NAACP: Washington Bureau The 115th Congress will be sworn into service on January 3, 2017, and is scheduled to run for two years until the end of the year in 2018. As a result of the 2016 election, the 115th Congress will be one of the most diverse ever, including an historically high number of African Americans. Specifically, beginning in 2017 there will be a record 51 African Americans in the Congress: 3 in the US Senate (including only the second African American woman in history), and 47 in the US House of Representatives. This means that African Americans will represent just under 10% of the entire Congress.

News from Anne Becker: So, at this time, I especially am glad to let you know about the International Poetry Reading that I’ve organized for the Takoma Park Third Thursday series, November 17, 7:30pm, at the Community Center, 7500 Maple Ave. Poets Martha Sanchez Lowery, Zeina Azzam, Yermiyahu Ahron Taub, Konstantin Kulokov and Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka will present a multi-lingual, multi-cultural perspective in order to enlarge the world we live in. We’ll hear English, Spanish, Arabic, Yiddish, Russian and Polish, in one evening, in one room.

The New York Times To our readers, When the biggest political story of the year reached a dramatic and unexpected climax late Tuesday night, our newsroom turned on a dime and did what it has done for nearly two years — cover the 2016 election with agility and creativity. After such an erratic and unpredictable election there are inevitable questions: Did Donald Trump’s sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters? What forces and strains in America drove this divisive election and outcome? Most important, how will a president who remains a largely enigmatic figure actually govern when he takes office? As we reflect on this week’s momentous result, and the months of reporting and polling that preceded it, we aim to rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism. That is to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor, striving always to understand and reflect all political perspectives and life experiences in the stories that we bring to you. It is also to hold power to account, impartially and unflinchingly. We believe we reported on both candidates fairly during the presidential campaign. You can rely on The New York Times to bring the same fairness, the same level of scrutiny, the same independence to our coverage of the new president and his team. We cannot deliver the independent, original journalism for which we are known without the loyalty of our subscribers. We want to take this opportunity, on behalf of all Times journalists, to thank you for that loyalty. Sincerely, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr.

I will turn 66 this month. I’ve been writing and publishing for forty years. During this period I’ve also defined myself as a literary activist. My concern has not only been with language and how it’s used but also with the things men and women carry everyday. We carry our cultural memories and the history of who we are, the changes we encounter and the dreamers we wish to be. At the center of each artist’s heart must be the roots of civility and compassion for his fellow human being, as well as a concern for mountains, lakes and trees. The artist should create out of passion and love. The artist should be forgiving as well as fierce. The recent presidential election will force many of us to the barricades during the next few years. Why? Our nation is divided. Who Speaks for America? I always felt a poem, a play or a novel could engage and pull a person into conversation with a neighbor or stranger. Culture can be a soft pillow for hard politics. Good citizenship should promote beauty; there is nothing more beautiful than people coming together to work and build. The USDAC is a young organization doing just that. When artists and cultural workers embrace and unite it creates a different type of global warming. The USDAC cares about cultural rights and democracy. Everyone especially our children or groups that are marginalized must have access to the resources needed to create. Inside schools, business areas and even prisons, everyone should be able to sing, dance and write. There is no way, for example, we can tackle the serious problems of mental illness in our society without turning to the arts. We should no longer push our elderly into a corner when they can be reclaiming their bodies by dancing in the center of a room and enjoying the motion of living. It’s art which makes us aware of our mortality and pushes us to create things for the unborn. There are paintings that are just as important as laws. There are musical compositions that can be medical cures just waiting to be heard. What I like about USDAC is its diversity of voices and disciplines. I see many of the people involved with this organizations and its activities as being guardians of America’s future. The barricades we uphold and defend are constructed out of light and love. It’s time we place our imagination on the line.

New books came in the mail yesterday: Life in Suspension by Helene Cardona. Dreaming My Animal Selves by Helene Cardona. Born on Third Base by Chuck Collins.

Today is election day. It's a turning point for our nation. Embracing darkness or light has much to do with what we fear. We fear the other - the stranger - the language we don't understand. Our faith seems so human at times - so filled with cracks of misunderstanding and hatred. We fail too often at doing right - doing good. We take the road too often taken. We need to be explorers. What do you wish to discover? Ask yourself if you will ever be a pilgrim, a planter, a person happy to take care of the soul's garden.

I'll try and get back to blogging on a more regular basis starting in November. A new cycle. 66 on the 20th. How many more years left? It has been a disappointing year in regards to my last book. 1 review. There must be less sales. I have to keep pushing ahead. I'm moving more toward erasure - family as well as friends. I'll try to give away much more items in 2017. No need to be going out as much as I've been doing. Each visit to a cafe is money out of my pocket. No need to do anymore networking. I'm amazed of how many people I just don't hear from anymore. Conversations followed by silence. The biggest lie anyone can make in life is claiming they love another person.

Good food at the Ben Tre restaurant located at 2418 Street, NW. Vietnamese Cuisine. Sunday to Thursday - 11am-11pm Friday/Saturday 11am-12-am. 202-827-8786

VOTE!

