THE UNFINISHED (a
special document for the African American Research Network,
December 12, 2015)
Last year at Central China Normal University, I proposed we
should establish the African American Research Network (AARN) to promote
critical projects involving international scholars and writers who had a
serious interest in black (United States) literatures and cultures. Sharing links to information crucial for our
research would be the network's primary aim.
AARN made progress during 2015, and I hope we will be able to do more in
2016 as the amount of information for exchange continues to expand.
AARN members Aldon Lynn Nielsen and Lauri Ramey published
the anthology What I Say: Innovative Poetry by Black Writers in America
(Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2015), which, in the words of
Nathaniel Mackey, "makes an
original and important contribution to the fields of American and African
American arts and letters and to the more general field of poetry and
poetics." To expand our sense of
tension between representing what can be
designated "innovative" in poetry
and representing poetry as
creative, historicized ethnic thought, we ought to examine a less visible
contribution from the previous year, namely Black
Gold: An Anthology of Black Poetry (Savannah, GA: Turner Mayfield
Publishing, 2014) edited by Ja A. Jahannes.
Black Gold enabled Jahannes (1942-2015) to achieve his greatest
desire before his death ----"to have the generations of poets of the
African Diaspora living in America, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean
represented in a single volume." The anthology is a counter-hegemonic
contribution to poetry and poetics. and, as Tony Medina states plainly
"[t]hat these poets spoke (speak) truth to power is nothing any other
group of poets living under oppressive conditions would do ---speaking to a
history of enslavement, Jim Crow and rampant discrimination, injustice and
inequality."** When we juxtapose the two anthologies, the
challenge for research locates itself in the contested heart of difference: what kind of truth is spoken to what form
of power?
It is not sufficient to do comparative work with the two
anthologies without considering Jahannes's desire as pretext and context. Thus, I am sharing the unfinished and
unedited interview I conducted with him in December 2014. Jahannes made many contributions to African
American literature and culture, and those contributions deserve to be
remembered. He is on the always growing
list of people about whom I intend to write, but my intentions are often
delayed or waylaid. That shall not be
the case with the document I offer for your inspection.
**There are some printer's errors in Black Gold, and Tony Medina will have to
tell us whether his sentence is rendered accurately.
Interview with Ja A. Jahannes
This interview with Dr. Ja A. Jahannes was conducted by
e-mail between December 7, 2014 and December
18, 2014.
Interviewer: Jerry W. Ward, Jr.
Honorary Professor, School of Foreign Languages, Central
China Normal University
WARD: You are a
writer who has made deep investments in African American literature and
culture. Please tell us a bit about your
origins, your family history, and why you decided to do your undergraduate work
at Lincoln University (PA)?
JAHANNES:
I was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia on August 25th
1942. I was raised by my grandmother Calle Jeter on a farm in Caroline County
across from the city across the Rappahannock River. When I was seven I went to
live with my mother Frances Williams Johnson. Then my father James Arthur
Johnson and mother moved to Baltimore in Dundalk Maryland in a neighborhood
called Turner Station. Turner Station is a peninsular which is a black
neighborhood. My father’s mother Calle Jeter was part black, white and
Cherokee. My Mother’s family was black and Cherokee and Creek. My grandmother
was the sister of the father of Derek Jeter. When I was young I was often taken
by my grandmother to the Jeter homestead. At 5 years old I told my grandmother
I didn’t want to go there anymore because the Jeter boys passed me around like
I was a toy.
I went to Lincoln
University because a friend of my mother’s named Adams said if I went to
Lincoln he would give my mother $100 for my scholarship. In those days $100 was
a lot of money. At Lincoln I had the best professors. They were dedicated
teachers and brilliant, caring me. I learned to write poetry in classes with
Lou Putnam. I also learned everything I know about theater from Lou Putnam. Of
course I had done lots of theater in high school at Sollers Point High school
in Turner Station.
