Dancin' Dancin' Dancin'!

The aspect of 'civilization' that is most hostile to festivity is not capitalism or industrialism - both of which are fairly recent innovations - but social hierarchy, which is far more ancient. When one class, or ethnic group or gender, rules over a population of subordinates, it comes to fear the empowering rituals of the subordinates as a threat to civil order...Ecstatic rituals still build group cohesion, but when they build it among subordinates - peasants, slaves, women, colonized people - the elite calls out the troops.

Barbara Ehrenreich -- Dancing in the Streets

I purposefully took a copy of writer Barbara Ehrenreich's new book, Dancing in the Streets, along when The Other Half and I went on a recent visit to Chicago, because I knew I would see its subject in action. In addition to catching up with friends and visiting a city we enjoy but had not visited in at least five years, the Other Half and I also went to attend the festivities surrounding the International Mr. Leather contest(Link NSFW) in general, and the Old School Dance hosted by the black leathermen’s group, Onyx, on Saturday night in particular.

Subtitled "A History of Collective Joy," Eherenreich’s book, looks at how Western cultures at first enjoyed large group celebrations, and their eventual suppression by forces both religious and economic. Although we see some outbursts of this kind of thing from time to time -- Carnival for example, especially in Brazil (and pre-Katrina New Orleans) and Junkanoo in The Bahamas -- it is a rare thing for those of us in the ‘civilized world’ to let our hair down and dance, frolic, play, with two or three hundred, or a thousand strangers, who by the force of the revels suddenly turn into our closest friends.

This Eherenreich feels is a shame, and possibly psychologically damaging. She notes the interesting correlation between the ‘birth of melancholy’ (what we now call depression) in Europe and the end of the feast days, saints days, and other group rituals brought on by various puritanical sects during the Reformation and afterwards. Now it seems that only at sporting events, football in the US, soccer (football) in the UK and elsewhere around the world, or large rock concerts, does that same level of group ecstasy reappear. And even in the world of sports, where collective actions both bad (‘Hooliganism’) and banal (remember The Wave?) have sprung up organically, with the rise in ticket prices and the continued rise in ticket prices ($25 - $65 for our woe-filled Orioles, unless you want to sit in the nosebleed section) and introduction pricey sky boxes geared more for corporate schmoozing than for watching a game, this outlet too appears to be endangered.

(Oddly enough, not long after coming back, I woke up to the sound of my partner watching clips of the tribute to Freddy Mercury on You-Tube. Watching a stadium filled with fans screaming and clapping in unison to “Find me somebody to love” – now that’s ecstasy.)

I’ve experienced such bursts of collective joy a number of times, and usually on a dance floor, surrounded by happy party goers, heartbeat taken over by the driving pulse of a wicked bass line. The only times I regularly see glimpses of Dr. King's 'Beloved Community' is on a dance floor.

Although Eherenrich makes only passing mention of it, gay men have developed a series of events of group ecstasy (in more ways than one), the much maligned Circuit Party. Although I’m not a White Party in Miami kind of guy, I have been to Montreal's amazing festival, DiversCite, where thousands of people gather around four stages erected in the streets at the edge of the city's "Gay Village" to dance and bounce to a range of musics.

While not an official ‘circuit party’ IML it does boast one of the grand dances of the year, the annual Onyx Men of Color Old School Dance Party on Saturday night. Dark, crowded, loud -- glorious -- it is always one of the highlights of the weekend, and M and I have a great time. Mid-way through the party we were surrounded by a room full of men (and some women) in various forms of (un) dress or costume/drag/fetish gear dancing, cheering, and pumping their fists in the air as the DJ spun a sampled Dr Martin Luther King Jrs. "I have a Dream" speech into a dance mix set to a throbbing house beat. ‘Free at last, free at last’ he said, as we chanted along, hands in the air, filled with what can only be woefully described as pure joy.

Did things get a touch...Excessive? Sure. All our friends ask us for salacious details from the event when we returned. A grin and the phrase, "What happens at IML stays at IML," is our standard response....We did see a couple of people that were far too high – one seemed to have his engines racing all weekend, so it was hard to tell whether he was naturally hyper or medically enhanced. One couple ran afoul of Palmer House hotel security, and, we believe, were escorted off the premises, as rumors of their having sex on the outdoor fire escape swirled around them. At least one ‘how much can you **** in one weekend?’ porn film was rumored to be filmed during the event. The gay porn industry also held an awards event during the same weekend, so various ‘stars’ were to be seen everywhere from dance floors to breakfast spots. And why is it that it’s never the people you want to see exposing themselves who invariably are wearing the least? But overall, the event was a model of, well, joy, and friendliness, along with more than a little playful erotic showing out. Backs were rubbed, butts were grabbed, nipples were pinched -- and these were just ways strangers would say 'hello' to each other....

The weekend (and Ehrenreich) also reinforced something that appears in David Nimmons' The Soul Beneath the Skin: The Unseen Hearts and Habits of Gay Men -- how amazing it is for thousands of men to gather and there be no fights, no shootings, and no violence. With all the alcohol (and drugs) available and flowing, with all the pumped up gym boys (did someone say steroids...I mean ‘supplements?’) if this were a straight crowd there would have been some kind of shoving, pushing, punching going on (sorry hetero friends, but you know it’s true). Shade was thrown, not punches. All acts involving fists were consensual. An old joke but perhaps true: gay men it seems really would rather F*** than fight.

And this is something we do all the time: as we were dancing with the leather boys in Chicago, Washington DC hosted its annual black gay pride, and there was a similar event in San Juan that same weekend. No one seems to notice or even mention when thousands of (gay, bi, lesbian, and transgendered) people of color gather peacefully. A few (usually straight, I'm sorry to say) black knuckelheads run amok, however, and it's a national emergency.

