26 Sunday Jul 2020
Posted in Poetry by Rosaliene Bacchus, United States
Darkness descends upon the land
The evil deployed far & wide
return home to devour our flesh
Our enemies revel in our undoing
vengeful gods spewing discord in the wind
The brave are silenced & threatened with evil
teargassed & spirited away in the night
Who will save us from the hateful heart?
Who will save us from the faithful
holding onto false promises?
Who will save us from collaborators
bought with wealth & power?
Candles flickering in the darkness
guide our faltering steps
19 Sunday Jul 2020
Posted in Poetry, United States
Tags
African American poet, America’s violent racism, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (2018) by Terrance Hayes
My Poetry Corner July 2020 features sonnet 13 from the poetry collection American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (2018) by African American poet Terrance Hayes. (Note: The following excerpts of poems are all sourced from this collection.) Born in 1971 in Columbia, South Carolina, Hayes is a national award-winning poet and university professor. After receiving his MFA from the University of Pittsburgh in 1997, he taught in Japan, Ohio, and Louisiana before returning to the University of Pittsburgh where he worked for several years. In Pittsburgh, he gained local fame as co-director of the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics.
Hayes moved on to New York University to take up his current post of Professor of English. In 2017, he was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and now serves as an ex-officio member of the Academy’s Board of Directors. The divorced father of two children resides in New York City.
Hayes’ featured sonnet 13 is one of seventy freestyle sonnets, all bearing the same title and length of fourteen lines required for the poetic form. Written during the first two hundred days of the Trump presidency, the sonnets in this poetry collection are mostly political poems about life, love, and death of black men—haunted and hunted by violent racism.
In his 2018 interview for the Poets & Writers Magazine, Hayes tells interviewer Hanif Abdurraqib why he chose the sonnet: “How can I write a traditional love poem to someone or something I don’t deem worthy of my love? I just don’t know what other form would be able to hold this particular moment.”
He further expands on his poetic choice during his interview for The White Review Magazine in January 2019. In trying to express all the complications of love and politics, “I have to change my mind, because it’s a sonnet, because of the volta,” he tells interviewer Rachel Long. “Otherwise, it’s just a box. Something has to give. So whatever I go in with, I have to come out with something new.”
In sonnet 7, the poet alerts (lines 1/2//13/14):
I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison, Part panic closet, a little room in a house set aflame. […] Voltas of acoustics, instincts & metaphor. It is not enough To love you. It is not enough to want you destroyed.
In the following eight sonnet, the poet pour[s] a pinch of serious poison and merciful panic into [the] river for assassins like James Earl Ray, Dylann Roof, and others named in the poem. On the volta (lines 11-14), he then affirms:
Love trumps power or blood to trump power Beauty trumps power or blood to trump power The names alive are like the names in the graves
In the featured thirteenth sonnet on my Poetry Corner July 2020, Hayes describes all the ways in which the black male is silenced and erased by violent racism.
The earth of my nigga eyes are assassinated. The deep well of my nigga throat is assassinated. The tender bells of my nigga testicles are gone. You assassinate the sound of our bullshit & blissfulness.
Hayes commentary on Trump’s rise to the presidency in sonnet 26 (lines 1-4) resounds loudly today:
America, you just wanted change is all, a return To the kind of awe experienced after beholding a reign Of gold. A leader whose metallic narcissism is a reflection Of your own…
He asks in sonnet 30 (lines 4-6):
Is this a mandate for whiteness, virility, sovereignty, Stupidity, an idiot’s threats & gangsta narcissisms threading Every shabby sentence his trumpet constructs?
“…I ain’t mad at you, / Assassin,” Hayes writes in sonnet 53 (lines 12-14). “It’s not the bad people who are brave / I fear, it’s the good people who are afraid.” (Emphasis mine)
To read the complete featured thirteenth sonnet, “American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin,” and learn more about the work of the poet Terrance Hayes, go to my Poetry Corner July 2020.
05 Sunday Jul 2020
Posted in United States
On America’s 244th year of independence, I offer these “rants” from Tom Engelhardt, an American editor, publisher, and author who belongs to the same generation as our 45th president.
