A Subtle Trayvon Martin Reference in Kevin Young's Poem?

I was checking out Kevin Young's new poem "Anthem" on NPR recently. The poem is part of a series "NewsPoets," where each month NPR invites a poet "to spend time in the newsroom -- and at the end of the day, to compose a poem reflecting on the day's stories."

Young's mostly humorous poem combines and plays off of a story imagining "what might happen if Texas seceded from the U.S." The poem also muses about currency, inspired by a news story about the demise of the Canadian penny, and includes uses and references to the word "cleave," which can refer to a severing or sticking to something.

Ta-Nehisi Coates on Writing/Blogging as Learning, Exploratory Experiences

I enjoy checking out various writers talk about the processes of writing. I got a chance to hear and read Colson Whitehead's thoughts on process when he was promoting the release of Zone One, and I like checking out Elizabeth Alexander's Twitter Poetics.

Yesterday, Ta-Nehisi Coates posted a video link on his blog from his air-time on Chris Hayes's television show. Now, long-time followers of Coates know that he typically declines opportunities to appear on television talk shows offering the "black perspective" or the position from the Left. However, the Trayvon Martin case has given him reason to accept a few offers.

Kevin Young's Second-Person James Covey Poems

James Covey, the translator for the Amistad rebels, represents one of Kevin Young's most memorable characters. That Young is a poet says something about the extents to which poets have participated in the presentation and development of protagonists--real and imagined. In the first section of his volume Ardency, Young gives Covey a prominent role and makes it possible for readers to consider his interactions with his fellow West Africans. 

What distinguishes Young's series of Covey persona poems from those by several other poets is that Young writes several of the poems from the second-person perspective. The Covey of Young's narrative at times appears to speak directly to the Amistad rebels referring to Cinque and some of the others as "you." Young's approach also situates us--the readers--alongside the captives as Covey translates their words and experiences.

Some Cities & Universities Where Trayvon Martin Rallies Took Place

Monday, marches and rallies protesting marking the absence of justice in the killing of Trayvon Martin took place across the country. Here's a roundup of some of the articles about the gatherings in various cities. 

• Thousands march in protest to Florida hearing on Trayvon Martin slaying
• Hundreds rally at L.A. City Hall
• Activists young and old march for Trayvon Martin at UT Arlington
• Dozens Rally in Oakland
• Outrage over Trayvon Martin at Carnegie Mellon Univ. (Pittsburgh) rally
• Kansas City rally shows support for Trayvon Martin
• Protesters hold vigil for slain Florida teen on University of Tulsa campus 
• Hundreds gather in Detroit at rally for Trayvon Martin 
• DC Protesters Call For Charges Against George Zimmerman in Trayvon Martin Shooting Death
• Black law students at Harvard remember Trayvon Martin 
• Hundreds rally at Houston protests over Florida teen killing
• Trayvon Martin rally at (Atlanta) Capitol draws many
• Trayvon Martin rally held in Shreveport 
• Trayvon Martin rally at VCU (Richmond) 
• Baltimore Rally For Trayvon Martin Shuts Down Traffic 
• Trayvon Martin Protesters Gather Outside Iowa Capitol 
  
Related:
• A Notebook on the Trayvon Martin Case

Race and Outliers

The epilogue at first appears to be the final presentation of a randomly selected and researched outlier. But we soon learn that the closing outlier narrative is in fact a narrative about the author, Malcolm Gladwell. We learn, perhaps not surprisingly at this point, that Gladwell’s own success emerges from the hidden advantages and multiple opportunities that his parents and grandparents received.

 Among other important issues, Gladwell explains how light skin color allowed his otherwise disadvantaged black relatives to excel in ways that their fellow dark-skinned Jamaicans did not. Having an ancestor who had “a little bit of whiteness” or having one who got a chance at meaningful work became an “extraordinary advantage.” It was an advantage not simply based on working hard but rather on arbitrary yet powerful cultural and structural factors.

What stood out to you most concerning Gladwell’s discussions of skin color and advantage (or disadvantage)? Why?

From Miami Heat to a High School Team in St. Kitts

First, LeBron James and D-Wade organized their Miami Heat teammates in a show of support for Trayvon Martin by taking a group shot wearing hoodies. And now, a high school team from St. Kitts, an island in the Caribbean, has followed suit. The students in this photo are at a track meet and offering their support (visually) for Trayvon.  

Photo from Ryddim magazine.


Related:
• A Notebook on the Trayvon Martin Case

Blogging about African American Poetry & The Habit Loop

I've recently started reading Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business (2012). I could tell from early reviews and chapters that some of my students would benefit from the book, so I've taken steps to order copies for one of the reading groups that I'll coordinate in the fall. As I was envisioning the kinds of conversations we'll have about old and new habits, I started considering some of my own routines.    

For over a year now, I've been publishing  a blog entry about African American poetry nearly everyday. In his book, Duhigg mentions something known as a "habit loop," which consists of a cue or trigger, a routine, and a reward. The cue prompts us to go through a set of processes or routine and if the results are sufficiently rewarding, we are inclined, when we re-encounter the cue, to repeat the process, hence forming a habit loop.

A Notebook on Collegiate Students

Some reflections and observations concerning my work with college students.   

