Two Poems

I plan to post a short note, with photos doing most of the talking, about this past weekend's Dark Room Collective reunion at Poets House, and the celebration at the Harlem Arts Salon for US Poet Laureate and Dark Room member, poet extraordinaire Natasha Trethewey, but I think as fitting a tribute might be to post new poems inspired by the conversations we had with the audiences and each other.

One topic that arose at the Saturday panel, provoking some contention, centered on the role of politics in black poetry, and in particular, the role of the Black Arts Movement. As some J's Theater readers may be aware, Amiri Baraka recently posted on the Poetry Foundation website "A New Post-racial Anthology?," a sharp critique of a new anthology, Angle of Ascent by Callaloo editor Charles Rowell, that reads Rowell for reading out of the African American poetic tradition various trends and schools. I am not in the anthology and have not seen it, but having just taught a semester-long class on the Black Arts Movement, some of its predecessors and some of its heirs, I will only reiterate what I said at Poets House, which is that all aesthetics are political, if we understand the latter term broadly, and that the influence of the Black Arts Movement, like that of the Harlem Renaissance, runs like a river--or in some cases, a tiny stream--through a broad swathe of contemporary Black Diasporic writing, including work produced outside the United States.

That said, this morning I wrote two poems which I then posted first to Twitter, in keeping with an idea I have produced a conference paper about, black digital literature. What is the experience of reading a poem on Twitter, which now allows stanzas and line breaks? (I've already seen someone delightfully mash up the poem in his citation of it.) I have slightly modified them here. The poems are rather simple, overtly political, and topical, and in couplets, sparked in part by a comment by the scholar and poet Keguro Macharia made this morning on poems using that stanzaic form. Like haikai and senryus, both of which I've tweeted before, short coupleted stanzaic poems are Twitter-fit.

CO2

An engineer fires up a new power plant.

A city on the grid flares like the surface of a star.

At the border, a small army masses and husbands its weapons.

We fail to grasp that we are always grasping

and mostly feeling, which eludes the plotted axis.

The mother tortoise sweeps beneath the silver wave

and the axes, if not the plastic nets. Will we eventually dream

of tortoises when there are no more tortoises or mothers to dream of?

CLEVELAND

Something unspeakable struggles behind these windows.

Shadows of a cry or cries or their aftermath.

Neighbors come and go and say hello and drive

into the silence of their hard, separate lives.

Or do not say goodbyes or enough to sustain a single

sentence. Do not lend an eye to tear into the darkness.

While in it there are horrors no sentence could bear, not

even the tumor feeding off indifference. Love thy neighbor.

Copyright "CO2" and "Cleveland" © John Keene, 2013. All rights reserved.

Tomorrow: Nothing Personal: The Dark Room Collection @ Poets House

Coming up tomorrow!

Random Photos

This is an incredibly busy time, and I'm just trying to keep it together. April proved not to be the cruelest month this year, but Inter/National Poetry Month went by like a bullet train and my postings were admittedly spotty. There are still a few more weeks in the semester, and then I hope to post a bit more consistently and frequently. Until then, a few photos of recent events.

A still from Shirley Clark's remarkable 1964 film
The Cool World, which Tracie Morris and colleagues
curated as part of Pratt Institute's Manhattan film series

Various organizers and participants in The Cool World
screening, including actor Rony Clanton (far left), co-organizer
Tracie Morris (second fr left), and critic Amy Taubin (fifth
from left, exact center)

Music box, 34th Street
(you pass your hand in front of the hole
and it issues a lovely tone)

Hilton Als (l) and Junot Díaz in conversation,
the Strand Bookstore

Ari Banias and Pamela Sneed, after the Gregg
Bordowitz Blues for Smoke reading at the Whitney Museum

Engelhard Court, Newark Museum of Art

Kazim Ali, Jayne Anne Phillips, Nathalie Handal
(and Brenda Shaughnessy, at bottom right), final reading
of the 2012-13 Rutgers-Newark Writers @ Newark
reading series

Two award-winners: Rigoberto González and Dee Rees
at Rigoberto's book launch, Casa Azul Bookstore, East Harlem

At Casa Azul Bookstore (poet Sheila Maldonado in the red jacket)

The paparazzi at the red carpet, Tribeca
International Film Festival

One of the celebrities speaking (I asked around but
no one could tell me who he is!)--Do any J's Theater
readers know?