Have we perhaps hit on something? An ‘escape valve’ for our selves and our culture? I’m not sure: the LGBTQ community has a lot of problems, and Nimmons himself admits to glossing over the problem of drug use in his discussion of The Circuit. However I noted with interest that the protesters surrounding the recent G8 Summit ended their work with a free outdoor rock concert and dancing. And this Saturday 7.07.07, the Live Earth concerts hope to raise awareness surrounding issues of global warming and the environment. I always did like the quote attributed to 19th and early 20th Century anarchist Emma Goldman, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to join your revolution.”

Memorial Day 2007

Remembering, with particular thoughts of the men and women now buried in Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetary



Facing It
from Dien Cai Dau by Yusef Komunyakaa


My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't,
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way--the stone lets me go.
I turn that way--I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.




A clip from composer William Grant Still's In Memoriam: The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy

RFK Redux

Many thanks to the usually poetry-oriented Great American Pinup Blog for bringing this speech back. Would that we could bring Bobby back as well

Robert Kennedy from a speech delivered to the Cleveland City Club on April 5, 1968 one day after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated...


Mr Chairmen, Ladies And Gentlemen

This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.

Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lost their cause and pay the costs."

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.

I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

You call yourself ...what?

I think I have come not to a certain wisdom but perhaps to a certain sense. I think of myself as a writer. What does being a writer mean to me? It means simply being true to my imagination. When I write something, I think of it not as being factually true (mere fact is a web of circumstances and accidents), but as being true to something deeper. When I write a story, I write it because somehow I believe in it - not as one believe in mere history, but rather as one believes in a dream or in an idea.

Jorge Luis Borges, "A Poet's Creed" from This Craft of Verse.





I recently had the pleasure of teaching a workshop at Coppin State University, and one of the students in the class asked me a question. I answered it, but I’m not entirely sure I gave her quite the response she was looking for. The young lady’s question was:

“What makes you a poet?”

Now, this is what I think she meant (and the question I did not answer then): I think she meant, how come our teacher has brought YOU in here and said, “HE is a poet?” Is it because you have a book? Because you’ve been published in journals? By virtue of going to workshops? Winning awards and recognition from teachers and academics? How come you get to call yourself a poet?

I partially answered this question by saying I tend NOT to call myself a poet, although I do write poetry. If pressed, I call myself a writer, because I write in a number of genres, and also because ‘Poet’ does function for me as a kind of title, as something that one gets bestowed upon them (although I’m not entirely sure who would do this form of anointing or granting of knighthood/ ‘poet-hood’).

There are a number of people, particularly but not exclusively, on the spoken word circuit that call themselves poets, or have ‘Da Poet’ in their stage names. Teens and young adults fill notebooks with writing and rhymes, and consider themselves poets. Kinko’s, desktop publishing software, and on-line printing services has enabled anyone to put out a book or chapbook, enabling the world to consider themselves poets.

I suppose part of what separates the wheat from the chaff as it were is consistency, determination, stick-to-it-tive-ness, moxie, and doing the work, actually writing, and being serious about your work (if not necessarily about yourself) that allows you to self-declare. Having the work published in different venues, awards and accolades, mention by instructors may be considered the outward signs of that seriousness, the attention you pay to your craft, to the art. But I think all of us who write know of others whose work we admire who have difficulty getting published or the recognition they deserve. Yet we consider them fellow poets.

The answer I gave, which, as I said I’m not sure satisfied my young interlocutor, was that being a poet is as much a mindset as anything else. If prose writers love sentences, or the paragraph, poets love words. The texture of certain words, what happens when they are placed next to other words – even what happens if you reverse the order of how those words are placed together – these are the things that excite me into poetry. Since I do write in different forms, it a poem occurs as opposed to an idea for a story or article, depending on the aura of the event, image, or phrase that I encounter. Some images to me declare themselves immediately to be poems, others as stories, still others as something that demands further exploration and explication. And yes, there are others that could ignite the desire to use all these modes to explore them.

Poetry is something that happens internally, something that has occurred on a particular rung of the DNA ladder, that moves someone to cast specific words into lines across a page. Poetry is as much a way of seeing the world, a mindset that causes you to have certain visions of the universe and how to express those visions to others, as it is a matter of what someone calls you, how many awards you win, how many teachers bring you into their classrooms to stand in front of their students and declaim, and assist them in their own explorations.

I ended by quoting something Harryette Mullen said when asked to define poetry (and reminded the students that she meant this in all its connotations): “Poetry is words playing with each other.”

...or are you just glad to see me?

In honor of New York's 'Poem in Your Pocket Day' today, a poem by Pulitzer Prize Winner Natasha Trethewey, from her book Native Guard











South

Homo sapiens is the only species to suffer psychological exile. -- E. O. Wilson


I returned to a stand of pines,
bone-thin phalanx

flanking the roadside, tangle
of understory - a dialectic of dark

and light - and magnolias blossoming
like afterthought: each flower

a surrender, white flags draped
among the branches. I returned

to land's end, the swath of coast
clear cut and buried in sand:

mangrove, live oak, gulfweed
razed and replaced by thin palms -

palmettos - symbols of victory
or defiance, over and over

marking this vanquished land. I returned
to a field of cotton, hallowed ground -

as slave legend goes -- each boll
holding the ghosts of generations:

those who measured their days
by the heft of sacks and lengths

of rows, whose sweat flecked the cotton plants
still sewn into our clothes.

I returned to a country battlefield
where colored troops fought and died -

Port Hudson where their black bodies swelled
and blackened beneath the sun - unburied

until earth's green sheet pulled over them,
unmarked by any headstones.

Where the roads, buildings, and monuments
are named to honor the Confederacy,

where that old flag still hangs, I return
to Mississippi, state that made a crime

of me - mulatto, half-breed - native
in my native land, this place they'll bury me.

Native Guard:
Poems by Natasha Trethewey

Exits and Returns

One of the things I learned, the easiest of lessons, was that the better you do your job, often going against conventional mores, the less popular you are likely to be. (So, if you seek popularity, this is probably not the profession for you.) . . . .