WARD: In remarks
about WordSong Poets, your memoir
anthology, you mentioned a certain kind of literacy as well as critical
thought as important aspects of your undergraduate years. Our political visions
are often shaped by our undergraduate experiences. How did Lincoln University
shape your perspectives on life in the United States, on international
affairs?
JAHANNES:
WARD: What inspired
you to become a creative writer and a scholar?
JAHANNES: I read a lot as a child. I was also encouraged to
read by my mother. I wrote poetry in high School and I was published in the
Lincoln University Lincolnian and “The Voice Of The Rabble.” “The Voice Of The
Rabble” was the same student newspaper that Langston Hughes and Thurgood Marshall
wrote for in their student days. I learned the methods of scientific analysis
in classes at Lincoln University with Dr. Henry Cornwell and Professor Tom
Jones.
WARD: As a scholar in
the social sciences, you are obligated to make inquiries about themes which
have a certain historical roles within disciplines. On the other hand, creative writing provides
greater freedom to select themes and genres.
How do you make choices in the domain of creative writing?
JAHANNES:
The scientific and creative process have similarities. Each
endeavors to explore some vistas of reality. A a Behavioral Scientist, I am
trained not to stop at the simple regurgitation of facts and dates which so
often is the case with the social sciences, but to search for meaning and
causality. Likewise in my creative writing I attempt to explore causal
relationships. My choices in creative writing are guided by my interests.
Whatever excites me to ponder it becomes fodder
for my creative exploration in my writing.
WARD; When and where did you first begin to publish your
creative work? How has it been received
over the years?
JAHANNES: My first published works were poems in the Hampton
newspaper, “The Hampton Daily News” in Hampton Virginia when I was a professor
at Hampton Institute, which is now Hampton University. The newspaper published
several poems. One was “On Train Comes Through Hampton.” Later I had essays,
articles, reviews, plays, spoken word cds, psychological essays and research
and social criticism essays. My work has appeared in such diverse publications
as the Journal of Ethnic Studies, Vital
Speeches, the Journal of the National Medical Association, Ebony, the Black
Scholar, Encore, Class, Black Issues in Higher Education and the Saturday Review. I lectured in Africa, Asia,
South America and the Middle East. I received many honors and awards including
the United States Air Force Commendation Medal, The Langston Hughes Award, The
Joseph J. Malone Fellowship, and The Danny Glover Award. I received grants from
the U. S. Office of Education, the U. S. Department of State, the Longwood
Foundation, the Mott Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the
Rockefeller Foundation, the Georgia Council for the Humanities and other
institutions. My work also appears in a number of anthologies including Black
Poetry of the Deep South (Beans Brown Rice Publishers), African American Poetry
(Globe Press: Simon and Schuster, 1993), African American Literature (Globe
Fearon Press: Simon and Schuster, 1993), and Literary Savannah (Hill Street
Press, 1998). I wrote and produced eight plays, most notably the musicals
"Yes, Lord;" "One More Sunday;" and "Nealey's Playing
Ground." My
published books include, most popularly ,Truthfeasting, (Africa World Press, ISBN: 0865431914) BIG MAN, Turner Mayfield Publishing 2012
SABBATH RUN, The Prayer Stone, Turner Mayfield Publishing 2012 as well as over
two hundred articles, reviews, poems, and plays. I also have written a
collection of essays, an oratorio, two symphony librettos, one jazz opera,
RIVER OF HEAVEN, Turner Mayfield Publishing 2012, two opera librettos, a song
cycle, and lyrics for over 100 songs. I frequently serve as an art critic. Some of
his religious music has been published by Roger Dean Publishing Company, a
division of the Lorenz Corporation, and JTM Publishing Company. I directed many
theatre and performance productions, touring in the U. S. and abroad. He is a
BMI Publisher and Writer.
My work has been well received. One critic, Melinda Bargreen
wrote a wonderful review of my oratorio “Montage For Martin .” She was the
Seattle Times critic. She wrote, “A joyous, crowd-pleasing tribute to King in
"Montage For Martin." She said Oratorio by Stephen Newby and Ja
Jahannes; presented by Antioch Bible Church, with choir, orchestra, the Rev.
