remember the old
days on The Avenue in West Baltimore. Pres
brushes off pork pie hat and stands, offers
to gey my grandmother something from
the desert table. She declines, full from her
second helping of Ellington & Strayhorn's home
made apple pie. Essex and Joe Beam line dance
with Audre and Pat Parker while Assotto Saint,
Melvin Dixon and my partner critique them
from the picnic table off to one side.
Shamefaced, my father shows up late,
as always, with Charlie Parker and Bud Powell in tow.
Where've you-all been? my mother asks.
She gets a kiss and sheepish grin, but no reply.

The America's First Poets?

Very excited by this news of a discovery in Veracruz, Mexico, of what appears to be writing by one of this hemisphere's most mysterious civilizations, Las Olmecas/The Olmecs. Could this be the face of the First 'American' Poet?



In other verse news, please check out poet/doctor Peter Pereira's hilarious revison of our shared cable TV obsession, "Project Runway" -- Ladies and Gentlemen get ready for "Poetry Runway" (Make it Work!:)

A Death on My Street

I can't stop thinking about blood.


This is how the local paper first reported the story:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.robbery15sep15,0,1196976.story

From the Baltimore Sun

Blockbuster manager fatally shot in store

September 15, 2006

The manager of a North Baltimore Blockbuster was fatally shot last night in a robbery attempt after two gunmen entered the video store, city police said.

The victim - Antonio Gilmore, 37 - was pronounced dead at Johns Hopkins Hospital shortly after the 8:30 p.m. shooting, said police spokeswoman Nicole Monroe. He was the brother of a Northwestern District police detective, Garcia Gilmore, she added.

The gunmen entered the store in the 600 block of Homestead St., announced a holdup and then fled after the shooting - apparently without taking anything, Monroe said.

No customers appeared to be in the store at the time of the shooting, Monroe said. But she declined to say if other employees were present.

Detectives were reviewing surveillance tapes and interviewing witnesses last night, she said.

I was one of those witnesses.


I was walking home after a visit to my grandfather when a group of young kids, the oldest perhaps 7 or 8, ran past me saying 'they just shot that man!' Confused, I kept walking, only to have another, slightly older -- around 10 years old maybe -- young man come up to me and ask, "Do you have a cell phone? They just shot this man." "What man?" I asked. The young man took me into the video store, and there lying on the floor behind the counter was Antonio Gilmore.

Blood. I don't want to belabor the point, but I can't stop thinking about blood.

The right side of his face was bloody. Blood had matted his hair and under his head on the floor. Blood was bubbling out of his mouth. His left eye was wide open, staring up at the ceiling. Blood on his left cheek. Blood.

Two other people either were in the store then, or came in after me, I don't remember. I remember sending the young man to the nearby grocery store to get their security guard to call the police. I felt for Antonio's pulse at his wrist and at his neck. Dialed 911 -- or some number ending in '11' and got transferred to 911 -- and called it in. The store assistant, a 20-something young man with braids, came out of the back room looking vacant and in shock and said that he'd called as well. "I came to work here to get away from this shit," he said.

Although Antonio Gilmore had been working for Blockbuster for almost as long as my partner and I have lived in our neighborhood, I can't honestly say that I knew him well. We all knew him as 'the video store guy', and had brief, cordial conversations with him whenever I went in the store. He'd been working for them since before the store moved from 5 blocks from our place to their new location about a year or so ago 3 blocks away, directly up the street from us. There was a period when I didn't go in, out of protest over the chain's stand against Martin Scorsese's 'Last Temptation of Christ', and my visits to the store became fewer with the advent of NetFlix.

Still, I went in from time to time, and Antonio Gilmore was a fixture in the neighborhood, one of those people you 'always see.' I would glance into the window of the store on the way home and look for him, giving myself a small moment of visual pleasure since he was a good looking, heavyset or 'thick brotha', with tight, well-oiled cornrows. Always very friendly and courteous to everyone, Antonio was a genuinely nice, decent man. He hired young people from the neighborhood, including at least one 'openly gay' young black man, didn't live that far from the store, and tried to get along with everyone. Everyone seemed to get along with him. Exactly the kind of black person one DOES NOT see or hear about in the mainstrem media -- untill they become victims of violence, sadly -- but who surround us everyday.

According to the store assistant, two young men wearing shades came in and began walking around the store. He even joked that they might rob the place. The joke turned serious when he noticed they had guns. Antonio came out of the back room and they demanded money. He walked to the front of the store, talking, trying to convince them that the robbery wasn't worth it, that the police were nearby and likely to drive by or come in at any minute, and so on. He'd walked them to the front of the store and had apparently talk them into leaving when one of the two turned and shot him twice as they ran out of the store.

