#Black American poetry

[manwalksintobar]

if we’ve gotta live underground and everybody’s got cancer/ will poetry be enuf?  // Eisa Davis to Ntozake Shange

         dear ntozake,

I got sacks of mercury under the skin beneath my eyes either cried too much or i’m abt to the cool war’s burnin up my retina again does poetry start where life ends? i know i’m supposed to be cool: i wear corrective lenses that feature high definition tragedy. baby in the dumpster       ethnic cleansing assassinations       multinational mergers i’m supposed to shake my head write a poem believe in ripples. but i ain’t cool. i emit inhuman noises i imagine terrorist acts as i flick my imaginary ash onto the imaginary tray i imagine going insane with a purpose and writing it down feels sorta unnecessary does poetry end where life begins? berkeley girl       black girl        red diaper baby born of the blood of the struggle but with reaganomics and prince pickin up steam in ‘81 nothing came between me and my calvins 10 yrs old       unpressed hair       playin beethoven readin madeleine l’engle       got scared in my pants when i heard this girl testifying ‘TOUSSAINT’ in the black repertory group youth ensemble i was just sittin in a rockin chair pretendin to be 82 and talkin like I knew all bout langston’s ‘rivers’

i wasn’t as good as her and i definitely wadn’t cool so i gave up drama and decided to bake soufflés zake you wda beat me up in the playground if we’da grown up together and you did eighth grade       ‘he dropped em’ at the regional oratorical competition i saw another fly honey rip it this time it’s ‘a nite with beau willie brown’ i was bleedin on the ground i became yours no more soufflés i jacked for colored girls right off my mama’s shelf my mama fania who was sweatin with you and raymond sawyer and ed mock and halifu osumare dancin on the grass       back in the day in you i found a groove never knew i had one like that did that monologue over and over alone in my room my bunk bed the proscenium arch 13 yrs old       screamin and cryin abt my kids gettin dropped out a window didn't know a damn thing about rivers but i knew abt my heart fallin        five stories you were never abbreviated or lower case to me you just pimped that irony that global badass mackadocious funkology you not only had hígado you had ben-wa balls in yr pussy

betsey brown on my godmother's couch nappy edges in mendocino at the mouth of big river spell #7 after the earthquake in silverlake the love space demands had to be in brooklyn yr poems are invitations to live in yr body love letters yr admirers dream they coulda written themselves no one cd find a category that was yr size blackety black but never blacker than thou you teased me into sassiness when i had none to speak of made profane into sacred but never formed a church sanctified women's lives whether we were reading nietzsche or a box of kotex we were magical and regular you many-tongued st louis woman of barnard and barcelona you left us the residue of yr lust left us to wander life as freely as sassafrass cypress and indigo and even the unedumacated could get yr virtuosity cuz you always fried it up in grease you built an aqueduct from lorraine hansberry's groundwater and it bubbled straight to george c wolfe you never read what the critics said and you scrunched up the flesh between yr eyebrows like everybody else in my family

but zake is poetry enuf?

i beg the question cuz you grew me up you    and adrienne kennedy     and anna deavere smith and all my mothers you blew out the candles on my 26th so when there's mercury under the skin beneath my eyes and the world ain't so cool do you write a poem or a will?

like leroi jones said     if bessie smith had killed some white people she wouldn't have needed that music so do we all write like amiri baraka does or do we all get our nat turner on?

i beg the question cuz i wanna get my life right do some real work and i really don't want to kill any white folk i mean     can we talk abt this maybe it's just my red diaper that's itchin but i still got that will to uplift the race sans bootstraps or talented tenths or paper bag tests this time we uplift the human race and i know the rainbow might be but is poetry enuf?

it's a naive question but i'm old enuf to ask them once in a while if we do finally unload the canon clean it out stock up on some more colorful balls ain't we only gettin the ones that are available at a store near you? doesn't the market end up setting the new standards anyway? is poetry enuf if it ain't sellin? if ain't nobody readin it? can poetry keep a man     who can't read from droppin his kids out a window?

and how can i call a ceasefire to this cool war in stanzas of eights when we've declared poetry a no fly zone? we have learned to protect it and its potential politics like a mother shoot down anyone who might overdetermine a poem's meaning (while we poets divebomb everyone else's politics with impunity like we're the United States or something)

if poetry is just poetry we save it from the conservatives but doesn't that mean it's of no use to the progressives?

is poetry enuf? cuz that's all i'm doin. makin up stories    on stage     on the page keepin the beat and that's all my friends are doin and that's what a lot of folks my age are doin

but if we've gone and burnt up everything in the sky if there's nothin else to eat but landfill stroganoff if we've gotta live underground and everybody's got cancer will poetry be enuf?