Ken Hutcherson (M.C.), Northeast Chamber Ensemble, five soloists and
narrator/singer George Shirley, with Newby conducting; Benaroya Hall, Monday
(two performances). A large, diverse and
mostly joyous crowd found a good place to celebrate the life of Martin Luther
King Jr. on Monday: Benaroya Hall, where the two-hour oratorio, "Montage
for Martin," brought the listeners repeatedly to their feet in
appreciation of a remarkable performance.
With a libretto by poet/composer Ja Jahannes (who also contributed
musical themes) and a score by local composer Stephen Newby,
"Montage" gave a musical biography of King as diverse as the country
King served. The quality of the vocal soloists was so consistently high that
the music and words shone to the strongest possible effect. One of the
production's greatest assets was narrator and tenor soloist George Shirley, the
first African-American tenor to sing leading roles at the Metropolitan Opera,
where he was a mainstay for 11 seasons. Shirley, who still has plenty of
firepower, brought immense authority and dignity to the narration, which tells
of King's rise, his struggle and the impact of his death. Each of the soloists
created powerful vignettes. Soprano Brenda Wimberly galvanized the
foot-stomping, clapping audience with her irresistible "I Can't Sit
By," and with the deeply affecting "I Get Tired Sometimes."
Linda Mattos, another soprano, was highly effective in "Woman in the
Crowd," and tenor Gregory Broughton gave a powerful account of "I
Bear the Marks." The mellow-voiced James Caddell sang the compassionate
"When You Have Done the Best," as a screen descended, displaying
video images of King's life. And mezzo-soprano Sylvia Twine contributed some of
the score's most moving moments in her solos. The Northeast Chamber Ensemble,
an excellent woodwind quintet from Rhode Island, made the most of its
opportunities in "Fanfare for Struggle." The diversity of the score
(which fused classical, gospel, jazz, hip-hop, ethnic and country-Western
influences) made it a challenge to produce. It's part acoustic, part
electronic, a formula that sometimes led to balance difficulties. The spare,
Copland-like opening sounded tentative in the afternoon performance — but there
was nothing tentative about the rest of the music, especially the gospel-based
sections that featured the soloists and the responsive United Voices of Antioch
Choir. They made a biblical "joyful noise" indeed, lifting up the
crowd and providing the heart of this celebration of King's life.
WARD: In a brief
comment on your novel The Prayer Stone,
I suggested that your fiction fits well with the writing Sheree R. Thomas anthologized in Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative
Fiction from the African Diaspora
(Warner Books, 2000). Has your sense of
creative exploration led you away from the narrative forms and content of African American social realism we
identify with Richard Wright, Ann Petry, and John Oliver Killens? Have your insights about African American
post-modernity and
metaphysical
interests urged you to explore the territory of things unknown? Are you experimenting with what Donal E.
Polkinghorne describes as a relationship between the narrative format and
experimental designs?
JAHANNES:
WARD: Do you plan to
publish your book of essays in the future?
Do your essays deal with literature and other forms of art or with
social and political issues or with a mixture that is always “outside the box”
in terms of subject matter?
JAHANNES:
WARD: In addition to
poetry and essays, you have written plays and composed music. Some of your plays have been produced in
interesting venues; some of your music has been recorded. How do you assess the meaningfulness of these
works in your career as a writer? Have
you had to grapple with creative tensions between your career as a scholar and
your work as an artist?
JAHANNES: My plays are the product of sharing my creative
intuitive ventures and my historical research
in tandem. The only issues I have had to grapple with is too
little time and too little money to do the kind of work that I wanted. My
recordings have been a true labor of love and freedom. I learned the use of
voice early in my life to transform words into life and mesmerize audiences. I
have done that rather well, in my preaching, teaching and public performance. I
learned these skills from the likes of Ruby Dee,
Toni Cade
Bambara, Sonia Sanchez, Martin Luther King and the great preacher,
Gardner Taylor. Taylor is the role model for
Martin Luther King. I also learned must from my friend, John Henrik Clarke, who
served as vice chair of the Pan African Movement of The U. S. A. (PAMUSA) when
I served as the National Chair in the early 90’s.