We are all heroes in our own mind, I suppose, and if I had to rewrite the past I would do something heroic. As it is, I now keep thinking to myself about what I could have done, or might have done. Twenty years ago, I received Emergency Medical Training while in the Coast Guard. But that was twenty years ago. All I could do in this case was stay beside him. I held Antonio's hand and rubbed his stomach lightly. I think I said, 'hold on' but am not sure. I tried not to look at the bullet hole in the upper right hand side of his chest, or at the right hand side of his face, or at the blood bubbling out of his mouth. I wish I hadn't noticed the slight shudder he gave just before the paramedics arrived. (!Que no quiero verla! as Lorca says in his Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias)

After Antonio was taken out of the store, and the police came in to talk to everyone, I tried not to look at the blood on the floor where his head had lain, or its splatter on the cabinets, but couldn't help it. I kept returning to it, looking, staring, sometimes thinking someone should come and clean it up, out of respect, even though I knew it needed to stay there as part of the investigation. Another part of me -- the writer perhaps -- kept thinking how 'pool of blood' is such a misnomer. 'Pool' conjures up images of pleasure, of a cool dip in the summer, not the coagulating reddish mess I found it difficult to tear my eyes away from.

I was struck by the discordant note the poster for the DVD of "Lucky Number Slevin" struck there next to the counter, with its prominant guns pointed at the viewer. Although I like 'action movies' as much as anyone else, as I've gotten older I've had increased respect for films that have attempted to show the ugliness of violence, from The Wild Bunch and Bonnie and Clyde in the 1960s to Cronenberg's recent, excellent, A History of Violence. It is not pretty and shouldn't be considered so. I remembered how cinematographer and director Ernest Dickerson objected to the addition of a gun in the poster for his film Juice back in 1992, because one of the points he wanted to make in the film were the consequences of what happens everytime a gun goes off.

Although we are a majority black city, it was odd to see how white our police force remains. And while the black officers and detectives seemed more of a mix of types, the white ones seemed to fit a particular mold or image, with their 'crew cut' hair and Marine/Military bearing.

Also, considering how the 'CSI' franchise has proven to be so popular, it was interesting to hear the police in the store complaining about our local crime scene people. Witnesses were in the store for at least two hours before being taken downtown to talk to investigators, and CSI-Baltimore still hadn't shown up by the time we left. The other cops complained about previous latenesses and also their general level of sloppiness, with Crime Scene folks cleaning up the area rather than looking for evidence.

HBO's 'The Wire' gets the look of the Baltimore City Homicide squad room exactly right. I also saw 'the board' across the room, made famous on our other locally set crime show, 'Homicide: Life on the Streets.'

I wish I didn't know these things first hand.

It seemed odd to me that there were children's toys as well as magazines and a TV set in the witness waiting room at police headquarters, I'm not sure why. Someone had written "I don't know shit" in crayon on the wall of the waiting room. While we were waiting to be interviewed by detectives, the local Fox channel carried the story of the shooting, including the news that Antonio Gilmore was dead. Tears filled my eyes, even though I'd overheard one of the officers on the scene say he's 'been pronounced' before we'd left.

My partner and I have lived in the Waverly section of Baltimore for a long time, over ten years. We've weathered some rough times here: our apartment was broken into, our neighbor found someone pissing in our yard one afternoon, one guy with a serious drug habit broke into about a half dozen cars in the area one weekend. We've survived the loss of the Colts and a grocery store and dealers on the corner, to now and the arrival of a new, larger, grocery and a trendy YMCA, Habitat for Humanity renovating houses around us, and a rise in housing prices. The neighborhood remains a mix of ethnicities and orientations, the "United Nations of Waverly," and is 'on the come up.' We like it here, in part because there remains a bit of a small town feel on our block, just a few blocks from major city streets. This has shaken us, saddened us, and made us want to hold onto each other and our area and the fragility of life even more.

PS: The four carnations mentioned in this fuller story published on Saturday are mine,
left when I was on my way to work Friday morning.
By Saturday morning they had blossomed into bunches of flowers and balloons left in remembrance outside the store.


Four flowers for North South East and West -- Dawn, Noon, Sunset and Midnight, the spiritual stages of life as expressed by the Kongo People of Zaire. (Dawn for birth, Noon the flourishing of life, Sunset the end of life, Midnight the underworld where those who have lived well remain until they are reborn, in the Dawn, as the next generation). "Four Moments of the Sun" for Antonio Gilmore.

Decision 2006 (Primary Edition)

Primary day in Maryland yesterday...where to begin?

Our first experience with electronic voting was less than perfect (to say the least!), with two large jurisdictions (Baltimore City and Montgomery County) having to extend voting time at the polls. In Baltimore, the extention took place over the objections of the local Board of Elections -- WTF!?!? -- who wanted to close the polls at the regular time of 8 pm. It took an emergency court order to override them and extend to 9.