2019
• November 22: A conversation with educator-organizer Jay Gillen
• November 18: Black boys, teachers, and creativity
• September 21: More on generations of black women students and artists

2018
• December 20: Collegiate black men as guides on a Humanities/STEM project
• October 26: Collegiate black men and visual essays
• April 27: Why some black poetry sounds boring to black students (abstract)
• April 13: College students take the lead at Language Arts conference
• February 4: Collegiate black men, rap courses, and active participation
• January 19: Black fathers, African American literary studies, and special collections

2017
• December 5: Eugene B. Redmond meets with first-year collegiate black men
• October 29: Reginald Harris's "The Lost Boys" and Collegiate Black Men
• October 28: A roundup of African American Male Initiatives
• September 12: Discussing comics, feminism, and online harassment
• September 9: LeRoi Jones, Amiri Baraka, and nicknames of collegiate black women
• September 2: Comic books, collegiate black women, and the Blerd Gurl
• July 16: Why collegiate black men value Adrian Matejka's Jack Johnson poems
• July 11: Writing African American college students letters about poetry and ideas

2016
• May 29: Fandom and literary studies
• May 18: Ta-Nehisi Coates's audiences of black boys and young black men

2015
• September 26: Covering Robert Hayden's "The Whipping" with young black men
• February 14: Imagining increased opportunities for African American students
• February 14: When the Poet and Rapper is One 
• January 8: Student rappers & poets in an African American Literature course

2014
• December 19: Writing about black poetry vs. writing about rap
• December 16: Studying Poetry & Rap with Collegiate Black Men in 2014
• November 2: Poetry & the politics of "black woman" metaphors 
• October 30:  More on the vulnerability of collegiate black men 
• February 14: Networks of 'consciousness' for collegiate black men 
• February 13: Collegiate Black Men and the circulation of black books   

2013
• November 1: The vulnerability of collegiate black men & a note on a Jack Johnson poem
• October 17: Style, Politics, and Inter-generational Links Among young Black Women
• September 4: All those twins & other siblings 
• April 20: The value of "our" history for African American collegiate poetry readers
• April 11: Collegiate Black Women & Specific Affirmations: The Cindy Lyles Approach 
• March 6: College students have little exposure to African American poetry 
• March 4: McGuire elevates the Expectations of Collegiate Black Men

2012
• November 7: The case for early support for black collegiate women
• October 17: 25 Poems later, who are my students now? 
• October 4: Ashley Greenlee's Summer Journeys to Texas and NYC  
• July 13: Lil sisters, homegirls & the language of affirmation 
• May 26: The Black Women Formerly Known as Poets
• March 26: Imagining Early Recruitment for Black College Students  
• March 6: Collegiate Students & Court Vision 
• February 29: Malcolm X & Collegiate Black Men
• February 27: Black Women, Hair & the Politics of History 
• February 27: Sistas Rocking Naturals at SIUE 
• February 6: The Interactive Reading Group 
• February 5: Black Collegiate Women & the Power of Spoken Word Poetry
• January 28: Going to the Movies with Black College Students 
• January 22: Working with Collegiate Black Men

2011
• December 10: Collegiate Black Men, Rap, and Poetry 
• October 31: Black Students & Access to Exclusive Science Study Groups 
• October 29: Black Women @ SIUE & Other-ground Arts Communities
• September 16: A Lesson from a Scene of Racial Instruction
• August 27: Collegiate Black Men Exchanging Ideas
• July 15: Student Participates in Enriching Summer Program in Texas, New York City
• March 3: Collegiate Black Men - Defining Problems

2010
• July 29: Summer Reading on Frederick Douglass

2009
• October 9: The Interactive Reading Group  

2008
• September 29: Launching the Interactive Reading Group  

Related:
• African American Literature @ SIUE  

Imagining Early Recruitment for Black College Students

I first met one of the students in my Malcolm X course some years ago when she was a student at a high school in East St. Louis where I was doing volunteer work. She was a sophomore in high school when I met her, and she's a sophomore in college now.  I feel honored to have been in her academic life this long.

The past couple of weekends, I've been watching the NCAA men's basketball tournament. At moments in the broadcasts, you'll hear the commentators discussing how college coaches and their recruiting assistants had started making contact with talented and potential college players when the guys were in the 8th and 9th grade. College basketball is such a big business with all the accompanying competition (ah yes, and corruption) that the guys are recruited as early as possible.

The Coverage of The Walking Dead's Michonne

After Michonne's appearance on The Walking Dead television program on March 18, coverage on the popular comic series character and Danai Gurira, the actress playing Michonne, has increased. Here's a sampling of articles.

March 18 - The Walking Dead Finds Its Sword-Wielding Michonne - TV Guide 
March 18 - 'The Walking Dead' Casts Sword-Wielding Heroine Michonne - Entertainment Weekly  
March 18 - Actress Danai Gurira To Play Michonne In The Walking Dead Season 3 - The Urban Daily 
March 18 - ‘The Walking Dead’ Finale: Who Was That Hooded Woman? - Wall Street Journal 
March 19 - Who’s that badass woman with the katana in the season 2 finale of The Walking Dead? - Nerd Reactor 
March 19 - Danai Gurira Cast As Michonne In The Walking Dead - Science Fiction
March 19 - Native Iowan will play popular character in 'Walking Dead' - Des Monies Register 
March 19 - 'Walking Dead' finale: Who is Michonne? - Los Angeles Times  
March 19 - Potentially interesting character finally introduced on The Walking Dead - AV Club
March 19 - 'Walking Dead' Casts 'Treme' Actress Danai Gurira as Michonne - The Wrap
March 20 - Iowan actress brings comic's Michonne to life on Walking Dead - Examiner 
March 22 - 'The Walking Dead's' Danai Gurira Excited to Embody Badass Michonne - The Hollywood Reporter 
March 24 - Danai Gurira Talks The Walking Dead’s Michonne, Glen Mazarra Talks Annoying Lori - The Mary Sue

Digital Humanities and the Study of African American literature

James Neal, a tremendous digital humanities resource on twitter, will be pleased when I let him know that I organized and am moderating a panel on digital humanities and African American literature at the upcoming College Language Association (CLA) annual conference. The panel will include presentations by graduate students who incorporating technology practices into their studies of black literary art and culture.

