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02-10-2017, 06:18 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 6,766
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Black History Month
My small contribution to Black History month.
Stagecoach Mary Fields
(c. 1832-1914)
Just like the storied cowboys of the plains,
Mary finds Montana wild and free.
A liberated slave from Tennessee,
she’s odd in white Cascade, where cigar stains
on six-foot girls are rare. And she retains
her modesty, a shotgun keeping louts at bay.
The liberal mayor lets her drink and play
at cards in his saloon. She masters reins
to beat out angry men for stagecoach routes,
a first for women, making rounds when sun
sears and wind chafes. She wins those bouts,
protects the mail. With laughs and whiskey breath,
she tells of facing wolves one nighttime run
through snow—her knife and shotgun beating death.
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Ralph
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02-11-2017, 12:09 AM
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Location: Arizona, USA
Posts: 1,844
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Deleted**
Apologies, I didn't see the forum where this was posted!
Wonderful, RCL, and timely.
Last edited by William A. Baurle; 02-11-2017 at 12:17 AM.
Reason: I had a Countee Cullen poem posted
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02-11-2017, 11:42 AM
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Location: Los Angeles, CA
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I see no reason not to post the poem as a tribute to Black poets past and present.
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Ralph
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02-11-2017, 03:48 PM
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Location: Arizona, USA
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Ralph, I'd love to participate in a thread like that. It would be a long one, because there are scads of great poems by black poets I would love to share and draw attention to.
However, since this is in Drills, I gathered (after posting the Countee Cullen poem, Incident), that this would be a thread consisting of our own poems in appreciation of Black History month.
I think a thread simply posting great poems by black poets would be appropriate and extremely timely in these crazy days, where closet racists everywhere seem to be crawling out of the woodwork and enjoying their time in the sun.
I will wait to see how the thread goes before proceeding. Or - I'll look for one of my own poems that might fit the bill. Or write a new one.
Bill
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02-11-2017, 06:21 PM
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Bill, thanks for the good words and your interest.
This is one that benefitted from the workshop.
Trash Records 1950
A Blues Sonnet
I once worked in a store where music died:
Race Records, dusty and disdained, had died
in burning bins the owner fed outside.
I’d asked about those discs, so strange to me.
My new boss viciously enlightened me:
the records stamped with colors vibrantly
depicting Satchmo’s grin and glistening horn
and red-dressed women dancing to his horn
were Shit from spades that’s even worse than porn!
I quit, but checking bins behind the store
saw all the blues and jazz discs from that store
were melting rainbows in the blaze’s roar.
I salvaged one with Satch’s Black and Blue,
played it at home, respecting black and blue.
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Ralph
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02-11-2017, 09:44 PM
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Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: Arizona, USA
Posts: 1,844
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Another good one, Ralph. And good on ya for quitting, if N is you.
I hope we can drum up some interest in this thread. I promise not to let it slip down the board. It's too important.
Tell the truth, I'm more than a bit surprised. I'd have thought this would have fifty responses by now.
I workshopped this sonnet, written in loose alexandrines, here in 2012. I hope it's in the spirit, as it's about the great poet Derek Walcott, though it doesn't have the gut-punch of your sonnet.
(And as anyone familiar with Walcott will be able to see, I am imitating him like a banshee.)
Reading Walcott
When this man writes white almonds, I pretend I'm blind
as a bat that's lying dreaming on a book of Homer,
so I can go on reading, in my head a number
of voices ricocheting, a deliquescent grind
of genuine island lilts and one that's less refined:
my landlocked cracker mimick. No. We must remember
the almonds. White, he said. Alright. I see a comber
Curling in, on top a watermelon rind-
white froth of foam that seems to want to settle down
upon an arc of shoreline where I see together
a woman and a man in daylight sharp as a diamond.
Her hair is dark and flying loose, skin cinnamon-brown,
half-naked, and him the same; they laugh and love the weather.
