Teaching Hollins University, Spring 2020

A sunny Monday morning in Brooklyn.  The air goes from chilly to warmish back to chilly–a good winter day in the metropolis.  Quiet too–that post Christmas quiet when friends and family are satiated, gifts opened and delighted upon.  Or they are returned for that refund.  But this year’s Christmas was already quiet.  Few people traveling and those that do under extreme circumstances as in a neighbor saying he was driving to Florida to wave at his grand children there.  New strain of Covid is keeping him masked up and off airplanes.  That kind of Christmas.  But along with all kinds of caution, my neighbors have gone all out with lights and decorations–with the exception of Our Lady of Victory a RC church, no one has times for creche but oh those lights.  I do miss the blow up Santa and elves, but the family that put them up each year have left.

Indeed, this is a year of departures:  the awful and shameless deaths of people from COVID19.  The predatory and stalking deaths of Black Americans by police officers from the North to the South with the death of George Floyd added an horrible symmetry as it recalled the death of Eric Garner-both claiming their loss of breath:  “I can’t breathe”.  Indeed the loss of breath from the police, from the virus, from a variety of environmental accidents, episodes, intentional destruction.  And BIPOC (not my favorite acronym) bore the brunt because of systematic and sustained structural issues:  racism, sexism, poverty, economic stress.  The loss is huge and how it will be balanced remains an issue.

But, a great fight has been joined this year.  More people voted in the national election for the first time since the 1960s!  Democracy really was on the line and yes, it still is.  But the BidenHarris ticket won and by a solid majority.  That Trump and is supporters continue the fiction of voter fraud show just how much work we will have to continue to do.  The Trump people like to blow up city blocks, kill unarmed protestors and drive cars into people  demonstrating for justice.  Whether you say defund the police abolish the police or reform the police, you are saying that current policing across this nation is poor and THINGS GOTTA CHANGE.

So this year many things changed for me.  I lived in Virginia for 4 months on campus at Hollins University where I was the Louis D. Rubin Writer in Residence.  I was prepped to do amazing things: teach, write, read, socialize, explore Virginia and maybe even East Tennessee.  And well I taught a really great course with a terrific group of graduate and undergraduate students. I went to JMU at Harrisonburg for a Furious Flower book launch.  Before the shutdown I got to eat and drink at interesting restaurants in Roanoke.  And then it stopped.  And while my Brooklyn friends locked down; I was left isolated.  It was challenging but I learned to trust my instincts while living on an almost deserted campus.  I learned to listen to the birds, watch the squirrels, rabbits and on Mother’s Day in May, foxes.  People helped me get through the residency, but all of those glorious plans remained unfulfilled.

Much is riding on the coming year, but despite many things that did not happen; many things did in 2020.   I published important new work both prose and poetry. Two prose works: memoirs–were published, the most recent at https://www.pangyrus.com/category/essay-memoir/.   The New Yorker published two poems:  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/16/nia

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/30/betye-saars-mystic-chart-for-an-unemployed-sorceress

I curated a Radical Poetry Reading for The Brooklyn Rail New Social Environment https://brooklynrail.org/events/2020/09/16/radical-poetry-reading-with-patricia-spears-jones/

and am pleased that CA Conrad asked me to join an experiment as part of The Poetry Project’s Annual New Year’s Day Fundraiser which goes virtual. https://www.poetryproject.org/events/the-47th-annual-new-year-s-day-marathon

huge moon huge dreams

And finally like many of you I did what I could to keep in touch with family and friends; to support social justice; remove Trump; and stay healthy.  None of this is easy.  But nobody’s bored.  I know I am not.

Keep these words in mind in coming year:  CREATIVITY, GENEROSITY, KINDNESS, INTELLIGENCE, LOVE.  We will need all of these things to keep our minds and bodies whole and prepared to struggle for a just world where human dignity is standard, not neglected.  Where art is exalted not exhausted.  Where we will be able to hold each other again.  Yes Black Lives Matter. Yes, the environment matters.  Yes, disarmament matters.  Yes, the struggle for peace continues.