Callaloo Anniversary Readings (One)

UPDATE: Reading Podcast now available from the Pratt Library Website


A great weekend of readings and panels here in Baltimore surrounding the 30th Anniversary Celebration for the African-American literary journal Callaloo. It was a wonderful Old Home weekend of reunions with folks, some of whom I haven't seen in years and years (Big UP! Christian!) for me as well.

The Pratt was fortunate enough to play host to a reading by three powerhouse poets, Carl Phillips, Natasha Trethewey, and Yusef Komunyakaa Friday night. The rain was heavy, and downtown traffic next to impossible, so we got off to a late start, but otherwise it was an amazing night. Carl read some of my own favorites of his work from his Quiver of Arrows collection (Thanks!), Natasha read from the Pulitzer Prize Winning Native Guard, and Yusef mainly read new work, including an amazing "Requiem" for New Orleans. Some of the finest and most highly respected living poets (and please note: not 'black poets' not even 'American poets,' but finest poets on the planet/global/"universal" ), it was an extraordinary thing to hear them reading together from the same stage.

(Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths)

Here are three poems read by the readers on October 19th, to give you a little flavor of the program. (Podcast of the program pending)



As from a Quiver of Arrows

What do we do with the body, do we
burn it, do we set it in dirt or in
stone, do we wrap it in balm, honey,
oil, and the gauze and tip it onto
and trust it to a raft and to water?

What will happen to the memory of his
body, if one of us doesn't hurry now
and write it down fast? Will it be
salt or late light that it melts like?
Floss, rubber gloves, a chewed cap

to a pen elsewhere - how are we to
regard his effects, do we throw them
or use them away, do we say they are
relics and so treat them like relics?
Does his soiled linen count? If so,

would we be wrong then, to wash it?
There are no instructions whether it
should go to where are those with no
linen, or whether by night we should
memorially wear it ourselves, by day

reflect upon it folded, shelved, empty.
Here, on the floor behind his bed is
a bent photo - why? Were the two of
them lovers? Does it mean, where we
found it, that he forgot it or lost it

or intended it for safekeeping? Should we
attempt to make contact? What if this
other man too is dead? Or alive, but
doesn't want to remember, is human?
Is it okay to be human, and fall away

from obliation and memory, if we forget,
and can't sometimes help it and sometimes
it is all that we want? How long, in
dawns or new cocks, does that take?
What if it is rest and nothing else that

we want? Is it a findable thing, small?
In what hole is it hidden? Is it, maybe,
a country? Will a guide be required who
will say to us how? Doe we fly? Do we
swim? What will I do now, with my hands?
-- Carl Phillips



Incident

We tell the story every year—
how we peered from the windows, shades drawn—
though nothing really happened,
the charred grass now green again.

We peered from the windows, shades drawn,
at the cross trussed like a Christmas tree,
the charred grass still green. Then
we darkened our rooms, lit the hurricane lamps.

At the cross trussed like a Christmas tree,
a few men gathered, white as angels in their gowns.
We darkened our rooms and lit hurricane lamps,
the wicks trembling in their fonts of oil.

It seemed the angels had gathered,
white men in their gowns.
When they were done, they left quietly.
No one came.
The wicks trembled all night in their fonts of oil;
by morning the flames had all dimmed.

When they were done, the men left quietly.
No one came.
Nothing really happened.
By morning all the flames had dimmed.
We tell the story every year.

-- Natasha Trethewey




from Autobiography of My Alter Ego

I did what I did. To see
friends turn into ghosts
among the reeds, to do
deeds that packed the heart
with brine and saltpeter
was to sing like a bone
for dust. All the questions
were backed up
inside my brain. Questions
I didn’t know I had -
as if I had stopped
at the bloody breach -
the stopgap between
animal and human being.
I did what I did.
I called the Vietnamese
gooks and dinks
so I could kill them. But one night
I had to bash in the skull
of a dying GI.
I was the squad leader,
but I didn’t order
PFC MacHenry to do
what I couldn’t do.
Or Private Ortega.
I used the butt
of my MI6
& stars bled on the grass.
Was the soldier black?
Was he white?
I can only say
I did what I did
because he sounded like a pigeon
tied to a hunter’s stool,
cooing with eyes sewn shut.


-- Yusef Komunyakaa

Fall Verse

I've not posted poems here for a while, and so to correct that:

I'm always impressed when 'non-poets' recite poems from memory (I'm also impressed when POETS recite from memory as well, particularly when they're doing one that they themselves didn't write). Here's the poem that Garrison Keillor closed his recent library appearance with, "A Blessing" by his former teacher, James Wright

A Blessing

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.



This poem appears in Keillor's collection Good Poems, an anthology which former US Poet Laureate and frequent Prairie Home Companion guest Rita Dove objected to, on the grounds that so few black poets appeared in the selection

For those readers who might have missed it... let me point out that in Keillor's entire book, all two hundred and ninety-four poems of it, I could find only three Black poets—all of them dead, no less, and the one woman actually a blues singer. Now, I may be missing someone—poems can be blessedly color-blind—but by any standard, this is an abysmal percentage. (Nor is there a Hispanic or Asian-American or Native American presence to speak of.) In his foreword, Keillor claims to have merely collected poems America—real America, good America!— wants to read; one can only conclude that his America never reads work by living African-American poets...

