The day after May Day thank you Jacob Lawrence with event link!

Posted on May 2, 2015May 14, 2015 by admin

If I could say that someone waved a magic wand around me, I would say it is because of Jacob Lawrence, an important artist whose work continues to refresh the imagination to this day. I first saw half of the Migrations Series in the 1970s at the Philllips Collection in D.C. I think because of Richard J. (Rick) Powell, who was then a artist/scholar/curator kind of guy. I was stunned. These little paintings told stories about the South and the very real reasons that Black people left-had to leave. The next time I saw the panels was at the Whitney I think along with other series, The Builders, etc. Again, the stories in colors vivid and bold lines–the generosity towards Black folks, the pride of Black folks, the folk of Black folks–his painting allowed the narrative to sing through.

So when Elizabeth Alexander (she’s the very tall imposing diva next to moi) asked me to create a poem in response to the Series, I was both excited and terrified. How to do justice to this work? How not imitate in words what he had already done in paint? How to add to the discourse on the Black Migration? How. Last August when I was the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, I re-looked at each of the panels and realized that Panel 57 was what I returned to. She’s the only single female figure in the entire series. She’s wearing white. There’s a cross in the picture. I thought of my cousin Hassie, who was head Usher at the Baptist church she attended. I thought of the aunts who came down from Chicago and Detroit looking fly. I thought of the harsh beauty of the south and the hard heartedness of southern white leadership. And then I realize that the best way into the poem was through scent. If you get the catalog you can read “Lave”. If you attend the exhibition, up till September 7, you can hear me and the other poems read our work in one of exhibition room. You can hear great music in other rooms (I am in a picture with the great opera singer, Kevin Maynard) On May 1, May Day, International Worker’s Day, we read at the Museum of Modern Art.

Hopefully, this link will take to what was one of my proudest moments as a poet and a Black woman who has lived long enough to know the harsh beauty remains in the South as does menace towards Black people, poor people–but I also know that the struggles have moved North, have taken a more complicated hard heartedness. But like our ancestors, we keep moving and when needed like the laundress, we find work, we do the work, we stand on whatever ground we can.

Again, I thank Elizabeth Alexander. Leah Dickerman, Sarah Kennedy, Jennifer Harris and a great crew at MOMA; the film studio guys, the really nice guards, the wait staff for any and all dinners, the whole sense of conviviality. Because ultimately, Lawrence shows how Black people embrace life in all of its complications from loving to loss; from brutality to struggles for justice. We really do keep on keeping on. And if you cannot embrace that simple thought you are starved of humanity. Praises to the Ancestors. Praises to the poets.

The reading was live streamed on youtube, here is the link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdPZ5Wag9BM#action=share

la vida es la sueno, sometimes

Posted on April 6, 2015April 6, 2015 by admin

Jacob Lawrence at age 23 showed a series of small paintings narrating the GREAT MIGRATION–the movement of thousands of Black people from the South of these United States to hopefully better lives in the North. This is the largest voluntary internal migration-all others were forced. I kept that in mind as I developed the poem, “Lave” which is part of the Poetry Suite commissioned by Elizabeth Alexander for the Museum of Modern Arts exhibition of the entire series for the first time in 20 years. One-Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence Migrations Series and Other Visions of The Great Movement North is now up at MOMA and it is worth seeing because it shows how active, innovative and politically engaged African American artists were during the Great Depression into War Years and beyond. We are still working through the power of their imagery, those ideas, and of course their challenges. This panel is the one I focused on when writing my poem, though others are in the poem as well. Every poet in the suite came to Lawrence’ work from their own perspective, just as artists came to their response to the growing urbanization of Blacks differently from Lawrence. My life is like a dream, sometimes at least when it comes to poetry.

On May 1, a Debut Reading of the Poetry Suite moderated by Elizabeth Alexander will include me and Rita Dove, Nikky Finney, Terrance Hayes, Tyehimba Jess, Yusef Komunyakaa, Natasha Trethewey, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Crystal Williams, and Kevin Young.

At the preview exhibition, I had a chance to commune with my Panel, but I am sure when I go again, the gallery will be packed. Here’s the link: http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2015/onewayticket/

May your life be a dream sometimes, too.

the thrill of departure

Posted on January 28, 2015January 28, 2015 by admin

I taught a poetry workshop for Poets House using “departure” as a way to allow writers to take a different direction; try new things. Everyone has certain ways of seeing, feeling–I know that I do. And any time I am asked to try something different, called to create from another vantage, I embrace the process. But I know it may not work. There is always risk in not making good or hopefully great work. Of having your writing in the company of others who have been deemed valuable. I know that my work is well-regarded and for some deeply admirable. But I am not a prize receiving poet. The New York Times does not know my name. My last book, Painkiller, of which I very proud received like 3 reviews. And yet, I am completing A Lucent Fire: New & Selected Poems for White Pine Press. I would love to get prizes and the monies attached. I would love to get the praise. But my work as a poet has been to keep going despite neglect or rejection–it is not about giving up hope. It is about thinking that maybe in the language I choose to work with, I bring something new, different, engaged to the discourse. I am not glib. I cannot reduce my work to a sound bite–that does not interest me. What does is that thrill of departure-the step towards something possibility familiar, but often completely unknown.