There are a few things I would like to pass on to you as I come near to the end of my career.

One: It's not about fame. By and large, the more famous you are, the less of a journalist you are. Besides, fame does not last. At its best, it is about being paid to learn. For fifty years, I have been paid to go out and ask questions. What a great privilege to be a free reporter in a free society, to be someone whose job is a search for knowledge. What a rare chance to grow as a person. . . .


Nor for that matter, is it about prizes or awards, although these are very nice...Rather, the richness of the profession – and it has been an uncommonly rich life for me – has been in the wonderful collegial friendships I have, many from those Civil Rights and Vietnam Days, right through to the present, the friendship of so many people who care passionately about what kind of a country we are.

When I was young, I wanted to be a witness to important events. That’s one of the reasons I went to the South in the beginning. What I got was a great ticket to sit in on history, far better than I could ever have imagined, and above all, a life where I was never bored...

I want to leave you today with one bit of advice: never, never, never, let them intimidate you. People are always going to try in all kinds of ways. Sheriffs, generals, presidents of universities, presidents of countries, secretaries of defense. Don't let them do it. . . .

Never let them intimidate you. Never. If someone tries, do me a favor and work just a little harder on your story. Do two or three more interviews. Make your story a little better.

David Halberstam, Speech to the Columbia School of Journalism, 18 May 2005:


Again, the bitter sweeness of life: Days after the death of the great journalist David Halberstam, Bill Moyers returned to PBS with the resurrection of Bill Moyer's Journal.

The first show was like a bucket of cold water thrown in the face of those 'Beltway Guys,' the entrenched Washington press corps, delving into how they all seemed to miss the falsehoods and evasions of President Bush's justifications for war in Iraq (the video of the show, "Buying the War," and a transcript are on line). The show pointed out how, in the wake of 9/11, the press like the rest of the nation fell into almost blind patriotism and did not look deeply into the claims the administration was making about Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Later, most reporters seemed content to buy what the White House was selling, without questioning the sources or checking facts. Some -- particularly CNN -- seemed more afraid of being called non-patriotic by (and losing ratings points to) Fox News than they were interested in doing basics of reportage. It was a sad, but illuminating, report, and one I hope journalism schools make all their students watch.

My partner and I are ardent Moyers fans, starting back with his glorious talks with Joseph Campbel, through his time on Now, and the recent 'On Faith and Reason' episodes. So we're in Televised heaven right now, and looking forward to his next reports.




In memoriam, I close with some sharp, on target comments by David Halberstam on the state of the press today from Glenn Greenwald's blog on Salon.com

Those to whom the most is given, the executives of our three networks, have steadily moved away from their greatest responsibilities, which is using their news departments to tell the American people complicated truths, not only about their own country, but about the world around us. . . .

What I think is happening is something extremely serious,nothing less than a change in the value system in a very important part of the news business.

At the core of the old value system was a belief on the part of the men and women who worked in journalism that this was an uncommonly privileged life, that we did not do this for the money -- almost all of us could have made a great deal more money in some other field, but we were uncommonly privileged, free men and free women working for a free press in a free society, beneficiaries of exalted constitutional freedoms, willing, if need be on occasion, to report to the nation things which it did not necessarily want to hear.

What has changed is not the talent and idealism and passion of the journalists out there, but the value system which governs the way they work, and finally what gets in the paper or on the air. . . .

A number of things stand out in the change of values which has come about in the last decade or so. Because of its growing power and influence and because of the ever-greater competition, not just network against network, but network against cable show, the television executive producers have redefined what constitutes news -- often going for stories that television likes to cover, stories which are telegenic, because they have action or are sexy or are tabloid- or scandal-driven.

We have morphed in the larger culture from a somewhat Calvinist society to an entertainment society, and that is reflected in the new norms of television journalism -- where the greatest sin is not to be wrong but to be boring. Because boring means low ratings. And so altogether too many people at the top in the television newsrooms have accepted the new, frillier dictates of the men and women above them in the corporations.

But the quantum change had come with the coming of cable, and the fierce new competition generated by cable news shows, which were primarily about sex, scandal and celebrity. Or celebrity, sex and scandal. Soon, we began to see a willingness on the part of the networks -- their own audience fragmenting, their ratings down -- to embrace, particularly in their magazines, these tabloid values as their own....

Television's gatekeepers, at a time when a fragmenting audience threatens the singular profits of the past, stopped being gatekeepers and began to look the other way on moral and ethical and journalistic issues. Less and less did they accept the old-fashioned charge for what they owed the country.

The viewpoint seemed to be -- from their testing and polling -- that the American people did not want to know what was going on, so why bother them with unwanted facts too soon? So, if we look at the media today, we ought to be aware not just of what we are getting, but what we are not getting; the difference between what is authentic and what is inauthentic in contemporary American life and in the world, with a warning that in this celebrity culture, the forces of the inauthentic are becoming more powerful all the time.

Poetry Month: Wish List & Must-Read Favorites

Picked up the first half of this idea from Dr Peter Pereira's Blog; the second, complimentary listing I thought up on my own, based on books I read last year. Feel free to 'Tag' yourself and list your 'I gotta get that/You gotta read this' pairings as well.


Five poetry collections you may not have read but certainly must: The collections, for whatever reason, should be a bit off the beaten path.(...deliberately leaving out books by friends/people I know I've yet to get to)

As Elected: Selected Writing by Bp Nichol (Talonbooks)

The Black Reeds by Mark McMorris (University of Georgia Press)

Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved by Gregory Orr (Copper Canyon Press)

Killarnoe by Sonnet L'abbe (McClelland & Stewart)


Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry, edited by David Trinidad, Denise Duhamel, and Maureen Seaton (Soft Skull Press) -- Idiot that I am, I saw it but didn't buy it at AWP (and it was at a discount even!)



