good friends make life a little sweeter
not really, but my poems are being translated. Marilyn Hacker recommended my work to the editor of a major Paris based literary journal and here’s the result. SO PLEASED. Now have poems translated into Czech, Spanish and French. Check out my poems and poems by D. Nurske, S. Rauschenbush and Barry Wallenstein.
http://www.recoursaupoeme.fr/
Emperor Tulips, Brooklyn Botanic Garden
These tulips were in full bloom the day it was announced that I was the 2o17 recipient of the Jackson Poetry Prize. Good friend and Bed-Stuy neighbor, Alicia Bleghens and I walked about the garden on a day full of sun and full of people. Since then I feel as if much of my life is full of sun and full of people and filled with gifts, many insubstantial. I sit in my apartment which is also my studio looking at books and art with the fan whirring and my belly a bit too full from an overlarge breakfast and feeling deeply grateful for my personal rewards, and deeply disappointed in the current political environment.
The Fourth of July really is a complicated holiday for Black Americans. As someone whose family has been here several generations including the generation of enslavement, I so understand how necessary liberty and equality and justice is for full humanity and citizenship. All of the white nationalists carrying on about “their” country makes me simply want to vomit. But they are doing what their ancestors did: terrorize people and scar their own communities. Their own communities need to disown, dismiss and deeply disrupt their activities. Alas racism remains a think strand in the American tapestry and will take a while, a long while to undo.
I say this with some kinds of optimism in my heart. It could be that I just taught a workshop at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA where I worked with white people who are working hard to know more about writers and cultures outside of their own. This is challenging work, but the work is being done and out of that comes more complicated, sophisticated poetics (I think). When I asked them to recommend poets they read, the list included many contemporary writers of color. I deeply admire the range.
Workshop recomendations FAWC, 2017
Since May, I have made a number of difficult decisions, but ones that I needed to make. I will not teach comp next year. I do not want to do so. I am working on a new poetry manuscript as new poems written between 2015 and now keep arising from my mind and heart. I look forward to teaching at Adelphi University. I am grateful for the many blessings I have received this year and I am so pleased to share what I know and learn new things. It takes the sting from the ugliness, stupidity and bellicosity of the political environment. It makes me know that in America change happens, sometimes for those who already have too much, sometimes for the rest of us.
One of the joys of my time in Provincetown was joining Susan Bee and Charles Bernstein who have been summering on the Cape since they were young newly weds–that was like 30 something years ago. They heart heart heart the National Seashore and now so do I. The Atlantic Ocean is powerful and inexorable and thanks to President Kennedy we can see this place much like the pilgrims who alas cut own the many beeches and left the coast as dunes. Much is being done to hold off the erosion of the shore, but it’s beauty abides. The National Seashore is a true treasure. If you go to Cape Cod, you must see it.
National Seashore, Race Point, Cape Cod
roses and cards from friends near and far
Anyone who works long and hard and seriously at their chosen art form deserves recognition. Anyone. But I am not anyone and I am so glad to have received the 2017 Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers. It was a balm, a boon, and a joy to share with friends on May 23rd at the Century Club–so venerable, the balcony looks towards the Chrysler Building! Strands of my life from Loft Jazz world, The Poetry Project, Bomb Magazine, Mabou Mines, Vermont College, VCCA, Rhodes College, CUNY, St John’s Church in Park Slope, Cave Canem were all there. So many people, I did not get to greet everyone. They came from Boston and Long Island and one of my hometown friends ws there! Nicole Peyrafitte posted part of my acceptance speech, thus the title of this blog.
My hair stylist Nadia Vassell made my hair look fab; a Lancome rep at Saks did my makeup. I wore new clothes that Janet Goldner helped me shop for. I was happy. I am thrilled and tired and glad that the ceremony and brouhaha are over. I have plans for this good fortune, mostly paying bills and giving myself that cushion because I’ve had many many many rainy days and no cushion. I do not come from money or a pedigree. There are no relatives who went to Harvard or Spelman or even FSU! I am the first person in my entire family to go to and complete college. I come from Forrest City, a small town in Arkansas in the Delta that is barely holding on, but was once a site of major cotton plantations and the ancillary businesses resulting from that. Cotton is still there and rice and soy beans and corn, but people Black or White are not “on the land”-huge machines do what hundreds of poorly paid people did 50 years ago. But the land is where my mama resides in a graveyard in the South end of town and land is what I co-own with my brother and sister in town. And land is large and flat and green. I come from a verdant and violent place.
So I deeply appreciate the judges selection of my work. It means that you can come from a small place in a small state and make it big (well Bill Clinton did that first, but hey, he’s not a poet) in your chosen field. I am not “big”, but this says that my work is important. And they give me money too! I am so pleased that this “win” is only about selection from a small universe of nominees and not one of us knew we were up for this prize. This is about merit and spirit and recognition and yes, I deserve this. Any poet who has been writing and publishing and editing and reviewing and caring deeply about language and the people who explore and explode it, deserves recognition. So whomever receives this next year–enjoy the roses, the cards, the love and acclaim from friends and more scrutiny than one can possibly handle. For now, the recipient is moi and moi is pleased and glad to have made an excuse for wonderful friends to celebrate and be joyful on a balcony in mid-town as the sun set and everyone dressed up!
