CLICK HERE FOR OPENING OF NIELSEN TALK

Let Freedom Ring

Art and Democracy in the King Years, 1954-1968

April 16, 2008

The second day of the Georgetown/Lannan Foundation Symposium started off with a morning panel on "Scholarly Assessments." I don't have any photos of this one, as I was sitting on the panel and thought it might be rude to jump out in front of the table every few minutes to take pictures of my colleagues. If I later get any photos of our panel from the other photographers in the room, maybe I can post them after the fact. This session brought me together with friends and colleagues stretching back to my first teaching days at Howard University: Joanne Gabbin, Sandra Shannon, Valerie Smith, Eleanor Traylor and Michael Thelwell. We were moderated, to the extent that folks like us are susceptible to moderation, by Jabari Asim, who I'd read in the WASHINGTON POST but had never before met. The good Dr. Gabbin started us off with reflections on poetry and wrapped up with Nina Simone's moving performance from the night she learned of Dr. King's death. My own talk went back to Vincent Harding's reflections the night before, looking at Movement Music and the central role of such musicians as Len Chandler. (You can hear the opening moments of my contribution by clicking at the top of this blog entry. Be forgiving; I didn't run the recording through the Soundforge "Um" remover.) I was most pleased by the audience questions after our initial forays, which gave us an opportunity to widen the discussion to such visual artists as Sam Gilliam.

The panel after our lunch break break assembled many of the poets and artists who were there to perform in the evening readings: Sonia Sanchez, E. Ethelbert Miller, Amiri Baraka, Barbara Teer, and Haki Madhabuti, chaired and hosted by Professor Sonyica Diggs, herself a recent graduate of the Georgetown PhD program and an able representative of the good work being done there.


Then we all made our way over to a beautiful new theater on the campus, where Baraka delivered the annual Lacay Plenary Lecture, on "Art as a Form of Politics," introduced by Ammiel Alcalay. If you've ever spent time around Baraka, you know there are few moments when he isn't writing, doodling or both. His lecture was read fresh from a packed memo pad. (Amiri joked [I THINK it was a joke] that he was looking for somebody to donate a laptop.) The set for that evening's play ("STUFF HAPPENS" by David Hare) made a stunninng backdrop for Baraka's talk. I spent a few delicious minutes as Baraka spoke imagining the cast of the play (Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, Powell and Rice) in their positions in office chairs circling the stage acting as chorus.

Following a reception and a quick dinner, the evening reading featured Sonia Sanchez, E. Ethelbert Miller and Askia Toure.

That photo at the top, by the way, shows Sonia Sanchez listening carefully to Ethlbert Miller.

SPOTTED AT DULLES AIRPORT

CLICK HERE FOR AMIRI BARAKA PERFORMANCE

LET FREEDOM RING:

ART AND DEMOCRACY IN THE KING YEARS, 1954-1968

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

APRIL 15, 2008

One of the most consistently rewarding symposia series in the U.S. is the one that began in 2003 under the joint sponsorship of Georgetown University and The Lannan Foundation. In 2005 I was a keynote speaker in their symposium "Black Archipelago: Writing and Performance from the African Diaspora," which brought me together with Jay Wright, Dereck Walcott, Haile Gerima, Linton Kwesi Johnson and others. This year I was invited to join an equally ambitious program examining "Art and Democracy in the King Years," a most welcome supplement to all the obeservations on the anniversary of Dr. King's assasination. While the Pope's visit was tying up traffic over near the new Nationals' stadium, the campus of Georgetown University, more than usually welcoming and beautiful in this early Spring weather, hosted one of the first large meetings to join scholars, artists and civil rights activists for a series of reflections and performances.

The first day of the meetings started off with an eloquent presentation on the Freedom Songs (which were to become a steady theme throughout the symposium) offered by Vincent Harding. I had last seen Dr. Harding more than a two decades earlier when he came to a bookstore near Dupont Circle to speak about his then new, ambitious history THERE IS A RIVER: THE BLACK STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM IN AMERICA. I had heard him since, though. One of the many audience tapes of Ornette Coleman concerts in my collection is a particularly stellar performance in San Francisco back in 1994. Roughly midway through the concert, featuring the work from TONE DIALING, somebody stepped to the microphone and delivered a spell-binding recitation that went on for twelve minutes. I learned from Bay Area poet friends who had been there that the recitation was given by Vincent Harding. At Georgetown, Harding took the dangerous tactic for a keynote speaker of asking his audience to listen carefully to a series of recordings of Freedom Songs. For nearly half an hour, virtually nobody moved, but all were moved. These songs have as much power today as they did when they propelled a movement years ago.