Early voting is open from 8:30 am to 7:00 pm and begins this Saturday, October 22, 2016, at One Judiciary Square, 441 4th Street NW and then continues on Saturday, October 28, 2016, at 8 more locations including: Chevy Chase Community Center, 5601 Connecticut Ave. NW Columbia Heights Community Center, 1480 Girard St. NW Dorothy Height-Benning Library, 3935 Benning Rd. NE King Greenleaf Recreation Center, 201 N St. SW Malcolm X Elementary School, 1351 Alabama Ave. SE Sherwood Recreation Center, 640 10th St. NE Takoma Community Center, 300 Van Buren St. NW Turkey Thicket Recreation Center, 1100 Michigan Ave. NE

POETRY, PUBLISHING AND RACE Tuesday, October 18, 4:00 PM POETRY, PUBLISHING AND RACE Rob Casper, head of the Poetry and Literature Center, will lead a discussion with poets/editors Cathy Park Hong (New Republic), Don Share (Poetry Magazine), Evie Shockley (Feminist Studies), and Carmen Giménez Smith (Puerto del Sol/Noemi Press) on the ways poetry helps us navigate race in contemporary American culture. Location: Mumford Room, sixth floor, James Madison Building Contact: (202) 707-5394

THAT BOOK THING CALL LOVE

The problem with being a local author in Washington DC is that most bookstores don't display your books. Well, most don't even have a copy in stock. Many years ago I was a strong supporter of independent bookstores and looked to them before Amazon. Recently I discovered Walmart was selling my work. I've only been in a Walmart once in my life. What I find is that bookstores give you parties but they encourage you to take the last piece of cake (your book) when you leave.


As I move into the "Fall of life" I'm more concerned with building my archives and documenting my career than selling books. I'm happy that many copies of my titles are available in local libraries.

THAT BOOK THING CALL LOVE

The problem with being a local author in Washington DC is that most bookstores don't display your books. Well, most don't even have a copy in stock. Many years ago I was a strong supporter of independent bookstores and looked to them before Amazon. Recently I discovered Walmart was selling my work. I've only been in a Walmart once in my life. What I find is that bookstores give you parties but they you take the last piece of cake (your book) when you leave.


As I move into the "Fall of life" I'm more concerned with building my archives and documenting my career than selling books. I'm happy that many copies of my titles are available in local libraries.

RADIO DAYS

ON THE MARGIN (WPFW-FM 89.3) Thursday Mornings at 9AM.

The following people will be appearing on my radio show
during the month of October.

October 6: Jane Freundel Levey
Managing Editor of Washington History

October 13: John Cole
The Librarian of Congress Historian

October 20: Clarence Page
Journalist, Senior member of The Chicago
Tribune Editorial Board

October 27: Paul Buhle
Editor of The Encyclopedia of the American
Left (We wil be talking about C.L.R. James)

I gave a lecture on Langston Hughes at Marymount University yesterday. I'm scheduled to do 5 talks on the campus this year. The next one will be on the Black Arts Movement, November 1st.


I have four more weeks teaching my memoir class at the University of Houston/Victoria. I think it has gone well. Very positive feedback from the students.


I need to get ready for doing a new season of The Scholars (UDC-TV). It starts next week with an interview with Vera Katz.

Fighting the Next Round

So I receive an award and folks say the recognition was long overdue. I don't know how to respond to this. At times I feel like Joe Louis standing in front of a hotel in Las Vegas shaking hands. I wonder whether it might have been better to be knockdown maybe years ago instead of being left standing without a punch. We should honor writers simply by reading their work. This morning I gave one of my books to a friend heading back to China. She held the book in her two hands and said she would cherish it. She spoke from the heart. Too few do these days. I wanted to hold her hands but I still had my gloves on.

THE LIFE OF A POET: TERRANCE HAYES

Thursday, September 29, 7:00 PM
THE LIFE OF A POET: TERRANCE HAYES

Poet Terrance Hayes will discuss his work with Ron Charles, editor of The Washington Post's Book World. This event is free and open to the public. Reservations are required. Co-sponsored by the Hill Center and The Washington Post.

Location: Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital (921 Pennsylvania Ave. SE)
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Please click here for more information.

Have me in the strong loneliness of the sunless cliffs.


   - Ezra Pound

E-Notes

100 emails I need to answer within the next 48 hours.  I'm behind in a number of things, however still pushing forward. I completed my review of Clarence Major's Chicago Heat and Other Stories for The New York Journal of Books. I want to review a book each month.


The upcoming week is a busy one:


MONDAY
Aspen Institute talk by Jeff Chang
The poet Ko Un at the LOC


TUESDAY
Dentist
Reading at Oxon Hill Library


WEDNESDAY
Breakfast with Naomi Ayala
LM  IPS


THURSDAY
On The Margin interview with Wilfred Samuels
The Mayor's Arts Awards


FRIDAY
IPS- Sheridan Circle and OAS Building

LOOKS LIKE ANOTHER PRESIDENTIAL T.K.O

The biggest joke played on the American public is that folks haven't decided who they are going to vote for yet. How many people really change their minds about a candidate? I knew I wasn't going to vote for Trump- Trump years ago. No Baptist minister is going to bless me wrong. No poll or debate is going change my mind. We vote not just for an individual but for a party and the way one believes government should work. Who is the undecided voter?  Is it the person in the checkout line trying to purchase 50 items? So you find yourself standing behind them with a soda in your hand. The solution is to vote and use the self-checkout machine.