That my generation, whether in the form of Donald Trump or Mitch McConnell, would be responsible for turning imperial America into an autocratic-leaning, collapsing semi-democracy, and a first-class world annihilator, I would have found hard to imagine. [In the early 1970s], if you had told me that, half a century into the future, the world’s fate would rest on a presidential election between a genuine madman and something close to a dead man (that, for all we know, may not prove to be an election at all), I would have dismissed you out of hand. And yet that, it seems, is the pandemic legacy of my generation for which we should all be ashamed, even as we watch the young, driven by the insanity and inanity of it all, turning out in our diseased streets to protest a country coming apart at the seams.
Excerpt from “The Age of Disappointment? Or How the American Century Ends” by Tom Engelhardt, published in TomDispatch.com on June 18, 2020.
Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture. He runs TomDispatch.com and is a fellow of the Type Media Center. His sixth and latest book is A Nation Unmade by War.
A Happy Fourth of July to all my American blogging friends! For the sake of our country and planet, may saner minds prevail.
07 Sunday Jun 2020
Posted in Social Injustice, United States
The glorification of one race and the consequent debasement of another—or others—always has been and always will be a recipe for murder. There is no way around this. If one is permitted to treat any group of people with special disfavor because of their race or the color of their skin, there is no limit to what one will force them to endure, and, since the entire race has been mysteriously indicted, no reason not to attempt to destroy it root and branch.
James Baldwin in The Fire Next Time, published by Vintage Books Edition, New York, USA, 1993 (pp 82-83). Originally published by The Dial Press, New York, USA, 1963.
James Baldwin (1924-1987) is an American novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, and activist. He is the author of more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction. Among the awards he received are a Eugene F. Saxon Memorial Trust Award, a Rosenwald Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Partisan Review Fellowship, and a Ford Foundation grant. He was made a Commander of the Legion of Honor in 1986.
03 Sunday May 2020
Posted in The Writer's Life, United States
Tags
Coronavirus death toll in the United States, COVID-19 pandemic, Essential labor force, Lockdown in Los Angeles during pandemic, Minority Power Elite, National mourning during pandemic, Writers as essential professionals, Writers’ Critique Group Meetings & Workshops
Today marks the fifty-third day of my home isolation under our statewide lockdown to slow the spread of COVID-19. Though I’m used to working at home, the fallout of this global pandemic has unsettled my creative writing process. I can no longer focus. Our federal government’s chaotic mishandling of this health disaster has scrambled my brain cells. Each day brings new shocks that demand processing.
Attempts to write the fourteenth chapter of my third book have proved futile. Instead, I focus on completing the essential research required to add legitimacy and depth to the profiles of women I plan to feature in this book. More than ever, men and women must work together as equal partners to find solutions for the existential crises the human species now face. No more name calling. No more putting down. No more cries to lock her up.
After my initial consideration to postpone the 2020 release of my second novel, The Twisted Circle, I’ve decided to go ahead with its publication. I’m now ticking off each step completed of the process for submission of my complete manuscript from cover to cover. More about the cover art at a future date. Continue reading
26 Sunday Apr 2020
Posted in Human Behavior, United States
The [COVID-19] pandemic should awaken us to the realization that in a just world, social fetters should be replaced by social bonds, ideals that trace back to the Enlightenment and classical liberalism. Ideals that we see realized in many ways. The remarkable courage and selflessness of health workers is an inspiring tribute to the resources of the human spirit. In many places, communities of mutual aid are being formed to provide food for the needy and help and support for the elderly and disabled.
There is indeed “an uplift in solidarity among common people in many parts of the world, and perhaps even the realization that we are all global citizens.” The challenges are clear. They can be met. At this grim moment of human history, they must be met, or history will come to an inglorious end.
~ Noam Chomsky in excerpt from a discussion with Robert Pollin from the article “Chomsky and Pollin: To Heal From COVID-19, We Must Imagine a Different World” by C.J. Polychroniou, Truthout, published April 10, 2020.
19 Sunday Apr 2020
Posted in Nature and the Environment, United States
Tags
Climate Change, Digital Earth Day Event 2020, Earth Day 2020, Earth Day Climate Action, Earth Day Network (EDN), First Digital Earth Day 2020
April 22, 2020 is Earth Day’s 50th anniversary. The theme this year is Climate Action with the aim of mobilizing all citizens of Earth “to call for greater global ambition to tackle our climate crisis. Unless every country in the world steps up with urgency and ambition, we are consigning current and future generations to a dangerous future.”