When Elizabeth Alexander asked me to write a poem in response to Jacob Lawrence Migrations series, I was deeply touched. This was not expected and I was not sure of what I’d do; how I’d do it. I had written a poem in response to Lawrence’s “Builders” series-a gorgeous, hopeful group of paintings. That poem was published in Black Renaissance Noire, thanks Quincy Troupe. But this was different and when I was at VCCA this past August, I was able to pull together the strands of thinking about Lawrence’s work and a panel in that celebrated series and make a poem. I will always be grateful to my fellow VCCA residents who heard the poem read aloud for the first time and my good friend Deborah Wood Holton for her insightful first reading. I will read the final version, May 1 at MOMA with Elizabeth, Yusef Komunyakaa, Rita Dove, Tyehimba Jess, Crystal Williams, Nathasa Tretheway, Terrence Hayes, and Kevin Young.

A few days ago I stood in the recording studio at MOMA holding the catalog and marveling at the hard work done to bring Lawrence’s work to a new generation; a large audience. From what I have heard from everyone who worked with him, he was a deeply kind, generous and hard working man. An artist whose gifts are giving with love and great honor to the ancestors. I am grateful to him for showing what vision and work whether quickly seen or gained over a lifetime means. It means that the thrills keep coming year after year after year. The show opens April 3. I hope you go see it and see the work of artists living and gone–depart from your own vision. See where the colors, lines, figures take you–the journey may be long or short, but it will be different.

At MOMA, with Jacob Lawrence catalog, January 2015

Year’s ending-horses still galloping

Posted on December 24, 2014December 24, 2014 by admin

I know that the Year of the Horse will go into late January, so the galloping is not over. We have been on a very wild ride. The news of day has often been mysterious, horrific, terrifying or utterly silly. Sometimes the same item can be described with all those words. I know that it has been a wild ride for me and one that I treasure because I am breathing and too many people I love no longer breathe.

Florence Tate whom I only met in “real life” recently passed. I knew her son Greg Tate for what seems like forever. But his famous Mama I met via social media–she was a great presence on Facebook and intensely encouraging to me and many other writers, artists, singers, organizers, activisits and bon vivants. The last time I saw her breathing was at the Funeral for Amiri Baraka–the kind of affair that brought his friends, enemies, former lovers, their children and just about anyone who was a who in the downtown/Black Arts Movement/literary scene to Symphony Hall in Newark. I will also miss Galway Kinnell whose readings at Brooklyn’s Ferry Landings at the end of the Poets House Bridge Walks were so very very special. His passion for life, for poetry for oatmeal LOL never left him. Like Baraka, Kinnell was a fighter for justice; a great teacher–they were poets who created communities and they both lived long enough to modify earlier excesses and mend some fences.

I can’t breathe #Ican’tbreathe has become a chant; an indictment; a statement of anguish and demand. Eric Garner’s utterly unnecessary death at the hands of the NYPD and others who are here to serve people galvanized and continues to galvanize young people on top of those marching/organizing/agitating in Ferguson MO. The parade of dead Black, Brown and occasionally White bodies at the hands of Law Enforcement (LE) has made a significant number of people who had otherwised kept their heads in the sand. look up and see that the police are more soldiers than peace officers and that much of policing has become occupation–the lastest military incursions by the Israel into Gaza serves as a kind of template, it seems to me. These are ugly times. Ugly times.

And yet I am writing on a chilly rainy day in Brooklyn, a piano solo-some minor league European composer’s work makes perfect background noise. Today I went to the Museum of Modern Art to read “Lave” a poem commissioned for the catalog for One Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence Migrations Series which will open in early April at MOMA. Elizabeth Alexander has done a great job of bringing Black poets with very different poetics together to honor and respond to Lawrence’s seminal work. I know that this was a great opportunity; a great challenge. I hope people will respond to our response. I also saw the Robert Gober Retrospective. Gober is White. He’s Gay and he’s Young and very definitely breathing and I am glad. His sculptures defy standards of beauty; his bodies are never complete; his anguish not extinguished; his fears what should be feared–bullies, killers of the mind as well as body–the title of the exhibition is The Heart Is Not a Metaphor and you know what it is not Pulsating, pumping, a muscle whose only job is to keep the body upright and moving, the heart is beyond compare. And yet even Gober allows the heart, the hearth to become symbols for the ways we attempt to stunt pulsation; to destroy intimacy, charity, erotic impulse.

At the end of this Year of Baldwin; this Year of Losses, public and private; this year of Protests and Counter Protests. The fighting t-shirts: I can’t breathe/I can breathe the year when too many White People found themselves in a racial quagmire of their own making with no understanding of how to get out–I for one listen to the young people who started #blacklivesmatter; who demanded to be heard in at unneeded Al Sharpton organized march; who march and chant and tweet and demand to be able to BREATHE and to have a future. Saludos to you. May we all get off that horse when the Year of the Horse ends, saddle sore, yes, but ready to walk on this altered/altared earth. May we find a way to breathe together in justice, in peace.

Crech, Bed-Stuy, photo by Patricia Spears Jones