What we have right now is drama. A countdown to the first debate. Of course the media will tell you the presidential race is too close to call. Of course, no candidate has a significant lead. Of course, in key battleground states it's a dead tie. Look, no matter what happens in the first debate, immediately afterwards both candidates will "spin" that they won. You can sit home and play the game of who got the best zingers in. And like that first Ali/Frazier fight tickets are already being sold for the rematch and the second debate. I bring up sports and boxing only because the media will be looking for a knockdown or a T.K.O. Yes, Teddy Pendergrass - it looks like we've been here before:

Lookin' back over my years
I guessed, I've shed some tears
Told myself time and time again
This time I'm gonna win

But another fight, things ain't right

I'm losin' again
Takes a fool to lose twice
And start all over again

Think I'd better let it go

INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE: KO UN

Monday, September 19, 6:30 PM
INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE: KO UN

Korean poet Ko Un and his translator, Brother Anthony, give a bi-lingual reading of Ko’s work, followed by a brief moderated discussion with Frank Stewart, writer and editor of MANOA: A Pacific Journal of International Writing. Co-sponsored by Asian Division of the Library of Congress, MANOA: A Pacific Journal of International Writing, and the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea).

Location: Mumford Room, sixth floor, James Madison Building
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Please click here for more information.

The Big Kickoff

I looked at the NFL football schedule for the Washington Team.  I have this team going 6-10.
Of course the Cowboys, Eagles, and Giants could play worse than last year. If that's the case then
Washington makes the playoffs. So tune into the games played on September 18th (Cowboys) and September 25th (Giants).  Might Washington be looking for a second cousin?  If Washington loses these early games it's going to be a long season. It will make the game (week 4) against the Browns very interesting. RG -What, RG-Who or RG-III?

Childhood's End

 

It was just a matter of months before North Korea would once again have the world trip over its toys.

I place this nation next to Yemen. It's like living next door to a kid who gets drums for Christmas.

What's the name of that movie or television series in which North Korea takes over the United States?

I never knew how that happened but then Trump is running for president and reality doesn't seem to play in our minds anymore.

Watch the media lick its plate over the weekend. North Korea gone nuclear is the type of story that will make parents in Middle America keep the lights on in their kid's bedroom. I'm so tired of things that go bump in the night. But then it's 9/11 this weekend and how many of

us ever imagined planes flying into The Towers?  Stranger Things? We are living in the Upside/Down world. If only North Korea could be South Korea then we could all sleep on the roof and watch the stars glow on the basement floor. Until then the bright light might be a nuclear blast and not our friend the Sun.

 

TRYING TO LIVE OUTSIDE THE BOX WHEN HELL IS ONE FLOOR DOWN

Probably sometime next year Trump will announce the creation of a new media network. One can see Roger Ailes and Sean Hannity joining him and building something bigger than the Fox News Channel. At the end of the day it's not about our nation or national interest. It's about folks becoming a brand, being greedy and getting away with as much as they can. We live during the Age of Apology - which means steal now and explain later. During an hour of leisure take a moment to compile a list of names of people who could be placed in a freezer and maybe defrosted in their next life. One could begin with Johnny Manziel. This guy belongs in the NFL as much as a good many of folks who can't sing find their way at the top of the charts. But these are the times we live in. How many minds are currently trapped inside Hillary's missing emails?  The problem right now is not Donald Trump - it's the people who permit him to escape from the truth. Trump knows how to hide a lie under his tongue and use it to escape when having an conversation. When does a con artist become an escape artist?


Houdini once hung himself upside down in downtown DC. Now it seems as if our nation is dangling like a flag some no longer care to salute. How many of us recall Pandora's box and how the opening of it released all the terrible evils? Once the box was closed the only thing left inside was - Hope.
On November 8th we must keep Hope alive. I think you know who to vote for. It might come down to Hillary or Hell. Only a fool bumping into a wall will think darkness doesn't matter.Yes -it's getting hot in here. The Devil always wants to sell you a cold drink.