Staceyanne Chin, performing at Rutgers-Newark

A subway drummer, making
and breaking beats

The keynote panel at the CUNY "Renaissance of Roland Barthes"
conference (l-r Diana Knight, D A Miller, Lucy O'Meara,
and Giancarlo Lombardi)

At Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues, Barclays
Center and full moon in the background

Remembering Richard Iton

Richard Iton

Last week I sadly learned of the death, after the recurrence of a previous illness, of my former Northwestern University colleague Richard Iton. Like all of the full-time members in Northwestern's African American Studies Department, Richard was a distinguished scholar in several fields, and he brought this interdisciplinarity to bear in his scholarly and critical work, and in his teaching. A political scientist by training, with a PhD from Johns Hopkins University, he explored the relationship between black popular culture and political and social movements and formations. The author of two award-winning books, including In Search of the Black Fantastic: Politics and Popular Culture in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Oxford University Press, 2008) and Solidarity Blues: Race, Culture, and the American Left (University of North Carolina Press, 2000), his interests encompassed a wide range of topics, such as the Black Diaspora and transnationality, postcolonial studies, and critical race studies. Richard could and did speak as authoritatively about Hegel, Gramsci and Fanon as about the history of African American comedy or hip hop, and he once thrilled students by giving them a short course, in the span of a few hours, on hip hop's history and aesthetic and cultural stages up to today. He also played a key role in designing and implementing Northwestern's very rigorous and highly regarded doctoral program in African American Studies, one of the leading ones in the US, and it was not only his intellectual vision, but his diligent administrative work that, alongside that of others, brought the NU PhD in African Americans to fruition. His passing represents a great loss to the department, the university, and the fields in which he worked. It also represents the loss of a warm, generous, down-to-earth, funny, brilliant person, someone who succeeded, many times over, in bringing talented new scholars into the world. Rest in peace, Richard, and we will truly miss you, your exceptional and focused mind, your generous, amazing spirit.

The official statement from Celeste Watkins-Hayes, the chair of African American Studies at Northwestern:

Mourning the passing of our Dear Colleague, Richard Iton

April 25, 2013 -- Last night, we received reports of the passing of our colleague, teacher, and friend Richard Iton. We have been working to confirm this information, and we just received word from Northwestern Memorial Hospital that these reports are unfortunately true. Our hearts are broken and our minds are jarred. But we can take comfort in the fact that Richard touched many lives and made remarkable contributions to our department, our university, and our discipline. We will share details about services when we receive them from Richard's family. In the meantime, let's lean on each other for support.

Yours in sympathy,
Celeste Watkins-Hayes, PhD
Chair, Dept. of African American Studies

Here is a video of Richard speaking last year at Cornell University:

Jason Collins Comes Out

Jason Collins (© Kwaku Alston/Sports Illustrated)

I continue to be tremendously impressed and moved by the courage of Jason Collins, a current NBA journeyman center and free agent, who announced yesterday in an article ins Sports Illustrated's current (May 6, 2013) online issue, "I'm a 34-year-old NBA center. I'm black. And I'm gay." With those words, he became and now is the "the first openly gay" male athlete playing in a major American male team sport. There have been a number of male and female athletes in individual sports--from Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King in tennis, to Greg Louganis in diving, and lesbians, bi and trans women athletes in team sports, as well as male athletes in pro sports overseas who have come out. In addition, Sheryl Swoopes and most recently Brittany Griner, in the WNBA, are among the black gay American women who have come out playing for major American team sports. But Jason Collins represents a double first--the first man, and the first black American man, to come out while still active as a player for a major American pro team. He finished this season with the Washington Wizards, after beginning it with the Boston Celtics, and has also played for the former New Jersey Nets, Memphis Grizzlies, Minnesota Timberwolves, and Atlanta Hawks. Though he makes clear in the article that he did not set out to be the first, he has instantly become a trailblazer with this amazing step, and he deserves the highest praise for taking it.

Collins's eloquent Sports Illustrated testament goes beyond just coming out, exploring his journey to those opening lines. So much of what he describes--the fear, the anxiety, the despair, the pain, the ambivalence, the self-delusion, the almost crushing desire to be accepted, to fit it, to not be any more different--are things many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer people have felt and still feel, sometimes after being out and living openly; coming out is and remains a process, and is never a final act, though that first step out, even today at a moment of fast-moving social progress and ever-expanding acceptance, at least among many in this country, of lgbtiq people, can often be the most difficult one, and for someone in Collins's position--a man of color, a professional athlete, a person raised in a Christian home, someone raised with black middle-class aspiration values--it probably did feel as difficult and risky as he describes. I am not a professional athlete, but many of the feelings he expresses are ones I and many people I know have felt intimately, deeply. Collins describes his journey in a way that welcomes all readers in, to understand what he has gone through, and where he hopes to go next with his life. It is a narrative of personal liberation, but it will probably have resonance in ways Collins has not ever imagined.