A few years ago when I wrote my first blog entry on technology using the phrase "digital humanities," James discovered my site, commented on my ideas, and encouraged me to start posting on twitter. It was his prompting that led me to sign on to the social media site. The interplay between my blogging and tweeting have certainly increased my productively as well as my interest in pushing for more African American literature-digital humanities conversations.

What if Obama's Trayvon Statement was a Poem?

What if, instead of Obama delivering his comments out loud concerning Trayvon Martin, the President had decided to release his brief remarks in a written statement? And what if he included line breaks so that his words appeared as verse:

If I had a son
he'd look like Trayvon

Seeing his words that way would have highlighted and clarified the already poetic or at least literary nature of the statement. Folks would have picked up on the two 5-syllable lines, the simile (like), the alliteration (look like), and the rhyme (son / Trayvon).

He could have included more line breaks stretching the poem out a little more:

If
I had
a son
he'd
look like
Trayvon

In that configuration, the "If" of Obama's statement and thus his interest in speculation would be even more pronounced. Accordingly, Obama's statement would remind some readers of Langston Hughes's poem "If-ing," where the speaker imagines several scenarios and closes by noting that "just by if-ing / I have a good time!"

Perhaps my own interest in examining verse within and beyond the world of poetry inclined me to see the poetry of the President's statement.

Related:
• A Notebook on the Trayvon Martin Case

Dreams of a Son: Obama's Speculative Narrative about Trayvon

Although Barack Obama's brief comments about the Trayvon Martin case have drawn considerable attention, perhaps a few words are in order concerning the implications of the President's speculation: "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon." The line resonated with so many people in part because the "if" prompts audiences to imagine additional possibilities, what an Obama son would look like, what it would mean.  

Obama's statement is also clever and poetic in that it evokes, without directly mentioning, race (i.e. a black son). In other words, Obama stopped just short of mentioning race, effectively making his remark...pre-black.

Evie Shockley Remixes Poem to Address Trayvon Martin Case

In July 2009, amid the controversy surrounding the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Evie Shockley wrote a ghazal, entitled "improper(ty) behavior" about racial profiling. The poem appeared in Shockley's volume of poetry the new black (2011), and every second stanza of the poem concludes with the phrase "while black," including "driving while black," "thriving while black," "reviving while black," and "surviving while black."  

In a recent blong entry on the Red Room site, Shockley expressed "feeling overwhelming grief, outrage, and pessimism," noting that "the grief is a response to the recent murder of a black teenager in Florida; the outrage and pessimism respond as much to the long, bitter history of racism in the U.S. as to this specific case." Part of Shockley's response involved adding two lines to "improper(ty) behavior":

A Notebook on the Trayvon Martin Case

Some blog entries about the Trayvon Martin case. 

• April 12: Ta-Nehisi Coates & Trymaine Lee on Trayvon Martin 
• April 8: Trayvon Martin and Persona (Poem) Moments  
• March 31: A Subtle Trayvon Martin Reference in Kevin Young's Poem?  
• March 25: What if Obama's Trayvon Statement was a Poem?
• March 25: Dreams of a Son: Obama's Speculative Narrative about Trayvon
• March 24: Evie Shockley Remixes Poem to Address Trayvon Martin Case
• March 24: Lauren Victoria Burke's coverage of the Trayvon Martin Case
• March 24: Trymaine Lee's coverage of the Trayvon Martin Case
• March 24: #TrayvonMartin & Afrofuturism
• March 23: Ta-Nehisi Coates's Coverage of Trayvon Martin
• March 18: How the Pace of News & Literary Publishing Affect Poetry
• March 18: Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Coverage of Trayvon Martin
• March 17: The Coverage on Trayvon Martin

Lauren Victoria Burke's coverage of the Trayvon Martin Case

Lauren Victoria Burke, who writes for the Crewof42 site about the Congressional Black Caucus, has been provided a series of pieces on the Trayvon Martin killing. Her writings have provided useful background and context and contributed to the larger discourse on the subject.

Entries
• March 19: Tray Martin and 7 Dead Black Males Who Should Be Alive
• March 19: DoJ to Investigate Trayvon Martin Murder
• March 20: Cleaver: DOJ Should Investigate Trayvon Martin Case as Hate Crime
• March 20: Did Trayvon Killer Say “F**king Coons?”
• March 22: Allen West on Trayvon: “Let’s all be appalled not because of race…”
• March 22: Day 26: Wilson to Talk Trayvon on House Floor Every Day
• March 22: Hastings: Repeal Stand Your Ground Law

Related:
• A Notebook on the Trayvon Martin Case  

Trymaine Lee's coverage of the Trayvon Martin Case

Journalist Trymaine Lee provided extensive coverage concerning the murder of Trayvon Martin. Lee was writing for the Huffington Post at the time. He now writes for MSNBC.

Lee's articles were posted frequently on Twitter and facebook, providing a range of readers with background information and new developments.

[Related: Ta-Nehisi Coates's coverage of Trayvon Martin]

Although editorials on the case and aftermath are useful and necessary, news reports offer essential context and details of events taking place. Consequently, Lee's work constitutes one of the largest bodies of reporting on the case by a single journalist.

#TrayvonMartin & Afrofuturism

Thank goodness so many black folks refused to buy into the typical narratives about the "digital divide," which frame things only in terms of the haves and have nots. True, there are some very real discrepancies out there, and we should certainly be concerned about the racial implications central to some of the inequalities. But it also pays to consider, as those interested in afrofuturism have been doing for a while now, the distinct approaches to technology utilized by black folks.

Yesterday in a presentation, scholar Adam Banks was noting the importance of conversations on twitter, facebook, youtube, and blogs for raising awareness and practical organizing concerning Trayvon Martin.  If black folks had waited on CNN and MSNBC to provide coverage, pointed out Adam, who knows when and whether coverage would have become more pronounced. He was highlighting how African American use social media to in struggles for social justice.