Although I had no problems, the stories I've heard just from people I know are enough to curl the hair: Someone showing up at the polls before 9 am only to be told, 'You've voted already;' voter's names not being on the rolls; some people being allowed to vote without showing proper ID; some complaints about how close together the machines were, so someone standing next to you -- or even standing in line waiting-- could see how you voted (but this last only in some areas of Baltimore City -- in the county apparently people had plenty of room...hmmmm...) ; poll workers who recieved book-training on the new machines but had never even touched one until election day! Heads are rolling because of this even as I type.....

I noted, during a run through on a machine -- and how is it that there were machines touring various branches of the library for voters to try, but none for the actual poll workers?-- that touching the screen for a candidate caused the candidate *below* the one I chose to be highlighted ("Oh, that happens sometimes," said the person showing off the machine. "You just press it again to clear it and try again") For me, however, the most frightening thing was the large DIEBOLD plastered across the top of the darned things as visions of Ohio 2004 danced in my head.

As for the results, a mixed bag: neither my friend Anthony McCarthy nor my neighbor Mary Washington, two black, openly gay, candidates for the state legislature, made it (Mary came very close -- 800 votes -- and was considering taking the election commission and Diebold to court because, in yet another glitch, when voters chose the 'large screen' format on the voting machines display, her name dropped off the screen and it was not very clear that one had to scroll down to see other candidates); Kweisi Mfume lost to Ben Cardin for the chance to go against the African American current Lt Governor and Republican toadie Michael Steele (who has been calling himself 'independent' and playing the race card like mad, wrapping himself in the legacy of Martin Luther King in a pre-primary mailing, for example); fellow Gilman graduate Stuart Simms was unsuccessful in his bid to become Attorney General -- while another Gilmanite (in the class behind me) John Sarbanes won the nomination for Ben Cardin's former House district, the long and winding (read: gerrymandered by our former governor) US House 3rd.

There's been much wailing and gnashing of teeth (in some quarters, but not here) because former Baltimore mayor, former Governor, current Comptroller William Donald Schaeffer lost to Peter Franchot ending his 50-year political career. Was it because, although a Democrat, he was the close ally of the Republican Governor Robert Erlich (and therefore this result bodes ill for *his* chances this November?), or was it because of his his weird personal attacks on another primary opponent, Janet Owens, calling her 'fat,' (talk about the pots calling kettles black!) and suggesting that she 'does everything her husband tells her'? Or perhaps it was his negative (I would say almost racist) comments after a run in with recent immigrants in a McDonalds, ending with his thoughts that 'people in this country need to speak English'? Or is it simply that 50 years in elected office is finally enough?

One interesting point in the primary has been the apparent shift in power from Baltimore City to the Washington suburbs (in particular Montgomery County). Montgomery really flexed its political muscle this time, voting machine problems or not, elevating Franchot and others to runs for statewide office in November. Some commentators see a dearth of 'new faces' in Baltimore City, while there are a wealth of up-and-comers in the DC area. All one hopes is that, whomever wins will be representative of all the parts of the state.

Five Years Later...

I still find it extremely difficult and painful to see some of the images of September 11, 2001

...I remember being haunted by the image of the collapsing towers, seeing it over and over again as I closed my eyes to sleep at night (it haunts me still)

...I remember going to a church on the way home for a service/meditation session, where people were able to talk about what they were feeling

...I remember making a point of stopping by a carry-out run by Middle Easterners that night to show I didn't 'blame all Muslims' nor was I afraid of them

...I remember the odd quiet of our city, of all cities, for days afterward

...I remember the clear blue skies of that week

...I remember how close to each other all of us felt -- connected, not just to the rest of the citizend of the United States, but to the rest of the world

...I remember how greatful I was to hear from friends, family, and loved ones who survived

...I remember the shock I felt at how close some of them came to not being among the surviors

...I remember how we all tried to act 'normal' and carry on with our day that day, and in the days afterward, and our attempts to avoid talking about it

...I remember the moment I had the sad realization that the US was going to attack someone for this

...I remember the growing unease at seeing all the American Flags sprouting up -- not that I
'hate America' but because I knew how often political troglodytes wrap themselves in the Red White & Blue

...I remember my first post-9/11 trip to New York, and recalling a comment of someone who lived there as I looked toward the southern tip of Manhattan: 'There they aren't'

Our President's urging in the days after 9/11 that we carry on -- even to go shopping! -- was astoundingly wrongheaded. I still think we need to mourn, even to the point to having an official day of mourning and rememberance as the Spanish did after their trains were bombed. We suppress our feelings of loss and grief at our peril, and I feel that we still have not honestly reflected on the deeper meanings of what happened to us and what we lost that day. As well as what we've lost since that day by enlarging our response to the attacks to the point of dangerous insanity by invading Iraq, arresting innocent people, relying on torture to extract information, expanding the powers of the Executive Branch, playing the Fear Card in order to win elections, wiretapping and spying on our own citizens, and calling anyone who disagrees with these moves 'appeasers,' the 'cut-and-run crowd,' or un-American.

