Tag Archives: Lorraine O’Grady

The world (whirls) are spinning April 2022

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This morning a Black man in some sort of uniform wearing a gas mask pulled out a canister that temporary blinded people and then shot those within a subway car going into the 36th Street Station in Brooklyn.

The sun is bright this day.  The air is crisp.

My neighbors and my landlord are doing repairs on buildings up and down Macon Street.  The planet is spinning–there is so much rage.  War in the West.  War in the East.  War on almost every continent on our globe.  Wars in ourselves.

So how best to remember that like my neighbors hammering, good and useful things happen at the same time as catastrophes.  Here’s a brief riposte.

So it is good to just say that I am grateful for all who celebrated with me this past Friday, April 8 when I was honored by The Poetry Project at its gala celebrating the Project’s 55th year–the other honoree was Rene Ricard who departed in 2014 after an often tumultuous but poetry driven life.   Vincent Katz and Arden Wohl were the Gala’s co-chairs and Kyle Dacuyan, the Project’s ED set a generous and convivial tone to the evening. Here are a few notes from my part as honoree:

Jason Kao Hwang played a beautiful violin solo and it was definitely my part of the program. Lorraine O’Grady was filmed talking about my work in A Lucent Fire, and she read “The Perfect Lipstick”‘ a 3 minute reel about me included Cornelius Eady, Alice Notley, Maureen Owen, Guillermo F. Castro,  and Charlotte Carter; and then Tyehimba Jess basically testified on my behalf and read “Love Come and Go”.
It took just about everything in me to not cry. And then it was me and yes, i was on point.  I found a poem I wrote back in 1974-75 as a way to show just how long I’ve been associated with the Project and then spoke about the importance of the Project and I ended the speech by reading “Seraphim” with the last line “And unto joy” which seems utterly apt.  We see such horror, terror, rage, and we write about them-if there is one thing we can try and do as artists and writers and humans on this planet is remind ourselves that joy abides as well.
I am thankful to have friends and family who encourage me.  I know that readers when they find my books are pleased to have done so.  Over the past 10 years, there has been a growing look at my work and greater interest.  I have lived long enough to gather some applause.  I know that this is not always the case.  Good friends joined me at Table 5: Willie Perdomo, Charlotte Carter and Marie Brown–Black and Brown literati.  We are here and we are working and know the world is spinning, but writers are always about dancing on the whirls.

Black tulle and brilliant hued gems–thanks Sandra Payne brief update

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Cover art by Sandra Payne

Cover art by Sandra Payne

THANKS TO SANDRA PAYNE for making work even while facing many personal and family challenges–through it all she focused on beauty and some of that became the cover for my poetry collection.  I am blessed with brilliant, talented, dedicated friends.

0508141659 Today started gloomy-as if Spring wanted to show that yes it can get chilly and gray and oh so not fun again.  So what to do-well I had an appointment to see work by Sandra Payne.  www.sandrapayne.com.  I’ve known Sandra since the late 1970s’s/early 1980s and we’ve both seen NYC change in some ways for the good/in some ways for the bad.  C’est la vie!  One thing we have in common w/ a number of Black American and African Diasporic artists is Just Above Midtown Gallery run by the incomparable Linda Bryant, at one time the only contemporary art space devoted to Blacks and other people of color in Tribeca.  David Hammons, Senga Nengundi, Lorraine O’Grady, all manner of later to be famous folk got their first major gallery shows there.  There were sightings of DeNiro (never saw him), et al.  But mostly there was a powerful committed to conceptualism by Blacks and installation work and stuff that wasn’t seen as “Black” i.e. THE AVANT GARDE.  As someone who had been in the East Village from day one of my journey in NYC, I was used to Bohemia, to conceptualism, to installation, performance art–it was simply refreshing to see the artists be pretty much the same color as me!

So back to Sandra–she’s an artist who has been working in a combination of the accretted–elaborate manipulated sculpture pieces made of colored aluminum or collages that explore our fascination w/ luxery items: pearls, jewels in patterns and colors that seem like an explosion of displays from Cartier, Tiffany’s or DeBeers.  And then there are the items from the natural world-driftwood and minerals and feathers–what she does with peacock feathers is magical.  This in an apartment the size of a NYC EV studio, but one w/ high ceilings (thank God for height) so there are cabinets of wonders–each time she opened a drawer, it was a surprise.  And she has collections of mid-century Americana; Black memorabilia; copper utensils; and beautiful boxes with items that will one day find a way to be exhibited in just the way she wants them to be.  Years ago, I saw a work of hers which alas could not be reproduced for a book cover, but it was of a circle of black tulle with different hued gems–a kind of storm of desire.   Her capacity to organize all of these materials and make a space that is comfortable and full of delight is why she is so very special to we who are her friends and admirers.

My visit was to see work that may (hopefully) adorn the cover of my new and selected which may be called The Perfect Lipstick or The City Proper or  At the Fringe of Town–don’t know just yet.  So today’s outside gloom was met with explosions of beauty, radiance, commentary on African American history–didn’t talk about her use of Black memoriabilia–and I am so grateful that she is one of the artists that were part of that unruly band that started out at Just Above Midtown.  She may not be as known as many of her compadres from back in the day, but she is deeply committed to making work of intense beauty and wit.  I am really looking forward to what is on that cover for my White Pine Press volume.