Although her comments were not meant to rail against her own absence from the volume, it is with interest that I note that in his followup book, Good Poems for Hard Times, Keillor or the editors included this Dove poem from the Writer's Almanac:

Dawn Revisited

Imagine you wake up
with a second chance: The blue jay
hawks his pretty wares
and the oak still stands, spreading
glorious shade. If you don't look back,

the future never happens.
How good to rise in sunlight,
in the prodigal smell of biscuits—
eggs and sausage on the grill.
The whole sky is yours

to write on, blown open
to a blank page. Come on,
shake a leg! You'll never know
who's down there, frying those eggs,
if you don't get up and see.


My admittedly quick survey of the contents of that volume, however, seems to indicate that she is the only black poet in that collection. The more things change...???

Full Disclosure note: I 'sampled' (with proper credit, of course!) a few lines from "Dawn Revisited" for a poem of my own, On The Road (for James Byrd), that appears in the Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South anthology. And no, I'm no where near big-headed enough to include my own work in the same post with Dove and Wright!

Foot in Mouth Disease (Nobelist Edition)

UPDATE (10/25/07): James D. Watson, the eminent biologist who ignited an uproar last week with remarks about the intelligence of people of African descent, retired today as chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island and from its board.

Since I mentioned this in a recent post, I feel moved to post Dr Watson's retraction. Sadly, perhaps, his "illness" has caused the cancellation of further stops on the Good Doctor's tour

PS: although I've done fairly well on them, I tend to agree with the late, great Stephen Jay Gould's belief in Mismeasure of Man that IQ tests are a form of 'scientific' sexism and white supremacist racism...


NYTimes October 19, 2007

Nobel Winner Issues Apology for Comments About Blacks

By CORNELIA DEAN

James D. Watson, who shared the 1962 Nobel prize for deciphering the double-helix of DNA, apologized “unreservedly” yesterday for comments reported this week suggesting that black people, over all, are not as intelligent as whites.

In an interview published Sunday in The Times of London, Dr. Watson is quoted as saying that while “there are many people of color who are very talented,” he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa.”

“All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.

In a statement given to The Associated Press yesterday, Dr. Watson said, “I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said. There is no scientific basis for such a belief.”

But his publicist, Kate Farquhar-Thomson, would not say whether Dr. Watson believed he had been misquoted. “You have the statement,” she said. “That’s it, I am afraid.”

Late yesterday, the board of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research institution in New York, issued a statement saying it was suspending the administrative responsibilities of Dr. Watson as chancellor “pending further deliberation.”

On Wednesday, Bruce Stillman, president of the laboratory, had issued a statement saying the laboratory’s trustees, administration and faculty “vehemently disagree” with the sentiments of Dr. Watson, who has served as director and president of the laboratory, whose school of biological sciences is named for him.

Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor study plant and animal genetics, cancer and other diseases. Dr. Stillman said they did not “engage in any research that could even form the basis of the statements attributed to Dr. Watson.”

Dr. Watson is in England to promote his new book, “Avoid Boring People: Lessons From a Life in Science” (Knopf). In a statement, Paul Bogaards, a spokesman for Knopf, said only that it was “understandable that his comments have caused upset throughout the world.”

There is wide agreement among researchers on intelligence that genetic inheritance influences mental acuity, but there is also wide agreement that life experiences, even in the womb, exert a powerful influence on brain structure. Further, there is wide disagreement about what intelligence consists of and how — or even if — it can be measured in the abstract.

For example, in “The Mismeasure of Man,” Stephen Jay Gould, the evolutionary biologist, dismissed “the I.Q. industry” as little more than an effort by men of European descent to maintain their prominence in the world.

Nevertheless, Dr. Watson, 79, is hardly the first eminent researcher to assert that inherited characteristics like skin color are correlated to intelligence and that people of African descent fall short. For example, William B. Shockley, a Nobel laureate for his work with transistors, in later life developed ideas of eugenics based on the supposed intellectual inferiority of blacks.

His ideas were greeted with scorn, and Dr. Watson is encountering a similar reaction. According to the BBC, the Science Museum of London canceled a speech Dr. Watson was to have given there today, saying that much as it supports robust discussion of controversial ideas, Dr. Watson’s assertions on race and intelligence are “beyond the point of acceptable debate.”

Henry Kelly, president of the Federation of American Scientists, a private group that works to bring science to policy making, said it was “tragic that one of the icons of modern science has cast such dishonor on the profession.”



How did scientists decide that intelligence was unipolar and quantifiable, and why did the standard keep changing over time? (Stephen Jay) Gould's answer is clear and simple: power maintains itself. European men of the 19th century, even before Darwin, saw themselves as the pinnacle of creation and sought to prove this assertion through hard measurement. When one measure was found to place members of some "inferior" group such as women or Southeast Asians over the supposedly rightful champions, it would be discarded and replaced with a new, more comfortable measure. The 20th-century obsession with numbers led to the institutionalization of IQ testing and subsequent assignment to work (and rewards) commensurate with the score, shown by Gould to be not simply misguided -- for surely intelligence is multifactorial -- but also regressive, creating a feedback loop rewarding the rich and powerful.... -- Rob Lightner on The Mismeasure of Man

"When you speak of this in future years, and you will...

...be kind."

A fond farewell to Deborah Kerr. My favorites of her films include the stunningly beautiful Black Narcissus, the urbane romantic masterpiece An Affair to Remember, verbose late-Tennessee Williams Night of the Iguana, "Turn of the Screw" adaptation The Innocents -- and of course the "Walk Like A Man" movie, Tea and Sympathy, where the title quote comes from. A remarkably subtle film actress (its all about the look on her face, what she does with her eyes) no one could express sexual and emotional repression like Kerr. The Washington Post, NYTimes, and LATimes remember.


