Tag Archives: Tyehimba Jess

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.

The Jackson Poetry Prize –I am grateful

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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

 

 

 

the thrill of departure

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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

At MOMA, with Jacob Lawrence catalog, January 2015