Many commentators online have noted how valuable Collins's comments will be for young people struggling with their sexual orientation, and I agree wholeheartedly with this. For young people of color, Collins, Brittany Griner, and many other out public figures probably will play a crucial role in self-acceptance. Seeing someone like themselves who is able to say "I am gay," who does not fall into the usual mainstream representations of queerness, will probably be invaluable. There are already many people who fit this category, but male professional team sport athlete was not one of them. Collins' coming out may also help people his own age and older who are grappling with their sexualities, and may help many heterosexual people who may still not accept and embrace lgbtiq people in part based on stereotypes, or who may still be carrying around abstracted ideas about who is lgbtiq. It may helped parents, grandparents, siblings--like Jason's twin brother, Jarron, who is straight--relatives, neighbors, all kinds of people who still have not been able to fully see the lgbtiq people around them, to see their humanity. Many of Collins's peers in the NBA like Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash, Dwyane Wade, Emeka Okafor, Al Horford, Jerry Stackhouse, Metta World Peace, and Baron Davis, past NBA legends like Karl Malone and Magic Johnson, stars in other sports like pioneer Martina Navratilova and , as well as other prominent figures across the society, including President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, former President Bill Clinton, Collins's former Stanford roommate Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy III, and Oprah Winfrey, have all shown their support.

Collins's coming out may prove especially valuable to other male and female athletes who are not yet ready to come out or be out, to live openly publicly (though they may be out to those close to them), and have felt the same sort of pressures of heteronormativity and heterosexism, who because of homophobia believe they have to choose a spouse of the opposite sex and go through the motions of a relationship or a marriage, who have felt despair and because they don't see a single person like them willing and able to be out doing what they do, they feel they cannot be honest even to themselves. This is as true for white male professional team sport athletes as it is for black, latino, asian-american, native american, hapa, and other male professional team sport athletes. Jason Collins has opened that door, and walked through it, joining a number of amazing athletes, like John Amaechi, Kwame Harris, Esera Tuaolo, Roy Simmons, Dave Kopay, and others, who came out after ending their professional careers. It's unclear if any team will sign Collins, but given his talent, skills and determination, for the sheer sake of business, an NBA team would be foolish to pass him up. This doesn't mean there won't still be a bit of a freakshow, that homophobes won't rear their heads, that he won't meet with some rejection or indifference by teammates. I imagine he realizes this; we all do. Some of this backlash began almost as soon as the article and news broke. But he has opened the door, in a different but still significant way as predecessors like Jackie Robinson and Curt Flood did, and others, perhaps a small, single-file line, in the NBA, the NFL, the MLB, the NHL, and the MLS, will walk through, but even a few in one or several will be significant. So I cheer Jason Collins, and appreciate what he has done. I hope has the support he needs, and that all who follow him will be able to find and rely upon it as well.

Proust/Degas/Surrealist Drawing @ the Morgan Library

Over the last few months the J. P. Morgan Library in New York mounted three shows, each of which was worth the price of admission. Rather than a long disquisition I'll offer some brief thoughts on each, along with pictures, to give a sense of why I was glad to have caught them.

First, the Library memorialized the 100th anniversary of the publication of Marcel Proust's (1871-1922) Du côté de chez Swann (1913), better known in English as Swann's Way, the first volume in what would be come one of the masterworks of the 20th century, and of all literature, À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time), with an exhibit on the background of the novel, Proust, and a trove of manuscripts, including letters he wrote to his beloved mother, the notebooks in which he took down thoughts towards Swann's Way, the handwritten manuscript drafts, and the bound, marked-up galley pages.