They wave me over to them, toss me a sweet white almond.
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02-21-2017, 08:29 PM
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Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: Arizona, USA
Posts: 1,844
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https://muse.jhu.edu/article/175182
Link to a chunk of an interview with Tracy K. Smith. I was/am looking for one of her poems from The Body's Question online, called Gospel: Miguel (el Lobito).
Amazing poem. But then just about all of her poems, in that book at least, are amazing in some way.
**Edited in: ah well, it's not online anywhere, apparently. Just buy the book. You'll love it, I can just about gua-ran-tee it (< my Joe Willy Namath impression).
https://www.amazon.com/Bodys-Questio...sap_bc?ie=UTF8
Last edited by William A. Baurle; 02-21-2017 at 08:37 PM.
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02-24-2017, 09:51 PM
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Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Florida, USA
Posts: 3,372
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Hey y'all,
Having no poem of my own notably significant for this month, but as I usually try to post a number of poems by black poets on my blog during fleeting February, and by chance while reading an anthology I got from a used store, I discovered Etheridge Knight. Not having time to copy the long poem that was a perfect rebuttal to Trump and right-wing excess in general that I found in that book, I will content myself to post one rather interesting poem by Knight, whose first book I believe was written or published while he was in prison.
A Wasp Woman Visits a Black Junkie in Prison
By Etheridge Knight
After explanations and regulations, he
Walked warily in.
Black hair covered his chin, subscribing to
Villainous ideal.
“This can not be real,” he thought, “this is a
Classical mistake;
This is a cake baked with embarrassing icing;
Somebody’s got
Likely as not, a big fat tongue in cheek!
What have I to do
With a prim and proper-blooded lady?”
Christ in deed has risen
When a Junkie in prison visits with a Wasp woman.
“Hold your stupid face, man,
Learn a little grace, man; drop a notch the sacred shield.
She might have good reason,
Like: ‘I was in prison and ye visited me not,’ or—some such.
So sweep clear
Anachronistic fear, fight the fog,
And use no hot words.”
After the seating
And the greeting, they fished for a denominator,
Common or uncommon;
And could only summon up the fact that both were human.
“Be at ease, man!
Try to please, man!—the lady is as lost as you:
‘You got children, Ma’am?’” he said aloud.
The thrust broke the dam, and their lines wiggled in the water.
She offered no pills
To cure his many ills, no compact sermons, but small
And funny talk:
“My baby began to walk... simply cannot keep his room clean...”
Her chatter sparked no resurrection and truly
No shackles were shaken
But after she had taken her leave, he walked softly,
And for hours used no hot words.
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02-25-2017, 01:36 AM
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Old South Wales (UK)
Posts: 6,685
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Well, Siham, I've been following this thread since it began and your post just broke a dam.
I have long been afraid to do, to say, what I feel to be right in less specific but similar circumstances, only to be told that it's not OK. I remember with horror a situation when a member of a writing group, actually a wellknown person who is both black and gay, flung back his chair and walked out, shouting over his shoulder that he couldn't stay in the same room as someone who was so "right on". I struggle to recall what it was I said; if only, if only...
I remember the frisson of confused feelings when the actor Benedict Cumberbatch said "coloured people" instead of "people of colour" and was torn apart by the press. And I'm still not quite sure when it is OK to say "black".
I don't want to introduce any discussion along these lines - this is the wrong thread - but the Etheridge Knight poem meant a great deal to me and I shall think deeply about the comfort I got from it.
Thank you for posting it.
.
Last edited by Ann Drysdale; 02-25-2017 at 01:44 AM.
Reason: changed "correct" to OK (the second one) because I am still thinking.
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02-25-2017, 02:22 AM
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 12,945
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People of colour, Ann? What does that mean? Anyone who is not white? Is a Japanese person a 'person of colour'? I don't think he/she would like that at all. Similarly with Chinese people. Not PC at all.
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