You're invited TO THE 40TH ANNUAL LETELIER-MOFFITT HUMAN RIGHTS AWARDS WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 Carnegie Institution for Science 1530 P Street NW | Washington, DC 20005 5:30 PM Reception | 7:00 PM Program In lieu of ​recognizing​  new aw ​ard recipients​ , ​ IPS is proud to present an inspirational film project by Grassroots Media DC featuring past award-winners from far and wide. Join IPS and MCs Jodie Evans of CODEPINK and Larry Stafford of Progressive Maryland to hear these human rights champions reflect on how the Letelier-Moffitt Award impacted their work, and what gives them hope during challen ​g ing times: Harry Belafonte​​ Almudena Bernabeu and ​​ C. Dixon Osburn, the Center for Justice and Accountability Jonathan Hutto, Appeal for Redress the Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders​ ​ ​​ Vidalina Morales, La Mesa Nacional Frente a la Minería Metálica en El Salvador ​Bertha Oliva de Nativi, COFADEH for Honduras Human Rights Platform​ ​​ Ai-Jen Poo, National Domestic Workers Alliance ​  ​​ Gustavo Torres, CASA ​  ​​ Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO ​ ​ With music by Elena & los Fulanos, a bilingual folk rock band based in Washington, DC   Purchase tickets at www.ips-dc.org/LM2016. ​ Thanks to a generous sponsor, we are able to offer discounted tickets to students and young nonprofit professionals. Email christina@ips-dc.org or call  202-787-5272 ​ for more information​ .   Our annual memorial service for Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt will be held at Sheridan Circle on September 23 from 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM.

Institute for Policy Studies 1301 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 600 | Washington, DC 20036 202.234.9382

You're Invited!    31st Annual Mayor's Arts Awards Thursday | September 22, 2016 | 7:00 pm  Historic Lincoln Theatre 1215 U Street NW Washington, DC 20009 Doors Open 6:00 PM Reception following Awards Creative formalwear suggested  The Mayor's Arts Awards are the most prestigious honors conferred by the city on individual artists, teachers, nonprofit organizations and patrons of the arts.  Special Honorees Lou Stovall Lifetime Achievement Julianne Brienza Visionary Leadership E. Ethelbert Miller Distinguished Honor Individuals and Organizations will be recognized in six categories: Excellence in the Arts, Excellence in the Humanities, Excellence in Creative Industries, Outstanding Student Award, Excellence in Arts Teaching, and Outstanding New Artist 2016 Mayor's Arts Award finalists: Story District, Michael Janis, DC Jazz Festival, Washington Improv Theatre, Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capitol, Washington Performing Arts, DC Shorts, Pan American Symphony Orchestra, Post Classical Ensemble, Cory L. Stowers, Falun Dafa Association of Washington, Carolyn Malachi, One Common Unity, Sandy Bellamy, Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts, Dance Metro DC, Stone Soup Films, Leron Boyd, DC SCORES, Project Create, Amanda Swift, LifePieces to Masterpieces, Washington Performing Arts, Dawn Johnson, Inner City-Inner Child, Young Playwrights' Theater, Split This Rock, Max Tyler Gibbons, Tara Campbell, Maverick Lemons Admission is free, RSVP here www.dcarts.dc.gov | 202-724-5613 About the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities provides grants, professional opportunities, education enrichment, and other programs and services to individuals and nonprofit organizations in all communities within the District of Columbia. The Arts Commission is supported primarily by District government funds and in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.      Executive Director: Arthur Espinoza, Jr. Commissioners:  Kay Kendall, Chair | Kim Greenfield Alfonso | Stacie Lee Banks Susan Clampitt | Edmund C. Fleet | Antoinette Ford | Rhona Wolfe Friedman  Alma H. Gates   | Darrin L. Glymph | Barbara J. Jones | MaryAnn Miller | Elvi Moore Maria Hall Rooney | José Alberto Uclés | Gretchen B. Wharton | C. Brian Williams

DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, 200 I Street, SE , Washington, DC 20003 SafeUnsubscribe™ emiller698@aol.com

FROM THE ALDON NIELSEN PROJECT: The words of Aldon Nielsen

Q.  It seems few critics examine Baraka's collection of essays Daggers and Javelins; why is this?  Isn't the period between 1974-1979 key to the last stage of his intellectual development?

 

 

Few critics have given more than cursory examination to any of Baraka’s work after about 1972, a remarkable thing - pretty much blanking out four decades of an artist’s work. In the general curriculum, Baraka has been represented by a few anthology selections for decades now, occasionally including “In the Tradition” as sole survivor of the works dating from his Marxist turn. Among those who read at all more broadly, it’s usually restricted to those poems, along with Dutchman and Blues People. The second version of Harris’s Baraka Reader thankfully remains in print, but that dates to 1999, and now we have the deeply flawed SOS: Poems 1961-2013. The Reader and SOS at least give a broad overview of what Baraka accomplished in those decades, and yet, even now, neither critics nor teachers seem to spend much time with the late Baraka. In too many circles, the cliche has taken hold that the post Black Arts Baraka was a sadly diminished trafficer in agit prop. (Though there are other critics who mark the decline as dating to the Black Arts era itself. There isn’t a whole lot of attention given to the essay collection Raise, Race, Rays, Raze either.)