In other news:

Can you revoke a Nobel? DNA co-discoverer James Watson says whites are smarter than Africans (Scroll down the article for Watson on the relationship between skin color and sex drive, and how it would be okay to abort potential homosexuals). FYI: He, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins have been under the microscope in recent years over how much of the credit for DNA should also have gone to colleague Rosalind Franklin. Did the boys want to keep things to themselves?

We told you so! Study shows Feminists have more fun in bed.

And speaking of movies -- Tyler Perry, Box Office King.

Some have wondered if this will lead Hollywood to make more films for black audiences. He certainly knows his audience well, and the casting of Janet Jackson and Jill Scott helped to bring in their fans (and, although few will admit this, black gay men -- for whom 'Miss Janet' is a "Diva" in the way that Madonna is one for white gay men -- have been circulating shirtless photos of hard-bodied actor Michael Jai White from the film that somehow managed to 'leak out' in the weeks leading up to its release as well, so some of that first weekend money is from us!)

I'm less than optimistic about the future of black films however. I've seen it before (as well as the 'boom' in Latino/Hispanic films that was supposed to occur after the success of La Bamba -- remember that?) I'm sure we'll see more from Perry (particularly if he stars in it -- note the numbers in the Lions Gate article linked to his name above), but I suspect, sadly, that it will continue to be a hard sell to get anything beyond silly comedies and interracial buddy movies made. "Fluke" tends to be a favorite word of the Powers That Be, whether in film or in books. Confusion reigns when minorities flock to a film or rush out to buy a novel. Who knew 'they' would be interested? How do we repeat that success? Gee I don't know.....dumb stares all around.

Do you think that maybe there'd be less confusion if more people of color were in the boardrooms and decision making centers of these industries? Just a thought....

What Becomes a Legend Most

The Baltimore Book Festival was held at the end of September here, around our Washington Monument. Events like these are always mixed blessings. One gets to see a number of 'big names' (Nikki Giovanni was here, for example, as was Zane sitting in the Strebor Books booth, along with some ab-tastics who looked like they stepped out of one of her book's pages. And unlike the young lady mentioned in this article, I didn't scream for Clifford the Big Red Dog, but did have a giggle-fit on seeing one of Maurice Sendak's Wild Things wandering around, much to the confusion of The Other Half).

But the Festival can also be very difficult, not only for visitors with so many different programs going on at the same time, but also for small press and self-published authors, or someone who does not have a 'name' (Baltimore City has also put most of its book eggs into the Book Fest basket, making little to no room for things literary at other events, like the annual summer fest, Artscape). Sitting in a booth or walking around for three days, enticing people to purchase or even look at your book....it's tough. But what can I say? It's hard out here for a...n author! These are the dues one pays on the road to becoming an Overnight Success.

The festival was also a chance for many of us in the Maryland Literary Community to pay respects to one of the hardest working women in our number, the late Barbara Simon. She taught at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (and elsewhere), was president of the Maryland State Poetry & Literary Society, and was involved in a wide variety of literary and writing-related projects in this area: Poet’s Ink, Attic, the 3rd Sunday Reading Series at Minas Gallery, the Baltimore Book Festival, and the Maryland State Arts Council Arts in Education and Poetry OutLoud programs. She along with Rosemary Klein was also half of 3 Conditions Press, and published my book, and others.

She had so much time for other people, and other's work, that she never got around to pulling together a collection of her own work. Fortunately Rosemary and others including MiMi Zannino, Alan Reese, Dan Cuddy, Leslie Miller, and Karen Elliott, worked to change that, and debuted the collection The Woman from Away at the Book Festival on Saturday.



The biggest draw of the weekend by far, however, turned out to be Tim Gunn of Project Runway and TG's Guide to Style fame. The crowd of people there to see him was IN-credible, and the line waiting for him to autograph his book snaked down the street. Word is that the bookseller sold out of copies of his book while Gunn was still talking, and had to go back to the bookstore for a couple more boxes -- and then sold all of those as well!

Tim Gunn talked and answered questions, signed for over an hour and a half and got to everyone's book, posed for pictures, and was smiling and as gracious and dapper the entire afternoon. And it's true: the man apparently does not sweat and is a model celebrity (unlike, say, someone else who appeared at the festival, speaking to the audience for only about two minutes before saying, "If you want to talk to me more, buy my book!"). Unflappable and stylish, Gunn makes everything look easy.

More recently Mr. Lake Woebegone, Garrison Keillor, came to the library for a program launching his new book, Pontoon. Rumpled but stylish (his red sneakers with white striped matched the trademark white shirt and red tie he wore with his dark blue suit -- Tim would approve I'm sure), he'd done a Prairie Home Companion show here the night before, and we had a good deal of publicity thanks to our connection with the local NPR station, WYPR, and the place was packed with somewhere between 550 to 600 people. We've had similarly large crowds here before -- most recently for Terry McMillan, John Hope Franklin, M. L. King biographer Taylor Branch, and Chris "Pursuit of Happyness" Gardner (and let's not even talk about the mass hysteria that occurred when Dexter King was here!) so it wasn't completely unusual. But it is still astounding to see so many people show up for a person who still considers himself a writer and storyteller.