WARD: You have
identified the companies that have published your music. On which CDs might we
find and listen to your music? And did
you establish Turner Mayfield Publishing so that you might have greater
creative control regarding your writing and the works of writers you might
decide to publish?
JAHANNES:
WARD: How have the experiences you had as a teacher and
those you gained from extensive travel had formative importance in your life’s
work?
JAHANNES: I always wanted to travel. My plan after I graduated from Lincoln
University was to get a law degree and a Ph. D. before I was twenty five and
then travel to world exploring the cultures of other lands knowing that with my
credentials I’d be able to find a job when I returned to the states. When I
lived and taught in Ethiopia I had the opportunity to meet Haile Selassie, the
Emperor. I wrote about those experiences
in “Africa Online Magazine, a digital international publication where I
was contributing editor. I wrote: “The long white dresses of the women
glistened in the sun as they made gestures in unison bringing their hands up to
their breasts. The procession was just below the balcony of my house, the old
Haitian Embassy, and the only two-story building on Addis Abba’s Fikre Miriam
Road, where the residences of diplomats were intermingled with small local
hovels.
H.I.M Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia
The specter of the women’s
movements, some fat and some small, did block out all sound to me. In
retrospect, there must have been the high pitched drums of the Horn of Africa
and tambourines in the processional. Before I could ask myself “What are they
doing?” the answer came to me: they are beating their breasts. It was the
beginning of a funeral cortege, led by women in the traditional white dress
with thin embellishments of bright colors on the bottom of the skirts and white
shawls that lay across their shoulders.
I had never seen women beating their
breasts before, though I had read about it in the Bible. I think I had thought
beating their breasts was literal, but these women made symbolic gestures and
never actually touched their breasts. It would no doubt have been painful for
them to have actually struck themselves for ten miles or so in the midday sun,
but in this land steeped in Christian orthodoxy and ancient mysteries, everyday
was a revelation.
One evening, I was visited by a
Muslim friend. We were seated in the upper reception room of my house. He
lowered his voice and confided that the Emperor, the enigmatic Haile Selassie,
reputed descendant of the House of David, and keeper of the remnant of the
cross on which Jesus died, had gone into the mountains for several days,
supposedly to pray. I said nothing, as my usual inclination in foreign
countries is never to make statements about religion or politics; but, also,
never to condemn what is said in my company. I was thinking how to change the
particular direction my friend’s conversation had taken. My friend said that
the Emperor was a sorcerer and that he had gone into the mountains to cast
spells and work magic. As he spoke, the sky outside turned dark and there was a
sudden flash of sunshine filled with a thin stabbing rain. Then the sky
cleared, the rain stopped, quiet reigned, the sun came out, and two birds flew
in a death frenzy into the large cathedral windows overlooking the staircase up
to the room where my friend and I sat. He put down his coffee, excused himself
and left precipitously.
There was only one other day as
dramatic as that during my two year stay in the resplendent capital of
Ethiopia. That day, again at midday, the bright sunny sky suddenly turned
black. There was a roaring noise of the people outside the compound of my house
on the street. I saw my driver roll up the windows of my Ford Taunus and scurry
inside his room in the servants’ quarters. Suddenly, a locust swarm as black as
midnight began to cover everything. The servants closed the doors to the house
and stuffed cloths under the very small spaces beneath the doors that I had
never noticed before. But they kept on coming and kept on getting in. I was
afraid they would drown us. My wife and I were panicky; the children, except
for the baby, were off at school and that was even more frightening. I thought
we are going to die, the world is coming to an end. We were doomed in the land
of borrowed Eucalyptus trees (a gift of Australia that now is the national tree
of Ethiopia) seven thousand feet above sea level, far away from my beloved
United States. The sky cleared as quickly as it darkened; the locusts died as
quickly as they seeped through every crack and crevice in the house. The plague
was ended. I had only read about such occurrences in the Bible, though
somewhere in the back of my mind, I seemed to recall hordes of locust filling
the sky over my great-uncle’s farm in Sparta, Virginia when I was a boy. But
this incident prepared me to be mentally ready for anything that was to follow
in Ethiopia.