my aunt angela says i can do my thang and keep swinging left hooks to oppression if i stay up stay into it stay involved just one form of praxis will do. it's just my guilt that thinks i need twenty-two what's enuf?

shouldn't i (or somebody) be our secular bodhisattva become a real power player but skip the talk show can't we stabilize, rekindle collectives and cooperatives and collaborations therapeutic communities that double as creative juggernauts a publishing house     a theatre where the plays cost less than the movies get the neighborhood coven back together take dance breaks in the cubicles sing until the flourescent lights burst into snow i ask you because you changed me zake you changed thousands of women and i know poetry can't be enuf if you drunk

i ain't tryin ta walk off wid alla yr stuff and i got nuttin but love for ya so that's why i gotta know i'm sittin on my bed encircled by every book you've ever published they're open like fans marking pages with the flint of genius all i want is for this circle to grow so tell me:

is this where poetry and life are twins? i felt so crumpled up when i started writing you poetry seemed so useless and dingy next to all the bright red bad news but now that the poem is over i feel wide open like an infant of the spring just tell me how to feed this light to my responsibilities and poetry just might be enuf           love           eisa

[frompoemsthativeread]

Amen Amen Amen. I call out God's good name in the midst of the first miracle--the black body. Look at him, at us. Were the mountains not named after some dark brotha's shoulderes? Didn't the wind learn its ways from watching two boys run the spine of a field? Bless the birch-colored body, always threatening to grow or burn. Bless the body that strikes fear in pale police. & wets the mouths of church girls & choir boys with want. Am I allowed to say I praised my pastor most without the robe?

-- Danez Smith, On Grace. From Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color (2018).

[girl-bateman]

A Study in Beauty. 

Brand New City, Mitski

Howls Moving Castle, Dir. Hayao Miyazaki

American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis

American Psycho, Dir. Mary Harron

Liquid Smooth, Mitski

Ruminations: Big and Little Bullys, Euphoria

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

Jennifers Body, Dir. Karyn Kusama

slant of light, ryebreadgf

American Psycho, Dir. Mary Harron

American Beauty, Alan Ball

Black Swan, Dir. Darren Aronofsky

Cléo from 5 till 7, Dir. Agnès Varda

[the-evil-clergyman]

Ye Hag, from Selections from the Poetry of Robert Herrick by Edwin Austin Abbey (1882)

[newvision]

— Danez Smith, iv. not an ode for John Crawford (a bop) from Black Movie

[beggars-opera]

A researcher in New York just announced that she has discovered a never-before-seen poem by Phillis Wheatley!

Dr. Wendy Roberts was researching Wheatley’s life and found the poem tucked away in a “commonplace book,” or scrapbook, of Mary Powel Potts, an 18th century Quaker in Pennsylvania. The poem, “On the Death of Love Rotch,” eulogizes a Nantucket woman whose family did business with the Wheatleys. Her son was also the subject of one of Wheatley’s poems. This new work is attributed only to “A Negro Girl about 15 years of age” but it’s very unlikely that there were two teenage Black poetry prodigies being published in the colonies (although it would be very cool if there were).

The book also contained a poem called “The Black Rose” which does not have an attribution with it but might also be a lost poem, and the only one Wheatley wrote memorializing another Black woman.

Dr. Roberts will be presenting more on this find on Thursday 1/26 at 6 EST in a virtual talk.

Further musings on this by J.L. Bell at Boston1775.

[pagansphinx]

Black History Month

Maya Angelou (American, 1928-2014)

Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.

I'm not cute or built to suit

a fashion model's size

But when I start to tell them,

They think I'm telling lies.

I say,

It's in the reach of my arms

The span of my hips,

The stride of my step,

The curl of my lips.

I'm a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

I walk into a room

Just as cool as you please,

And to a man,

The fellows stand or

Fall down on their knees

Then they swarm around me,

A hive of honey bees.

I say,

It's the fire in my eyes,

And the flash of my teeth,

The swing in my waist,

And the joy in my feet.

I'm a woma

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

Men themselves have wondered

What they see in me.

They try so much

But they can't touch

My inner mystery.

When I try to show them

They say they still can't see.

I say,

It's in the arch of my back,

The sun of my smile,

The ride of my breasts,

The grace of my style.

I'm a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

Now you understand

Just why my head's not bowed.

I don't shout or jump about

Or have to talk real loud.

When you see me passing

It ought to make you proud.