So: do we all need a radio program or a reality show to 'make it big'? McMillan famously sold books out of the back of her car going from city to city hitting beauty parlors to small book groups. Mr. Franklin has been toiling in the field of History for longer than I've been alive. Tim Gunn was at Parsons for over 20 years, and Garrison Keillor talked about how he started by filling in at a small radio station as well as how slight and unassuming Prairie Home was when it began. Most of us won't luck out and be
Soulja Boy and Crank That on Youtube: It usually takes a long time -- and a lot of hard work -- to become an "Overnight Sensation."

UPDATE: Listen to a podcast of Keillor's presentation from the Pratt Library website

The Perfect (Nobel) response

"I can't say I'm overwhelmed with surprise. I'm 88 years old and they can't give the Nobel to someone who's dead, so I think they were probably thinking they'd probably better give it to me now before I've popped off." -- Doris Lessing

(thanks for the heads up Tayari!)


Congratulations also to Al Gore, Nobel Peace Prize Winner! An Oscar, the Nobel...who needs the White House? Prediction, 2009: Al Gore wins Tony Award for "Global Warming on Broadway"....

Cherchez la Femme

Congratulations to Doris Lessing, this year's Nobel Laureate. The always unpredictable Academy pulled another fast one on me, picking someone who's been "On The List" of the deserving for so long, I'd forgotten her! She was one of the women who were founders of the notion of the "Personal as Political", so Brava to her! I also vividly remember how she came under attack for her Canopus in Argos: Archives series of novels. How DARE a 'major writer' write Science Fiction with creatures from other galaxies commenting on situations here on Earth! And then Philip Glass turned two of the novels (The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 and The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five) into Operas -- Shocking....

(And am I the only one who hears just slightest of nods to the current world situation in the fact that, although British, Lessing was born in Persia -- a country we now call Iran?)

The choice of Lessing fits in well with something I wanted to comment on anyway: how seldom it seems we view women as 'major writers'. Even I didn't have that many on my Possible Nobel list, only short story wizard Alice Munro and (speaking of the personal/political connection) poet-novelist Margaret Atwood (another possible Canadian winner would be poet Anne Carson, but the Academy has been noticeably poet-phobic of late). Young as they are both Edwidge Danticat and Zadie Smith are (or should be) just one or two solid books away from Shortlist status, with Britain's "Ali Sisters" (that's the non-related Ali Smith and Monica Ali) perhaps right behind them.

Britain's Orange Prize was organized to redress the lack of consideration women authors tend to get from the other majors. This year's winner was the wonderfully talented Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (photo at right) for Half of a Yellow Sun.

All this is very strange (dare I use the "M" word, misogyny?), particularly since there may not be a publishing industry without women. Even the Queen herself, Oprah, hasn't picked a book written by a woman in some time (Tayari Jones makes an interesting comment on the Catch-22 involved in that. Don't forget, when she started choosing books, even if they were written by men, the titles were considered "Women's Books" -- sometimes you really Can't Win....). Fortunately, some male writers 'get it' and speak about the importance of women writers to their own work.

But women's voices are disappearing elsewhere too. In the most outrageous news of this ilk, a movie studio head declares he doesn't want to make movies with women in the leading role anymore.

Even though it has been faulted, perhaps Susan Faludi is onto something with her new book The Terror Dream. At this post 9/11 "Macho" point in our history, when the woman running for president has to 'prove how tough she is', no one wants to hear from the 'weaker sex'. However, we ignore their voices at our peril.


"Women's rights is part of a larger story - about human rights, the declining engagement in public life," a force, Faludi says, that "stops people from not just being consumers, but citizens."

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year?

If it's Fall (according to the calendar, if not the thermometer), then it must be Awards Season. This year's MacArthur "Geniuses" have been chosen (particular congratulations to Chicago Favorite Stuart Dybek, the gloriously-voiced Dawn Upshaw, and artist Whitfield Lovell, who gets the joy of placing his 2007 award next to that of his partner, 1999 recipient Fred Wilson.

Nominations for the OTHER NBA (i.e. the National Book Award) will be announced later this week (October 10), as will the British Man Booker Prize (October 16)

The National Book Critics Circle on the Season (be sure to check the end of the last paragraph on how timing is everything in publishing for the Big Shots). The NBCC awards usually get announced in January

Jamaican Novelist Marlon James' take on the Nobel

Place your bets! British Bookmakers publish the Nobel Prize Odds

My friend John and I usually do the Nobel shortlist thing. He's posted his take for the year. I've been calling out Philip Roth for a number of years now, and suspect (unless the Swedes just can NOT bring themselves to award an American with The National Cowboy in the White House) that he's the man to beat this year. As always however, there are folks who I would like to see win, that is writers who I think are very deserving of the award, and those who are more likely to win. As with everything in life, these are often not the same people.

If there were any justice, astonishing writers like Jay Wright, Wilson Harris (John's favorite), or Thomas Pynchon should have one a long time ago (after Mason & Dixon would have been a great time for the mysterious Mr Pynchon, and Mr Wright has a new book out now). Salman Rushdie has been on a lot of short lists for a while, as has Chinese poet Bei Dao, and will most likely win one day. I feel the same way about Spanish author (and blogger)Javier Marías. And John Ashbery seems to have gotten every prize BUT the Big Gold One. It's also astonishing to me that neither Juan Goytisolo nor Milan Kundera haven't been Nobel-ed (Some people think they have!). And if there were such a thing as a posthumous Nobel, I suspect it would go to W G Sebald, who the lit crit types were chomping at the bit to honor during his much too short writing life.