I was under contract to the Canadian
government to teach in the education and psychology programs at Haile Selassie
University. My wife was head of the Science and Technology Library at the
university and she had an ancillary job dealing with antiquities as well. Her
job was very prestigious. My first chance to meet the Emperor came through her.
She told me that the Emperor was coming to the university on an inspection that
included her work and that I could come if I wanted to be in the visitation.
There was no way I would have passed up the opportunity.
We were all in a line awaiting the
Emperor to pass each of us. Out of the corner of my left eye I could see the
movement of people in my direction. Suddenly, Emperor Haile Selassie stood
before me. I was surprised that he was short, but I only registered his height
after he had passed. Before me, looking me in both eyes was a man of immense
personal psychic power; his eyes looked into my soul, knowing me like no one
has ever known me, in an instance. He said nothing but in that silence was more
power than I have ever confronted. I still wonder today, did the power of this
extraordinary man come from being an absolute monarch for over forty years,
from his enormous system of spies throughout the country that kept him so
informed that generals quaked in his presence, from his claimed descendancy
from Solomon and Sheba, his proffered lineage to Jesus Christ, or from some
divine power in the man himself? Later, I reflected that the Rastafarians had
proclaimed him “God” and taken their name from his name when he was Crown
Prince of Ethiopia under the wily Queen Zewditu; Ras, which means Lord and his
birth name Tafari Makonnen.
Few remember now that Haile Selassie
was for a long time the world’s longest reigning monarch, that he led the
defeat of the mechanized, gun toting Italians’ invasion in his country with men
who only had spears and dressed in leopard skins. The Italians proclaimed the
Ethiopians “white” because it was unthinkable that they had been defeated by
Africans. Few remember that he stood sovereign in the League of Nations in 1936
and asked the nations of the earth to come to the rescue of his people again
later from fascist Italians in one of the most moving and eloquent speeches
ever made by a head of state. And the nations sadly ignored him.
My days in Ethiopia were filled with
less grandiose affairs than the historic events that captured Haile Selassie in
history. They were filled with family and servants and mundane affairs. We paid
our household servants better than the American embassy and taught them skills
that made them marketable. Some American families were always trying to steal
my cook, Astede, because I had taught her how to fry chicken to perfection like
it is fried in the deep American South. Astede was originally hired as a
“mamite,” nanny for the children, but I soon learned that anything that I
taught her, she replicated it exactly. One day I showed her how to cook fried
chicken, and she never departed from that recipe. I quickly changed her job to
cook. She learned to cook Ostrich egg omelets, black eye peas (that really had
white eyes in Ethiopia), collard greens and all kinds of American and European
dishes copying my recipes exactly. Astede drew the line when I tried to teach
her how to cook rabbit; she had never seen this strange animal before and
summarily left the kitchen. I never tried that again.
Language situations often arose. I
once discovered that our housekeeper, who dress like the aristocracy and had
her coffee religiously before she did any work had been calling my children,
who were dark-skinned “baria” or slave while smiling at us. She was dismissed.
And, once in my faulting Amharic I asked Woyneshet, a cleaning woman, could I
have her for fifty cent. She left the room in hysterical laughter. Ethiopians
would come to blows over small insults like saying “your father worked as a
garbage man.”
One young friend of mine, Asseged
Dejene, was a lesson unto himself. At that time we had a membership in the
swimming pool in the Hilton Hotel, owned by the Ethiopian government. Asseged
asked if he could go swimming with us and we took him. The staff at the
swimming pool looked at him with disdain when we got to the pool. Asseged
overlooked them, took off his pants and shirt, and went to the edge of the pool
and jumped in. He splashed his way across the pool as I held my breath
realizing he did not know how to swim. When I asked him about it, he said he
just thought he would do it like he saw it in the movies. And he had. I never
again underestimated what people will attempt with no previous experience.