Selfie with Lee Briccetti, dir. of Poets House
April is often the cruelest month for me. Poems and mss get rejected. Lovers leave. Money gets tight even when the budget is followed. And those lovely budding plants means serious allergy reactions. So that song “Spring will hang you up the most” makes sense esp. when sun by Sarah Vaughn or Betty Carter, women whose knowledge of the world was vast and whose emotional reserves were deep. I am old enough to have seen them perform live although for some odd reasons I’ve never seen Aretha Franklin and it was only a year or so ago that I finally saw Chaka Khan. But those magic voiced women from jazz vocals glorious era–the daughters of Billie and Ella, they were sublime. Spring hangs on the sublime. And this April there was affirmation and prizes and forthcoming money and an outpouring of love and respect. This culminates on May 23rd with an awards event in mid-town Manhattan, where I will read some poems and thank everyone I can think of and feel a bit like Sally Fields’–You like me you really like me!
Every artist goes through those times when the world is dis-pleased with the work being done. You write free verse, everyone angles for form. You speak of the current trials and tribulations, others say poetry must transcend the times. You transcend the times, others write their current trials and tribulations. All any poet, no matter the style, can do is seek some version of truth in language, in line, in rhythm and rhyme, in a jumble of sounds that mimic sidewalk chatter or words as spare and austere as a French garden.
A part of me is learning to accept affirmation, to see that years of work has found favor and that more people will read my work. Another part of me hopes that I have the energy and good health to continue make work worthy of a wide audiences of serious readers, thinkers, et al. And now I really cannot hide behind the wall of indifference that often greeted me or my poetry for so many years. It’s a challenge, but a good challenge. I am happy to have good challenges and problems. As Dickinson pointed out “Success is counted sweetest. . .”
Emperor Tulips, Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Over the past several years ghosts and spirits (the words, the concepts) have found their way in my poems sometimes invited, sometimes not. I remember many years ago hearing Ishmael Reed respond to a questioner’s skepticism about worlds other than the one we encounter daily. He said that we live in many worlds and at times we can enter the other ones when we are open to that visit (poor paraphrasing on my part here). I think I understand what he was saying. There’s a membrane between the living and the dead. When I was a child, the Episcopal creed used the phrase “the quick and the dead”—that “quick” has been altered to simply say “living” but the sound of “quick” is more focused and startling. I can remember it 45-50 years later.
At this moment when so much of my life is overfull with accolades and support, I think of ghosts, of those whose showed me ways to move, to write, to think, to act. Who listened to me and understood what I was trying to do and who said, keep going. Their love and dedication and stories and gestures, their tender mercies towards me kept me from going under, fading away. Oh how I wish they were here:
David Earl Jackson
Peter Dee
Brenda Conner Bey
Lynda Hull
Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Weiss
good friends make life a little sweeter
Audre Lorde
June Jordan
Lorenzo Thomas
Ruth Maleczech
David Warrilow
Julius Hemphill
Butch Morris
Jayne Cortez
Ray Hill
Betty Ruth Merrick
Adrienne Weiss at one of my Cafe Loup birthday bashes–she had fun.
Brenda Conner Bey at Book Fair, 2009-2010?
I am still so deeply honored to be named the 11th Jackson Poetry Prize winner. The first ever recipient was Elizabeth Alexander and I love this picture us at the Museum of Modern Art at a reception that was part of the Jacob Lawrence Migrations Series exhibition. She organized a reading that I was part of with nine other Black American poets for the exhibition. Tyehimba Jess who recently won the Pulitzer Prize this year was another reader that night. We were all thrilled and honored-thanks again to Elizabeth for putting that evening together. And thanks to the Jacksons for creating the Jackson Poetry Prize. It is not only a great honor, but the funds will be extremely helpful.
E. Alexander & me at MOMA, April 2015
Here’s the Jackson Poetry Prize announcement from Poets & Writers. I am so grateful to the judges and to whomever nominated me. This is about work, the work I’ve been doing since 1974! Being a poet, at least to me, is a calling that is now a profession. I am wealthy in family and friends, but not in finances. My independence has been both a strength and a challenge. I have walked this path in my own way for a very long time. And I know that I have serious readers and I hope to have more. I thank all of you who have believed in me and who have read my work and challenged me to expand and explore. #gratitude
https://www.pw.org/about-us/jackson_poetry_prize
public art work-Bed-Stuy
This morning was a pretty one–sun shining, warm. Storefronts on Fulton closed until the shopkeepers open them up. Folks clustered at bus stops on their way to work. Many people smiling because sun was shining and it was warm.