Ta-Nehisi Coates's Coverage of the Trayvon Martin Case

I started a more general roundup of links on the coverage  concerning Trayvon Martin. Since I follow Ta-Nehisi Coates's writings, I've decided to devote a post to his continuing commentary.

[Related: Trymaine Lee's coverage of the Trayvon Martin Case]

Defining Encounters with the Sound of Amiri Baraka's Poetry

There's an extended moment in his tribute poem to John Coltrane entitled "I Love Music," where Amiri Baraka begins to shout and wail and wile out. I imagine that his loud projections of wordless phrasings are quite strange or unsettling for many of my students who likely never heard a poet do what Baraka does in his reading. Of course, Baraka's willingness to stretch out and make sounds that are unusual for poetry have contributed to establishing him as one of our most revered poets.

Yesterday, my students used audio devices to listen to Baraka reading several poems, including "Dope," "Jungle Jim Flunks His Screen Test," "RhythmBlues," "I Love Music," and a few different low coup poems.  After listening to Baraka read, several students were anxious to talk about what they heard, but they struggled to find what they considered to be the right words. I knew the feeling.

"When I grow up, I want to write poems."

During the mixed media poetry exhibit at Jamaa Learning Center, a third-grade boy named Kelly shared his clipboard with his responses to the questions his teacher had provided.

Related:
Mixed Media Poetry Exhibits

Clipboards, Poetry, and Third Graders

Student at Jamaa Learning Center observing poetry

On March 2, I organized a mixed media poetry exhibit for the students at Jamaa Learning Center, an elementary school in St. Louis. The 40 or so young people who attended seemed to have a good time. They read the poems, listened to poets reading on our audio devices, and observed the photographs.  

Since Illinois schools usually invite us to organize exhibits, I was pleased with the opportunity to work with a school in the city of St. Louis. The visit was arranged by one of the school's "Village Advocates" Christian Cooper, an SIUE grad who was a contributor to our black studies program activities when she was a student here.

I view our exhibits as "gateway" poetry experiences, providing many students with their first exposure to major African American poets such as Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, and Nikki Giovanni. The exhibits provide young people with special opportunities to learn about the sights and sounds of black poetry. The exhibits also provide me with chances to observe and learn how young people experience poetry and the processes of reading in general.

The organizers at Jamaa provided me with a useful idea for enhancing our future exhibits. In addition to giving the third graders who attended questions about the poems and poets, the teachers at Jamaa provided each of them with clipboards so that they could write as they were standing and looking at the display panels. The students looked like small-sized scholars, and more importantly, the clipboards seemed to empower the young to take their reading and response assignments seriously.

No doubt about it, I'll see to it that we provide students at our future poetry exhibits with clipboards.

Related:
Mixed Media Poetry Exhibits

The Idea of Escape in 3 Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks

[Still building ideas concerning escapology, spurred by Allison Funk's series of escape artist poems.]

It's clear that the art and dream of escape is central to three of Gwendolyn Brooks's most canonical poems, "We Real Cool," "a song in the front yard," and "kitchenette building." In "We Real Cool," the speakers have "left school," and it's that move--leaving school--that makes them seem especially like bad boys, right? That is, lurking late, singing sin, and thinning gin become more pronounced if done by boys who have escaped from school.

In "a song in the front yard," the young girl speaker yearns "to go in the back yard now / And maybe down the alley,/ To where the charity children play. / I want a good time today." Rather than stay in the yard where the good girls play, she would "like to be a bad woman" and "strut down the streets with paint on my face." The poem can be read as the ruminations of a young girl figuring out how to escape into womanhood.

The Writer-Scholar & Twitter: The Case of Mark Anthony Neal

The other day, I was talking with the sister-scholar Danielle Hall about one of our ongoing topics: black intellectual histories. This time, we were talking how contemporary scholars utilize social media, and we started citing various folks on twitter. I mentioned Mark Anthony Neal.

Neal is one of our most distinguished scholars who, for over a decade now, has consistently provided engaging commentary and scholarly writings on black expressive culture. The next time I talk to the good sister, I'm going to try to make the case that part of what makes Neal notable on twitter is his status as a prolific writer prior to the rise of social media. Thinking of Neal's identity as an active writer helps to explain what makes him stand out as a scholar on and beyond twitter.

Poems that Tell Stories and those that don't

Last week, while discussing some of Evie Shockley's poems with students, I was reminded of the power of poems that tell stories vs. those that do not. I asked students about the poems that they struggled with in Shockley's the new black, and some of them mentioned how they tended to be drawn to poems that tell stories.

They meant they preferred what are sometimes known as "narrative poems." Their preferences speaks to the power of narrative or really the appeal and familiarity of narrative. Beyond narrative poems vs. supposed non-narrative, lyric, and "experimental" poems, we might also consider that novels and autobiographies tend to have more widespread appeal than volumes of poetry. The reason has to do in part with the idea that novels and autobiographies are more known for presenting stories or narratives than books of poems.  (There are, no doubt, exceptions to the rule).

A Notebook on Escape Artists

I've been working through a few ideas about escape artists based on a series of poems by my friend and colleague Allison Funk. She has a few different poems about escape artists including "An Entry in the Escape Artist's Diary," "The Escape Artist Performing the Straitjacket Release," and "The Escape Artist in Winter" from her volume of poetry The Tumbling Box (2009) and a previous poem "Underwater Casket" from Poetry.

I've been thinking about the magic and mystery of literal escape artists as well as the ingenuity and significance of those who managed the art of getting out and away such as Harriet Tubman, Henry "Box" Brown, and Richard Wright.

Richard Wright as an Escape Artist

In the standard biographical sketches, Richard Wright is said to have "left" the South. But read his autobiography carefully and study the circumstances of black boys in the Jim Crow South, and it's apparent that it's more accurate to say that Wright escaped.