I say,

It's in the click of my heels,

The bend of my hair,

the palm of my hand,

The need of my care,

'Cause I'm a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

from And Still I Rise • Copyright © 1978

[powerlineprincess]

Collage details. Cut up Bible Tracts and a 35mm shot from the club♡ 2023 K.E.A Lux Hill♡

[musings-n-museums]

don't you want it?

the rise of american consumerism, article from pbs // four (4) search results from trends 2024, google images captions // black friday pulled in a record $6.22 billion in online sales: adobe analytics, by lauren thomas // temu best finds, google results // rent, written by jonathan larson // sale ends, by banksy // what you own, written by jonathan larson

[manwalksintobar]

Victims of the Latest Dance Craze // Cornelius Eady

The streamers choking the main arteries Of downtown. The brass band led by a child From the home for the handicapped. The old men Showing their hair (what’s left of it), The buttons of their shirts Popping in time To the salsa flooding out Of their portable headphones,

And mothers letting their babies Be held by strangers. And the bus drivers Taping over their fare boxes And willing to give directions.

Is there any reason to mention All the drinks are on the house? Thick, adolescent boys Dismantle their BB guns. Here is the world (what’s left of it), In brilliant motion, The oil slick at the curb Danced into a thousand Splintered steps. The bag ladies toss off their Garments To reveal wings.

“This dance you do,” drawls the cop, “What do you call it?” We call it scalding the air. We call it dying with your Shoes on.

And across the street The bodies of tramps Stumble In a sober language.

And across the street Shy young girls step behind Their nameless boyfriends, Twirling their skirts.

And under an archway A delivery boy discovers His body has learned to speak, And what does this street look like If not a runway, A polished wood floor?

From the air, Insects drawn by the sweat Alight, when possible, On the blur Of torsos. It is the ride Of their tiny lives. The wind that burns their wings, The heaving, oblivious flesh, Mountains stuffed with panic, An ocean That can’t make up its mind. They drop away With the scorched taste Of vertigo.

And under a swinging light bulb Some children Invent a game With the shadow the bulb makes, And the beat of their hearts. They call it dust in the mouth. They call it horse with no rider. They call it school with empty books.

In the next room Their mother throws her dress away to chance. It drops to the floor Like a brush sighs across a drum head, And when she takes her lover, What are they thinking of If not a ballroom filled with mirrors, A world where no one has the right To stumble?

In a parking lot An old man says this: “I am a ghost dance. I remember the way my hair felt, Damp with sweat and wind.

When the wind kisses the leaves, I am dancing. When the subway hits the third rail, I am dancing. When the barrel goes over Niagara Falls, I am dancing. Music rings my bones like metal.

O, Jazz has come from heaven,” he says, And at the z he jumps, arcing his back like a heron’s neck, And stands suddenly revealed As a balance demon, A home for Stetson hats.

We have all caught the itch: The neon artist Wiring up his legs, The tourist couple Recording the twist on their Instamatic camera, And in a factory, A janitor asks his broom For a waltz, And he grasps it like a woman He’d have to live another Life to meet, And he spins around the dust bin And machines and thinks: Is everybody happy? And he spins out the side door, Avoiding the cracks in the sidewalk, Grinning as if he’d just received The deepest kiss in the world.

[lionofchaeronea]

And all things were transfigured in the day But me, whom radiant beauty could not move; For you, more wonderful, were far away, And I was blind with hunger for your love. -Claude McKay, "Summer Morn in New Hampshire"

[godzilla-reads]

🌿 Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry edited by Camille T. Dungy

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

“Black Nature” is the first anthology to focus on nature writing by African American poets. Camille T. Dungy has selected 180 poems from 93 poets that provide unique perspectives on American social and literary history to broaden our concept of nature poetry and African American poetics.

A truly reflective collection of poetry that embraces the beauty, the struggle, and the complicated history of nature and the African American people. With sections titled “Nature, Be With Us” to “Forsaken of the Earth”, this should be on every poetry lovers shelf. These poems have such a powerful impact on how nature is viewed from a non-white lens and they made me consider a type of nature I hadn’t considered before.

Side note: My 3 favorite poems were “The Haunted Oak” by Paul Laurence Dunbar; “the earth is a living thing” by Lucille Clifton; and “Miscarriage in October with Ladybugs” by Amber Flora Thomas.

[lunamonchtuna]

so when are you gonna tell me that i’m the bane of your existence and the object of all your desires?

[shanaspeare]

The World is Yours

"Bury me in the ocean, with my ancestors that jumped from the ships, because they knew death was better than bondage." Killmonger, Black Panther

Originally posted on TikTok: @/vitxate

[bruce-morrow]

Other Countries celebrates Sojourner: Black Gay Voiced in the Age of AIDS @ CUNY Grad Center, 2023