 

Yes, there is agit prop to be found, particularly among the plays, but what this attitude does is provide cover for people who can’t be bothered to read deeply in the work, and the shame of that is that our discussions tend to overlook the lyric intensity of work such as the very late poem “Hole Notes”:

 

 

A below a sideways

An alley clings to the garden

Owning your alternatives

Why do you want to

Be here broke

Spring won’t appear

Afraid of winter here

Everybody refuses to

Acknowledge their everyness

 

 

Anybody who was not closely following developments in the Congress of African Peoples (and how many were following that closely?) might have been confounded by Baraka’s emerging as a committed Marxist in the early seventies. Where just a few years before, as we see in the essays in Raise, he had shown little patience with those who would urge the study of Marx on Black Americans, here he was announcing himself as a student of scientific socialism, as an adherent of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse Tung Thought. There was a deep split in the ranks of CAP as a result of this change in direction, and many, including Haki Madhabuti, were openly repelled by the development. Baraka’s 1972 poetry collection, Hard Facts, carried Marxist iconography on its red cover, signed the t “M-L-M,” and contained poems with titles like “Das Kapital” and spoke of the people “demanding the / new socialist reality.”  It also included denunciations of “a colorless shadow for / black militants in residence, to / bloat the pockets and consolidate / the power of an international / bourgeoisie.” There were signs of that same lyric intensity I spoke of, something that never went away even when militant-in-residence readers might have. There were other signs. The book was labeled excerpts, an indication that there was something much larger out there waiting to appear in print. And where even Black Magic with its white voodoo doll stuck full of pins on the cover and its scattered acts of antisemitism had been published in both hardback and paper by a major commercial house, this little red book appeared under the imprint of The Revolutionary Communist League and was a stapled affair.

 

From the outset, Baraka had been a DIY kind of guy. Recognizing early on that the poetry he cared to write was a poetry the New Yorker and Harpers would not care to print, he invented his own venues, started magazines for his own work and that of his radical compatriots. In an introduction to Poems for the Advanced, Baraka has claimed that it was easier to get into print with “hate whitey” than with “hate capitalism.”  Was he right? The cultural nationalist Raise was published by Random House even at a time when he was bringing out many of his works with his own Jihad Press, and now he was publishing as the Revolutionary Communist League. No matter what else may be said of Baraka, it has to be said that he was unafraid in taking his positions and putting his work before whatever public could be assembled. The move to the Black Arts left behind integrationists of an ameliorist bent. Baraka was not sad to see them go. The shift to Marxism dismayed cultural nationalists, including cultural nationalists who had come to that ideology under Baraka’s influence. But Baraka had seen “something in the way of things,” and he would call it out no matter the cost to his own prospects as a publishing author.

 

And the prospects were heavy. There’s a sub-theme in Daggers and Javelins that comes into view when you read the acknowledgments and publication notes. This was the era of solicitation followed by rejection. I witnessed this at first hand during Baraka’s residency at George Washington University.  Somebody (perhaps somebody who had never read Baraka’s work?) thought it a good idea to solicit an essay from the university’s famous visiting author for publication in GW Magazine, which the university describes as its “flagship” alumni and university periodical, with a circulation today of 200,000. Let’s just say they weren’t happy with what they got. That same somebody sent a student go-between to try to negotiate something less inflammatory from Baraka, but that was not going to happen. The same sort of thing happened when Columbia Records asked Amiri Baraka, noted music critic and frequent author of liner notes, do provide the notes for the album Woody III. Woody Shaw and Baraka had known each other for decades and shared a Newark background, as you can see in the title of the album’s lead piece, “On the New Ark.” Columbia was horrified by the Marxist inflected essay Baraka submitted, and sent an agent to try to talk him down. Problem was, as Baraka reported to me rather gleefully, the album sleeves had already been printed up with a note indicating that there was a Baraka essay inside. So the liner notes did appear, but were dropped from subsequent pressings. My understanding is that something similar happened with Baraka’s still unpublished Coltrane book. What I have heard over the years is that Howard University Press had contracted for the book with Baraka, but recoiled when they saw the manuscript in progress. Selections from that work have appeared as essays over the years.

 

Much of the initial reaction to Daggers and Javelins was hostile. When Kirkus Reviews weighed in they said, “More like dull kitchen knives and wet noodles than daggers and javelins: as those who've followed the Baraka (LeRoi Jones) career might expect, these essays and speeches are repetitious, monotonic, shrill--and painfully clotted with Marxist-Leninist jargon.“ Of course, Baraka was used to hostility by then, had been, since his earliest days as a poet, and one person’s “Marxist-Leninist jargon” may be another’s sharp description. There are moments in the essays when they read as if Baraka were simply running various cultural and political phenomena through the class analysis meat grinder. But one thing that becomes apparent when you read all of Baraka is that class had been at the heart of his thinking from the outset. It runs all through Blues People and is foregrounded in much of the early book reviewing. Just reread Home and you’ll see. But the sort of dismissiveness we see in that Kirkus review is something to which we’d already grown accustomed. Much the same sort of thing had been said about the work of the Black Arts era. Much the same strategy had been used in dismissing Baraka as merely a Beat poet, one of the bearded barbarians. What a review like that is meant to do is keep readers away from a text, and if you don’t read Daggers and Javelins you won’t understand what had happened to Baraka in the course of his ideological evolution, and you will miss his insightful commentaries on jazz, film, the revolutionary tradition in Afro-American literature, Césaire, or Ngugi wa Thiong’o. (Driving Baraka to Union Station one day, with C.L.R. James in the car, I mentioned that I had just read Ngugi’s Petals of Blood, just out in paperback. I remember Baraka asking eagerly from the back seat how it was.)

