Never knew how Lorenz Hart could come up with such an odd lyric, but then again, he may have wound up on San Francisco sometime in June expecting sun and getting fog and chill. I am in Stockton where it is sunny and it smells of cars and trucks and highways. I am to read at the University of the Pacific and then go onto the Bay Area, a place I find utterly beautiful and oddly estranged. I will be reading at The Poetry Center with Clarence Major, a legendary space and a celebrated author. I am really pleased. To get here, you work for 4 decades on poems and ideas and finally people begin to notice. (I am all for understatement).
What feels sad right now is this nation and the current bombasticity of political discourse –if you want to even given it that due. It’s been a long time since stories of con men abound, so the populace seems ill prepared for being conned. There are threads in the American psyche that loves to be lied to–it goes with White Supremacy-the invisible ideology. It allows otherwise intelligent people to make really bad decisions and then loudly declare the reasons why. The KKK was at one point called The Invisible Kingdom. These are the things you think about during Black History Month. or at least I do.
G. Carter Woodson and others did a great thing in insisting on the making Negro History important. I grew up with Negro History was celebrated for one week, so a whole month seems pretty darn good. and of course what is really being dealt with is American History which frankly is not being taught the other 11 months. So I hope that I can add some knowledge about my one little corner of Black History here where it is not that cold and it is very dry.
SFSU Poetry Center