(Pulitzer Center X Tarfia Faizullah)/ E. Ethelbert Miller = Great (Reading)
∑ n = (B(cause) ->This) + ( B(cause) -> This + This)
half note #001
Sometimes it’s a good feeling to know that you are not alone or at least to know that someone else is thinking what you are thinking.
About 2 years ago i wrote this piece called “Mel Bochner: In the Tower…or in the mix?” . It was a brief meditation on Mel Bochner’s exhibition in The Tower of the National Gallery of Art in DC and what was going on my my head at the time. In the piece, one of the things i talked about was visual poetry, in particular what I suggested was Bochner’s render of a “visual sonnet” based on the structure of the the Thesaurus paintings. I further suggest that these poems are connected to Stein, Boultenhouse , Apollinaire lineage starting with Stein’s “word portraits” to Boultenhouse’s “Poems in the Shape of Things” to Apollinaire’s collection of visual poetry Calliagrammes.
Just a few weeks ago I came across this article entitle “Apollinaire ‘s Visual Poetry” on MoMA‘s Blog INSIDE/OUT. AIf felt good to know that the same type of language and thinking that I had used to frame the poetic qualities of Bochner’s work was being used to by a curator at MoMa to talk about Apollinaire’s Calliagrammes. I know it seems like such a small perhaps even insignificant thing, but as a part of my creative process, it is important to create and find community where I can for encouragement, particularly with the experience of living in a new place where you don’t yet have community to plug into and to be a support.
Anyway, that is my half note for now…more soon…
INSIDE/OUT Blog Archive on Poetry related stuff click here .
What’s been on my mind
So many thoughts come to me as I move through my day, exploring my little corner of this vast Continent, trying to keep 3 languages (English, French and Bamanakan) straight in my head, trying to stay creative and nimble, etc
But there are some thoughts, observations, ideas that keep coming back, things that won’t leave you alone. Over the past few months I have been thinking about money, currency, cash, moolah y’all…how it functions in the world, its behavior, the behavior of those who handle it, define it, worship it, and those that are under its foot, caught in its crease. A recent article from SiliconAfrica has made me think even harder as I attempt to come to grips with my own complicity which has made ask and attempt to answer some tough questions for myself and the way I move in the world.
I have always been interest in Africa (I will post more about that soon my my other blog BOOM FOR REAL BAMAKO), even from a very young thanks to late Uncle Clemson “Russell” Joiner and my parents efforts to make sure I understood that there is more to African American history than enslavement (rebellion and victory) and the Civil Rights Movement.
I have been fortunate enough to have people around me from an early age to explain to that Africa and its influence on all American life is not some remote dead thing of the past, but that it is still with in a lot of ways… not as retentions but as things we have always done. I was reminded of this just a few weeks back when the The Daily Beast posted pictures from Martin A Berger’s newly published Freedom Now!: Forgotten Photographs of the Civil Rights Struggle where this photo taken by Don Cravens in 1955 caught my attention:
which in turn immediately made think of the picture I took during my first week here in Bamako in 2013, which I call Royalty.
Although I was not surprised to see women carrying things like this in Bamako; I must admit, despite my Low Country/Gullah roots, I was still surprised to see this. I see women like this everyday walking around Bamako, I marvel at them, how they are always in motion, always at work, always serving.
Because these things have been repeatedly going through my mind since I have been here I have been trying to make sense of them the best way I know how…by attempting to make poems. I am not quite ready to share them yet, but you will see them, if I am blessed you may see 1 or 2 of them in print.
See you soon.
Brief thoughts on Langston and Africa
I thought about Langston Hughes all day today, thinking about what he meant to me, how much I still don’t know about him and his work…I also thought about what it means for me to be here in Bamako, Mali, a poet and trying to make sense of myself here.
I came across this poem doing what I do with a good portion of my days, surfing the net, reading, researching etc and I came across this on ChickenBones:
Africa
Sleepy giant,
You’ve been resting awhile.
Now I see the thunder
And the lightning
In your smile.
Now I see
The storms clouds
In your waking eyes:
The thunder,
The wonder
And the new
Surprise.
Your every step towards
The new stride
In your thighs.
– Langston Hughes
This poem resonates with me as look at out into what is now early morning Feb 2nd and think about the future of Africa. Although things are dire in many countries, there are many countries where the people are thriving, that energy is palpable. I feel it when talking with people about their country and I see it in all of the building that is going on. I also saw and felt that creative spark in talking to the young people at the American International School of Bamako, who I had the opportunity to spend the day with a few days ago.
This Hughes poem despite its age does what so many good poems do, it speaks to its reader where that reader is found. It takes a poet of extreme vision to simultaneously be timely in one’s own day and transcendent 47 years after your death…
Thank you Langston Hughes, you give us all who claim to poets something to strive for.
A Thought on Humility…
I just got finished reading another great piece from Joe Ross’ blog. The is called A Politics of Humility and it reminded me of something I wrote a long time ago about how elusive humility can be, but also how rewarding it can be or it can even disappear, but Joe goes further from a personal meditation to a thought how to build a much more peaceful planet.
Check out this passage:
“We might find a far richer peace if we sought more humility. But humility is pretty out of fashion these days. Have you ever heard a parent dream that their child grows up to be humble? Yet isn’t it possible that with more humility — seeing that our true place is with others, among others, not over them, running them– we would unleash a mighty calm upon the world.”
Read the whole post here