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old_man_summer
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| Split This Rock Day 3: "Harlem" Renaissance in Washington |
[Mar. 22nd, 2008|10:07 am] |
I dragged myself out of bed this morning to attend a walking tour of the Harlem Renaissance in Washington , led by Kim Roberts. Karren Alenier has already blogged about it very nicely here, so I won't belabor the point. Several of the sights she mentioned as highlights also impressed me, including Duke Ellington's childhood home, a handsome gray rowhouse at 1212 T St. and the place where he played his first gig, the True Reformers Hall:
Also, as I mentioned before, the Thurgood Marshall Center (former YMCA), where Langston Hughes briefly lived, and the home of the Saturday Nighters salon, where most of the luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance met and talked. Most interesting to me was hearing about Langston Hughes' misery in DC, and his checkered occupational history while he was here. He came to the city expecting to take a job at the local African-American newspaper. They started him in ad sales, and he lasted, Kim said, perhaps a month. He had equally short tenures at a range of other jobs, from working with the historian Carter Woodson to washing clothes in a laundry and serving as a hotel busboy. That last day job was notable especially for Hughes' on-the-job self-promotion: when poet Vachel Lindsay visited the hotel for a reading and banquet, Hughes made sure a sheaf of his best work was lying next to his dinner plate. Lindsay read Hughes' poems at his own reading, and announced that he had discovered a "black busboy poet" in DC. This made the national news, with a picture of Hughes in his busboy uniform. Perhaps not the kind of acclaim Hughes had in mind (and his busboy colleagues were so irritated with him for doing this that he quit immediately afterwards), but it does fall into the category of "just so long as you spell my name right." (Busboys and Poets is named in honor of this story, too, as you might have guessed.) Apparently, Hughes peripatetic wanderings in DC reflected his unhappiness here; he felt pressure from family members to achieve occupationally, but found the classy U street neighborhood stiff and pretentious. He apparently much preferred the working-class 7th street neighborhood; on the tour, I had the opportunity to read aloud some of his comments about 7th street, which sound woefully stereotypical to contemporary ears (he mentions barbecue, watermelon, and the Negro's innate gaiety, for examples).
I also met some interesting people. I got to chatting with Michael Newheart, a divinity professor at Howard University, and discovered that he actually knew someone I knew, Pepper Phillips, a colleague of mine here at UMD. You might not be impressed with that degree of small world connection-making, but seeing as how the number of people I know in DC approaches zero, I was surprised and pleased. I also met Karen Johnston, a poet, lay minister, and social worker from New England, who has the most adorable Split This Rock poem ever up at her blog, and some other nameless individuals, including a wonderful older woman who bonded with me over a shared fondness for long skirts (she'd bought hers in a cowboy store in Nevada).
After the tour we all went home to bed. We were all exhausted! |
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| Split This Rock Day 3: 5:00 Reading and Reception |
[Mar. 22nd, 2008|02:51 pm] |
I came back to the festival for the 5 p.m. reading, which featured Coleman Barks, Pamela Uschuk, and Belle Waring. Lucille Clifton was supposed to be there, but fell ill, so the reading began with Sarah Browning and the poets each reading one of her poems, which was a nice tribute, although not as nice as having her there in person would have been.
Coleman Barks read his Letter to President Bush. I sat there listening to him, crying over what might have been. Like him, I don't really consider this proposal foolish. I wonder how many world conflicts could have been solved just as usefully with a fully waged and committed peace. Even WWII, the great war, the justified war: What would have happened if wealthy tourists had poured into 1920s Germany, spending money freely and easing the economic woes of war reparations? What if Wilson had achieved his 14 points? It is painful that the history of war is one of hundreds of missed opportunities for peace. It is painful that imagination is not always enough. But I do believe that we do good by creating alternative visions, by speaking joy to power, because once in a while it does work, and once in a while is better than nothing.
Pamela Uschuk is an interesting person. At the poetry and policy discussion, I enjoyed her description of the word "matriot," which she apparently coined, and her description of her father's experiences refusing to sign a loyalty oath in the McCarthy era. But I was not moved by her reading; I suspect I would like her poetry better if I met it on the page.
