Maya Angelou: giving birth to all of our brightnesses

When looking for two frustratingly lost books this morning, I came across this random assembly of titles on a shelf:  I read in their titles a tribute to the largess of Sistah Maya, who eloquently in her speech and posture, testimony and poems, was our dark symphony; a courageous chronicler of the brackish and briny currents of her own life, yet a messenger giving birth to all of our brightnesses; a fierce friend, we pray who is resting now adorned in the neatly fitted wings she desired and golden slippers.

Poet Nikky Finney's acceptance speech at the NBA for Head Off & Split

Poet Nikky Finney won the 2011 National Book Award last year for Head Off & Split, a collection of impresseive poems which layer reams of meaning into meaty metaphors served up you might say in bite-sized lines of controlled meter.

Impressive as Finney's achievement is in this volume, her acceptance speech for the NBA was a power-packed appetizer for the book. In her remarks, Finney put her audience on notice that she was serving up truths not always pleasing to the palate nor easily digested. However, everyone who values truth could take a seat at her table and would eat well.
Here's a link to Nikky Finney's acceptance speech well worth savoring (about 9 minutes): http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2011_p_finney.html

Pauli Murray (Returning Spring) Poetry - Black Poetry Post #18

Pauli Murray's poem, "Returning Spring," was highlighted in the DevotionReader.com Black poetry series for National Poetry Month 2010.
See a video featuring Rev. Pauli Murray from the TV series, "On the Road," hosted by Charles Kuralt, 1985

"I believe in reconciling the  descendants of all the slaves and the slave owners of the South.  And, by now, the genes have recirculated so, that I suspect if you put all of the people of the United States end to end according to true line blood relationship, we would all be in a long line,  all of us.
This is the fascinating thing about the South. Black, white and red are related by blood, and by culture, and by history, and by common suffering.
And so what I am saying is, ' Look, let's level with one another. Let's admit we are related, and let's get on with the business of healing these wounds--and we're not going to heal them till we face the truth.'"    Pauli Murray, On the Road TV series, 1985

Song In A Weary Throat 

Born in Baltimore in 1910, and raised in Durham, North Carolina, Pauli Murray was a lawyer, civil rights activist, feminist and human rights advocate. She graduated from Hunter College in 1933 but was denied entrance to the University of North Carolina (UNC) in 1938, more than a decade before the campaign that successfully led Floyd McKissick to become the first African American admitted to UNC.  

Pauli Murray later graduated from Howard University Law School (1944), took her Masters of Law degree at the University of California, Berkeley, and earned a Doctor of Juridical Science degree at Yale University Law School, the first Afrrican American woman to do so.

Murray wrote various texts about race and equality: her noted poem on race is "Dark Testament," written about 1943, and her book, States' Laws on Race and Culture (1950) was praised by Thurgood Marshall as "the Bible for civil rights lawyers."

In 1977, Pauli Murray became the first African American woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest. She died in 1985. In 1987 her autobiography, Song in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage, was published posthumously.

DevotionReader.com Series: 30 Ways of Looking at Black Poetry

Returning Spring by Pauli Murray

I’ll sink my roots far down
And drink from hidden rivers,
Renew my kinship with growing things—
The little ants will hold their congresses
Upon my arm, and cautious insects
Will make brief tours across my brows
And spiders spin webs from toe to toe.

The spears of sun will prick
No blade of grass to wakefulness
But I shall feel it tremble,
No further straw be laid upon a nest,
No twig but I shall see it quiver.

I’ll hear the symphonies within a stone,
Catch every murmur of the ground,
Travel the heavens with each vagrant cloud
And ark the golden islands in the sky.

http://www.devotionreader.com/poetry/black-poetry-post-18-returning-spring

“Returning Spring” by Pauli Murray in The Garden Thrives, edited by Clarence Major,
Pauli Murray, “Returning Spring” in Dark Testament, 1970.

Sources: 

http://www.episcopalarchives.org/Afro-Anglican_history/exhibit/leadership/murray.php*
   * Includes a video featuring Pauli Murray, from TV series "On the Road" host, Charles Kuralt, 1985
http://paulimurrayproject.org/pauli-murray/biography/

This post was updated on April 18, 2011 at 12:09 pm

Claude McKay on "If We Must Die"

Claude McKay

Poetry, like its sister, music, has the power to transcend barriers of race, culture and gender and communicate with the universal humanity in us all. That's the narrative Jamaican-born poet Claude McKay told about his acclaimed poem, “If We Must Die,” which is commonly embraced as an anthem of Black nationalism. Here's an account of McKay’s story, published in Devotion Journal in 2006: http://tinyurl.com/3worzjy

Audio: Claude Mckay reads "If We Must Die" (1:00)

Maya Angelou awarded the Medal of Freedom

Charles Dharapak/AP

Fitting tribute to Maya Angelou for her contributions to letters, uplift of Black culture and the human spirit. For millions of her readers, including me, Ms. Angelou's biographies and poetry represent the power that words have to change our lives.
2011 is also the 40th anniversary of the publication of Ms. Angelou's first book of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie.