My children learned some lessons,
too. The boy in the small shabby, one room house next door often left home to
go to school barefooted. My son asked me to buy him some shoes. He was really
taken aback when I explained to him that the boy had shoes but walked to school
barefooted to save his shoes and put them on only near the school.
Ethiopia gave birth to Egypt.
Ethiopia gave the world the first civilization, before Greece and Rome.
Civilization spread out from the Rift Valley Region of which Ethiopia is the
headstone. It, then, is no wonder that the country can produce a man like Haile
Selassie. His legacy began early. When he was regent and there was an effort to
have him removed from power by jealous relatives and power hungry generals who
were trying to convince, Queen Zewditu, that he was dangerous, he outmaneuvered
them. Ras Tafari, as he was known then, received word of his impending
overthrow while he was out leading a group of his soldiers. His enemies
expected he and his men would engage them in a fight at the palace. He
dismissed his men a long way from the palace and walked the distance alone and
entered the palace, going directly to the queen. His move was so unexpected, so
simple in its execution, that no one moved against him. He persuaded the queen
that he was her best ally in a humble conversation, and she guarded his
ascension to the throne as Emperor.
Addis Ababa was a thriving,
sophisticated city when I lived there with my family. It had a hospital with
some of the best doctors in the world, an opera any country would be proud of
and traditions that made the heritage of the country incomparable. The only
thing I had in common with the Emperor, besides the same skin tone, which often
got me labeled an uppity Amhara (the ruling class, of which the Emperor was a
part) who was trying to act like an American, was the fact that my family owned
the only grand piano outside of the palace. I always believed that it once was
one of the two that was in the palace. It escapes me how we got it but I had it
painted white to distinguish it from “the other one.”
Ethiopia was full of diversity,
being the oldest organized Christian country, where the head of state was
automatically the head of the church, it still had its predominate Muslim
population as well as other religions. Its many tribes had distinctively
different traditions. Once it was the entire Horn of Africa but the Europeans
carved it up into their own spheres and set up rivalries and ethnic wars, much
like they have done in Europe in recent decades, which continue to be
perpetuated today.
Haile Selassie is credited with
modernizing the country, despite its poverty, and planning to do more towards
bringing it into the 20th Century while keeping its historic traditions. The
face of Ethiopia in the world today is the emaciated bodies of famine starved
youth. We forget that we had a dust bowl in the U. S. that left many Americans
emaciated, starving, and at wits end. It has happened throughout the world and
it shall happen again.
The last time I saw Emperor Haile
Selassie it was at Maskal, an ancient seasonal rite. It is a feast
commemorating the Finding of the True Cross and an integral part of the Ethiopian
Christian Calendar. It is a national holiday and celebrated annually in late
September throughout Ethiopia for centuries and the streets and rooftops are
filled with tens of thousands of people on the eve of Maskal. It was in a large
open area near the entrance to the city of Addis Ababa on the airport road. The
priests of the Coptic Christian Church were everywhere in their fine ceremony
dress, embroidered in gold, bright blues, greens and reds, and the Patriarch,
or head of the Ethiopian church, was leading the processional to the open field
where an elegant throne had been placed for the Emperor. Determined that my
children not miss out on this occasion that we were not likely to see again,
with two of them in tow, I pushed forward through the crowd. Thankfully, my
parents had taught me never to be afraid to push through the crowd. We ended
up, my wife following suit with the baby in her arms, at the feet of Emperor
Haile Selassie. We sat on the ground before the throne. He did not look at us.
His gaze was far off into the distance as though reading time itself. The next
I heard of the Emperor, a year later, was that he and his family had been
deposed, he had been treated very badly, and he had been ingloriously killed.
The women of Ethiopia still beat
their breasts. The world changes; there is still sunshine and rain, dark
clouds, mysteries, and occasionally the rise and fall of an exceptional man.
WARD: What is the
legacy that you wish to leave for humanity and a future?
