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

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

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

First some 'definitive' versions:


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



Margaret Whiting and Johnny Mercer



Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Jordan




Ringing the changes:


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



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




Rod Stewart and Dolly Parton



Willie Nelson and Norah Jones



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



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




Happy Holidays to All!

Bright Lights, Medium Sized City

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

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

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

How YOU Doin'?

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

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

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

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

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

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






Charlie Howard's Descent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-- Mark Doty

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

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

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

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

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

****

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

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

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

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


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

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

Daybreak

for Xia

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

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

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

(Translated by Jeffrey Yang)

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

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

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

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


Stones

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

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

Cha-cha-cha Changes

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

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


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

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

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

Horrible.

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Full post, well worth reading, is here.

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

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

International Day Against Homophobia 2010

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


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


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

Poem in Your Pocket Day

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







The Day Lady Died
by Frank O'Hara

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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



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

Post Oscar Post

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Help for Haiti

The Haitian Presidential Palace, before (bottom) and after


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


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

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

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

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

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

Don Belton, 1956 - 2009

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

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

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

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

Belton, Don
b. 1956

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rest in Peace Don

Black Action Heroes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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








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

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


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


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


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

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

Roy de Carava 1919-2009

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






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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Obsidian III 4.2 (Fall-Winter 2002)

TSE @ UB

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



All Their Stanzas Look Alike
by Thomas Sayers Ellis

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

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

Blog Action Day 2009: Climate Change

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

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

Global Warming Facts & Figures

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

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

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

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

10 Solutions for Climate Change

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

Mid-Lits

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

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

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

Ya'll Come!

Summer Reading

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

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

-- David McCullough's "John Adams"

-- Richard Price's "Lush Life"

-- Kent Haruf's "Plainsong"

-- George Pelecanos's "The Way Home"

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

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

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