Charlotte news video clip of the Medal of Freedom award presentation to Maya Angelou from President Barack Obama at the White House on Tuesday, February 15, 2011.

http://charlotte.news14.com/content/local_news/triangle/636774/n-c--s-maya-angelou-receives-medal-of-freedom

2010 National Book Award for Poetry

2010 National Book Award for Poetry, Lighthead, by Terrance Hayes...view Hayes' page on Poets.org

My Library: Just acquired I Never Had It Made, Jackie Robinson's Autobiography

After doing a bit of research for a piece I wrote on Black achievers recently, I reflected on Jackie Robinson's entrance into major league baseball and the magnitude it had on sports and our American culture.

I was reminded, and also newly informed, about how courageous Jackie Robinson was off the field, advocating fairness and integration within major league sports and speaking out on behalf of social justice in various arenas.

I Never Had it Made 

While researching Robinson, I read a note about his autobiography, I Never Had It Made (1972). I knew of Arnold Rampersad's biography, which I have, in fact. However, I was not aware of Robinson's autobiography, and immediately I had to have it.

So, I am fortunate to have just acquired a clean and beautiful hardback copy of I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography as told to Alfred Duckett.

Can't wait to read it and report my impression.

There was another intriguing aspect to the Jackie Robinson autobiography that I've only had a few minutes to research, and that is "as told to Alfred Duckett." Is this Alfred Duckett also the poet, Alfred Duckett? The Alfred Duckett who wrote one of my favorite poems celebrating the Black master of music, Duke Ellington:


The Duke

Duke Ellington's music
almost came too soon.
A gaunt coyote
Keening the moon.
Mighty organ waters
rushing to the sky
and a great broad,
passing by.

Duke Ellington's music.
A noonday dream.
A secret joke.
Pure cream.

A train gone crazy
on a wide open track.
Bitter-strong coffee,
hot and black.

Is that a baaaad poem or what!!?! "Bitter-strong coffee/ hot and black"!
Oh, yes, I've got to find out about Alfred Duckett now.

Post edited on 4/15/2011.

Schomburg Center in Harlem Acquires Maya Angelou Archive

Maya Angelou’s paper trail includes a rambling, typewritten letter from James Baldwin, dated Nov. 20, 1970, addressed to “Dear, dear Sister” discussing everything from his new book to his feelings about death.

And one from Malcolm X, written on Jan. 15, 1965, assuring her, “You can communicate because you have plenty of (soul) and you always keep your feet firmly rooted on the ground.”

And a draft of her poem “On the Pulse of Morning,” which she recited at the 1993 inauguration of President Bill Clinton, showing Ms. Angelou’s changing the first line from “Rocks and Rivers and Trees” to the final, stark version: “A Rock, A River, A Tree.”

All of these things and more — a total of 343 boxes containing her personal papers and documents — have been acquired by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The trove has notes for Ms. Angelou’s autobiography, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”; a 1982 telegram from Coretta Scott King asking her to join a celebration at the King Center; fan mail; and personal and professional correspondence with Gordon Parks, Chester Himes, Abbey Lincoln and her longtime editor, Robert Loomis.


Read the full article by Felicia L. Lee printed in the New York Times on Monday, October 26, 2010

Tyler Perry and "For Colored Girls"

Mr. Perry is the most successful black filmmaker ever. His nine pictures — from the comedic romp “Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Family Reunion” to the melodramatic “Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married?” — have brought in over $530 million at the North American box office. He also has an enormous business in stage shows and two television series on TBS.

Read full article by Brooks Barnes printed in the New York Times, October 24, 2010

What shall I give my children, who are poor...?

The Children of the Poor

What shall I give my children? who are poor,

Who are adjudged the leastwise of the land,

Who are my sweetest lepers, who demand

No velvet and no velvety velour;

But who have begged me for a brisk contour,

Crying that they are quasi, contraband

Because unfinished, graven by a hand

Less than angelic, admirable or sure.

My hand is stuffed with mode, design, device.

But I lack access to my proper stone.

And plentitude of plan shall not suffice

Nor grief nor love shall be enough alone

To ratify my little halves who bear

Across an autumn freezing everywhere.

Of late, a familiar line from a poem in "The Children of the Poor," Gwendolyn Brooks’ sonnet sequence, has resurfaced in my thoughts, bringing with it a mood as troubled as the sorrow songs:

“What shall I give my children, who are poor/

Who are adjudged the leastwise of the land...?”

The line has always given me pause, from the first time I read it, which had to be in the late Sixties, as the Black Power/Black Arts movement was exploding, in urban centers in America, in my third grade classroom via a young socially engaged teacher, and in my consciousness.

