I AM AN AMERICAN POET –American Poets Congress launches

Posted on May 1, 2018May 1, 2018 by admin

Dog Tags by Jane Hirshfield on tree in “the Jungle”

Heard on NPR an Edward Hirsch’s poem read by Shaquille O’Neill that Kwame Alexander discusses early in the morning. The poem is about basketball and life and of course O’Neill would love it. It is old school, the whole setup. Populist Black American poet talkes POETRY with slightly bewildered, slightly awe-struck NPR hostesss. 50 years ago it could have been Langston Hughes chatting somebody up and say Mickey Mantle intoning Carl Sandburg. Media representation of poetry, American poetry continues this odd desire to make all things plain and clear as if the masses can’t look up a work on their dictionary.com app. Glad that O’Neill and many athletes read and write poetry. But you don’t have to be a celebrity to add value to poetry. You have to care about language, culture and the work required to make even the simplest seeming poems profound.

On Sunday, April 29, American Poets Congress presented 15 poets reading work at Poets House where Lee Briccetti noted that poets are the unelected legislators of the world, and in which each of us said our names and then I AM AN AMERICAN POET. The poets intoning are Amanda Deutch, Anne Waldman, Cecilia Vicuna, Cynthia Kraman, David Henderson, Edwin Torres, Erica Hunt, James Sherry, Michael Broder, Patricia Spears Jones, Pierre Joris, Purvi Shah, Tai Allen, Tan Lin and Vincent Katz. James Sherry, Vincent Katz and I co-curated this and what a line up.

Co-cuarators I am an American Poet reading at Poets House, 4-29-18

It was our way of standing on a ground that feels like our home and not the one that is promoted out of the damaged and dangerous minds of party in political power. Poets, what can we do?

We write. We think. We ask questions. We answer them, but not often. Some questions remain unanswerable. But the questions keep us searching for that answer say to ending racism, ending injustice, promoting fairness and honesty, offering succor and candor and compassion. When do we do these things, how do we, what are the words. Working with two white men on this project was challenging to them and to me. Working with men who are use to directing ordering guiding even as they seek to be progressive and collaborative is challenging. But you know what I learned to deal with the challenges –if we are to begin to build another way of looking towards the future then working with and challenging privilege is going to be very important. Dismissing people because of their lack of political purity or their unenlightened attitudes means having to find others to replace them who may or may not be better. You don’t change unless you’re put in a situation where change has to take place or you don’t progress. Americans do not want to be seen as mean spirited, hateful, killer cops on every corner, but until Americans remove the killer cops on every corner, and stop backing mean-spirited and hateful policies, well that is what America is to most of the world right now.

But poets know this and poets write about language, how it is used, abused, trampled over, and made to build up mean spirited, hateful and poisonous policies that ultimately will make us poorer, sicker, our air and water toxic, our understanding of safety, security and defense enablers of militaristic fantasies. Yup, this is a bad era for Americans, for the world given the drift to the right.

Mural-San Antonio

But poets being poets keep language alive. We keep making those questions, whether we are bards or beats or Black Arts devotees, we know that every phrase that damage, the psyche, scars the culture must be overmatched with language that heals, that thrills that poses a fresh way of seeing and being.

POETS ARE THE BEST, but I would say that because I am a poet and this is the last day of National Poetry Month. And it is great to know that whether you’re Black White, HIV negative or positive, Asian, Latinx, Native, queer, gender nonconforming, lover of animals or only lover of flowers or you speak 5 languages or only one-if you still work language to find the truth there in, I SALUTE YOU. Oh and we can write about basketball, drone warfare, police brutality, love affairs, sleepy Sundays, capitalism, poverty, music, tea, the genome, etc. If there are words, there is poetry.

New York is very much alive

Posted on November 4, 2017November 4, 2017 by admin

At CUNY Grad Center, Victor Hernandez Cruz, David Henderson, Ammiel Alcaly

Empire State, Halloween

New York City is very much alive. While 8 people died from a terrorist attack even as tiny ghouls, smurfs, pirates, heros and sheros walked about with huge bags demanding candy. Meanwhile those with little or nothing on shivered in the chilly Halloween weather.

New York City is very much alive. While the mayoral race is on, many people are learning what they can and cannot do politically. Politics in this state must change-new people should be allowed to run; new voices need to be heard. Too much is done as if this was the 19th century.

