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“We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks

THE POOL PLAYERS.

SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.

We real cool. We Left school. We

Lurk late. We Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We Die soon.

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"We begin with history."

THE PLACE OF POETRY by Liana Ambrose-Murray

(On our African-American Poetry class trip to Smith College for a Conversation between Nikky Finney and Elizabeth Alexander in the Poetry Center.)

The visit to Smith College was truly amazing, healing, and eye-opening. It’s a completely different and wonderful experience to hear the sound of each word and line directly from the body of the poet. I feel I’ve learned a lot more about Professor Nikky Finney and Professor Elizabeth Alexander’s work from the event, which is always a much-needed and wanted experience.

A thin, black thread traces the grain of the floorboards in the living room, or perhaps its called the family room, that houses the burning fireplace of poetry. The fire burns bright, forever, to feed the world with warmth, to give us light and seeing eyes, and to sit (always moving) at the center of the story–storytelling–where the important words cannot be forgotten. This black thread begins in a place we must remember and ends in the center of this growing house, and it’s the warmth of the fire that feeds this thread. It grows. Rather than step over and walk past the thread that lies on the floor, Professor Finney and Professor Alexander so gallantly decide to lift the tip of this thread. Their words and poetry, in different ways, lift the end of this black thread and trace its length (as a spelunker would lift the rope that ties her body to civilization, back at the mouth of the cave) out the door, through the valley, and past the sky. This thread thickens and grows the further it goes back to the origins of the place of poetry, where both Prof. Finney and Prof. Alexander have travelled many times.

Prof. Finney does this with long, flowing strides (just like her voice and the way she speaks). I picture her poetry along a circular timeline, in which her work encompasses the breadth of an untold history through the presentation of what is now–it’s timeless and open, as if our great great great grandmothers planted the seeds of sunflowers that still (today) light the corners of our windowsills, where the gardens grow. Prof. Alexander traces the length of this long black thread-rope with the echoes of her exquisite heels, marking the walls with the sound of her, step by step (just like her voice, which can carry an idea, a story, something new and necessary, with the precision, clarity, elegance, and strength of her mastered high-heeled step). I imagine Professor Alexander’s poetry imbibed with the soul of history, not history as in the past we tell, but rather the length of art, life, magic and treasured songs that once existed, and through the place of poetry that Professor Alexander reaches into, still does.

Like the sankofa bird:

Professor Alexander and Professor Finney so beautifully pull the threads of the past to present, not so much to reflect on the past, but in recognition of the past as a legacy that has built the fire of today. Professor Alexander spoke of “the place of poetry,” and I imagined a world that artists (poets) can step into, that encircles the edge of their minds like an invisible (and invincible) crown of roses–to be nourished, sometimes painful, but always there and always beautiful. The idea that poetry exists already, and a poem forms when an artist accesses this world is beautiful and magical.

In Professor Finney’s acceptance speech (below) she recalls her greatest teacher saying, “Ms. Finney, do you really have time to sit there? Have you finished reading every book in the library?” I think this shows the circular “timeline” of Prof. Finney’s work, that her dreams of being a poet, the fire of poetry, were realized by the sparks of “every book in the library”. The fire inside of Prof. Finney’s work seems to be fed by the shelves and shelves of pages of words of ideas and of knowledge that are interlaced within the threads of the “past”.

And Dr. Katie Cannon, who said to Prof. Finney, “Black people were the only people in the United States ever explicitly forbidden to become literate.” This is the history that burns. Those Black people who could see the invisible crown of roses about their head (this place of poetry encircling the mind) rose like fire above the rusty knives of slave owners, plantation overseers, and law writers who attempted to severe these beautiful, flowering minds from their alive Black bodies.