At the end of Southern section of Black Boy Wright explains that "This was the culture from which I sprang. This was the terror from which I fled." Toward the end f the Chicago section, Wright details his break with the Communist Party, and what's not in the book is that in 1947, a couple years after the publication of his autobiography, he decided to leave the United States for France.

WDS: Different Approaches to Creativity

Haley Scholar Reading Groups 

By Cindy Lyles 

In "Late Bloomers," Malcolm Gladwell focuses on the creative processes of contemporary fiction writer Ben Fountain and 19th century painter Cezanne. Gladwell establishes that it took both men a while to develop into the well-known artists they are today. Neither achieved acclaim in their twenties or thirties; their roads to fame were long and slow unlike some creative prodigies, like Orson Wells, Herman Melville, and Mozart whose careers peaked in their early lives.

“Conceptual” creativity and open-ended exploration are the two artistic processes Gladwell hones in on in the article. The former process entails little research but step-by-step execution that unfolds according to a preconceived plan; whereas the latter results from extensive research, as well as trial and error.

Picasso was so opposed to the open-ended process that he admitted, “I can hardly understand the importance given to the word research. In my opinion, to search means nothing in painting. To find is the thing” (301). On the other hand, Fountain and Cezanne both lean toward the research process to create.

How could a conceptual approach have benefited Fountain and Cezanne more? Or, how would open-ended exploration have benefited a prodigy artist like Picasso?

AOC: Limiting Choices

Haley Scholar Reading Groups 

By Danielle Hall

In the second part of chapter 7 of The Art of Choosing, Sheena Iyengar discusses the ways in which decisions made out of "suspicion or fear" may cause more damage in the long run (237). Put differently, some of the worst or least informed decisions happen when one must confront unattractive choices. Avoiding complex choices is usually what leads one to being "caught between a rock and a hard place." Iyengar warns that ignoring unattractive choices, or choosing not to choose, is problematic and potentially harmful.

Something of note is how the concept of restrictive choice, which we discussed previously in chapter 6, resurfaces again throughout this chapter. Again, Iyengar urges readers to consider the benefits of letting go and reminds us that there are other options available to us that can help alleviate the pressures of choosing and yield positive outcomes (240 & 254-55).

What is one way that you have benefited -- personally or academically -- by letting go (or as Iyengar says "limiting ourselves") that somehow led to new or better possibilities and outcomes in your field of study?

Allison Funk Remixes her Escape Artist Poem

On the acknowledgments page of her volume The Tumbling Box (2009), Allison Funk notes that one of her escape artist poems initially appeared in Poetry magazine. I consult Poetry regularly, so I went to their site to see how Funk's poem appeared when it was first published. There were notable differences.

In the May 2001 issue of Poetry, Funk's poem is entitled "Underwater Casket." In her volume of poetry, the poem is entitled "The Escape Artist in an Underwater Casket." The new title aligns the poem with the other pieces in the series, which are  "An Entry in the Escape Artist's Diary," "The Escape Artist Performing the Straitjacket Release," and "The Escape Artist in Winter."

Poets as Essayists

The recent release of Kevin Young's book of essays had me thinking back on a few different poet-essayists. Langston Hughes, for instance, wrote prose throughout his career. His most known essay remains "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (1926). 

In addition to being a leading black poet of the late 1960s and 70s, Larry Neal was also a leading essayist of the black arts era. His pieces "Black Arts Movement,""Any Day Now: Black Art and Liberation," and "And Shine Swam On," to name a few, are solid and helped shaped conversations about black artistic expression during the time period. Amiri Baraka published and continues to publish prose, including books Blues People (1963), Home: Social Essays (1965), Black Music (1967), and Digging: The Afro-American Soul of Classical American Music (2009). 

How the Pace of News & Literary Publishing Affect Poetry

In December 1969, the Chicago police killed Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. The shootings sparked outrage among large numbers of activists, commentators, and various observers. Poets also addressed the shooting, as the January 1970 issue of Negro Digest published Haki Madhubuti's poem "One-Sided Shoot," which was "for brothers fred hampton and mark clark, murdered 12/4/69 by chicago police at 4:30 AM while they slept."

In retrospect, the speed at which the poem appeared in a major publication seems remarkable. These days, it seems unlikely to view a poem by a black poet in a highly popular publishing venue about a recent event. The major periodicals that run news items almost never publish African American poets, and the publications that feature black poets do not present timely news.

Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Coverage of Trayvon Martin

Last week, Ta-Nehisi Coates (TNC) wrote a series of blog entries about Trayvon Martin, assisting in bringing the incident to the attention of more people. TNC's contribution to the boarder coverage revealed how a high-profile blogger/journalist can deepen and expand consciousness concerning the vulnerability of black boys and men and the troubling implications of some laws.    

In his first entry, Florida's Self-Defense Laws and the Killing of Trayvon Martin, on March 13, Coates noted that he hadn't "blogged about the shooting of Trayvon Martin by a neighborhood watch captain, George Zimmerman, because I've found the killing depressingly familiar." Among other incidents, Coates was likely referring to an incident that occurred in September 2000, when his friend Prince Jones, who was unarmed, was killed by a policeman. As noted by The Washington Post, "the highly publicized shooting was the catalyst for a broad Justice Department investigation into allegations of brutality and racism by the county police department."

Harriet Tubman & Henry Box Brown, Our Great Escape Artists

Illustration of Henry 'Box' Brown emerging from his box

I was reading and then writing about Allison Funk's series of escape artist poems and started wondering: are Harriet Tubman and Henry Box Brown two of our greatest escape artists?  No question, the narratives about their abilities to defy the odds and break free from their confines have fascinated listeners and readers for over a century.