My children and my students will be my legacy. I took
teaching to be a priesthood. My students have used all the concepts I taught
them to have productive, useful lives. They are in constant communication with
me. Most of them have graduate degrees because I always insisted that they go
as far as they could go in getting and education. In my writing I have dealt
with concepts of individual freedom and responsibility. I hope those who read
my work will be inspired to make a difference in their communities and in the
world. Perhaps my legacy will be the championing of individual freedom in all
aspects of life by my protégés and those I have touched in word or deed. I
believe my poetry will be a major part of my legacy. The best of art is poetry
the best of poetry is art. Can we really see without the poet or can the
dreamer really know reality without the science of poetry. I believe my poetry
for children might endure.
THIS REFERS TO A BOOK IN WHICH YOU HAVE POETRY. WHAT IS THE EXACT TITLE? WHO IS THE
PUBLISHER? WHAT WAS THE DATE OF PUBLICATION? I WILL HAVE TO CREATE A QUESTION
THAT FITS THE COMMENTS AND MOVE IT TO ANOTHER SECTION OF THE INTERVIEW. Jww
12/18/14
This anthology consists of 51 different
poems that all relate to children. The title sums it up beautifully
- a celebration of poetry with a beat. This book is packed with
wonderful diverse African-American artists like Kanye West, Queen Latifah, and
Tupac Shakur, spanning American History from the Harlem Renaissance to
modern-day hip hop. An added benefit is the audio cd that has
performances from the book by the original authors and artists. These
poems will definitely appeal to children of all ages. Students, even the most
reluctant, will be pleasantly surprised that hip hop is poetry. For
example, the poem, "Hip Hop Rules the World" by Jacqueline Woodson,
explains how one boy's discovery of rap is one of the most creative
forms of poetry; this leads him to end his own poem with "Hey Dog!
Guess who else is a poet now".
These poems stimulate a variety of thoughts and emotions. For example,
"Aloneness" by Gwendolyn Brooks gives a wonderful perspective of the differences of
aloneness and loneliness. "Loneliness does not have a lovely sound. It has
an under buzz. Or it does not have a sound. When it does not have a sound
I like it least of all. But aloneness is delicious"(Aloneness).
Each illustration has bright expressive colors but is different on each
page. There were several illustrators that shared their talent.
Some illustrations were cartoon like, collages, paintings, and sketches, but
all captured each poem with detail and interest. For example, "If We
Forget" by Ja Jahannes shows a boy in the middle of the page
surrounded with shadows of ancient portraits of men that made a mark
in history. I would also use this poem as an opening for poetry month and
definitely use during Black History Month since my class follows a famous
African-American each week. My spotlight poem would be "If We Forget"
by Ja Jahannes.
If we forget
Who will keep the dream?
Who will celebrate?
Ancient portraits in black
reaching back
Reaching forward to today
Timbuctu, Zimbabwe
If we forget
Who will keep the dream?
Who will celebrate?
If we forget
Who will care?
Who will share our pyramids,
store our past,
See our glory?
Share our story.
Who will celebrate
Malcolm and Martin
Whitney, and Washington
Lincoln and Hampton
Tuskegee
Destinations, destiny?
Who will remember?
Who will remember?
Who will remember?
Who will remember me?
If we forget
Who will remember
Shades of black
Reaching forward, reaching back
Ebony echoes growing strong
Singing songs
In the night
Richard Wright
Slavery's sorrow
Slavery's pain
Freedom struggle
Freedom's gain
Tubman's train
Bethune and Brooke
Gwendolyn's book
W.E.B and Owen's too
Billie's blues and Hughes's blues
If we forget
Who will keep the dream?
Who will celebrate?
Who will remember
Robeson
Muhammad won
Burt's fun and Anderson
Marshall's Law
Pushkin and Dumas?
How far?
Can we go
If we forget?
If we forget
Who will remember?
Who will celebrate?
What a fabulous way to end this book than by adding "I have a
Dream" By Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This poem is shared in many
classrooms on his birthday.
JAHANNES:
