POETRY MONTH 2016
Like Black History Month and Women's History Month, Poetry
Month sounds the alarm for annual rituals, or daily ones. Thus, April is for
Remembering and forgetting.
Hurting from ancient injuries and healing whenever possible.
Smelling the skunk of
blame and drinking palm wine of forgiveness.
Tracking down the terrorists and seeking the saviors.
Repeating rituals to confirm that we are motes of dust and grains of
sand in an ever expanding universe of consciousness.
And what has poetry to do with this busyness? A great deal as it circulates without need of
invitation in society. Nursery rhymes,
adolescent "love" poems, ads that tax intelligence, and epics are all
instances of a genre that defies consensual definition. So too are song lyrics and deft words jammed
against the air on the spurs of moments. The uncertainty of knowing precisely what we
are talking about, other than a process of talking about something, gives
poetry a bad reputation among literal-minded readers who question its
legitimacy and a trumped-up name among folk who offer hasty
praises and subjective prizes. We
are inundated with poetry. Even people
who say they do not read or listen to poetry are affected by it. A to Z we have poetry. Poetry, or a reasonable facsimile thereof,
inhabits mundane crevices of daily
life. Even the kind produced by produced
by artificial imagination and mechanical intelligence.
As Peter Middleton
puts it in Distant Reading: Performance,
Readership, and Consumption in
Contemporary Poetry (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005), the
making "of meaning by a poem is an intersubjective process extended over
time, many individuals, and only ever partially available for cognitive
reflection"(xv). Middleton aptly
identifies one of many reasons for contemporary anxiety about poetry in our
cultures of reading. Under the influence of anxiety, the old chestnut that a
poem shouldn't mean but be looks attractive.
"The value of reading contemporary poems, apart from
the considerable pleasure of thinking about what they're up to," according
to Don Share, the editor of Poetry,
"is that it gets us to focus our attention and sharpen our critical
skills, things we need more than ever in an age, like ours, of
distraction." And it does require
special skill to become aware of what poetry may distract us from, especially
when the word "protest" enters the conversation.
For example, in June
2016 W. W. Norton will publish Of Poetry
and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon
Martin, edited by Phil Cushway and Michael Warr. According to what is advertised on Amazon.com
This stunning work illuminates
today’s black experience through the voices of our most transformative and
powerful African American poets.
Included
in this extraordinary volume are the poems of 43 of America’s most talented
African American wordsmiths, including Pulitzer Prize–winning poets Rita Dove,
Natasha Tretheway, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Tracy K. Smith, as well as the work of
other luminaries such as Elizabeth Alexander, Ishmael Reed, and Sonia Sanchez.
Included are poems such as “No Wound of Exit” by Patricia Smith, “We Are Not
Responsible” by Harryette Mullen, and “Poem for My Father” by Quincy Troupe.
Each is accompanied by a photograph of the poet along with a first-person
biography. The anthology also contains personal essays on race such as “The
Talk” by Jeannine Amber and works by Harry Belafonte, Amiri Baraka, and The
Reverend Dr. William Barber II, architect of the Moral Mondays movement, as
well as images and iconic political posters of the Black Lives Matter movement,
Malcolm X, and the Black Panther Party. Taken together, Of Poetry and
Protest gives voice to the current conversation about race in America while
also providing historical and cultural context. It serves as an excellent
introduction to African American poetry and is a must-have for every reader
committed to social justice and racial harmony. 75 photographs.
[[quoted verbatim from Amazon.com, March 26,
2016]]
There is
less fanfare in what is posted on Amazon.com regarding Resisting Arrest: poems to stretch
the sky (2016) edited by Tony Medina.
An anthology of poetry addressing violence against
African-Americans featuring work by Jericho Brown, Kwame Dawes, Rita Dove,
Cornelius Eady, Martin Espada, Ross Gay, Jaki Shelton Green, Joy Harjo,
Patricia Spears Jones, Allison Joseph, Yusef Komunyakaa, Jamaal May, Thylias
Moss, Marilyn Nelson, Ishmael Reed, Sonia Sanchez, Quincy Troupe, Frank X
Walker, Afaa MIchael Weaver, Mark Doty and more. Edited by Tony Medina.
Proceeds from the sales of this book will be donated to the "Whitney M.
Young Social Justice Scholarship" sponsored by The Greater Washington
Urban League, Thursday Network. [[ quoted verbatim from Amazon.com, March 27,
2016]]
Although Medina's anthology is already in print and is conducting
a conversation about violence and is
contributing directly "to social justice and racial harmony" by
donating money to a scholarship, it is likely that so-called mainstream media
will say little about Resisting Arrest
and a great deal about Of Poetry and Protest. Medina's anthology illuminates today's American experience through the voices
of our most transformative and powerful African American poets. Of course, the pronoun "our" here
does not refer to exactly the same body
of people (potential readers) as does
"our" in the W. W. Norton description. The disconnection matters. The discrepancy constructed between protest and violence
matters as much as does what can legitimately claim to be "an excellent
introduction to African American poetry."
Does W. W. Norton wish for us to believe the excellence in the anthology
edited by Cushway and Warr is somehow of
a different kind or degree than that embodied in Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry (2013), edited
by Charles Henry Rowell?
If you can smell the funk behind the hype, you can
understand why Of Poetry and Protest
, backed by big money, only makes IDEAL
what Resisting Arrest makes FACTUAL
by its transferring of proceeds of
poetry to an admirable cause. If your
sense of smell is not so keen, listen to the YouTubed voice of
Clint Smith III--"History Reconsidered"
https://youtu.be/V0QCKP7__7k
Smith will open your nose and allow you to smell what needs
to be smelled during Poetry Month.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr. March 27, 2016
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