Belle Waring -- a former local neonatal nurse, lots of frontline experience with DC trauma -- was the least-renowned of the bunch, and I think she felt shy coming up on stage in her jeans and fleece vest, sheaf of paper in her hands (Uschuk is a glamorous tall blonde, and was wearing striking red cowboy boots, a gift from her famous poet husband). She made several self-deprecating remarks, and then opened fire, in an intense, painful, whisper, with some of the finest poetry I heard all weekend. Among others, she read The Forgery, about engaging in guerrilla medicine to save a baby's life. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) domystic, Rob, you would adore this lady. I bought her book, Dark Blonde (linked above), and also a Rumi collection of Barks.' (Barks is most famous not for his own poetry, but for translating Rumi. If you as an American and English-speaker know Rumi's poetry, it is because of him.)
A magnificent reading. I had wondered about where to go for dinner in between the 5 and 8 p.m. readings -- I found myself alone again -- but Sarah Browning solved my problem. Here is a great example of what kind of a conference this was, and what kind of a conference organizer she was: She got up at the five o'clock reading and announced that they had ordered hors d'oeuvres for the volunteers and the poets, but that the previous night they had way too many leftovers. So, she announced, when the treats arrived this evening, perhaps everyone in the audience would like to join the poets and volunteers in the cafeteria for an impromptu reception, so nothing would go to waste. Sarah Browning, a toast to you: not many people mix administrative skills with a truly warm and giving heart.
So I went to the reception and feasted on falafel and chicken shish kabobs and fruit and cheese, and ended up connecting with Karen Johnston again, some other poets from Massachusetts whom she knew, and a wonderful pair of sisters, Skeeter and Sue Scheid, who lived here. We made instant friends, eating dinner together, talking about all matters local, national, and personal, and exchanging chapbooks and encouragement. (I tried to talk Karen into going to the open mic and reading. She was ambivalent, but I see from her poem about the conference that she took my advice!) I also chatted briefly with Karren Alenier again -- when I picture the conference, I picture her, because we kept landing together -- and exchanged emails and blog addresses. It was all so easy, and fabulously fun. A wonderful validation of the adventures and connections that are possible when you travel solo and fearless into the world. |
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| Split This Rock Day 3: 8:00 Reading |
[Mar. 22nd, 2008|08:25 pm] |
The 8:00 reading for Split This Rock day 3 was a blockbuster, including Dennis Brutus, Kenneth Carroll, Mark Doty, Carolyn Forche, and Alicia Ostriker, and I am not going to try to review all of that. Instead, just the highlights.
Mark Doty began with a gorgeous snippet of a poem by Taha Muhammed Ali:
And so
it has taken me
all of sixty years
to understand
that water is the finest drink,
and bread the most delicious food,
and that art is worthless
unless it plants
a measure of splendor in people's hearts.
"A measure of splendor in people's hearts" -- again that theme of speaking joy to power, of creating an expansive imagination that bends the heart toward reconciliation. Some of his reading you can see for yourself:
I also found Alicia Ostriker charming; her reading was cheeky and erotic and lighter in tone than any of the others.
Kenneth Carroll was also funny, with a trash-talking would-be Army recruit named Snookie Johnson (scroll down for the poem) who reminded me of Arlo Guthrie ("I wanna see blood and guts and gore and veins in my teeth!"), and a Presidential Love Letter that recast W. with his wiretapping illegal-searching ways as a spurned lover creepily stalking us.
Both of these were quite a contrast with Dennis Brutus, who delivered a serious reading that provided the political heart and soul of the conference.This is Brutus (the picture is Karren Alenier's, and is featured on her blog):
He is a South African poet who has also spent many years in the U.S. He was an anti-apartheid activist, and thus was jailed at Robben Island with Nelson Mandela and other activists in the 1970s. He did not read much in the way of poetry, but instead spoke about that experience, and what relevance it has to how we should respond to the Iraq War now, in a way that reminded me very much of Nelson Mandela's own comments about the experience.
