My apartment is a swirl of piles: clothes, toiletries, documents—the stuff you need when you take a big trip. And I am about to take a big trip, to Virginia for 4 months. I have been appointed the Louis D. Rubin, Jr. Writer-in-Residence at Hollins University. Dara Weir, whom I met at Hollins when I was a visiting poet; Natasha Tretheway, whose father taught there and other poetic luminaries are past appointees. This is a big deal and it comes on top of many expected and unexpected professional achievements since 2014-15. I am getting used to being a 4 decades overnight success.
Of course, these opportunities do not come helter-skelter. I’ve been published as a poet since my early 20s and have worked to become the best poet I can be and yes I am still growing as a poet and thinker and activist, and as I have grown, the opportunities have come. I am glad I stayed the course.
And that is is something I hope that many of us do as we are daily assaulted with lies particularly from the political right –you know the people who create Middle East Peace Plans that don’t exactly include all of the people who would have to make it work; the people who are now making legal immigration more difficult; the people who claim they can’t bake a cake for same sex couples because it’s against their religion (there’s no such prohibition in the Bible, there’s no Cake commandant. And everyone is tired because the briber in chief constantly tweets stupid, mean and occasionally important stuff. It really is hard to live in a morally corrosive time and have like a desire for truth, beauty and justice. But hey, think of it as being against the mainstream which is corrupt. The Right is running all but the House of Representatives (thank you Nancy Pelosi) and a few major institutions that think liberal and democracy are good things. So we poets and artists have a very important role to play outside that mainstream. And we ought to play it loud and louder.
Over the past two weeks, I went to 2 memorials (there could have been 3, but I could only do 2)-Jan. 19 for Kwame Shaw, whom I may have met in passing while hanging out in the experiemental jazz world of the 80s–I know his adopted daughter Klare and so I went for her and her mother, his ex-wife. The event at St. Mark’s Church was all about music and remembrances. Henry Threadgill, Amina Myers and during the repast, David Murray made us all understand why for Shaw, Jazz was a religion. Then on January 26, what seemed like the entire downtown art world came out for John Giorno’s Memorial. An elegant and beautifully staged event from the rose petals on the sanctuary stage to the perfect video loop and the musical offerings by Meredith Monk, Michael Stipe, Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye. Linda Yablonsky, Penny Arcade, Lynne Tillman, Bob Holman were a few of the writers who read from Giorno’s memoirs. The Black activist Jazz freak and the gay Buddhist poet had this in common: a powerful desire to make a difference in the world and the energy and ideas to make that difference happen. Shaw brought the powerful music of the AACM and other Black creative musicians to a larger audience as a way to build up the foundation of Black intellectual acuity. Giorno worked tirelessly to bring gay eroticism into the mainstream, to allow poetry to examine his sexuality and explorations. Both were activists, serious activists–Shaw organized for SNCC, open doors for Blacks in the media, created JazzTracks and Giorno started a fund in support of the first victims of HIVAIDs–he literally saved lives or allowed those dying a measure of dignity. He was a serious practioner of Buddhism. Both men left behind unlikely and loving partners. The memorial I could not make it to was Steve Dalachinsky who like his best friend and frequent nemesis Steve Cannon came to symbolized bohemian New York. and from what a year turned into a huge carnival of poetry, anecdote, music and cheer. These men all were bohemians in NYC. A New York that is quickly slipping away under the huge condos and corporate logos of these corrosive times. These men all lived LOUD lives and well we need to start matching that largeness with our own. June Jordan would so agree with me.
Sanctuary, St. Mark’s Church, Giorno Memorial
So I will take my NYC energy South and do my best to do good work and maybe just maybe bring some ideas and provocations to bear in and out of the classroom. Because when poets stop telling the truth, we all suffer. I am a poet and I don’t like suffering.
https://www.hollins.edu/academics/majors-minors/english-creative-writing-major/louis-d-rubin-jr-writer-in-residence/