Though I was quite familiar with Proust's life and story, it was something altogether new to be able to view his handwriting, to note how he was unfolding his ideas on the page, and to study how he edited the opening of Swann's Way, crossing out a large swath of meandering prose and inserting in its place that unforgettable opening, "Longtemps je me suis couché de bonne heure." (For a long time I would go to bed early"), which in its rhythmic propulsion, idiomatic playfulness and grace, and narrative foreshadowing, portends not just the rest of the first section, but the entire giant work. The musical title itself, something I'd always wondered about, turns out to have been a bit of slang Proust was playing with; it literally means "Alongside Swann's home," which sounds awful for an English title, and was also controversial among French grammarians. What the exhibit also shows is that Swann's Way, initially rejected by nearly all the major Parisian publishing houses, was so long that the ultimate publisher, Grasset, who required Proust to subsidize its production (yes, this began as a vanity project!), demanded that the author lop off a sizable chunk from the novel's end, and, as Proust wanted the book to appear, he complied. The second volume, À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (In the Shadow of Young Girls In Flower, a/k/a In a Budding Grove) did not appear until the end of the First World War, in 1919. Despite the rejection Proust encountered at first, the estimation by many in Paris's literary world that he was a wealthy dilettante and socialite, and Grasset's own rather harsh editorial treatment of his work, there were admirers who immediately graspedn his brilliance; the exhibit names two American literary masters, who read him upon the book's publication, in the original French: Edith Wharton, who knew she was in the hands of one of the greats, and Henry James, to whom she sent Swann's Way, who also perceptively lauded Proust's genius. The seeds of that genius, cultivated and nurtured, are visible in this show.

Proust's notebooks (note the illustrations on the covers
of these narrow, pocket-perfect volumes)

Proust's notebooks containing notes and
drafts of what would become Swann's Way

The typescript version of Swann's Way
with Proust's annotations and changes

The third galley (incomplete) of Swann's Way
on which Proust has inserted, on a piece of paper,
his famous opening line, "Longtemps je me
suis couché de bonne heure...."

Proust's galley, with the truncation
Grasset required, concluding Swann's Way

In Search of Lost Time (the complete,
multivolume text)

***

Miss La La (Anna "Olga" Brown)

There also was an enthralling exhibit focusing on French artist Edgar Degas's (1834-1917) drawings and eventual 1879 painting of the famous 19th century black aerialist, Miss La La (Anna Olga Albertina Brown) (b. 1858-1919?), at the Cirque Fernando, one of the popular mass entertainment venues in mid-century Paris. Yes, you read that right; Miss La La was an acrobat, born to a black father and a white Prussian mother, who performed with the Troupe Kaira and regularly transfixed Paris and other cities in Europe. Degas's painting, considered one of his masterpieces, required his usual intense preparation, but with even greater concentration, for while he was able to render Miss La La, suspended high above the circus floor by dint of her bite on a suspended from a rope, fairly easily, he struggled to capture the geometry of the circus building's ceiling and rafters.

According to the exhibit, Degas may even have had some help with the drafting of the arches and planes, though it is known that he studied the architectural plans quite carefully.  The preparatory drawings, pastels, and paintings of Miss La La are offered their own considerable beauty, and it was thrilling to move along the wall and note how Degas was working up towards the extraordinary painting, "Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando" (oil on canvas, 1879, National Gallery, UK), that resulted, though interestingly, Miss La La's racial identity is less evident in the final work that in the preparatory ones. What one notices in that final image is her floating form, inspired in part by religious iconography Degas was quite familiar with, as well as other circus images by peers, and that almost glowing, orange vault of ceiling and the arches and pillars holding them up, as carefully poised as the aerialist herself.

The exhibit did not say what happened to her, though Reggie H. sent a link with more information on her (can't find it on Wikipedia!), including that she was born in Stettin, formerly in the Prussian Empire and now part of Poland (Szczecin), and that was known various as Olga Kaira, Olga Kaire, la Venus Noire, “Olga the Mulatto”, “Olga the Negress”, “The Venus of the Tropics”, “The Cannon Woman” and “The African Princess.” According the Circus Girl blogsite, she continued performing up to the late 1880s, married an American contortionist named Emmanuel (Manuel) Woodson, and had a daughter named Rose Eddie Woodson, who was born in London in 1894, before giving birth to two more daughters who together became an act known as the "Three Keziahs." Apparently the last known recorded year of Olga's life was 1919, when she was listed on a US passport application. Had I the time I'd spend a bit of it trying to learn what happened to her. Degas, also of mixed-raced ancestry on his mother's side, not only painted one of his greatest works, but immortalized this extraordinary figure.

A reproduction of a Degas pastel

A preparatory sketch (charcoal on brown paper), 1879

A preparatory pastel, on brown paper
(one of the most "Impressionistic" of
all his versions here)

Degas' draft of the architecture
in the Cirque Fernando's ceiling

Edgar Degas, Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando
(oil on canvas, 1879)

A poster featuring the Troupe Kaira
and highlighting Miss La La

An illustrated magazine, featuring
images of circus participants,
including Miss La La on the lower right

A book that includes a discussion
of Olga (Miss La La) and her acrobatic
partner, Kaira la Blanche (Theophila Szterker)

***

These two exhibits would have been enough for any museum visit, but there was also the Drawing Surrealism show to explore. A surfeit of energizing, deranging riches, filling two large galleries. Ego yes, but so much id! In fact it contained 165 works by 70 artists from 15 countries on paper, including many of the most famous Surrealist stars, like René Magritte, Giorgio DiChirico, Salvador Dalí, and Jean Arp, as well as some I did not expect, like Georges Bataille. Artists preceding or following the Surrealists, like Frida Kahlo also make appearances, and throughout the show gently guides you along the pathways of affiliation and influence. One highlight and delight was a painting by Wilfredo Lam, Surrealism's man in Cuba. There also were more recent non-Euro-American artists working in that tradition, which was a refreshing addition.

The show unfolds by emphasizing Surrealist techniques, including collage, automatic drawing, decalcomania, frottage, and some of the most striking imagery of all produced through the exquisite corpse method. Viewing this group of images made me want to gather up a group of friends, have a few drinks, and produce a few exquisite corpse drawings and texts for fun. (I just might have to do that.) A number of the works had this effect, though, which in a sense is in keeping with the Surrealist ethos. Unfortunately this show ended on April 21, so if you pass through New York you can still catch the Proust and Degas exhibits, but these Surrealist renderings won't be departing my memory anytime soon. Should someone mount a future show featuring these artists and works, perhaps pairing a bit of the poetic and prose works, music, and other artistic forms that also constituted Surrealism would make for quite a event. A participatory exquisite corpse dramatic or performance work wouldn't be a bad idea either.

One of the Drawing Surrealism exhibit rooms

Guillaume Apollinaire, "La mandoline,
l'oeillet et la bambeau" (1915-1917) 

André Masson, Battle of Fishes (1926)
(he uses sand on the painting, as you can see)

Wilfredo Lam, "Woman and Bird" (1942)

Frida Kahlo, "El verdadero vacilón" (1946-47)

Victor Brauner, "L'Anatomie du désir" (1933)

Exquisite corpse drawing (collaboratively
created by André Breton, Marcel Duhamel,
Max Morise, and Yves Tanguy, 1928)

Ellsworth Kelly, "Brushstrokes Cut into 44 Squares
and Arranged by Chance," 1951

In the Garden

For some reason I seem to recall hitting the garden much earlier in prior springs, but between work and the weather, it was not until this weekend that we were able to put plants into the ground.

As in previous years, we planted herbs and vegetables in the back, but no flowers this time. (C found places for new rose bushes in the front.) Between natural die-offs, the hurricane last fall, the long chilly (but not freezing) winter, and the slow-arriving spring, some of the backyard's longstanding perennial herbs didn't make it, but the African sage, the lavender (which for years we could not induce to grow, until we added lime to the soil), and the rosemary are thriving. We never planted comfrey, but its purple spears have formed a little forest beneath the lilac bush, which is now in bloom. The blackberry bush, severely cut back, also looks set both to flower and bear fruit. Among the flowers, the rose bushes, a single hyacinth, and the rhododendron bush, and the honeysuckle are also doing well.

Towering over everything is the river magnolia, with its full, healthy glossy, white-pink leaves, which are shedding, forming a carpet over everything, which I hope will have been completely laid by the end of the week so that we can rake it up and attend to the rest of the backyard. That should also give both us time to recover from the workout the gardening bestowed upon us. I am praying I'll be able to move my arms and legs tomorrow.

A few photos of the new plantings, which are mostly fruits vegetables we've had success growing in the past (broccoli, eggplant, basil) and some we've never been able to grow before (sweet peas, jalapeño peppers). We tried a new method our neighbor recommended to prevent weeds. Alongside the transfers we placed a lining of newspaper, which we covered with topsoil. Supposedly the paper admits the plant's roots but does not allow weeds (evening nightshade behind a perennial visitor along the fences) to bore through. I will try to add updates throughout the rest of the spring and summer.

The ever-hardy African sage, which I had to cut back.

Sweet peas, onions (there were wild onions
dotting the soil), broccoli, eggplant, cucumbers,
and hot peppers

A bigger patch: tomatoes (6 different types), basil and
lemon basil, jalapeño peppers, cilantro

The same patch from a different perspective

The strawberry patch, which was full of new shoots,
with oregano, cilantro to the left, and cucumbers
(rosemary is the far right)

The river magnolia, in bloom
(the butterfly bush is on the left,
a fir tree stands in the right distance)

Another patch where we used to have lemon balm
and lots of other herbs, but nothing survived, so we
went with 3 types of stone crop (on the right)
and sweet marjoram on the left. We later added
a row of spearmint and peppermint behind these.