 

Along with his readings in Marxist theory, Baraka had been reading the fiction and criticism of the writer we know variously as Lu Xun or Lu Hsun, real name, in Pinyin, Zhou Shuren. (I’ve found on my trips to China that there is always a problem talking about the Chinese artists we read in English.  I will make several stabs at the name as we know it in America, and eventually somebody will suddenly smile and say joyfully, “Oh, you mean ______________,” with all the Chinese readers expressing delight that we know this author, if not this name.) The title of this book derives from Lu Hsun’s commentary. The critic throws the javelin against distant enemies; wields the dagger for close enemies. Baraka saw in this a good description of his essays.

 

There is much from which readers can benefit in Daggers and Javelins, but scholars need to attend to this book too if we are ever to have any accurate understanding of Baraka’s becoming a Marxist critic. At present, the best sources for comprehending Baraka’s move from cultural nationalism to Marxism are his own autobiography, Komosi Woodard’s A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka and Black Power Politics, and Michael Simanga’s recent Amiri Baraka and the Congress of African People: History and Memory. It’s not hard for those of us who lived through the period to see how Baraka could have lost faith in his politics of the late 1960s. In D.C., we had experiences with Marion Barry that closely paralleled Baraka’s disillusion with Newark’s Gibson. It surely was important to elect Black leadership to cities that had for so long been dominated by White politicians. But . . . there were limits to the cultural revolution. When Barry first ran for mayor of the nation’s capitol, he was often seen about town in dashikis. (To give him credit, he was one of the first local political figures to recognize the needs of the gay community, he was fiercely dedicated to jobs for youth, and his stated politics were vastly preferable to the Democratic machine politics that would have been empowered by the election of Walter Fauntroy.) But once Barry was in office, the dashikis more often remained in the closet, the Armani suits showed up more often, and the city became the plaything of real estate developers. (When Barry emerged from his jail sentence years later and re-entered local politics, the Kente cloth was much in evidence.) Baraka never abandoned the commitment to changing consciousness, but he came to understand something Fanon had described years before about the national  bourgeoisie. Political power doesn’t grow out of the sleeve of a dashiki, which is to say that changing the color of the figures in power in a political structure may ameliorate, but if the structure itself is not changed the oppression and immiseration will continue.

 

Baraka learned from his experiences, and he came increasingly to recognize the material basis for consciousness and ideology. It was that experience that prepared the way for his shift to Marxism. We need a much clearer study of how Baraka and his CAP colleagues made that shift, though. Baraka, we have to admit, generally lurched toward the more authoritarian end of whatever ideological spectrum he joined, and the move to Marxism was no different. He had sympathized with the Karenga version of nationalism for a time in the sixties,   and his Marixsm was similarly doctrinaire. At the time I met him, he had a row of framed photos on his desk. There were Marx, Lenin, Mao . . . and Stalin . . . and Enver Hoxha,  First Secretary of the Party of Labour of Albania, saints preserve us. If the poetry and drama of the period was somewhat less sectarian, the pages of the newsletters Baraka participated in at the time swirled with details of splinterings and denunciations within the Revolutionary Left. As part of my research into the life and work of C.L.R. James, I have been required at times to immerse myself in the arcana of Trotskyist reconfigurings, a dispiriting exercise I have to admit. Left historians may one day provide a full history of Baraka’s groups and their movements from the Congress of Afrikan Peoples to the Revolutionary Communist League (M-L-M) to the League of Revolutionary Struggle (M-L). For now, those who are interested may peruse the outline provided by the activists themselves in their “Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line,” where one may read of the period when “The situation was also complicated by the fact that the anti-revisionist communist movement itself was still very inexperienced and going through struggle to define a correct orientation and line for the U.S. revolution. There were various opportunist forces which had not yet been exposed or defeated. These would have an impact on CAP/RCL, with the organization coming under the influence of the ultra-left line of the so-called “Revolutionary Wing” for a period of time.”

 

I’m guessing not a lot of poetry critics are going down that rabbit hole.  Still, if we are to be fair to Baraka, as fair as we routinely are to Eliot and Pound, I think we need to do the work of untangling these histories and taking the evolution of Baraka’s ideology seriously.

 

Doing that, though, I believe we will also find, as I have argued over the years, that the “through line” is of greater importance than local political disputes. The poet who wrote “Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note” was still the poet who wrote:

 

I thought there were things

I didn’t understand

that wd make the world

poetry.