Five poetry collections you have read and think others certainly should read also: The collections, for whatever reason, should be a bit off the beaten path. (...again, leaving out great books by friends/people I know)

Acts of Love by Edgar Gabriel Silex (Curbstone Press)

The Heat Yesterday by Ian Iqbal Rashid (Coach House Press)

Immanent Visitor: Selected Poems Of Jaime Saenz, Forrest Gander and Kent Johnson, translators (University of California Press)

The Shine Poems by Calvin Forbes (University of Louisiana Press)

The Steam Sequence by Carly Sachs (Washington Writers Publishing House)


Rave Faves -- I'm pretty sure I'm going to be living with these two for a long time:

Every Goodbye Ain't Gone: An Anthology of Innovative Poetry by African Americans, edited by Aldon Lynn Nielsen and Lauri Ramey (University Alabama Press)


Open Field: 30 Contemporary Canadian Poets, edited by Sina Queyras (Persea Books)


Happy Reading!

Poem: "Ay ay ay de la grifa negra" by Julia de Burgos

Today's Poetry Month poem is from one of Puerto Rico's greatest poets, Julia de Burgos




Ay ay ay de la grifa negra

Ay ay ay, que soy grifa y pura negra;
grifería en mi pelo, cafrería en mis labios;
y mi chata nariz mozambiquea.


Negra de intacto tinte, lloro y río
la vibración de ser estatua negra;
de ser trozo de noche,
en que mis blancos dientes relampaguean;
y ser negro bejuco
que a lo negro se enreda
y comba el negro nido
en que el cuervo se acuesta.
Negro trozo de negro en que me esculpo,
ay ay ay, que mi estatua es toda negra.


Dícenme que mi abuelo fue el esclavo
por quien el amo dio treinta monedas.
Ay ay ay, que el esclavo fue mi abuelo
es mi pena, es mi pena.
Si hubiera sido el amo,
sería mi vergüenza;
que en los hombres, igual que en las naciones,
si el ser el siervo es no tener derechos,
el ser el amo es no tener conciencia.


Ay ay ay, los pecados del rey blanco
lávelos en perdón la reina negra.
Ay ay ay, que la raza se me fuga
y hacia la raza blanca zumba y vuela
hundirse en su agua clara;
tal vez si la blanca se ensombrará en la negra.


Ay ay ay, que mi negra raza huye
y con la blanca corre a ser trigueña;
¡a ser la del futuro,
fraternidad de América!


Cry of the Kinky Haired Girl

Ay, ay, ay, I am black, pure black;
kinky hair and Kafir lips;
and a flat Mozambican nose.

A jet black woman, I cry and I laugh
at the thrill of being a black statue;
of being a piece of the night, where
my white teeth flash like lightning;
and being a black whip
that is twistes on blackness
to shape the black nest
where the crow lies.
Black piece of blackness where I carve myself
ay, ay, ay, for my statue is all black.

My grandfather was the slave they say
the master bought for thirty pieces of silver.
Ay, ay, ay, my grandfather was the slave
that's my pain, that's my pain.
Had he been the slave master
that would have been my shame;
for among men and among nations,
if the slave has no rights,
the master has no conscience.

Ay, ay, ay, the sins of the white King,
let the black Queen wash them in forgiveness.
Ay, ay, ay, my black race is slipping away
with a buzz toward the white race it flies
to sink in its clear waters;
or perhaps the white race will grow dark in the black.

Ay, ay, ay, my black race is slipping away
running with the white race to become brown;
to become the race of the future,
fraternity of America!


Julia de Burgos, "Ay ay ay de la grifa negra," tr. by Claudette Williams from Daughters of the Diaspora: Afra-Hispanic Writers, edited by Miriam DeCosta-Willis (Ian Randle Publishers, 2003)

We are all Virginia Tech

Nikki Giovanni at the VT Memorial Convocation, 4/17/07

We are Virginia Tech.

We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.

We are Virginia Tech.

We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.

We are Virginia Tech.

We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.

We are Virginia Tech.

The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong, and brave, and innocent, and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imaginations and the possibilities. We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness.

We are the Hokies.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We are Virginia Tech.


Addenda 1 (To bring it back home): 76 people have been murdered in the City of Baltimore as of Tuesday March 15, 2007

Addenda 2 (To talk about what some have called the '800 pound gorilla in the room Nikki didn't have to mention, thanks to the presence of George W Bush in Blacksburg'): Tim Grieve of Salon.com's "War Room" notes this:

From Blacksburg to Baghdad

We know that Baghdad, Iraq, is a long way from Blacksburg, Va., and we don't mean to take anything away from the tragedy that struck this week at Virginia Tech. But still, we've got to ask: How much airtime will the networks commit -- how many convocations will George W. Bush attend -- to honor the lives of the 178 people who were killed in bombings in Iraq's capital today?

Pulitzer Prize Poetry and Music

As a counter to this week's horrific news (my thoughts and prayers are with family, faculty, staff and students at Virginia Tech) and last week's I-mess: Art and good news.



Poet Natasha Trethewey becomes only the 4th African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry (joining Gwendolyn Brooks for Annie Allen (1950); Rita Dove for Thomas and Beulah (1987); and Yusef Komunyakaa for Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems (1994)), for her collection Native Guard. I read the book last year, and it's delicious(Another African-American woman, Cynthia Tucker of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, also won this year's prize for Commentary). Last May, she appeared on PBS' NewsHour, returning to post-Katrina Gulfport, Mississippi, to reflect and read some of her work.


As a long time jazz fan, I'm especially overjoyed to learn that John Coltrane received a *LONG OVERDUE* "posthumous special citation" (as did SF writer Isaac Asimov for his writing, a 'gateway drug' to the world of science writing and Science Fiction for many people, myself included).

Free Jazz giant Ornette Coleman won this year's music Pulitzer for "Sound Grammar," his first recording in 10 years, and the debut release on his own label of the same name -- a recording which I just bought last week (I particularly adore the version of "Sleep Talking" from the 1979 "Of Human Feelings" recording that's on here)

Guess I got that 'Pulitzer mojo workin' baby'...now to try it with the Lotto!