Anniversaries

August 19, 2006, was the 70th anniversary of the assassination of Spanish poet and dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca. Murdered by fascist troops during the early stages of the Spanish Civil War, this world-class writer and activist was only 36 years old. I first encounterd Lorca's writings in high school, and his work was one of the 'gateway drugs' that started me off on my continuing love of poetry. I also remember, back in high school, a group of teachers talking about him, and in talking about his death, one said contemporaries were not sure if he was killed 'por eso o por el otro' ('for this or for that' -- literally 'for this or for the other'). There was a quiet, slightly uncomfortable moment in the teacher's room, as no one wanted to come out and make explicit in front of the 14 or 15 year old me what the phrase referred to (but what I'd already either known or had suspected): the question of whether he was killed because of his politics or because he was a gay man.

Of course today is also the anniversary of one of the greatest tragedies to befall this country, the horror of what happened when nature's fury met political incompetence and social indifference, and wind and water ripped the covers off the dream world most Americans live in and forced them to see what things are really like for so many people in this country, which we call "Katrina."


News organizations and others are marking this anniversary, and the politicians are once again trooping toward the Gulf Coast for press conferences and photo ops. New Orleans and the Gulf hold a special place for me. I was in the US Coast Guard, stationed in Mobile, Alabama, for two years, and spent part of that time in cities along the Gulf, from Passcagoula and Biloxi, Missississippi, to New Orleans (when I had a three-day break, and the choice was staying in Mobile or riding on a bus for a couple of hours and spending the rest of the time in New Orleans...well, no offense, Mobile-ites, but I chose The Big Easy almost every time). I fell in love with New Orleans, and also fell -- hard -- for someone there. I was really too immature for a serious relationship, sadly, and like many people, only realized how special what we had was until after it was over.


So I have strong, complex, emotions when it comes to New Orleans. It is one of my favorite US cities, in part because being there has always felt like NOT being in the United States, but in another world. It was summer, humid and rainy, the last time I was there, and I made notes for a poem about the place and my feelings, watching the city's and my own histories collide, mesh, and swirl as the rain splattered the car's windshield, and in my notes I called it an 'aqueous city'. Now, of course that phrase has yet another meaning.


One of the great failures post-Katrina failures to my mind is our failure of vision. As appalled as I was by what happened (and didn't happen -- and hasn't happened yet), I am most dissapointed and infuriated by the lack of realization by the powers that be that we have also been handed an amazing opportunity. How many times have we been able to rebuild an entire city? The last time was around the turn of the last century, from, the 1871 Great Chicago Fire to the 1904 Baltimore Fire to the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, there were an unprecidented series of disasters befalling American cities, leading to the need to rebuild. Citizens and city planners got together and transformed these cities, creating the outlines of the great metropolises we see and live in now.


Katrina should have been another one of those opportunities, a call for planning, innovation -- and vision. I've always thought there should have been a blue ribbon planel of architects, environmentalists, developers, city planners, private citizens from all walks of life and economic levels, business people, and politicians brought together to discuss the future of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. How do we build a city below sea level? What can be done to minimize the impact of storms to come (the Weather Channel is on as I type this, with reports on Ernesto in Florida)? What kind of life do we want to create for the citizens of Louisiana, Missississippi, and Alabama? Yes, rebuild, yes, restore and strengthen the levees, yes bring back The Saints and Mardi Gras. But who is thinking about the future? Where is the vision? Who is talking about the possibilities offered to us as we rebuild? Certainly not Our Current President, who continues to spout platitudes. But someone has to do this. Someone, somewhere has to be able to dream -- and then go to work.

Oh yeah, we're using our "Vision" to rebuild Iraq. And as this is also the one year anniversary of the cliche 'Playing the Blame Game' I really should leave Dubya alone. Yeah, right...
(the only people who use that Blame Game phrase were folks trying to run away from responsibility. IMHO there was and continues to be enough responsibility/blame to go around).


In honor of Lorca and The Gulf, here's the final section of the poem "New York (Office and Denunciation)" from the collection Poeta en Nueva York which seems especially appropriate today.

I also CANNOT RECCOMEND HIGHLY ENOUGH Spike Lee's masterpiece When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. It is absolutely essential viewing, and should be seen by everyone.