Allison Funk's pieces are persona poems from the perspective of an escape artist. But her poems can also be read as metaphors or allegories for people artfully struggling to break free from various contraptions. In "The Escape Artist Performing the Straightjacket Release," she writes that "slipping out of the jacket / isn't the trick. / It's getting free of what coils around me / daytime and night."  At least one of the ever-present coils confining Tubman and Brown was enslavement.

The Coverage on Trayvon Martin

There has been outrage and building coverage on the killing of teen Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, who had followed and reported  Martin as looking suspicious. After the shooting, Zimmerman was released by local police as they have so far accepted the claim that he was acting in self-defense.

[Related: A Notebook on the Trayvon Martin Case]

The incident occurred February 26, and the coverage has finally  started to pick up considerable steam. This past week, for instance, blogger/journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates ran a series of entries on the incident; there was considerable discussion in the comments section. An article in The Times by Charles Blow sparked even more conversation.

What follows are a round-up of some of the online pieces. 

Considering Escape Artists

I was recently re-reading a series of poems about an escape artist in my friend and colleague Allison Funk's volume of poetry The Tumbling Box (2009). Her poems "An Entry in the Escape Artist's Diary," "The Escape Artist Performing the Straitjacket Release," "The Escape Artist in Winter," and "The Escape Artist in an Underwater Casket" offer perspectives from the viewpoint of an entertainer skilled at performing daring and difficult escapes.     

Allison's persona poems offer a perspective from someone who is "Willingly bound" and yet adept enough to "slip the knots." In another poem, she writes that "you think I'd free myself fast;" but instead takes a little time before escaping to ponder dying because "I'd imagined death as a spaciousness / I hadn't known on earth."

Why Evie Shockley's Poems Require Multiple Readings

Yesterday, my crew of students and I were discussing the new black, and a question came up: "How should we read Evie Shockley's poems?" The answer we arrived at: in multiple ways.

There are all kinds of poems that require multiple readings in order to "get it." But with three of Shockley's poems -- "dependencies," "x marks the spot," and "mesostics from the american grammar book" -- though, more than one series of ideas are communicated at one time, so multiple readings are a requirement, not simply a good idea.

Bargains and Outliers

Haley Scholar Reading Groups 

The “Marita’s Bargain” chapter focuses on a leading college-prep school, the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) in a struggling community in New York City. Gladwell gives special attention to one of the students, Marita, and the considerable effort and sacrifices she must make in order to do well at the school. She must rise early and study late into the night

Gladwell argues that KIPP “has succeeded by taking the idea of cultural legacies seriously.” That means that a tradition like summer vacation is replaced with year-round schooling, and the times that the school day begins and ends changes as well as how students are instructed to pay attention in class. And, a student like Marita is given more of a “chance” when someone brings “a little bit of the rice paddy to the South Bronx” and explains “the miracle of meaningful work.”

African American Poets and Academic Appointments

A list of African American poets and their academic appointments.  

• Elizabeth Alexander, Yale University, Department of African American Studies

• Jericho Brown, Emory University, English and Creative Writing

• Rita Dove, University of Virginia, Commonwealth Professor Department of English

• Cornelius Eady, University of Missouri, Department of English

• Kelly Norman Ellis, Chicago State University, MFA in Creative Writing

A Notebook on the work of Elizabeth Alexander

Elizabeth Alexander is one of our major poets and black studies thinkers. Her work has been prevalent in African American artistic and historical discourse for decades now.  She has produced several publications over the years, including The Venus Hottentot (1990), American Sublime (2005),and Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems 1990-2010 (2010).

Entries:
2019
• February 5: Elizabeth Alexander and Black Book History

2017
• July 30: The African American artwork adorning Elizabeth Alexander's books

2016
• December 9: A set of books for Black Girls from East St. Louis  
• January 31: Elizabeth Alexander's Venus Hottentot & John Keene's Miss La La 

2015
• July 12: The Worlds of Elizabeth Alexander 
• January 17: Elizabeth Alexander as a crucial connector

2013
• May 12: The Rise of Rita Dove and Elizabeth Alexander during the late 1980s

2012
• March 10: Elizabeth Alexander's Books
• March 9: Elizabeth Alexander: At the Crossroads of Poetry & Black Studies
• March 8: Elizabeth Alexander, Twitter Poetics & White Space
• March 7: Elizabeth Alexander's Teeny Tiny Twitter Poems
• March 6:  The Trouble with Anthologies & the Series Trend in Poetry
• March 6: Elizabeth Alexander's Amistad: A Versified Rendering of Black History
• March 5: Discovering Elizabeth Alexander's Poetry at Tougaloo Collge
• March 5: Elizabeth Alexander Week
• February 10: Elizabeth Alexander's Militant Nature Poem  
• January 25: Notes on Why Elizabeth Alexander's Presence on Twitter Matters

2011
• August 14: Black Poetry published by Graywolf Press 
• August 7: Elizabeth Alexander's "The Venus Hottentot" during the 1990s
•  May 4: From Popular Black Poets to Public Intellectuals

Related:
An Extended Notebook on the works of writers & artists

Elizabeth Alexander's Books

Volumes of poetry:
• The Venus Hottentot (1990)
• Body of Life (1996)
• Antebellum Dream Book (2001)
• American Sublime (2005)
• American Blue: Selected Poems (2006)
• Miss Crandall's School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color, with Marilyn Nelson (2007)
• Poems in Conversation and a Conversation, with Lyrae Van-Clief Stefanon (2008)
• Praise Song for the Day (2009)
• Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems 1990-2010 (2010)

Books of essays:
• The Black Interior (2003)
• Power and Possibility: Essays, Interviews, Reviews (2007)

Edited works:
• Love’s Instruments: Poems by Melvin Dixon (1995)
• The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks (2005)

Memoir
• The Light of the World: A Memoir (2015)

Related:
• Elizabeth Alexander Week

The Accessibility & Availability of The Boondocks

Part of what made The Boondocks such a popular breakthrough when it appeared in 1999 and on into the early years of the 21st century was its accessibility and availability in various newspapers and on the net. Folks would circulate humorous strips via email, and it was possible to check out the archive of strips on gocomics.com.