My 'shortlist' for this year would have to be Roth, Canadians Alice Munro (who says she's retired from writing) and Margaret Atwood, Adonis (Adunis) and Mahmoud Darwish (how about a political double header with either of these two and A. B. Yehoshua or David Grossman?), Nuruddin Farah or the Father of the Modern African Novel, Chinua Achebe (again, is he another one the Academy has forgotten they didn't give the prize to?), Haruki Murakami, and perennial nominee Thomas Transtromer (who probably doesn't win because the Swedes don't want to look like they're playing favorites by picking one of their own). Those looking for something to read this fall and winter should consider taking a look at the work of these authors.

BTW: Here's my choice for any and every possible prize: Junot Diaz's astoundingly fantastic Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. And if I really wanted to go out on a limb, I'd predict an all-Hispanola sweep of fiction and non-fiction categories, with Diaz's novel paired with Edwidge Danticat's wrenching Brother, I'm Dying. Run out and buy them now!

Oh for more time for reading!

Quote: Michael Palmer

As Octavio Paz notes, the poem is alive only when the reader opens the book; until then it is nothing, it is waiting in the dark. The poem then is not some self-contained, isolated, self-sufficient object, but something that comes to be in a site that is social, contingent, and indeterminate. It captures and reconfigures time, but it remains at time's mercy, as we all do. Yet, supreme paradox, it also outlasts. As the great Chuvash poet Gennady Aygi once wrote in Stalinism's shadow, "Drive [poetry] out the door, it comes back through the window." That elusive thing, poetic truth, outlasts the demagogues, corrosive misrule, and the lies of power. Certainly today, with the values of our republic and our constitution under siege from within, with a regime bringing shame upon this nation and its people and untold death and destruction to our young and to countless others, and to the Earth itself, it is essential to continue to propose an alternative space and an alternative conversation, many conversations in fact, free to circulate in that space and celebrate otherness and difference and free to insist upon the crucial importance of the artistic imagination in its eternal resistance to the given and the inhuman. Such conversations or exchanges take place "between innner and outer worlds," in Wallace Stevens' words, "never certain, never fixed."

Michael Palmer, from "Time's Mercy" (Acceptance speech on recieving the 2006 Wallace Stevens Award from The Academy of American Poets)

PS: In case you were wondering....

...why some black and other people distrust 'the gay movement' (and that includes many of us who are LGBTQ), this response by James Kirchick to the Human Rights Campaign's support of the Jena 6 should clarify things a bit:

It is regrettable that an organization purporting to represent the interests of gay people would defend violent hooligans as an act of obeisance to the “civil rights community.” Whether or not the saga of Jena, La., speaks to the racial disparities in our country’s justice system, it is most certainly not a civil rights struggle akin to the Stonewall uprising or the Selma marches. The moral standing of the people involved in those historic events was absolute; the gay men at the Stonewall Inn and the marchers at Selma were violently set upon by police merely for peacefully assembling. The Jena 6 ganged up on a kid and sent him to the hospital. There is no good reason why gays should be party to this shameless display of historical ignorance and exaggerated grievance.

Poetry and/in The News

Kudos and thanks to poet/doctor Peter Pereira for remembering the 50th Anniversary of school integration in Arkansas and the Little Rock Nine with Cyrus Cassells wonderful, heatbreaking 'Soul Make a Path Through Shouting':


With their jerry-rigged faith,
Their spear on the American flag,
How could they dare to believe
You’re someone sacred?:
Nigger, burr-headed girl,
Where are you going?

I’m just going to school.

Fallout at the Poetry Society of America over the awarding of their Frost Medal to John Hollander (....and it's now "McCarthyism" to protest against a man who says that West African, Mexican and Central American are "cultures without literatures" among other things? Hmmm....)

And as for this:

"I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. It was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship. It was the same. And that's really what this society is really all about now here in the U.S.A. There's no difference....There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, 'MF-er, I want some more ice tea.' It was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there ordering and having fun and there wasn't any craziness at all."


not to mention this:

You know, and I went to the concert by Anita Baker at Radio City Music Hall, and the crowd was 50/50, black/white, and the blacks were well-dressed. And she came out -- Anita Baker came out on the stage and said, "Look, this is a show for the family. We're not gonna have any profanity here. We're not gonna do any rapping here." The band was excellent, but they were dressed in tuxedoes, and this is what white America doesn't know, particularly people who don't have a lot of interaction with black Americans. They think that the culture is dominated by Twista, Ludacris, and Snoop Dogg.

...from He Who Shall Not Be Named, I feel moved to provide a poetic "response" from the late Gwendolyn Brooks

I love those little booths at Benvenuti's

They get to Benvenuti's. There are booths
To hide in while observing tropical truths
About this -- dusky folk, so clamorous!
So colorfully incorrect,
So amorous,
So flatly brave!
Boothed-in, one can detect,
Dissect.

One knows and scarcely knows what to expect.

What antics, knives, what lurching dirt; what ditty-
Dirty, rich, carmine, hot, not bottled up,
Straining in sexual soprano, cut
And praying in the bass, partial, unpretty.