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"The Golden Shovel" by Terrance Hayes

I. 1981 When I am so small Da’s sock covers my arm, we cruise at twilight until we find the place the real men lean, bloodshot and translucent with cool. His smile is a gold-plated incantation as we drift by women on bar stools, with nothing left in them but approachlessness. This is a school I do not know yet. But the cue sticks mean we are rubbed by light, smooth as wood, the lurk of smoke thinned to song. We won’t be out late. Standing in the middle of the street last night we watched the moonlit lawns and a neighbor strike his son in the face. A shadow knocked straight Da promised to leave me everything: the shovel we used to bury the dog, the words he loved to sing his rusted pistol, his squeaky Bible, his sin. The boy’s sneakers were light on the road. We watched him run to us looking wounded and thin. He’d been caught lying or drinking his father’s gin. He’d been defending his ma, trying to be a man. We stood in the road, and my father talked about jazz, how sometimes a tune is born of outrage. By June the boy would be locked upstate. That night we got down on our knees in my room. If I should die before I wake. Da said to me, it will be too soon. II. 1991 Into the tented city we go, we- akened by the fire’s ethereal afterglow. Born lost and cool- er than heartache. What we know is what we know. The left hand severed and school- ed by cleverness. A plate of we- ekdays cooking. The hour lurk- ing in the afterglow. A late- night chant. Into the city we go. Close your eyes and strike a blow. Light can be straight- ened by its shadow. What we break is what we hold. A sing- ular blue note. An outcry sin- ged exiting the throat. We push until we thin, thin- king we won’t creep back again. While God licks his kin, we sing until our blood is jazz, we swing from June to June. We sweat to keep from we- eping. Groomed on a die- t of hunger, we end too soon.

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"If you / train your ears / for what’s / unstated / Beneath the congratulations(!) / That silence / is my story, / the pure celebration / (And shock) / of my face / defying / its gravity, / So to speak."

"I am a brick in a house / that is being built / around your house."

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"The Poet" Laurence Dunbar

He sang of life, serenely sweet, With, now and then, a deeper note. From some high peak, nigh yet remote, He voiced the world’s absorbing beat. He sang of love when earth was young, And Love, itself, was in his lays. But, ah, the world, it turned to praise A jingle in a broken tongue.

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"Negative" by Kevin Young

Wake to find everything black what was white, all the vice versa—white maids on TV, black sitcoms that star white dwarfs cute as pearl buttons. Black Presidents, Black Houses. White horse candidates. All bleach burns clothes black. Drive roads white as you are, white songs on the radio stolen by black bands like secret pancake recipes, white back up singers, ball-players & boxers all white as tar. Feathers on chickens dark as everything, boiling in the pot that called the kettle honky. Even whites of the eye turn dark, pupils clear & changing as a cat’s. Is this what we’ve wanted & waited for? to see snow covering everything black as Christmas, dark pages written white upon? All our eclipses bright, dark stars shooting across pale sky, glowing like ash in fire, shower every skin. Only money keeps green, still grows & burns like grass under dark daylight.

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"When The Neighbors Fight" by Terrence Hayes

The trumpet’s mouth is apology.

…………We sit listening

To Kind of Blue. Miles Davis …………Beat his wife. It hurts

To know the music is better …………Than him. The wall

Is damaged skin. Tears can purify …………The heart. Even the soft

Kiss can bite. Miles Davis beat …………His wife. It’s muffled

In the jazz, the struggle   …………With good & bad. The wall

Is damaged skin. The horn knows …………A serious fear.

Your tongue burns pushing …………Into my ear. Miles Davis

Beat his wife. No one called …………The cops until the music

Stopped. The heart is a muted   …………Horn. The horn is a bleeding

Wife. Tonight our neighbors are a score ………..Of danger. You open

My shirt like a door you want …………To enter. I am tender

As regret. Mouth on the nipple …………Above my heart.

There is the good pain …………Of your bite.

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"For Saundra" Nikki Giovani

i wanted to write

a poem

that rhymes

but revolution doesn’t lend

itself to be-bopping

then my neighbor who thinks i hate asked – do you ever write tree poems – i like trees so i thought i’ll write a beautiful green tree poem peeked from my window to check the image noticed that the school yard was covered with asphalt no green – no trees grow in manhattan

then, well, i thought the sky i’ll do a big blue sky poem but all the clouds have winged low since no-Dick was elected

so i thought again and it occurred to me maybe i shouldn’t write at all but clean my gun and check my kerosene supply

perhaps these are not poetic times at all

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"Tired" by Fenton Johnson

I am tired of work; I am tired of building up somebody else’s civilization.Let us take a rest, M’lissy Jane.

I will go down to the Last Chance Saloon, drink a gallon or two of gin, shoot a game or two of dice and sleep the rest of the night on one of Mike’s barrells.

You will let the old shanty go to rot, the white people’s clothes turn to dust, and the Cavalry Baptist Church sink to the bottomless pit.