Early on too, there was quite a bit of activity on the message board for, Boondocks.net, which made it possible for fans and critics of the strip to make their voices heard. Folks sometimes had intense debates about the merits and offenses of McGruder's comic strip.

Elizabeth Alexander: At the Crossroads of Poetry & Black Studies

In 2000, Elizabeth Alexander began working at Yale University as an associate professor. Although she had distinguished herself as a poet and while creative writers often work in English departments and MFA programs, Alexander's appointment was in African American Studies. In 2005, she was promoted to full professor with appointments in African American Studies, American Studies, and English, and in 2009, she became chair of African American Studies at Yale.

Alexander's now 12-year appointment in African American Studies is especially noteworthy when we consider the growing distance between African American poetry and Black Studies over the last 20 years. During the black arts era of the late 1960s and early 1970s, black poets were actively involved in the development and operations of black studies. Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez, for instance, collaborated with students and activists who worked to create the first black studies program at San Fransisco State University.

The Boondocks & White Spaces

The Boondocks, April 23, 1999

Among other notable results, Aaron McGruder's The Boondocks had the distinction of shining a light on two distinct white spaces--the suburbs and the funny pages of newspapers. McGruder was not the first African American comic strip creator, but few had ever gained the widespread attention that he did.

The appearance of a comic strip starring two (black) black boys was remarkable. Unlike the many black culture-less or black-lite African American characters who appear in mainstream commercials and on television shows, Huey and Riley Freeman were self-consciously black.  Their prevalent black racial identities were a reminder that the surrounding comic strips on the funny pages were almost exclusively white.

Elizabeth Alexander, Twitter Poetics & White Space

Elizabeth Alexander's project featuring teeny tiny twitter poems involves more than simply poetry. Alexander has also been publishing statements known as "Twitter Poetics" that offer her "ongoing observations on the process of writing in new forms and contexts." Alexander's statements have provided readers with the unique opportunity of viewing a notable black writer's serialized observations about the writing process.

In her first twitter poetic statement, Alexander noted, "Instead of the line break & white space that follows is the slash: bold, but no white space for the poem to breathe in." Here, Alexander suggests the challenge of limited space when producing poems for twitter. Her statement also laments the absence of white space.

Elizabeth Alexander's Teeny Tiny Twitter Poems

Since January 1, Elizabeth Alexander has been involved in what she refers to as the "Twitter Poem Project," where she writes short poems within the twitter 140-character format. Alexander actually wrote her first twitter poem several months before officially starting a twitter account. The New York Times had made requests from Alexander and poets Billy Collins, Robert Pinsky, and Claudia Rankine to compose poems while adhering to twitter's character restrictions.

[Related: Notes on Why Elizabeth Alexander's Presence on Twitter Matters]

Alexander's contribution, "Teeny tiny poem," read as follows: "Teeny tiny poem/just enuf 2hold/1 xllent big word/Impluvium/open-eyed courtyrd/collectng rain/as all poems do/ skylife, open/birds do:/ tweet."

The Boondocks & the Non-complimentary Book Blurb

The following blurbs appeared on the back of Aaron McGruder's first collection of strips, The Boondocks: Because I Know You Don't Read the Newspaper (2000):

"The most appalling of McGruder's reckless charges was that BET 'does not serve the interest of black people.' Our response to this slanderous assertion is that the 500-plus dedicated employees of BET do more in one day to serve the interest of African-Americans than this young man has done in his entire life."
--Robert Johnson, President and CEO, BET Holdings, Inc.

"The Boondocks is a deliciously amusing work that creatively challenges us with intense substance, cleverly disguised as a humorous comic strip. Aaron McGruder is one of the most important voices of his generation and a true credit to his race."
--Tavis Smiley, Author and Host of BET Tonight

Pilgrims in an Unholy Land: The Boondocks & Suburban Discontent

First Sunday, color strip of The Boondocks

In the first Sunday color strip of The Boondocks, Riley and Huey continue to explore their new environment and realize that how different the suburbs are from the city. The two brothers had been walking for 10 minutes, and Riley notes that they have not passed typical urban landmarks such as basketball courts, Chinese take-out places, or rib shacks.

"Riley," Huey says, "we are pilgrims in an unholy land." Despite widespread ideas about the virtues of the suburbs and the problems of urban environments, Huey suggests an alternative view: a place like the suburban Woodcrest, where they now live, is less desirable.

A Notebook on the Work of Adrian Matejka

Over the years, I've been blogging about the works of Adrian Matejka. Beyond writing poetry, Adrian has been a tremendous resource for me on the many scenes of poetry. 

He is the author of The Devil's Garden (2003), Mixology (2009), The Big Smoke (2013), Map to the Stars (2017), and the forthcoming Somebody Else Sold the World (2021). 

The Trouble with Anthologies and the Series Trend in Contemporary Black Poetry

Earlier today, I was writing about Elizabeth Alexander's powerful series "Amitad" and began to wonder why more people haven't discussed or even heard about the piece. Alexander's series is as impressive, in some ways, as her well-known poem "The Venus Hottentot." Maybe, I figured, the nature of a series of poems makes it more difficult for the work to circulate.  

In general, the most popular poems by African American writers are fairly short, stand-alone pieces. Paul Laurence Dunbar's "We Wear the Mask," Langston Hughes's "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," Gwendolyn Brooks's We Real Cool," and even Margaret Walker's "For My People" have moved relatively easily from anthology to anthology to dozens of anthologies over the years. The poems are memorized or jotted down on sheets of paper, recited at cultural programs, and thus passed along formal and informal networks of readers and listeners.