For a number of years, thanks to posts on blogs by Alex Ross and Greg Sandow, I've followed some of the grumbling by 'Classical' composers over the loosening up of the music category, an attempt to make up for their previous woeful ignoring of jazz and other forms of popular music -- started in part by complaints about the prize from the amazing composer (and past Pulitzer winner) John Adams (pictured at left) for ignoring "most of the country's greatest musical minds." Kudos to the highly respected and successful Adams for raising a ruckus -- but then what do you expect from someone with his own MySpace page?

The Pulitzer Board now accepts recordings, no longer requiring artists to send in scores of their music, although that it still 'encouraged.' (Sandow finds that 'encouragement' problematic, thinks it still means "We prefer Classical", and that perhaps they should just come out and say the prize is FOR Classical music and be done with it).

Not all composers were with John Adams. John Harbison for example let loose with this, "If you were to impose a comparable standard on fiction [comparable, that is, to the standard the Pulitzer board now mandates for music] you would be soliciting entries from the authors of airport novels."

Which to my ear is just this side of an up-market variation on Don Imus' recent empty-headed comments - particularly when most of us recognize that it would probably be a jazz musician that would likely wind up winning the prize (and look what happened -- "Ornette on Pulitzer!")


Justin Davidson on Ross' blog also provides an interesting note on Coleman's win -- no one nominated him!

"As jurors huddled for a weekend in March to go through the hundred-plus scores and recordings, someone noticed that despite the official desire for submissions in jazz, film music and other genres, Coleman's latest CD, "Sound Grammar," wasn't in the pile. [J]uror John Rockwell sent someone out to scare up a copy...."


Of course, it's not just in music where the Pulitzer Board has stubbed it's toe, as The Village Voices' Gary Giddens notes:


"Laughing Boy beat The Sound and the Fury and A Farewell to Arms; Years of Grace beat As I Lay Dying, The Maltese Falcon, and Flowering Judas; Now in November beat Tender Is the Night and Appointment in Samarra; and the board could find no worthy fiction at all in the years For Whom the Bell Tolls, Native Son, The Hamlet, The Adventures of Augie March, V, Idiots First, Losing Battles, and Gravity's Rainbow were eligible."

There was no 1974 Fiction award due to a disagreement between the Fiction Jury and the overall Prize Board: Gravity's Rainbow, which the jurors had chosen, but some members of the Board found obscene. This echoes how the music jurors were overruled in 1965 when they wanted to give the prize to Duke Ellington for his body of work and got overruled by the Board, pointing out that the award was supposed to go to a single work (as Giddens points out, they didn't correct their error by awarding it to Duke (and Billy Strayhorn) for the magnificent 'single work', 'The Far East Suite,' the following year).

No review of the Pulitzer would be complete without noting William H. Gass' gleeful demolition of the Fiction category and why writers should give the award a pass, Prizes, Surprises and Consolation Prizes" (called "Pulitzer, the People's Prizes" in his collection Finding a Form).


"...the Pulitzer Prize in fiction takes dead aim at mediocrity and almost never misses; the prize is simply not given to work of the first rank, rarely even to the second; and if you believed yourself to be a writer of that eminence, you are now assured of being over the hill - not a sturdy mountain flower but a little wilted lily of the valley."





Personally, I find something like Sweden's Polar Music Prize to be much more to my liking. Call it "The Odd Couple" award if you want (winners include Steve Reich and Sonny Rollins in 2007; Valery Gergiev and Led Zeppelin in 2006; Gilberto Gil and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in 2005; B. B. King and György Ligeti in '04...Dizzy Gillespie (left) and Witold Lutoslawski (pictured at right) in 1993!)



To my mind, this more accurately reflects the overall notion of 'excellence in music' than awards in just one category (and the winners list also looks a lot like my own music collection). And if they got the winners to play on the same stage...talk about one heck of a concert!

Au Revoir Phebus

Phebus Etienne at Gladys Knight and Ron Winan's Chicken and Waffles, Atlanta GA (photo courtesy of January Gill O'Neil)

I received the shocking news today that friend and poet Phebus Etienne passed on March 31, 2007, at the age of 41. I'm stunned, and feel a deep emptiness...I honestly can NOT believe that she's gone...

A fellow Cave Canem poet, her work appeared in a number of anthologies, including Making Callaloo: 25 Years of Black Literature, and her manuscript, Chainstiching, was finalist for the 2005 Tupelo Press poetry contest and semi-finalist for the 2006 Beatrice Hawley Award from Alice James Books.

None of this tells you about how glorious a person she was, the beautiful music of her soft voice, or how equally beautiful and strong her talent was. Warm, friendly, honest, and *human* in a way that so many of us aren't, I loved her smile, I loved her hugs, I loved and love her still.

Six of her poems can be found here on the Second Avenue Poetry website.

A clip of Phebus reading "Long Walk Home" at the Cave Canem Fellows Reading, Spellman College, Atlanta, Georgia, Friday March 2, 2007, from Amanda Johnston's Blog

The poem below, title poem from her manuscript, is from the anthology, The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States, edited by Edwidge Danticat


Chainstitching

After I buried my mother, I would see her often,
standing at the foot of my bed
in a handmade nightgown she trimmed with lace
whenever I was restless with fever or menstrual cramps.
I was not afraid, and if her appearance was a delusion,
it only confirmed my heritage.
Haitians always have relationships with the dead.
Each Sabbath, I lit a candle that burned for seven days.
I created an altar on the top shelf of an old television cart.
It was decorated with her Bible, a copy of The Three Musketeers,
freesia, delphinium or lilies if they were in season.
My offering of her favorite things didn’t conjure
conversations with her spirit as I had hoped.
But there was a dream or two where she was happy,
garnets dangling from her ears,
and one night she shuffled some papers,
which could have been history of my difficult luck
because she said, “We have to do something about this.”