New York City is very much alive. At the CUNY Grad Center Victor Hernandez Cruz read from his latest book and one of his oldest and best poems to a group of grad students, fellow poets like Don Yorty and me and then he sat down for a public interview. It was fun.

New York City is very much alive and moving and dealing with possible deaths and awful disruptions and yet the masks and costumes; the candy and liquor; the poets and critics were all out and about. Truck drivers, shoe bombers, radicalized racists won’t stop the music of any great city.

Tribute to Amiri Baraka, April 5, St. Mark’s Church, Manhattan

Posted on April 17, 2014May 13, 2014 by admin

photograph by Patricia Spears Jones

The Poetry Project and Cave Canem did a great job of paying homage to Amiri Baraka/Leroi Jones poetic roots and branches this afternoon. Poets and musicians performed Baraka’s works and/or paid tribute in poems to him. Quincy Troupe’s “Avalanche” had us thinking of Baraka’s welcome to that “unknown country” that he has now gone to. Julie Patton deconstructed his name melody collaborating with a bassist. David Henderson read his work/a Baraka poem and also a fine poem from Diane DiPrima. Cornelius Eady and Rough Music (Poetry’s house band) did a gorgeous multi-vocal arrangementl. I was also moved by Tracie Morris and Vijay Iyer’s deconstruction of “My Favorite Things”.
Bob Holman’s exegesis on Baraka’s most famous poem, you know the one about 9-11, the one that got the New Jersey legislature to remove the Poet Laureate position, which as Bob pointed out leads Baraka to be New Jersey Poet Laureate in perpetuity. It was a masterful critique of the poem, poet and situation. Thank you Bob Holman.
Steve Dalachinsky almost matched his wonderful performance at Jayne Cortez’ memorial last year w/ a wonderful piece in collaboration Matthew Shipp. Greg Tate brought some of Baraka’s prose from Black Music (me thinks “The Changing Same” is one of the great essays of the 20th century, just saying) reading a short riff on Wayne Shorter. And Martha and Basil King who met “Leroi” in the 1950s, Latasha Diggs, Toi Dericotte and James Brandon Lewis added to a generous and diverse group of poetic and musical voices in the tribute.
I almost left and then I realized I had to stay for Anne Waldman, who along with Henderson, Troupe, the Kings was a long time friend of Baraka and so her perspective had to be heard. She read a lovely elegy from Hettie Jones, Baraka’s first wife. Anne also discussed Baraka’s connection to Naropa. and the she and her band Ambrose Bye, Steven Taylor, and Devin Waldman served the material well. Because Anne did a fiery version of “BLACK DADA NIHILISMUS from “The Dead Lecturer”. I remembered how fascinated I am by the readings of poems across genders and Baraka was very much the enraged hetero male and Anne brought out her masculine side and worked those words. And then she ended with a kind of blessing on Baraka’s spirit and for all of us from her own summoning of female power.

I agree with Ammiel Alcalay who remarked that there are more works to unearth from Amiri Baraka and that he was extremely generous to the scholars and poets at CUNY Grad Center. Baraka, indeed all of the poets, Black and White who created the downtown literary scene deserve more scrutiny, to be read, wrestled with. They were not all Beats or Buddhists. They were as diverse as the neighborhood they lived and worked in. I am a huge O’Hara fan as many of my friends know, but I am also glad to have been part of the downtown scene in it’s third iteration in the 1970s w/ Anne and Lewis Warsh and Bernadette Mayer and Ted Greenwald and dear dear Lorenzo Thomas as my mentors, teachers, friends. It is good to see Bernadette and Ted begin to get their due and Lewis is now carving out more poets at LIU. As Steve Cannon told me, “Roi” always came back”. In many ways Baraka went back to Newark but Leroi/Amiri came to New York for friends, fun, the chance to wear his boogie shoes. And finally, Oliver Lake’s solo was extraordinary and his tribute poem a thing of great joy and admiration. Plus, he wore the most beautiful garment-truly a shirt of many colors. Where ever Baraka is he was tapping his feet.
I thank all the poets/ musicians and all the great people who made their way to the Sanctuary to pay tribute.

photograph by Patricia Spears Jones