Seeing the Whole Court; or Notes on Successful & Struggling Collegiate Students

These days, for the illest passes, folks might look to Chris Paul or Ricky Rubio, cats who can really dish the rock. I still have memories of about 20 years ago when I saw the 1992 televised Mcdonald's All-American high school basketball game, where a young Jason Kidd was ripping up and down the court throwing all kinds of shift and tricky passes. He could, as b-ball folks say, see the whole court.

Keen court vision and the ability of knowing where to be on the court (i.e. moving without the ball) are two hallmarks of a high IQ in basketball. Can those kinds of qualities translate into academic fields? In particular, I wonder what vision and sense of positioning might mean for college students.

Elizabeth Alexander's Amistad: A Versified Rendering of Black History

An 1840 illustration depicts captive Africans revolting on the Amistad in 1839

"Art takes us to knowing that may have no other way of being found." --Elizabeth Alexander

Black poets have written about enslaved people and struggles for liberation for well over 150 years now. Figures such as Paul Laurence Dunbar, Robert Hayden, Margaret Walker, Lucille Clifton, Amiri Baraka, Evie Shockley, Kevin Young, and many many others have written about the subject.  Contemporary poets have continued and extended the poetic practice by producing extended series and book-length volumes about discontent slaves, runaways, and insurrectionists.    

Elizabeth Alexander's "Amistad" -- first published in The South Atlantic Quarterly (Summer 2005), soon after as the third section of her book American Sublime (2005), and then again in Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems 1990-2010 (2010) -- represents a standout  series in the writings about slavery. Alexander offers various kinds of poems (persona, haiku, descriptive or documentary, lists)  as she provides a multi-part artistic chronicle of the experiences of the Mende rebels and captives, the Amistad, and the poet's engagements with the events during modern times. Ultimately, Alexander versifies a significant historical moment, offering the internal musings of Cinque, the rebel leader, and other key figures associated with the Amistad rebellion and aftermath.

Discovering Aaron McGruder & The Boondocks in 1999

National debut for The Boondocks

 

Of all the new writers, artists, and thinkers that I discovered during my first year of graduate school (1999-2000), Aaron McGruder proved to be one of the most important. Aside from McGruder, almost all the other writers I followed were serious and for academic purposes. But I read The Boondocks for entertainment purposes and because of the politics of the comic strip.

I likely noticed some similarities between the situation of the comic strip's protagonist Huey Freeman and my own circumstances. Perhaps I was drawn to a character who, like me, had recently from a black environment to a primarily white one. A figure immersed in "black consciousness" was also, of course, appealing to me.

Aaron McGruder Week

This week, I'll devote a series of blog entries to the cartoonist Aaron McGruder, whose comic strip and television show The Boondocks have been quite essential reading and viewing materials for folks interested in the intersections between black studies and popular culture over the last several years.  Perhaps no other African American comic strip has gained such a large and diverse following as The Boondocks.  

Although I've read McGruder's comic strip for years now, I only started really writing about his work over the last few years. I've enjoyed shifting a reading hobby into a subject for study and as a reading assignment for my students.  During the course of the week, I'll try to pinpoint some of my shifting interests in The Boondocks and how the strip and cartoon connect to black studies. 

Entries:
• March 8: The Boondocks & White Spaces
• March 7: The Boondocks and the Non-complimentary Book Blurb
• March 6: Pilgrims in an Unholy Land: The Boondocks & Suburban Discontent
• March 5: Discovering Aaron McGruder's The Boondocks in 1999
• March 5: Aaron McGruder Week

Discovering Elizabeth Alexander's Poetry at Tougaloo College

I "discovered" Elizabeth Alexander at Tougaloo College in Mississippi, in 1995-1996, during my first year of college. At the time, I was pursuing quite a bit of outside reading trying to catch up on all the "conscious" materials that my high school had neglected to assign.

I read autobiographies by Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, Richard Wright, and Assata Shakur that year. I  read DuBois and historical accounts by Carter G. Woodson. I read folks like Naim Akbar, Jawanza Kunjufu's  Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys, and several more. I had attended the Million Man March in October 1995, and so looking back on my readings, I was perhaps especially inclined to read works about black men, African American history, and the struggles of black folk.

Elizabeth Alexander Week

This week, I'll devote blog entries to the work of Elizabeth Alexander, a writer and scholar who has had an increasingly important presence in the discourse on African American poetry over the last 20 years. Her poem "The Venus Hottentot," her focus on history in various works, and her creative approaches to exploring a range of ideas related to popular culture in her poems have helped establish her as one of our leading poets.

I've devoted weeks to works by Allison Joseph, Evie Shockley, and Margaret Walker, so it's certainly time for me to provide a series of writings on Alexander's work.

The Densely Populated Field of Poetry

Black poetry is arguably the most densely populated African American art form. There's no doubt that black poets comprise the largest number of literary artists, far outpacing novelists, short story writers, playwrights, and essayists.

Here's the good news: the large numbers of poets out there (past and present) have contributed to the production of one of our country's, if not the world's, most expansive, diverse, and enriching bodies of poems. With so many different contributions, what we refer to as African American or black poetry has all kinds of twists and turns, extended patterns, and, most importantly, good poems.

Blogging about Poetry in February 2012

A typical busy month of blogging. Well, really, the blogging did not feel busy, since I enjoyed the process so much.

[Related content: Blogging about Poetry]

Early in the month, I did a series on poets Evie Shockley, Carolyn Rodgers, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, and Elizabeth Aleaxnder as well as on spoken word performances by our program contributors Danielle Hall and Cindy Lyles.  I also got a chance to write about Kevin Young and Tyehimba Jess and then later on topics related to the black arts era.