It was more than usually fitting, then, that Harding's quiet sermon was followed by a performance of Georgetown's own gospel choir. This was the second week in a row that a conference I was attending was treated to the gospel voicings of college students --

This was also an opportunity to reunite with friends -- not just poet and activist friends, but with Georgetown's inspiring community of scholars. Angelyn Mitchell, whose anthology of African American criticism my graduate students are reading right now, was the chief organizer of the symposium. Poet Mark McMorris, who had organized the Black Archipelago conference, was on hand every day. Scott Heath, who I met at the ERUPTIONS OF FUNK symposium last year in Alabama, Libby Rifkin, who I knew from her days at the Folger, Louise Bernard, who spoke at my own campus just a year ago, David Gewanter, with whom I've had a running dialogue on poetry for more than a decade, visiting writer Ammiel Alcalay -- I'm here to testify, Georgetown had nothing like this exciting nucleus of faculty back when I was a student across town.

and at some point in the afternoon, New England poet Everett Hoagland showed up to join us, making the dinner hour after Harding's talk perhaps the most concentrated locus of poetic energies in many a year.

The evening featured a poetry reading with Haki Madhabuti, Eugene Redmond and Amiri Baraka, and despite the late hour when the reading finally wound down, the poets agreed to sit down for further discussion with the audience.

BEST POET - ROD SMITH

I'm back in my hometown, DC, again, and this happens to be the week when Washington's CITY PAPER releases its "BEST OF" issue. Rod Smith was hailed as Best Poet -- He's having a good year!

Best Poet

Rod Smith

With 23 years running Aerial Magazine, 15 years at Georgetown’s Bridge Street Books, and 10 books of poetry published (including last year’s Deed), Rod Smith is a central player in D.C.’s poetry scene. Still, Smith is at his best when flouting poetic tradition. The 45-year-old Cleveland Park poet’s work is, in a word, weird. Take Smith’s “Tub Ride”: “Dad was the man who was always pointing into the sky/at a buzzard. Into a bush at a buzzard. He had a vision./He had a talent for mathematics. He had a tub ride.” The brilliance of Smith’s nonsense lies in its dense underbelly, its hilarious and disturbing investigation into human neurosis. Just imagine what Dad’s tub ride could be. —AH

CLICK TO HEAR CHARLES JOHNSON READ FROM MIDDLE PASSAGE

COLLEGE LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION 2008

The annual conference of the College Language Association happens also to mark the anniversary of this blog. I started the HEATSTRINGS blog from a hotel room in Birmingham, Alabama, during CLA two years ago.

This year's meeting was held in Charleston, South Carolina, at the Francis Marion Hotel -- And yes, that did mean eating some meals in the SWAMP FOX cafe (I would go for the crab soup if I were you.)

The conference offered the usual opportunities to catch up with friends, including Jerry Ward, Akiba Harper, Warren Carson, Howard Rambsy, Dana Williams, Dolan Hubbard, Maryemma Graham, Joanne Gabbin, Daryl Dickson Carr and so many others -- I even ran into Rosemary Feal, from the MLA, who was down South to participate in a panel.

This year's banquet speaker was novelist Charles Johnson, who read from MIDDLE PASSAGE and took questions from the floor. (Have to admit that a neo-slave narrative can make for an odd accompaniment to banqueting, but, as you can hear, we were all in good humor.)



The 2008 conference, as in years past, gave me a chance to hear from sharp young critics just starting out on their university careers.

And Kevin Powell, scheduled speaker for the Langston Hughes Society luncheon, turns out to be running for congress.

But the one thing missing from these photos may have been the best thing of the year. I didn't take my recorder to the big reception, at which Powell made his campaign speech/lit crit commentary, and I've been kicking myself ever since. The reception was hosted by the College of Charleston and their gospel choir performed a stunning version of "Wasn't That A Big Old Storm?" -- They had a tonality to the chorus that was strikingly different from what I grew up hearing in churches "upsouth" and we all were pained to find that they were only scheduled to give us the one song.

Next year's conference will be in Cambridge, Maryland -- Click here for the link to the Association's web site.

ANN COULTER VISITS PENN STATE

. . . but I went to a poetry reading by Charles Wright.

It had been more than twenty years since I had last been to a Wright reading (whereas Coulter seems inescapable even in my universe).

One of the last times I'd seen Wright had been a memorable evening at the Library of Congress, where he'd read with Eleanor Ross Taylor, in what turns out to have been one of the only readings she's ever given.

For his Penn State audience, Wright surveyed the recent years, winding up with a strong offering from his most recent book-length poetic sequence, LITTLEFOOT.

For a sample of this reading, click on the title of today's blog entry. In most browsers this should bring you to an MP3 of Wright reading his poem "Last Supper."