Nueva York (Oficina y denuncia)

Yo denuncio a toda la gente
que ignora la otra mitad,
la mitad irredimible
que levanta sus montes de cemento
donde laten los corazones
de los animalitos que se olvidan
y donde caeremos todos
en la última fiesta de los taladros.
Os escupo en la cara.
La otra mitad me escucha
devorando, cantando, volando en su pureza
como los niños en las porterías
que llevan frágiles palitos
a los huecos donde se oxidan
las antenas de los insectos.
No es el infierno, es la calle.
No es la muerte, es la tienda de frutas.
Hay un mundo de ríos quebrados y distancias inasibles
en la patita de ese gato quebrada por el automóvil,
y yo oigo el canto de la lombriz
en el corazón de muchas niñas.
óxido, fermento, tierra estremecida.
Tierra tú mismo que nadas por los números de la oficina.
¿Qué voy a hacer, ordenar los paisajes?
¿Ordenar los amores que luego son fotografías,
que luego son pedazos de madera y bocanadas de sangre?
No, no; yo denuncio,
yo denuncio la conjura
de estas desiertas oficinas
que no radian las agonías,
que borran los programas de la selva,
y me ofrezco a ser comido por las vacas estrujadas
cuando sus gritos llenan el valle
donde el Hudson se emborracha con aceite.

New York (Office and Denunciation)

I denounce all those
who never think of the other half,
the irredeemable half,
who raise their mountains of concrete
where the hearts of little
forgotten animals beat
and where all of us will fall
in the final fiesta of jackhammers.
I spit in your faces.
That other half hears me,
eating, pissing, flying in their purity,
like the supers’ children
who take their flimsy palettes
to the holes in spaces where
insects’ antennas are rusting.
This is not hell, this is the street.
That is not death. That is the fruit stand.
There are broken rivers and distances just out of reach
in the cat’s paw smashed by a car,
and I hear the song of the worm
in the hearts of many young girls.
Rust, fermentation, earth tremors.
You yourself are earth drifting among numbers in the office
What am I going to do, put the landscapes in their right
places?
Put in good order the loves that soon turn into photographs,
that soon become pieces of wood and mouthfuls of blood?
No, no: I denounce,
I denounce the conspiracy of these deserted offices
which erase the plans of the forest,
and I offer myself as food for the cows milked empty
when their bellowings fill the valley
where the Hudson becomes drunk with oil.

Federico García Lorca, 1929-1930

(translation by Galway Kinnell)

Art and 'Security' (or Bringing Home the Bacon)

After the recent death of director and Yale Drama School Dean Lloyd Richards (...am I the only one who loved the coincidence that he shares a name with the playwright actor Hugh Marlowe plays in "All About Eve"?), poet Elizebeth Alexander shared this excerpt from from an interview filmmaker St. Clair Bourne did with him in 1999, for Bourne's documentary on Paul Robeson, 'Here I Stand':

"My biggest hurdle of course, was not the fact that there was no opportunities out there or very few -but what do we say to my mother, who really was looking forward to my being a doctor - and I had already reneged on that and was now going to be a lawyer. And she had adjusted to that and how would she adjust to the fact that I wasn't even going to be a lawyer. I was going to go into this no-named profession, where there was no possibility of acquiring anything, certainly stability, or security, and that's what I was going to college for, she thought - for security. And I had to take really stock in myself and ask myself that question…what is security, for me. Is security money in the bank? Is security having a home that one is paying on? Is having a bank account… Is that security? Or is security getting up in the morning, and not counting the hours? And I decided, that for me, security was that. Getting up in the morning and not counting the hours and in the theater, there's a place where I did not count the hours - where you simply do the work, and you live off the doing of your work. You're in it, trying to accomplish it. And so, just after, I encountered Paul [Robeson], who was a factor in that decision, I decided to commit to the theater."

I've been thinking about this recently, particulary since I too had parents who drilled into me the notion that one had to 'put food on the table.' I remember from a documentary on Andy Warhol, one of his assistants saying that he too kept talking about having to go out and 'make the bacon', which may have something to do with the celebrity portraits he did during the 1980s which often graced the cover of Interview magazine. Your parents or someone is always worrying that, if you're an artist of some type, you're going to wind up starving in a garret somewhere, or out on the street.

"Get a real job," is something one hears all the time -- and it could be part of the reason why I do in fact have a 'real job' only tangentially related to writing. As someone pointed out to me a number of years ago, I am often like the persona in John Ashbery's "The Instruction Manual", which begins:

As I sit looking out of a window of the building
I wish I did not have to write the instruction manual on the uses of a new
metal.
I look down into the street and see people, each walking with an inner peace,
And envy them--they are so far away from me!
Not one of them has to worry about getting out this manual on schedule.
And, as my way is, I begin to dream, resting my elbows on the desk and leaning
out of the window a little,
Of dim Guadalajara! City of rose-colored flowers!
City I wanted most to see, and did not see, in Mexico!


I love Richards' comment about REAL security, and that place where one does not count the hours. So beautiful about being in your creative space, and so true. I also recently read this, from Julia "The Artist's Way" Cameron:'

Dear X,
I recieved your disheartening letter conveying the fact that your family was urging you again to "be sensible." I have never understood what was "sensible" about trying to ignore the things you love. What is it about being a declared artist that people find so threatening? I don't know. In any case, I am sorry for the pressure you are under and suggest you repeat to yourself the following: "If I give in, I will only feel more pressured, not less."