 

The essayist who looked at the movement from jazz’s origins to Swing and Bop and Free Jazz and beyond through the lens of class was the same essayist who wrote of Coltrane in a way Howard University Press couldn’t quite abide. The same man who wrote Tales wrote Tales of the Out and Gone. And this is why Daggers and Javelins desires, requires, the same close attention as Home then or Razor now. We are not trying to become members of Baraka’s Marxist denomination, even if we are Marxists or post-Marxists. We don’t have to sign off on his political line at every one of its turnings to love him and his work, any more than being a post-Eliot poet requires signing off on Eliot’s racism. There is much of real value to us in Daggers and Javelins, not simply to those of us working as poets and scholars, but to those of us grappling with the politics of our day. “We Live in a Political World,” sings Bob Dylan:

 

Wisdom is thrown in jail

It rots in a cell

Is misguided as hell

Leaving no one to pick up a trail.

 

That would be the same Dylan who went with his girlfriend to see Dutchman when it was playing in the village. (Pound was at a performance in Italy a few years down the road!) Baraka may have preached to choirs, but he also said you never want poetry that is simply a checklist of opinions for you to give your assent. You don’t have to go to church with Baraka to learn deep lessons from his writing. His daggers and javelins could be right useful in our trumped up political world.

CAN YOU GET THE DOOR?

 

It was a Saturday in November

or December, one of those days

you wish the year would end or

maybe begin again. The door bell

rings and no one in the house

hears it but you. There’s a choir

of rings already in  your head.

When you open the door you

pray the woman in front of you

is not a friend of Jesus, not a second

cousin or even a best friend.

 

She stands in front of you, old

enough to be your mother. She’s

overweight, dark-skinned and

wearing a wig. If you passed her

in the street you would notice

the sky first or maybe how three

people were waiting at the bus-stop,

and you could make four.

 

You’re holding the door open

like you’re standing in a toll booth

on the New Jersey Turnpike. The woman

has flyers and you don’t have a dollar.

She’s the woman you remember was

on the evening news maybe a month

ago. Her son was killed and she begged

the airwaves for an end to the violence.

She has a handful of flyers and a heart full of grief.

But there is nothing but static in the neighborhood.

Nothing but death living behind every other door.

 

 

 

-  E. Ethelbert Miller

   September 5, 2016

September 7, 3:30pm at the Library of Congress   Join the Library of Congress as it launches the Spanish version of the online exhibit The Mexican Revolution and the United States in the Collections of the Library Of Congress / La Revolución Mexicana y los Estados Unidos en las Colecciones de la Biblioteca del Congreso. Featuring extraordinary items from the Library, including letters from U.S. President William Howard Taft (1909-1913), photographs, books, manuscripts, and maps, the exhibit tells the dynamic story of the complex and turbulent relationship between Mexico and the United States during the Mexican Revolution, approximately 1910-1920   More info Mexican Cultural Institute 2829 16th St NW Washington DC, 20009

A LOVE SUPREME

So now it's September. In a few days the media will release those articles reporters have been researching over the summer. Look for those pieces crafted by two or three journalists. These are the articles that will influence the first debate. It will place one of the candidates in denial mode. The media loves drama - so the polls will tell Americans the election is "suddenly" too close to call. They will promote the first debate like its Ali against Frazier. The media will cry for a knockdown and not a knockout. Remember there will be two more debates. Each camp is ready to spin to the media that their candidate won. They could let us know this over the Labor Day weekend if there wasn't a hurricane coming. Don't be fooled by polls. Clinton will win the election because of the Electoral College. Let Trump have his HUGE rallies - it doesn't count for much unless you can turn that into the magical 270.  So what will be the new battleground State?  Aren't you tired of Ohio, Florida, Colorado and Pennsylvania having all the fun?  How come the key state for winning the presidency is never Utah, Rhode Island or Hawaii?  Can you imagine if it came down to South Dakota? Oh, and what group will be the key group with the key votes?  Will it once again be white men K-12? Who continues to write this 1950s script? If you hear anything about black folks picking the next president of the US - then you know it's rigged. Yes, Trump - we had something to lose. We no longer pick cotton - we pick presidents. Three days before the first presidential debate Coltrane is born again - he quickly writes "Meditations" and promises " A Love Supreme."

CRY ME A RIVER

 

Maybe we are all flat-headed fish trying to swim upstream into the future. It's the racism that keeps us wet - it's the water we cannot see.

We now live in a world without facts. It's obvious if you're following the presidential campaigns of Clinton and Trump. Voters claim they don't trust either candidate. But the issue here is not trust - it's gravity. Gravity is what's suppose to hold us down like facts. That's no longer

the case. It's what makes the average pundit too often a fish without water. What planet is this?  I listen to Trump and every speech he makes is an introduction into an alternative reality. One can only conclude that red and blue states have become parallel  worlds - or as Amiri Baraka once said - "one man's fast is another man's slow." A lie is a truth that has dirt under its fingernails. Immediately after the first debate in late September both candidates will claim they won. You can turn the television off now before watching - because nothing makes sense anymore.

We're dead when we think we're living. Seeing is no longer believing - it's only what the camera on our cell phones captures that matters.

 Smile- this is a stick-up you MF! Give me your money and your country. Yeah - that's a puddle you're standing in not a river.