She hasn’t visited me for months.
I worry that my life is an insult to her memory,
that she looks in and turns away
because I didn’t remain a virgin until I married,
because my debts will remain unforgiven.

Lightning tattoos the elms as florists make
corsages to honor living mothers.
I think of going to mass at St. Anne, where she was startled
by the fire of wine when she received her first communion.
But I remember that first Mother’s Day without her,
how it pissed me off to watch a seventy year-old daughter
escort her mom to sip from the chalice.

Yesterday, as the rain fell warm on the azaleas,
I planted creeping phlox on my mother’s grace,
urging the miniature flowers to bloom larger next year
like the velvet petals of bougainvillea that covered our neighbor’s gate.
I crave a yard to plant lemon and mango trees as she did.
Tonight I mold dumplings for pumpkin stew,
add a dash of vinegar for spice as she taught me,
sprinkle my palms with flour before rolling the dough between them.
I will thread my needle and embroider a coconut tree on a place mat,
keep stitching her presence in my life.

Phebus Etienne


Blogging Poets and Writers remember Phebus:

John Keene

Jan(uary Gill) O'Neil

Tayari Jones

Oliver de la Paz

Mendi Lewis Obadike

Tara Betts



UPDATE:


The following arrangements have been made for Phebus:

Wake: Friday, April 13, 4-9 pm, with a service by Father Francis Gargani at 7:30 pm; Andrew Torregrossa & Sons Funeral Home, 2265 Flatbush Avenue (Between Filmore Avenue & Avenue R), Brooklyn, NY, 718.253.5900.

Funeral Mass: Saturday, April 14, 9:15 am ; Saint Gregory the Great Church, Saint Johns Place & Brooklyn Avenue, Brooklyn, NY, 718.773.0100.

Internment: Rosedale & Rosehill Cemetary, 355 East Linden Avenue, Linden, NJ 07036, 908.862.4990.

National Poetry Month: Theme and Variations

I know
I know...
long time -
no Blog

sorry
the weather has been
so warm and clear.

I will try
to do better
soon


In the meantime, and in honor of Poetry Month, two poems by one of my all-time favorites, Dr. William Carlos Williams, M.D. of Patterson, New Jersey -- with variations on them.


This Is Just to Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold


Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams
by Kenneth Koch

1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.

2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!



The Red Wheelbarrow
by William Carlos Williams


so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.





The Red Cadillac
by Reginald O'Hare Gibson


Willie “Slick” Williams reads William Carlos Williams, then writes a letter to the producers of the TV makeover show Pimp My Ride, explaining why his car should be featured on the program.

so much depends
upon

a red cadillac
slick

with turtle
wax

beside the white
chicks

A Poetic Quest

Once again, I feel very honored to be in the company of a group of amazing writers (many of whom I've admired for a long time) in the current issue of MiPOesias Magazine, Quest, guest edited by the wonderful writer Evie Shockley (her a half-red sea is a poetic must have, btw). As an extra bonus, you get to hear many of the poets (myself included -- thanks Brian!) reading their work as well. Here's the line up:

Tara Betts, Derrick Weston Brown, Christian Campbell, L. Teresa Church,
Kyle Dargan,
Camille Dungy,
Cherryl Floyd-Miller,
Tonya Foster,
Aracelis Girmay,
C.S. Giscombe,
Duriel Harris,
Reginald Harris,
kim d. hunter,
Geoffrey Jacques,
Brandon D. Johnson,
A. Van Jordan,
Doug Kearney,
Raina León,
Carl Martin,
Lenard D. Moore,
Opal Moore,
Thylias Moss,
Marilyn Nelson, Mendi Lewis Obadike, G. E. Patterson, Meghan Punschke, Ed Roberson, Reginald Shepherd, giovanni singleton, Chris Stackhouse, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Treasure Williams, and Tyrone Williams

What Evie has done here, in part, strikes my eye and ear as a continuation of the work done at the Marjorie Cook Conference on Diversity in African American Poetry held at Miami University in September 2003, and collected in the (also must have) anthology Rainbow Darkness: an attempt to expand our notion of what we talk about when we talk about 'black poetry'. As she says in her editor's note to the issue, "i’ve gathered samples of the outrageous, the deep-blue, the needle-tipped, and the butter, the kinds of work i know and love, created by daring, caring, wayfaring poets."

We as a community contain multitudes, and we as individual writers often explore a variety of styles and modes as well. Thanks, Evie, for this chance to show another side to our work and ourselves.

(FYI: the lovely collage -- Wanderlust Wonderland -- is by poet/artist Krista Franklin)

On Art and Life

It's been one of my pleasures to know the visual artist Morgan Monceaux for a number of years, and last year even took a Mental Health 'art day' off from work for the unveiling of his work at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. His portraits of figures from history (US Presidents and First Ladies, jazz musicians and singers, figures from the Black West, etc) often have found elements and text added onto the paintings.

For example, his Ray Charles (right, in the Portrait Gallery collection) uses popsicle sticks to represent the piano and microphone. The sunglasses Ray wears and the buttons on his coat Morgan found on the street. A short bio of Ray surrounds the figure. The more you look at one of Morgan's paintings, the fuller, denser and more complex they become.

A recent profile in the Baltimore Sun details some of the monumental issues he has been dealing with both in his work and his life. It's an excellent and all too rare portrait of a vital, working African American artist.

I been particularly honored to have been able to see some of his recent work, his series on African American opera 'Divas' from conception to completion. This is a perfect subject for him, by the way, since the artist can be a bit of a 'diva' himself! Visiting him in his home (also childhood home of "Mr. Hi-de-ho" Cab Calloway -- there must be something special about that house!) and seeing his 'Madame Butterfly' (below) develop over a number of weeks was astonishing. As usual, the reproduction does not do justice to the glorious burst of colors that vibrate off the canvas (the gold of the tatami mat, the kimonos, the cherry blossoms in the background...). One evening, I watched as a pencil-drawn line was painted, then transformed into a door frame, and layer after layer of paint was applied to create just the right shade of red for the doors themselves, as Puccini's music surrounded us.