As I grew older, the line eventually challenged me each time I read it. It became not a question that Miss Brooks was asking of herself but a question I asked of myself, because the conditions that circumscribed Black children's lives in 1949 when "The Children of the Poor" appeared in Miss Brooks' first book, Annie Allen, had become more acute, so today at the mid-century mark in my life, I ask myself, “what shall I give my children who are poor, who are adjudged the leastwise of the land?”

Miss Brooks says in the poem, “plenitude of plan shall not suffice…,” and, she is right. Well intentioned plan upon plan that ends up lying on the drawing board will not suffice to rescue our children. Yet, I do yearn for a plan, a handbook, a blueprint, something tangible to give our children, to lay out the narrative of their heritage; to explain how circumstances have unfolded to create the world they inhabit; to show them how to navigate this economically and racially stratified America; and how to become thriving citizens of an increasingly shrinking global society.

There is so much rich instruction, counsel, advice and perspective that our writers and artists have created—I want to open all of it to our children through publishing and production of programs, and film and theater—modes, methods and devices to engage their innate talents and genius in productive action.

I want to tell our children what they are up against. But I also want to tell them that they are not defined by the narrow assessment of how others choose to see them.

I want to tell them that they are children of God; God made them, and sent them to this world at this time. And that their potential is as great as any that they can imagine; in fact, their potential is greater than anything that they can ask or think, according to the immeasurable power of God Himself, if they will believe in Him.

So, I have plenitude of plan. But via the words that I write, or publish by other writers, I have found my proper stone. I am working my plan. I am preparing resources for our children and publishing stories about what you, concerned readers, are doing to educate our young people.

Tell me, then, what is your proper stone? How are you engaged in preparing our children? What do you give—what shall you give to our children who are poor? who are adjudged the leastwise of the land?

What is the first book you read that most closely reflected what was familiar in your own life?

Maya Angelou (DevotionReader Copyright 2009)

I read a lot of books as a child, but it was not until I was 14 years old that I first "heard" the cadences and sauciness of one of my relatives speaking loudly to me from the page. It was in the dramatic monologues of several poems in Maya Angelou's collection, JUST GIVE ME A COOL DRINK OF WATER 'FORE I DIIIE. I remember hearing the familiar speech of my Aunt Thelma in two poems in particular, "When I Think About Myself," and "No Loser, No Weeper," and I was floored.

Just Give Me a Cook
Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie

Although I was reading the lines of those poems for the first time, the words were drumming a familiar beat in my chest as if someone were also speaking them from somewhere deep inside me. At the same time, I also thought someone was speaking the words behind me, and I even shifted a little to look over my shoulder. It was my Aunt Thelma that I heard saying those words, though she was nowhere nearby. Her talent for elocution was marked by her winsome ability to bend and stretch syllables, taking the listener on a rollercoaster ride of high and low pitches, punctuated by sharp endstops on words she spoke in emphasis. As long as what she had to say ended with everyone feeling in good spirits, listening to Aunt Thelma was a cautious delight when I was a child.

"The tales they tell sound just like lying" is a line from, "When I Think About Myself." I read the eight words intellectually, but in my head I heard Aunt Thelma perform them with attitude. I heard her draw out the word, "tales," in two or three beats longer than it routinely takes to speak that word, then at the end of the line her voiceover bleated out the words, "just like lying," in three overemphasized beats like James Brown's horn section at the end of a number. Aunt Thelma's personality, already submerged inside me, had taken over my reading of the poem. I knew it was her because I was too reserved as a teenager to show out like that.

I wondered, "did Maya Angelou know Aunt Thelma?" How could she have so faithfully transcribed Aunt Thelma's personal style into these poems? 

Not too long after thinking intently about this, I realized that Maya Angelou was not transcribing just my aunt. Ms. Angelou had captured a certain personality, a certain cultural sensibility present in the Black community, especially as expressed by some women, and one that could be traced from the South, to the North to the West, and even across generations. And this was an important revelation for me because it was the first time I recognized that my family, the persons in my family, were part of a living and dynamic cultural fabric, and that by virtue of that connection, we, the Parker family, were not only an individual unit but in some way we typified and exemplified some of the traditions and cultural norms of Black Americans.
From that time on I read history and literature with an understanding that some of what I was reading about Black folks could be found in the stories or expressions of members of my family, and that I could learn some of these things by just by sitting around the kitchen table listening to my grandmother, my mother and my aunts talking. I felt connected to a society whose outlines I had not seen so clearly before, threads of my African American cultural heritage connected directly to my family. It was powerful; it gave me a sense of belonging. I felt that the commonality in my culture was an inheritance. 

Since that time I have even more deeply valued the power of literature and history to contribute to learning about myself and my culture, and how I am linked with other African Americans and Black folks dynamically across the Diaspora. The history and literature also gives me a background and platform to discuss experiences with folks of other races, and from which to find understanding even if our experiences are different. That is what I gained when I found something that was familiar to my own life while reading a book.