You will spend your days forgetting you married me and your nights hunting the warm gin Mike serves the ladies in the rear of the Last Chance Saloon.

Throw the children in the river; civilization has given us too many. It is better to die than it is to grow up and find out that you are colored.

Pluck the stars out of the heavens. The stars mark our destiny. The stars mark my destiny. I am tired of civilization.

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"On Being Brought From Africa to America"by Phyllis Wheatley

Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,

Taught my benighted soul to understand

That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too:

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,

"Their colour is a diabolic die."

Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,

May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.

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"Southern Roads" by Sterling Brown

Swing dat hammer—hunh— Steady, bo’; Swing dat hammer—hunh— Steady, bo’; Ain’t no rush, bebby, Long ways to go.

Burner tore his—hunh— Black heart away; Burner tore his—hunh— Black heart away; Got me life, bebby, An’ a day.

Gal’s on Fifth Street—hunh— Son done gone; Gal’s on Fifth Street—hunh— Son done gone; Wife’s in de ward, bebby, Babe’s not bo’n.

My ole man died—hunh— Cussin’ me; My ole man died—hunh— Cussin’ me; Ole lady rocks, bebby, Huh misery.

Doubleshackled—hunh— Guard behin’; Doubleshackled—hunh— Guard behin’; Ball an’ chain, bebby, On my min’.

White man tells me—hunh— Damn yo’ soul; White man tells me—hunh— Damn yo’ soul; Got no need, bebby, To be tole.

Chain gang nevah—hunh— Let me go; Chain gang nevah—hunh— Let me go; Po’ los’ boy, bebby, Evahmo’ …

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"Negro Speaks of Rivers" Langston Hughes

I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

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"Admonitions" by Lucille Clifton

boys i don’t promise you nothing but this what you pawn i will redeem what you steal i will conceal my private silence to your public guilt is all i got girls first time a white man opens his fly like a good thing we’ll just laugh laugh real loud my black women children when they ask you why is your mama so funny say she is a poet she don’t have no sense

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"Southern Road" by Sterling Brown

Swing dat hammer—hunh— Steady, bo’; Swing dat hammer—hunh— Steady, bo’; Ain’t no rush, bebby, Long ways to go.

Burner tore his—hunh— Black heart away; Burner tore his—hunh— Black heart away; Got me life, bebby, An’ a day.

Gal’s on Fifth Street—hunh— Son done gone; Gal’s on Fifth Street—hunh— Son done gone; Wife’s in de ward, bebby, Babe’s not bo’n.

My ole man died—hunh— Cussin’ me; My ole man died—hunh— Cussin’ me; Ole lady rocks, bebby, Huh misery.

Doubleshackled—hunh— Guard behin’; Doubleshackled—hunh— Guard behin’; Ball an’ chain, bebby, On my min’.

White man tells me—hunh— Damn yo’ soul; White man tells me—hunh— Damn yo’ soul; Got no need, bebby, To be tole.

Chain gang nevah—hunh— Let me go; Chain gang nevah—hunh— Let me go; Po’ los’ boy, bebby, Evahmo’ …

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"Feminist Poem Number One" by Elizabeth Alexander

Yes I have dreams where I am rescued by men:

My father, brother, husband, no one else.

Last night I dreamed my brother and husband

morphed into each other and rescued me

from a rat-infested apartment. “Run!”

he said, feral scampering at our heels.

And then we went to lunch at the Four Seasons.

What does it mean to be a princess?

"I am what is known as an American Negro,"

my grandmother would say, when “international friends”

would ask her what she was. She’d roller-skate

to Embassy Row and sit on the steps of embassies

to be certain the rest of the world was there.

What does it mean to be a princess?

My husband drives me at six a.m.

to the airport an hour away, drives home,

drives back when I have forgotten my passport.

What does it mean to be a prince? I cook

savory, fragrant meals for my husband

and serve him, if he likes, in front of the TV.

He cooks for me, too. I have a husband.

In the dream we run into Aunt Lucy,

who is waiting for a plane from “Abyssinia”

to bring her lover home. I am the one

married to an Abyssinian, who is already here. I am the one

with the grandmother who wanted to know the world.

I am what is known as an American Negro princess,

married to an African prince,

living in a rat-free apartment in New Haven,

all of it, all of it, under one roof.

Poem: Giant Steps, ed. Kevin Young