While I may be a writer, I admit to having little understanding of the creative process, particularly in other art forms. I can't carry a tune in a shopping cart, so singers amaze me. Me, draw a straight line, a circle, anything? Forget about it...so artists astound me. To my mind, Morgan has to be some kind of alchemist, wizard, Maji, something, in order to be able to do what he does. His work has certainly kept him alive and active while going through difficult trials (HIV, cancer, the break up of a long-term relationship) that would have felled a lesser person. A remarkable man, and a remarkable artist.

Tim Gives Gays a Hardaway to go

Today, I was reminded of something I heard my parents and older relatives say when I was growing up. They'd remark that they actually preferred the hard line segregation and open racism of the pre-Civil Rights South to the quiet, subtle, subversive racism of the North. "At least down there, you know how people feel about you," they'd say. "You KNOW they don't like you. In the North, folks might smile at you and seem to be nice, but in their heart of hearts still hate your guts."

So in some ways I'm greatful to Tim Hardaway for his recent "I hate gays" comment. At least he's being honest and we know exactly where he stands. As long as everyone who feels the way Hardaway does keeps it hidden, there will never be any opportunities for dialog, learning, or possibilities for change. (To it's credit, the NBA has removed Hardaway from any future league-related events.)

As a gay person, I also know that Hardaway's not alone -- there are a lot of people who feel the same way he does, for whatever reason. As John Amaechi said, responding to Hardaway, "These are the comments that create the atmosphere that allow some of the tragic incidents of homophobia that we've seen. This is what makes the lives of gay and lesbian young people in schools miserable. It's what stops gay and lesbian people in the workplace from coming out as well as the fact they can be fined in 33 states for being gay."

Hardaway's comment gives people an idea of some of the things many of us have to go through every day, and why it is so difficult for people to 'come out' (I also think people who hold such strong views have some internal issues to deal with as well...but maybe that's just me....). And it's a rebuke to at least one sports commentator I read who said John Amaechi's revelation was 'no big deal' -- and an example of why he waited until he retired to be open about his personal life. Actually, I'm more surprised at the people expressing surprise over his comment -- but then we are in an age when people are supposed to 'come correct' when in front of the cameras.

And at least Hardaway wasn't threatening Amaechi's life, as apparently some have done via e-mail.

I'm sure at some point we'll hear that Tim has gone into 'gay-hab' like "Grey's Anatomy" star Isiah Washington. But to me, it would be better and possibly more helpful for him (and all of us) if some of the former teammates of the man who said, "I wouldn't want him on my team...if he was on my team, I would, you know, really distance myself from him because, uh, I don't think that's right. And you know I don't think he should be in the locker room while we're in the locker room," would quietly come to him and say, "Hey, brothaman...guess what?"

My Dinner with....

One of my favorite movies is My Dinner with Andre, Louis Malle's intellectual talkfest with Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, discussing life, art, and fauns (among other things) over a meal in an elegant New York City restaurant, while being served by a waiter who looks like he's seen and heard it all. I first saw the movie in college, and it had a powerful effect on me and my friends because many of the insights and comments made in the film were things we had also talked about and 'discovered' for ourselves (What can I say? I fell among Jungians in school....), and it helped to make my friends and I feel a little less strange in the wilds of Virginia. I've seen the movie many times since, and even have an underlined/highlighed copy of the screenplay on my shelves at home.

Last night, I was part of another, different discussion over dinner. I've been a long-time participant in the SHARE (Study to Help the AIDS Research Effort) project, a program that follows a group of men (HIV +, HIV- and those who have seroconverted) over time, keeping track of behaviors and physical and emotional changes. It is a reseach study, so some of the contributions SHARE has made may not be considered too glamorous to non-scientists, but much of the information garnered from us has lead to changes in treatment guidelines, and we also have an impact on various past and ongoing clinical trials.

Yesterday, a small group of study participants gathered for a focus group session, to talk about risk, sexual behavior, intimacy, "The Down Low," and a host of other issues. It was a thrilling and fascinating conversation -- as well as being an extremely rare event: eight black men sitting in a room talking openly and honestly about their lives, and what goes on in our community. (The Study decided, in order to avoid cultural or language misunderstandings, it would be best for the focus groups to be same-race). Most of us were middle aged (I believe the youngest man in the room was in his late 20s, the oldest in his 50's), and ranged across class, economic status, skin-color and hair (from dreads to bald/receeding) lines, as well as all those other 'markers' as well ('butch/straight-acting' and 'queens'; 'tops', 'bottoms', 'versatile/switch', extroverted and shy, silly and serious, etc). One black male faciliator did his best to guide and keep track of our wide ranging conversations, and two female doctors (one black, one Indian) observed and asked a few questions as well, and also provided medical facts when needed to keep us from passing on any false information.

None of us knew each other very well, if we had met at all, and no names were used until the end of the discussion to aid in the open flow of information. By the end of two hours, however, I think we all felt that we knew each other fairly well -- and we all hated for the eveing to be over, wishing the conversation could have gone on longer.

Men seldom talk about themselves and their lives with each other (or anyone) without a lot of posturing and member-measuring involved. Black men in particular seem to almost never share their feelings with each other. Gay/bi/MSM guys almost never get to meet in a place that does not have some 'I'm here to pick someone up' component to it. And few if any of us are willing to open up without alcohol being somewhere nearby to help 'loosen the tongue.' So this was an unusal night, and amazing and moving opportunity for us to eat, relax, talk, and be honest with ourselves and each other.