He spoke about the physical hardships of his imprisonment. Robben Island was a spectacularly isolated, brutal, maximum security prison, and he and the other activists were jailed with the most security and isolation available there. "Split this rock" was no metaphor to Brutus -- he was made to split rocks, to spend day after day turning boulders into gravel, until, as he said, the blisters on his hands had burst, and new blisters formed on top of them. This was actually light labor -- Brutus had been shot years before in a through-wound, where the bullet entered his back and exited through his chest, and he was considered too frail for the difficult labor assigned to Mandela and the other prisoners, which involved traveling to a limestone quarry and quarrying and splitting rocks there.
He also said that his time at Robben Island was not as psychologically shattering as you would imagine, but only because he and the other activists there were aware of the anti-apartheid resistance and worldwide support of their cause by people on the outside -- and especially Americans, people like Arthur Ashe. He said this awareness, the fact that they were physically but not psychologically isolated and silenced, gave them an unquenchable optimism that -- despite their life sentences -- neither they nor their cause would die on Robben Island.
He also pointed out that there is no such movement, no such resistance, to the injustices in Iraq now.
He said this was unconscionable. He called upon us all -- at length, so long they asked him to stop speaking and leave the stage -- to stop paying our taxes, to besiege and strangle this unjust war at its source.
His talk was long, and it was uncomfortable. You could see the audience shifting in our seats, fidgeting uncomfortably around our own guilt, the reality that few (none?) among us would risk even the the relatively low likelihood of the relatively comfortable prison or the relatively light consequences that might befall anyone with the cojones to illegally stand up to the IRS.
It made me angry that they stopped him. In a conference of poets many events had run late -- 30 minutes late, an hour late -- so the decision to stop him was not made out of an exaggerated American sense of timeliness. It was made from discomfort, but Brutus has earned the right to make us uncomfortable.
It is uncomfortable to feel guilty for more than the alotted quarter hour. It is uncomfortable to listen to an ugly speech instead of pretty poetry. But not nearly so uncomfortable as literally splitting rocks under the South African sun, with your hands bleeding until the scars come.
Of course he earned a standing ovation. But I wonder how many who heard him will even take the risk-free step of advocating for a peace tax alternative at the Lobby Day on March 31st:
(Oh, and there is an organized tax boycott for April 2008 to defund the war. Here's a primer on war tax resistance, for any who are reading this who are willing to put their money where their mouths are and engage in this modest risk of civil disobedience.) |
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| Split This Rock Day 3: Film Program |
[Mar. 22nd, 2008|10:37 pm] |
I had a difficult time figuring out what to do after the 8 p.m. reading. There was to be an Open Mic at FlashPoint studio downtown, which sounded fun, but I'd already read at one open mic and felt it would be piggie to do a reprise. And to go and not participate would have made me resentful, I thought, and it was late, and I was tired. Still, Karen Johnston wanted -- maybe -- to go to that one, and I wanted to go and support her in reading, and I thought it would be exciting to go to a new gallery. Ultimately, though, I joined Sue and Skeeter and decided to go to the Split This Rock film program, at Busboys and Poets. (Too many wonderful choices!)
The best part of that turned out to be the Metro trip back -- we met up with some other festival participants, and I had the idea that we should hold an impromptu anti-war reading right there in the train station. So we did: we read in the Metro stations, on the trains, and on the streets until we got to Busboys and Poets. A thrill.
We arrived late to the film festival, and sat in the back, and perhaps I was just too tired for it. None of the films particularly stood out to me (although I did not see them all), and Jimmy Santiago Baca's film actively annoyed me. It was a documentary of his (I am guessing expensive; this is perhaps cynical) residencies working in schools with high-risk children creating poetry. In general, using poetry as therapy rubs me the wrong way: I think journaling about your trauma is important, and I think painful experiences can lead to art, especially once you have plenty of distance on them, but journaling trauma is not itself art, and people who just write out their pain are not poets. Convincing them that they are cheapens poetry as an artform, and sets them up for a rude awakening when other people do not value their written work the way they do. Also, there were some painful moments on the video, where Baca's interns -- like him, people recovering from violence via writing -- dealt with the traumatized students in a ham-handed, hurtful way. At one point one intern tells a girl bent over her desk crying for an unknown reason and apparently unable to stop that she should stop: Ouch. Apparently it is ok to write about pain, but not to actually experience any.
Good films or no, though, I can recommend the overpriced-but-delicious mojitos at Busyboys and Poets. Also the yummy desserts. |
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