They sit, sup,
(Whose friends, if not themselves, arrange
To rent in Venice "a very large cabana,
Small palace," and eat mostly what is strange.)
They sit, they settle; presently are met
By the light heat, the lazy upward whine
And lazy croaky downward drawl of "Tanya."
And their interiors sweat.
They lean back in the half-light, stab their stares
At: walls, panels of imitation oak
With would-be marbly look; linoleum squares
Of dusty rose and brown with little white splashes,
White curls; a vendor tidily encased;
Young yellow waiter moving with straight haste,
Old oaken waiter, lolling and amused;
Some paper napkins in a water glass;
Table, initialed, rubbed, as a desk in school.

They stare. They tire. They feel refused,
Feel overwhelmed by the subtle treasons!
Nobody here will take the part of jester.

The absolute stutters, and the rationale
Stoops off in astonishment.
But not gaily
And not with their consent.

They play "They All Say I'm The Biggest Fool"
And "Voo Me On The Vot Nay" and "New Lester
Leaps In" and "For Sentimental Reasons."

But how shall they tell people they have been
Out Bronzeville way? For all the nickles in
Have not bought savagery or defined a "folk."

The colored people will not "clown."

The colored people arrive, sit firmly down,
Eat their Express Spaghetti, their T-bone steak,
Handling their steel and crockery with no clatter,
Laugh punily, rise, go firmly out the door.


(photo credit, NYTimes)

Jena 6 Plus 1: Now what?

Very heartening to see the demonstrations in Louisiana and across the country yesterday -- and particularly to see so many teens and young adults taking action (I half joked that even the homeboys on the corner switched to their BLACK XXX t-shirts yesterday). It does my old "Let's March on Washington!" butt good.

A couple of things I noted that I hope this action portends:

The influence of black radio (remember Spanish Language radio was credited with gathering el barrio together for their immigration rallies), blogs and e-mail blasts in getting the word out. Welcome, Civil Rights Movement, to the 21st Century!

(..and speaking of blogs: Where were the white liberal/progressive bloggers? Pam's House Blend Explains it all for you: they were as mired in Iraq as the President, apparently....)


The need (and desire) for newer, YOUNGER leadership. ( “Both Jesse Jackson and Reverend Al Sharpton are old, and we need new leaders to replace them.")

I also found it interesting, at least here, that some speakers brought up the subject of crime and violence against African-American men (and women). A topic very worthy of discussion and action. However, in this city, most of the crime is black-on-black, as opposed to the black vs white tensions Jena exposed. I agree that there is a relationship here: for example, questions surrounding the value we place on African-American lives vs the value placed on white lives, and finding ways to rectify the serious, systemic problems and disparities in the criminal justice system.

But stopping this town from living down to its nickname of "Bodymore, Murderland" is going to take more than just one day of wearing black. I look forward to our using the energy generated yesterday to deal with some of these matters locally all across the country.

Jena 6 Day

Having spent time in the Deep South/the Gulf Coast, I've seen the kind of locally accepted racial separation the Jena case exposes first hand. I've been in clubs where whites stood on one side of the room, blacks on the other, only meeting on the dance floor, for example. I've been to black areas nicknamed "Africa-town" (and it was not meant in a culturally positive, "We're celebrating our African-American Heritage" kind of way either). And all of us have tales to tell of disparate justice, of one form of sentencing for whites, another for blacks and browns. So I know this kind of place, know the story, I've seen it.

Its past time for this kind of madness to stop.

Thousands rallying to support 'Jena 6'

Tour buses lined roads into Jena, Louisiana, on Thursday as people from across the country came to the small town to show support for the "Jena 6" -- six black teens charged in the beating of a white classmate.

NAACP Information and Petition

Color of Change.org

Baltimore responds

The New America 2007 -- Modified First Amendment: The Freedom to be Tasered

What country are we living in now? Is this still the United States of America? I'm not sure....Even if the student were a disruptive, self-aggrandizing jerk, did he really deserve this treatment?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.


Student Tasered, arrested at Kerry forum

GAINESVILLE, Fla. - A university student with a history of taping his own practical jokes was Tasered by campus police and arrested after loudly and repeatedly trying to ask U.S. Sen. John Kerry questions during a campus forum.

YouTube Video here

"In 37 years of public appearances, through wars, protests and highly emotional events, I have never had a dialogue end this way. I believe I could have handled the situation without interruption, but I do not know what warnings or other exchanges transpired between the young man and the police prior to his barging to the front of the line and their intervention. I asked the police to allow me to answer the question and was in the process of responding when he was taken into custody. I was not aware that a taser was used until after I left the building. I hope that neither the student nor any of the police were injured. I regret enormously that a good healthy discussion was interrupted." -- Senator John Kerry

Postive before Negative

Posts later this week threaten to be somewhat sober and chilling (the national action on the Jena 6 takes place this Thursday, for example), so I thought I'd try to mention some positive items first:


Saturday, Baltimore hosted the commissioning of the Logistics Support Vessel-8 (LSV-8) USAV MG Robert Smalls (United States Army Vessel Major General Robert Smalls), the first Army vessel named after an African-American. Smalls (1839-1915) is one of those great, little known figures in US History that one tends to run into in a footnote or an aside: the First Black Captain of a U.S. Vessel, South Carolina State Legislator and five-term representative of the state in the US Congress, and eventually Collector of Customs in Beaufort, South Carolina, where he had bought and lived in the house where he had once been a slave. Stories like his never cease to amaze, astound, and inspire me.