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Lord

Listening to the album - Coltrane for Lovers.  A nice way to begin Friday and the last days of August.
Too often love is a farewell.  How often do we embrace loss?
So much seems to be ending. It feels like my departure is just around the corner. When will I wake and find my bags packed? Yes, leaving is surrender. A white flag around my life - suffocating me for too long and almost forever.

Those Last Days of August

David Fenza was my guest ON THE MARGIN this morning.  We talked about the running of AWP, creative writing programs and the culture wars. I'll air the program again when it gets closer to the AWP Annual Conference in February 2017. To access the show go to: www.wpfwfm.org

Access archived programs and then scroll down to ON THE MARGIN,  Thursday 25th at 9am.

Next week my guests will be writers Rose Solari and Rick Peabody.

I'll return to doing The Scholars (UDC-TV) on October 4th.

The next book I plan to review for the New York Journal of Books (NYJB) is Clarence Major's CHICAGO HEAT AND OTHER STORIES.

Annie Kim

Nice to receive an email from poet Annie Kim this morning. Here is a link to her website.

https://www.usi.edu/sir/sir-press-authors/annie-kim

E-News

Today I return to teaching my online memoir class (Mining The Mine for Memories) for the University of Houston Victoria.  Last year it went very well. It was my introduction to using Blackboard. A good opportunity to enhance my teaching skills and provide myself with a nice focus for 8 weeks.


I completed and submitted my review of The Strivers'Row Spy by Jason Overstreet to the NY Journal of Books. The next book I requested to review is Chicago Heat and other stories by Clarence Major.
My goal is to review a book a month.


I'll spend the day doing some correspondence and reading. Currently I'm reading Letters from Langston: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Red Scare and Beyond edited by Evelyn Louis Crawford and Marylouise Patterson. The letters are filled with some funny stories about Zora.
Nothing has changed in terms of how writers behave.


Yesterday, Bernard Richardson, dean of the HU chapel came by the house. I gave him a poster of Howard Thurman.


I'm still in the early stages of downsizing.

DICEE

Yesterday I found the folder that contained the early information about the District of Columbia Interracial Coalition for Environmental Equity (DICEE). This is the organization I started back around 1990 with Neil Seldman the president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.


I plan to place this information in my archives at the Gelman Library, George Washington University. It provides excellent documentation of how people of color were always concerned with the environment. The environmental movement is too often viewed as a white movement.

Windows & Mirrors

Below are remarks I made at the DC Jewish Community Center (DCJCC) on May 21, 2006. The event that evening was a bringing together of African American and Jewish musicians. "Windows and Mirrors'' was a popular cultural series I helped start with Miriam Nathan and Ken Sherman. Today there is still more work to do.






Several years ago I met Miriam Nathan and Ken Sherman, who at that time worked for the DC Jewish Community Center. Windows & Mirrors was simply an outgrowth of our friendship.
Whenever we came together there was always a lot of laughter and what the poet Lucille Clifton calls "good times."


Too often we look around our world and we wish we could find the good times; they seem too often to evade the headlines of our newspapers. As a poet I keep struggling to write love poems, to embrace a vision that will guarantee a better tomorrow.


Windows & Mirrors is simply built around the idea that one looks into a mirror and celebrates one's own identity; one turns from the mirror and then looks out the window. Outside is the world. Outside is one's neighbors.


African Americans and Jewish Americans share traditions as well as social and political interests. In the past Windows & Mirrors has looked at everything from sports to humor to music.


Culture is like lace, it gives a human being a style of grace. But it's not simply decorative, in fact it defines who we are. At times culture is that bridge which connects people. We walk across and dance across the bridge, suspended in our awe of one another.


If we were to stop for just one moment, maybe we would hear music and we would realize that life is one note. One note we can all hear, if only we listen to our hearts, or maybe just the musicians who on this evening will remind us how to love. Their new sounds nothing but a tapestry of beauty.


E. Ethelbert Miller

REPORT FROM THE FRONTLINE: Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

My friend LW (living in Milwaukee) sent the following email:

The Sherman Park area, specifically an 8-block area had 6 businesses burned, with no injuries.  They attempted to burn BMO Bank but it was put out quite rapidly. The cause was another Black male was shot by another fearful policeman, who happened to be Black, the story that's being spun is that he had a loaded gun in hand and would not put it down. This all follows about 4-6 Black males being shot by police, and about 7-8 Black males sodomized w/nightsticks on the open street, with the excuse of looking for "drugs".  If I remember correctly only 1 lost his job.  The county is just now paying settlement in that case.

 

 

Some of the youth here are extremely frustrated at the lack of resources, the arts, gym, and Humanities have been removed from the schools for over 10 -yrs.  Moody Pool which was on Burleigh was closed, and razed, the next hardship offered is they will be charging a dollar an hour to park at the lake front, or a $40.00 annual permit. A place that helped to squelch some tempers due to the heat, another attempt to push out the other.

 

Yes, we the innocent have been victims of Black on Black crime, and also driving while Black. Thank you for checking on me, much appreciated.