It's odd how you can miss something you've never had before. As I mentioned many of us would have loved to keep going, or to have a chance to come back and talk some more next week about other issues. The late and much lamented (by me, at least) Louie's Bookstore Cafe tried something like this once -- signing a random group of people up to get together to discuss a particular topic, with limited success. And the Washington Post did the same with a group of gay men for their Being A Black Man series. I'd love to see someone try something similar in communities around the country, bringing men together just to talk and share parts of their lives, focusing on different topics. I think there's an ache inside us as men, as African Americans, as LGBT people -- as humans -- and a lonliness that longs to reach out and have a warm, valuable, intimate, sharing experience with others; to listen to and to be listened to by someone else. To realize both your uniqueness and also how similar you and your experiences are with those of other men. It was a great evening last night, and I'd love to do it again sometime with another group of people. Maybe even at my place one day, over dinner.

Black Gay History Month for the NBA

Too much has been happening here in the past month for me to do much blogging, but I did want to sneak in a brief post to say....




Bravo! for former Orlando Magic and Utah Jazz center John Amaechi, the first pro basketball player to 'come out' as a gay man. It is also something of an event since he is half Nigerian, and that country recently considered passing a set of truly draconian laws against homosexuality (and their Anglican Bishop, Peter Akinola, is one of the driving forces behind the growing schism in the church over ordination of openly gay priests and other 'modern' changes)

Perhaps more importantly, bravo to him for being a model fomer sportsman, with impressive philanthropic credentials in England, founding the ABC Foundation to increase young people's participation in sports, and for building the Amaechi Basketball Centre in Manchester. He's someone putting himself, and his time and money where his heart lies.

I've also been impressed in the main by many of the reactions to his revelation by current players and coaches. My own personal favorite is this one, from Toronto Raptors coach Sam Mitchell. He also makes a comment about 'tolerance' that I find particularly apt for February, and all the other months of the year:

Mitchell was asked whether he believes tolerance increases with age.

"It shouldn't be about tolerance, it should be about respect, treating people as human beings," said Mitchell. "I don't like the word tolerance. Are you supposed to tolerate me because I'm black, or are people supposed to treat me with respect because I'm a human being?"

Exactly!

Voices Rising

It's difficult to express how humbled and honored I feel to be part of this new anthology. The work of New York's Other Countries writers laid the foundation for so much of what has happened in our literary community for the past 20 years. Their previous anthologies remain touchstones for me, and examples of the range and quality of the work of black gay writers. Being part of their new collection, 'rubbing pages' with the fantastic fellow contributors....it's a dream come true.

From the Redbone Press website:

Voices Rising: Celebrating 20 Years of Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Writing marks the twentieth anniversary of Other Countries—a small organization endeavoring to create a powerful, far-reaching, deliberate legacy of black queer expression. Voices Rising gathers more than sixty writers whose work forms an important bridge among members of black LGBT communities, charting two decades of evolution, accomplishment and struggle. The poems, short stories, essays, interviews and dramatic excerpts gathered here exemplify the personal, political and cultural complexities of identity, desire, family and community. In these pages established authors appear alongside emerging talents and heretofore unknown artists to compelling, historic effect. No other anthology so effectively represents the depth, breadth and brilliance of the current generation of black lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender writers.

For those in the New York area this weekend, the men of Other Countries have organizes a book launch for this Saturday, January 20, 2007, at South Oxford Space (138 S. Oxford Street) Ft. Greene, Brooklyn (Call 917-364-1491 for more info). Staceyann Chin, Alexis DeVeaux, editor G. Winston James, Bil Wright (one of the best readers you're ever likely to hear).....and that's just the appetizer. You know you should be there!

'007 News, Good and Bad

Positive spin:
Quranic Brothers: Keith Ellison and Thomas Jefferson


House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., left, administers the House oath to Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., during a re-enactment swearing-in ceremony, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 4, 2007. Ellison's wife Kim holds Thomas Jefferson's Quran which was provided by the Library of Congress. (AP Photo/Lawrence Jackson)


Not to be left out, Maryland will welcome it's own Muslim Representative to the State House soon, Greenbelt software engineer Saqib Ali

By the way, apparently while nobody noticed, two Buddhists were elected to the US House as well, Reps. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and Hank Johnson of (D-GA). Wonder if they were sworn in while holding copies of the Four Noble Truths?

No wonder (so-called) "Christians" are nervous -- the infamous "THEY/THEM" are obviously 'taking over!'

And while we're talking Islam, here's a holiday/New Year's message from Black Gay Muslim leader Imam Daayiee Abdullah: 'Perhaps if the leaders of the religious right had the true Christmas spirit in their hearts, they would avoid insulting friends and fellow citizens with their insistence on public dogmatism, and spread some peace on earth and good will to all people')












And now the Bad News:

George W sings, "Wait a minute Mr Postman" in yet another not-even-close-to-legal "Signing Statement"

How many more rights can this administration take away, deliberately mis-reading or ignoring the law, before it's stopped? This one seems particularly egregous to me, and brings us one more step closer to a day when the Government can invade our privacy with impunity. "Illegal immigrants" don't have the right to privacy via the US Mails? The FBI and others can read the letters of "possible terrorists?" Add this to the ongoing warrentless wiretapping controversy, and the end of habeas corpus the pattern of disregard for privacy on display by Bush and his minions would be obvious to a deaf mute. But where's the outrage? Why is no one in the streets? Perhaps they're on the phone to the new Congress, and maybe Nancy P can make stopping this part of the 100 Hours.


And in ongoing negative news:
Baltimore's first murder victim of the year was 17 year old Leon Nelson. How many more young Black men (and women) are we going to lose to violence? Again, where's the outrage?

A Chicago House Party Shooting at the 'hood's "Gay House"

I have a Chi-town contact with a little 'inside info' about this (which I suspect some will use to discredit the victims). I may be able to discuss as more becomes public about this. For now, I'll say once again I'm dissapointed by the lack of outrage or action (so far) from many black and white and black gay 'activists' over this.




Let us all try to make 2007 the year when our communities recognize that all our lives are important and worth saving.