Ours is a pedestrian culture. We have no place in it for the "calling" to make art....There is honor to following your vocation...Beyond honor, there is also the matter of success. I think of that as "filling the form," as in "If the shoe fits, wear it." In other words, if you are called to be an artist, you may just be supposed to be one. And who is to say you will not be an successful one, even in worldly terms....

I do not think, for myself, that the money can be the only measure of success, although in America we are certainly clued to think of it as the foremost. I think there is something to be said for feeling that we are in our proper role, that the shoe fits, as I said before, and taht we can walk in our shoes without them pinching. I am friends with a writer, an estimable writer, who for eleven years cleaned houses and washed dishes to support his writing habit. That's a lot of dishes and a lot of dusting. But it was also many years when he went to the page a happy man. I will tell you something else about this man. He is comfortable in his own skin. He seems to be aging well, with a sense that his life has been well spent. That happiness and sense of right action must count for something.
(Letters to a Young Artist: Building a Life in Art by Julia Cameron)

And this brought me back to one of the most moving letters I have ever read, one that I loved so much I used to carry a copy of it around with me in my wallet. It's by poet Hart Crane, to his father, who had recently offered him a 'good job' working for the family business. Here's an excerpt:

To Clarence Arthur Crane
January 12, 1924

My dear Father:
...I don't want to use you as a makeshift when my principle ambition and life lies completly outside of business. I always have given the people I worked for my wages worth of service, but it would be a very different thing to come to one's father and simply feign an interest in fulfilling a confidence when one's mind and guts aren't driving in that direction at all. ...

You will perhaps be rightously a little bewildered at all these statements about my enthusiasm about my writing and my devotion to that career in life. It is true to date I have had very little to show as actual accomplishment in this field, but it is true on the other hand that I have had very very little time left over after the day's work to give to it nd I may have just as little time in the wide future to give to it, too. Be all that as it may, I have come to recognize that I am satisfied and spiritually healthy only when I am fulfilling myself in that direction. It is my natural one, and you will possibly admit that if it had been artificial or acquired, or a mere youthful whim it would have been cast off some time ago in favor of more profitable occupations from the standpoint of monetary returns. For I have been through some pretty trying situations, and, indeed, I am in just such a one again at the moment, with less than two dollars in my pocket and not definately located in any sort of a job.

However, I shall doubtless be able to turn my hand to something very humble and temporary as I have done before. I have many friends, some of whom will lend me small sums until I can repay them -- and some sort of job always turns up sooner or later. What pleases me is that so many distinguished people have liked my poems (seen in magazines and mss.) and feel that I am making a real contribution to American literature...If I am able to keep on my present development, strenuous as it is, you may live to see the name "Crane" stand for something where literature is talked about, not only in New York but in London and abroad.

You are a very busy man these days as I well appreciate from the details in your letter, and I have perhaps bored you with these explanatioins about myself, your sympathies engaged as they are...Nevertheless, as I've said before, I couldn't see any other way than to frankly tell you about myself and my interests so as not to leave any accidental afterthought in your mind that I had any "personal" reason for not working in the Crane Company. And in closing I would like to just ask you to think some time, -- try to imagine working for the pure love of simply making something beautiful, -- something that maybe can't be sold or used to help sell anything else, but that is simply a communication between man and man, a bond of understanding and human enlight[en]ment -- which is what a real work of art is. If you do that, then maybe you will see why I am not so foolish after all to have followed what seems sometimes only a faint star. I only ask to leave behind me something that the future may find valuable, and it takes a bit of sacrifice sometimes in order to give the thing that you know is in yourself and worth giving. I shall make every sacrifice toward this end.

Affectionately, your son

Acting Just So

This weekend I had the pleasure of being one of the judges for the national finals of NAACP's Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics (ACT-SO) competition, in Crystal City, Virginia. I've been a judge and assisted a few of the young people involved here in Baltimore, but this was the first time I'd been to the Nationals.

I confess to being somewhat less than enthusiastic about doing the local competition, because I'm not really a 'slam' or 'spoken word' person, and the majority of the work that gets submitted falls into that category. I worry that I might not be fair to the young people since it's 'not my style'. However, more often than not I do it, thanks to some discussions about this subject with other current and former poet-judges, and because I do know and enjoy the work of a number of spoken word artists. We all recognize the fact that, while yes the poem comes to life on stage, but its really not going to be strong if the craft isn't there beforehand on the page as well. As much as I moan and complain about having to get up early on a Saturday morning to do it, the talent and enthusiasm of the kids always energizes me the moment I get there. And the last time I judged, someone turned in a sonnet -- so much for stereotyping the Younger Generation!