Fifty years ago, on April 22, 1970, twenty million Americans took to the streets, college campuses, and hundreds of cities to protest environmental degradation and demand a new way forward for our planet. With the launch of the environmental movement that year came two important developments: passing of the Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species Act; and creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Continue reading
05 Sunday Apr 2020
Posted in Poetry, United States
Tags
2019 United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, An American Sunrise: Poems by Joy Harjo, Native American poet, Poem “Advice for Countries Advanced Developing and Falling: A Call and Response” by Joy Harjo
My Poetry Corner April 2020 features the poem “Advice for Countries, Advanced, Developing and Falling: A Call and Response” from the poetry collection An American Sunrise: Poems by Joy Harjo, Poet Laureate of the United States. (Note: The following excerpts of poems are all sourced from this collection.)
Born in 1951 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the first of four siblings, Joy Harjo is a poet, musician, playwright, and author of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Her father was Muscogee (Creek) Nation and her mother of mixed ancestry of Cherokee, French, and Irish. Her mother exposed her to poetry at an early age, but painting was her first love.
My mother was a songwriter and singer, Harjo relates in her poem “Washing My Mother’s Body.” My mother’s gifts were trampled by economic necessity and emotional imprisonment. // My father was a dancer, a rhythm keeper. His ancestors were orators, painters, tribal chiefs, stomp dancers, preachers, and speakers… All his relatively short life he looked for a vision or song to counter the heartache of history. Her father’s drinking and abuse ended their marriage.
At sixteen years of age, Harjo’s abusive and violent stepfather kicked her out of their home. She moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she received her high school education at the Institute of American Indian Arts. After graduation, she returned to Oklahoma, gave birth to a son, and returned to New Mexico to pursue a life as an artist. In 1973, as a second-year undergraduate at the University of New Mexico, she discovered poetry. After earning her BA in 1976, she moved to Iowa to obtain an MFA at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
“After all the abuse I had been through, I saw [poetry] as a way to transform what is harsh into something nourishing,” Harjo said, during an interview with Santa Barbara Poet Laureate Laure-Anne Bosselaar in January 2020. “I had found something in poetry not found in painting that was so compelling. I could write about Native women, fighting for our rights in over 500 tribal nations.” Continue reading
09 Sunday Feb 2020
Posted in United States
Tags
American politics, Christian values vs Socialism, Corporate Personhood & Paramountcy, Earth’s Climate Crisis, Global Ecocide, Jonestown Massacre 1978, New American Republic 2020, US President Impeachment Acquittal February 2020
February 5, 2020. This is the day that the United States Senate chose to acquit Republican President Donald Trump of the impeachment charges brought against him by the Democratic controlled House of Representatives. I found the evidence of his guilt compelling. Except for just one of its members, the majority Republican senators chose to stand firm behind their leader. The loyalty to their party is admirable. It’s a valuable commodity in our times of divisive politics. On the other hand, party loyalty doesn’t always align with the best interests of we the people. Ever since corporations gained personhood and began financing politicians, corporate interests have gained paramountcy.
Today, we live in a New Republic. The balance of power has shifted beneath our feet. All that remains for the President and his Executive Branch of loyalists to consolidate their power is to seize control over the Supreme Court of the United States. All they need is a little more time.
Meanwhile, after centuries of human remodeling, Earth’s web of life is over-stressed and in meltdown. Our planet is overheated. Wildfires across drought-stricken grasslands and forests rage with unusual ferocity. The polar ice caps are melting faster than predicted. Mountain glaciers are retreating. Sea levels are rising, redefining coastlines worldwide. Storms powered by overheated oceanic waters batter our coastal cities and island nations, inundating our lives. Continue reading
02 Sunday Feb 2020
Posted in United States
Here is what we know now: the United States and Russia each have an actual Doomsday Machine… These two systems still risk doomsday: both are still on hair-trigger alert that makes their joint existence unstable. They are susceptible to being triggered on a false alarm, a terrorist action, unauthorized launch, or a desperate decision to escalate. They would kill billions of humans, perhaps ending complex life on earth.
[…]
Does any nation on earth have a right to possess such a capability? A right to threaten—by its simple possession of that capability—the continued existence of all other nations and their populations, their cities, and civilization as a whole?