Brooklyn is loudly branded as a place for hip White people and hip Black people and occasionally others are mentioned. But it is a place for ordinary people who get up in the morning and go to work in banks’ back offices; for the MTA; clerks at Macy’s or Bloomingdales or in the countless restaurants, bars,hotels, sports centers, juice joints, etc. that make up the “hospitality industry”, and a few work in fashion or media. Paychecks, bills, families,rent or mortgages to pay. So a warm Wednesday morning was most welcome. In Whitman’s prologue to Leave of Grass he catalogues jobs Americans do (did) and it is good that he did. We have a record of those jobs. We have a picture of the people who made their living. We now do some of what they did: we serve food or perform in theaters or exchange money.
Today, the Poetry Foundation posted my essay in the Harriet blog: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2017/04/colloquy-1-words-on-freedom-confusion-resistance-poetry/
and I hope people read my work. I am glad to be part of that industrious mix all the way from Brooklyn.
The cold, then warm, then cold weather is making our green and blooming friends most unhappy–they just want to bloom and get on with it and a few hearty blooms are fighting for show and a flowering tree across the street from a row of daffodils –we all want Spring. Even the plants are working hard.
the only tree flowering
corner yard, Bed-Stuy
purple salutes the green
Whitman statute, Whitman Birthplace Huntington, LI
On Saturday April 1 I read in two very different venues: Passaic County Community College in Paterson, New Jersey, as I was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and Howl Happening, a East Village arts gallery for a book launch of WORD: An Anthology which featured poets and artists or poets as poets and artists. It reminds me that like Whitman, I contain multitudes. From the broken city across the Hudson where mill building stand, while wood frame houses fall from fire, neglect, despair to the shiny overpriced formerly bohemian EV where I grew up as a young poet and writer and became the woman I am. The poets range from the academic to the anarchic–I seem to fit in with them all. I thank Whitman for that inclusiveness of words and tempo and ideas.
Why because on April 7, I took part in the Walking with Whitman series organized by George Wallace for the Whitman Birthplace and Historic Site in Huntington, LI. Going to LI is not without trepidation. It’s a haul and I found one of the few express trains there. I also encounter the not so gentle racism of the place. I sat down in the train car, took out my book to read on the train and this nice middle-aged woman said, “this train does not stop at Jamaica” assuming that somehow I must be on the wrong train. I politely told her I knew what train I was on and where I was going. The provincialism of suburbia always amazes me.
But a new friend picked me up at the train station once I got there. His car had heated seat (nirvana) and off we went to this lovely center which has a beautiful yard, that was the original one for Whitman’s family. And all things Whitman and a great list of poets in residence there. I got there in time to hear the “open mic” which was pretty good–most of the poets were middle-aged or older, one very young person. Then some pleasant music and then George Wallace introduced me and it was one of my best readings. I read for about 40 minutes & was given an ovation-my first ever. And it was genuine and surprising and I am glad that it was. I’ve gone to many venues where poets gin up things emotionally or otherwise to get an audience up and off their feet, but I don’t do that, at least not intentionally.
Afterwards there was a Q&A & the questions, the things on people’s minds are the things on mine:-how are we to be poets in this difficult time; how are we to create; what can we do to sustain ourselves and how and what must we do to consider the Future. Whitman talks a lot about the Future in his work, we do as well but it almost always dystopian. We have to start to think well if we could make a better place for humans and all other creatures and be of good cheer in this cosmos, well what would that be like? What does it mean to be inclusive, to allow for a range of expressions of sexuality, talent, civility? What will the family be like 50, 100, 200 years from now, that is if humans are still around. I don’t know. But I have faith that many of us are working hard to do as poets have done since the first one sang–we create, we present, we hope to connect. We seek knowledge and we hope for love.
Mark Doty, Richard Michelson, me after Paterson Poetry Prize reading.
medallion Walt Whitman Birthplace, Long Island
Tomorrow is Palm Sunday, a day of celebration and foreboding in the Christian calendar. One that shows triumph, jealousy, pride, fear and treachery in the making. Holy Week is one of the great dramas. Today I talked with my sister who is a CME pastor about her plans for the week and we both talked about Maundy Thursday–which follows The Last Supper and the betrayal of Jesus at Gethsemane. I said to her it is not Judas’ who most bothers me–his treachery is so well-defined. It is Peter’s–who as Jesus said betrayed him three times all out of fear. There are many Peters in this world–who claim they will do the right thing the just thing the loving thing, but cowardice and fear are very strong. Peter was forgiven but he had to work hard to regain that trust. How many Peters of this world have each of us forgiven. How many times have we out of fear betrayed out best selves? No one ever said a spiritual path of any sort is easy. But it is a path.
Window, St. John’s Episcopal -Park Slope
The ass
assination of Martin Luther King was a day that broke a forward motion leaving many shards, some picked up and moved forward, others still deep beneath the soil. I still remember the silence on the streets of Memphis the day after the riots. I remember the tanks and rifles. I am trying to carry one of those shards. But the ones under the soil–they poison us all.