I always wind up feeling a great deal more hopeful about that Younger Generation and the future of the country after doing the local event, and Nationals was no different, just on a larger scale. It was amazing to see a hotel filled with bright and highly talented black teenagers, buzzing with excitement and energy. Walking through the halls one had to be careful not to bump into someone leaping to the ceiling, practicing for the Dance competition, or interrupt young actors and actresses running lines with proud moms, dads, aunts or uncles looking on. The energy, drive, and sheer mindboggling ambition of these kids was extraordinary. Most of the young people I talked to were looking forward to pursuing double majors in college, and one young man aspired to both double majors and double minors. He made the rest of us 'old heads' seem like real slackers.

Some of the other judges included photographers Linda Day and Carl Clark, my friends and poets Kwame Alexander, and Linda Joy Burke, and others. I judged the Original Essay category, along with poet, filmmaker, and editor of the new anthology Growing Up Girl: An Anthology of Voices from Marginalized Spaces, Michelle Sewell. Before coming to Nationals and meeting the students we had to read and evaluate 48 essays, over a wide range of topics from African-American role models to quantum mechanics. In some ways, our talks with the students felt almost like mini-dissertation defenses: come in, discuss what you wrote and why you wrote it, try to win over the panel.

What is this thing called Essay?
Oddly enough, the question we asked just about every student also turned out to be the hardest for them to answer: What is an Essay? We could tell from our reading that surprisingly few knew what it was, and its form. In the Original Essay category we got short stories, speeches, memoirs, term and research papers, religious praise pieces, but very few actual essays. For most of the kids, they answered the question with 'TO ME, an essay...' and usually wound up by saying that it could be pretty much whatever kind of thing they wanted to write. A couple said "I don't like rules, so I broke them." At least they were being true to themselves and their definitions, or lack thereof, in the work.


Back to The Black Table
It was striking how many of the young people we saw were 'the only' or 'one of the few' black kids at predominantly white schools. Michelle and I were both curious about their experiences there, and whether, as Michelle said to one, the "MTV Generation" is really seeing beyond race and just accepting people as they are. THe sad report from the youngsters we spoke to is that this is not the case. Kids are facing some of the same kinds of comments, "jokes," and lack of understanding that people in my generation faced. One young man's paper was in fact about this very problem. While the media may appear to be more mulitcultural than in the past, it appears that old attitudes and mindsets die hard.

No Boyz Allowed?
Of the 48 entrants, only 12 were male. There were a number of other young men throughout the Nationals in other categories, but I hope the relatively small number of guys with essays does not mean that men aren't into writing.

Page vs Personality
One of the most striking things we noticed was the 'disconnect' between what the young people wrote and who they were and how they came across in person. Extremely bright, high energy, passionate kids would come in having written solid, fact filled, but ultimately slightly plodding papers. Why wasn't that drive and energy on the page? They could talk very eloquently and vibrantly about topics, be it the role of women in Afganistan, stem cell research, or affirmative action, but somehow they felt that when writing about it they had to be stiff, formal, and a bit pedantic. Time and again Michelle and I wished that the kids we talked to had put some part of their wonderful selves on the page. How are kids being taught writing these days? What are they taught?

What does the 'A' stand for?
Related to that, we were also somewhat suprised by the number of kids who proclaimed themselves to be in AP English whose work to our minds didn't seem to be at that level. I can think of only one paper I read from someone who said they were in AP seemed to show their work in that class to me, by the complexity of their sentence structure and some of the words they used. The others... pretty standard for basic English, okay, but Advanced Placement English? Whether it was a reflection on AP or the level of the 'regular' English class or not we weren't sure, but in either case, Michelle and I were ready to put the smack down on any number of teachers and school administrators by the end of the day.


It was a VERY full day for us. We saw our first young person at 9 am, and, after breaks for lunch and dinner, sent the last one off after midnight. The the energy, intelligence, drive, ambition, and sheer joy and exuberance coming off these kids kept us going throughout the day. And there were a number of truly wonderful surprises as well. Kids who wrote astonishing, moving and at times horrific stories about their growing up turned out to be some of the most sharp, polished and put together young people we'd ever met. They managed to (WARNING: Cliche Alert!) not only survive but thrive -- truly inspiring. Although they may not know what an essay is, we ran into some 'real writers' in our group, young people with great eyes for telling detail, color, who know how to pace their writing, and one young lady who had a near-professional ability with handling transitions in time (we strongly encouraged her to continue the mini-memoir she had turned into us, and Michelle wishes she'd had her piece for the Growing Up Girl anthology, it was that fantastic).