Unfortunately, I could not make the dedication ceremony, as I was at the Pratt Library's Waverly Branch for the branch's first Book Festival. Excellent weather outside, and inside some great poetry and workshopping by Tonya Maria Matthews and Maryland Poet Laureate Michael S. Glaser. It is very easy to fall into despair over the state of our world, our nation, our city, our block. But to see the young people writing, reading, and performing their work with Tonya, then see adults (and some of the teens) do the same with Michael....well, even someone as prone to melancholy as I am had to be heartened. We forget that kids are just that, kids, and that they need guidance, understanding, care, and intellectual and artistic stimulation to flourish. And the same doesn't hurt folks over the age of consent either!

Finally, on a personal note, I attended two different meetings of black gay men where two different guys said pretty much exactly the same thing: that they had been in discussions with other African American males and were pleasantly surprised at how, in spite of the potential for both to devolve into anger and name calling, both were effective and civilized, and succeeded in resolving the problems the meetings had been called to deal with. I mention this because, again, more often than not, the press covers the negative side of things: if it bleeds, it leads. And we as black people also underestimate ourselves and our brothers and sisters as well, expecting a fight whenever a difficult decision has to be made. I wanted to point this out to indicate that other ways do exist, that we can relate to each other in different ways. We can (and do) treat each other with decency and respect. We should not forget this, and honor it when it happens.


(Photo of kids from Good Shepherd Community Center, Red Hook, Brooklyn fromThe Children's Photographic Collective website)


"Censorship Watch"

Salon.com's Joan Walsh plays 'compare and contrast' and catches Fox TV clipping Sally Field's acceptance speech at the Emmy's. She was floundering, and I thought she was going to pull out her, "You like me, you really really like me," line again, but she didn't. She did however say, "If mothers ruled the world there'd be no more goddamned war," which is apparently too controversial a statement for US audiences to hear. Bless the Canadians for carrying the whole thing.

(Color) Blind Readers

Q: Are there any stories you've written that you feel have been misunderstood?

A: I've tried to write stories that expect a reader to do some work, to go back and reconsider. I hope there are many layers to explore, not all of which may be tapped in one reading.....I feel that folks might gain from stories....if they look beyond them simply as stories about African-American life. That the characters are Black is important, but not as important as the other ideas and contexts that shape the complexities and realizations in those stories. --

William Henry Lewis (on his collection I Got Somebody in Staunton)


According to my tags on LibraryThing (aka Crack for Book Lovers), my bookshelves are not color-blind. Far and away, I have cataloged more of my books as "African American". My top three in fact (African-American, Poetry, and LGBTQ) could "tell you" quite a lot about me -- this guy likes reading about people like himself: Negroes, Poetizers, and those pesky same-sex types.

I don't think that's 100% accurate, but it's not far from wrong either. I think we all do this. Some folks, however, would rather not admit it.

Author David Anthony Durham recently wrote about the notion of a 'Color Blind Reader', suggesting that the idea was absurd on its face:

I'd be interested to ask each "color blind" reader when was the last time they read something by a black author. They might shrug and say, "I don't know. Remember, I don't pay attention to an author's race." My translation of that - they probably haven't read a black author since a college lit course, because if they had they'd KNOW they had. They’d remember it, and likely they’d have learned things from it....

For white readers that shop at Borders - when was the last time you went browsing for a novel in the "African-American" literature section? They'd likely respond with, "The what? There's not an African-American literature section. Black history section, sure, but..." To which I respond that yes, yes there is a section of Borders - usually a small corner about a shelf and half wide - where the vast majority of fiction by black authors is shelved....I know all of this because that's where my first two novels go - when they're actually stocked at all....So, to the "color blind" reader that has no idea they have NO CHANCE of coming across most black writers in the center of the store... I argue that the fact that you don't read with an awareness of color means that you're being a willing accomplice to institutional segregation. In that regard, being "color blind" also means being blind to a host of inequities, perspectives and realities that you would be able to see if you chose to acknowledge color and to see how much it affects all our lives. Doesn’t make being “color blind” seem so enlightened, does it?

Durham is a VERY good writer (many of us on staff here at the Library are quite high on both him and his work), and I admire him for the range and ambition of his works: Historical Fiction both US (Gabriel's Story and Walk Through Darkness) and World (Pride of Carthage: A Novel of Hannibal), and now S/F - Fantasy (Acacia). I admit to having a weakness for Ambitious Black Writers -- and his personal library (image below) gets me hot as well!:). I find myself agreeing with his take on 'color blindness' (Durham has also posted a number of responses to his post as well.)

Yes, I do keep coming back to people 'like me' in various ways, but in my reading I like to think I've ranged far and wide. Many times it's a conscious decision: I notice I've read a good deal of contemporary work, so I go back to Classics. Feeling overloaded with US voices, I make a decision to sneak some authors across the border. Too many men around? I'll go through a period of reading female authors. I am aware of who I'm reading, where they come from, take into account 'what they are' (gender, orientation, nationality, etc). I have other 'weaknesses' -- Latin American and Spanish authors, for example -- and I'm looking forward to one day immersing myself in Arabic Literature (beyond my crushes on Adonis and Darwish).

A new book by one of my favorite authors arrived at the library as I was thinking about this. Inner Workings: Literary Essays 2000-2005 by Nobel Laureate J. M. Coetzee, a follow up to his previous collection of essays and reviews, Stranger Shores. I note with interest that, in the new book, Coetzee writes about only two writers 'of color' (ie visibly 'non-white' or 'not European'), fellow Nobelists Gabriel Garcia Marquez and V. S. Naipaul. Caryl Phillips, Salman Rushdie and (Nobel winner)Naguib Mahfouz appear in the previous volume -- and I'm purposefully leaving out the brilliant, Eurocentric, "white" Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges.

Now, this is not an attack on Coetzee, nor am I suggesting that he review the latest Omarr Tyree joint. I simply have a suspicion that my bookshelves would be more diverse than his, even if I removed all the 'African American' tagged items. I find it interesting that he, like so many others, doesn't seem to stray too far afield from the realm of the Usual European Suspects....and only one woman (fellow South African Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer) in the mix as well.

One wonders if it would cross either his mind, or the mind of book review editors who propose titles and essays to him, to have him survey the work of an African-American author: Since there appears to be a weakness for the Nobel, how about Toni Morrison, or his fellow African Nobelist Wole Soyinka (he did have a review of a black African author in an earlier collection). How much do we really learn in the land of the (color) blind?

Imprisoned

"My alma mater was books, a good library... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity." -- El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz

If Malcolm Little were behind bars today, would he have access to a range of texts? Could he discover the echoing marketplace of ideas in his prison library that would expand his mind and transform him into the brilliant Malcolm X? According to this article, perhaps not....and The Current Administration thinks that this is a good thing:


Prisons Purging Books on Faith From Libraries

Behind the walls of federal prisons nationwide, chaplains have been quietly carrying out a systematic purge of religious books and materials that were once available to prisoners in chapel libraries.

The chaplains were directed by the Bureau of Prisons to clear the shelves of any books, tapes, CDs and videos that are not on a list of approved resources. In some prisons, the chaplains have recently dismantled libraries that had thousands of texts collected over decades, bought by the prisons, or donated by churches and religious groups.

Traci Billingsley, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons, said the agency was acting in response to a 2004 report by the Office of the Inspector General in the Justice Department. The report recommended steps that prisons should take, in light of the Sept. 11 attacks, to avoid becoming recruiting grounds for militant Islamic and other religious groups. The bureau, an agency of the Justice Department, defended its effort, which it calls the Standardized Chapel Library Project, as a way of barring access to materials that could, in its words, “discriminate, disparage, advocate violence or radicalize.”

The Bureau of Prisons said it relied on experts to produce lists of up to 150 book titles and 150 multimedia resources for each of 20 religions or religious categories — everything from Bahaism to Yoruba.

Behind the walls of federal prisons nationwide, chaplains have been quietly carrying out a systematic purge of religious books and materials that were once available to prisoners in chapel libraries.....
The lists are broad, but reveal eccentricities and omissions....The bureau has not provided additional money to prisons to buy the books on the lists, so in some prisons, after the shelves were cleared of books not on the lists, few remained.

Timothy Larsen, who holds the Carolyn and Fred McManis Chair of Christian Thought at Wheaton College, an evangelical school, looked over lists for “Other Christian” and “General Spirituality”...“There are some well-chosen things in here,” Professor Larsen said...But he continued, “There’s a lot about it that’s weird.” The lists “show a bias toward evangelical popularism and Calvinism,” he said, and lacked materials from early church fathers, liberal theologians and major Protestant denominations.

So: in order to stave off Radical Islam (the purging started with Islamic texts, according to a source I have that works for the Prison Libraries here in Maryland), we toss out The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism and those Pesky Protestants as well along with the Quran?

What's next on the "Offensive" list?

And whose bookshelves are next to be redacted?

How ironic that I pass by this exhibit on display in our Central Hall every day on my way to work. Although it's true: at this moment, nothings been consigned to the flames....yet! Except, perhaps, for whatever pride we might have had in the fact that, as Americans, we have the right to read what we like, write what we like, research any topic, and think for ourselves, even when behind bars.

Ciao Luciano!

Behind the huggy-bear, "I'm just a happy, regular overweight Italian guy who loves to sing" persona was a great and serious artist
The Washington Post

A fond farewell to the Great Tenor (and hero to 'men of size' everywhere). However, as the NY Times assessment of his career indicates (it’s hard to avoid feeling that he never completely fulfilled his potential, that he squandered some of his awesome talent by letting his enablers turn him from a hard working artist into an overindulged and sometimes clownish superstar), 'The King of the High C's' career does bring up an interesting dichotomy: Does one strive to be An Artist or A Star?

Pavarotti's name is synonymous with opera for many people, and millions watched or listened to him, and purchased his recordings who probably didn't understand a word he sang and had never heard opera before or since. Is that 'bad' in some way, to be a 'popularizer'? In a way similar to the late Beverly "Bubbles" Sills, he managed to introduce people to Art. We hope that some, perhaps small, portion of them continue to be enthralled by it.


Placido Domingo is doing more within the opera world, particularly thanks to his resuscitation efforts in Washington DC....and okay, someone should have said 'no' to Yes Giorgio, and he probably shouldn't have been as indulged as much as he was...but what a Voice! His 'showstopper' Nessun Dorma made me cry (again) this morning....And I wouldn't give up some of his 'High Culture meets Pop" duets for all the world....

Il Divo meets The Godfather (with a brief cameo appearance by Grace Jones)



Two Tons of Sound: Pavarotti and Barry White



Why Opera Lovers miss him: 'Una furtiva Lagrima' (A furtive tear) fromDonizetti's L'elisir d'amore