We met a future political speechwriter (either that or he's the next Bill Clinton -- and a future Hillary was there as well), budding Opera and classical music composers (which really excited me:), future neurosurgeons, doctors, physicists, and psychologists, mathematicians and 17-year-old entreprenures with their own brochures. One bright but somewhat shy young man sadly didn't realize he also has a natural, very amusing, dry wit. Another we wished we could connect with a third entrant's parents to give him a bit more focus. One paper had us crying out for an editor to take just one quick pass at it, since it was this shy of being something really special. In another case, we were sorry to hear an entrant say she had changed the name of her work at someone else's suggestion because the title we thought would be the 'better fit' for it was in fact the one she originally had.

It was a great couple of days, and almost heartbreakingly inspiring. These are the kids one wants to introduce to counter the stereotypes about 'troubled black youth', or to answer concerns about 'the future of young people in this country'. If these kids are a snapshot of what's really going on out there, and if adults don't mess them up, overall I think we'll be fine.

Just keep them away from AP English!

Vive le (true) France

Fans wave flags in front of a giant jersey of the French team which hangs on the front of the Hotel Crillon in Paris, Monday July 10, 2006. France was stricken and shamed by Zinedine Zidane's brutal exit from soccer's biggest stage, yet the nation's president proudly embraced the favorite son, and masses of fans appeared to forgive the national hero who carried his team to the World Cup final, even if they didn't bring home the trophy. (AP Photo/Michel Euler) (http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com)


As if playing in the World Cup final wasn’t pressure enough...(f)or France, there’s the spectre of Jean Marie Le Pen, the leader of the extreme right-wing National Front and candidate for the presidency, who complained that the French national team, with its 16 nonwhite players, didn’t resemble French society as a whole. “Perhaps the coach exaggerated the proportion of colored players,” he told L’Equipe. “The French don’t feel totally represented, which explains why the crowds are not as supportive as eight years ago.”
http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2006/07/world-cup-open-thread_09.html




"What can I say about Monsieur Le Pen? Clearly, he is unaware that there are Frenchmen who are black, Frenchmen who are white, Frenchmen who are brown. I think that reflects particularly badly on a man who has aspirations to be president of France but yet clearly doesn’t know anything about French history or society.

"That’s pretty serious. He’s the type of person who’d turn on the television and see the American basketball team and wonder: 'Hold on, there are black people playing for America? What’s going on?'

"When we take to the field, we do so as Frenchmen. All of us. When people were celebrating our win, they were celebrating us as Frenchmen, not black men or white men. It doesn’t matter if we’re black or not, because we’re French. I’ve just got one thing to say to Jean Marie Le Pen. The French team are all very, very proud to be French. If he’s got a problem with us, that’s down to him but we are proud to represent this country. So Vive la France, but the true France. Not the France that he wants."

(http://football.guardian.co.uk/worldcup2006/story/0,,1809453,00.html)


French defender Lilian Thuram






(...and Merci John)

Poem: Is English Your First Language?

I just realized that, although I've been meaning to post poems here, I've been very bad about doing so. To remedy that, I thought I'd put up this one, which appeared in Issue #48 of Washington DC's grand annual literary cornicopia Gargoyle. Many thanks to Richard Peabody and everyone at the journal, and those who were at the launch reading in DC, (where The Other Half took this photo of your less-than-regular Blogger on stage)





Is English Your First Language?

Try evasion, ellipsis, and regret.
Or silence, unabridged, volumes spoken
with a whisper, encyclopedic furtive glances
in an echoing house dressed and lit for Scenes
of Childhood, the ever changing lines rewritten
every night. Improvisation: American family breakfast – action!

Primers on mind- and palm-reading the most helpful
dictionaries for translating the fading Braille of a hard
sentence across the butt, or face. Code- and willow-
switching learns you good: English is a conditional tongue:
only adults can misuse it, curse, or lie.

When outside the house say ___

Outside the family say ___

When white folks are around, say nothing.

Inside Cave Canem

Unlike Las Vegas, what happens at the Cave Canem: Black Poetry Workshop/Retreat doesn't stay at Cave Canem (well, SOME things -- like lousy drafts of poems -- do stay there but not everything...) People those of us who have been through the three year program always find it difficult to explain to people what the big deal is: the excitement of being part of a large, diverse group of black poets, the all nighters you pull in order to produce a poem every day for a week, the strong sense of connection you feel with others who've been through it. Call it Poetry Boot Camp, or the 'Black Breadloaf,' there's something special that happens when you bring a group of talented African-American writers together that's almost impossible to describe.

But now someone's attempting to do just that. Tyehimba Jess is now blogging from this year's retreat on Dog Bytes, recording the sights and sounds of the week. In addition to being an amazing poet (you do have his award-winning book, Leadbelly, don't you?), performer, and the first person I met at my first year at the retreat, he also has great blog experience from doing one of the Poetry Foundation's Journal's earlier this year. A sharp observer and an entertaining writer, his account of the week is the next best thing to being there.