.

Louise Glück

“The Red Poppy”

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The great thing

is not having

a mind.  Feelings:

oh, I have those;  they

govern me.  I have

a lord in heaven

called the sun, and open

for him, showing him

the fire of my own heart, fire

like his presence.

What could such glory be

if not a heart?  Oh my brothers and sisters,

were you like me once, long ago,

before you were human?  Did you

permit yourselves

to open once, who would never

open again?  Because in truth

I am speaking now

the way you do.  I speak

because I am shattered.

.     .     .

ZP_Mamie Smith, 1883 to 1946, vaudevillian and Blues singer who was the first black woman to cut a Blues record. In 1920, in New York City, she recorded the first million-seller by a black singer – two songs by Perry Bradford – Crazy Blues and It’s Right Here For You – If You Don’t Get It, T’ain’t No Fault of Mine.

ZP_Gertrude Ma Rainey, 1886 to 1939, and a Suitor, in The Rabbit Foot’s Minstrels touring music and theatre company, around 1915_Rainey was one of the earliest Blues singers and among the first to record.

ZP_Buddy Bolden (top row, second from right) and his Orchestra, 1905. New Orleans native Bolden combined a looser form of Ragtime with Blues, and by adding brass instruments from marching bands to these rhythms and moods he helped to create Jazz.

ZP_Scott Joplin, 1867 to 1917, was one of a handful of ingenious musical synthesizers of the 1890s, blending John Philip Sousa style marches with African syncopation, thereby creating Ragtime music. His Maple Leaf Rag from 1899 was played on brothel and parlour pianos across the U.S.A._Sheet music for Pine Apple Rag, 1908.

ZP_Why Adam Sinned, sung by black vaudevillian and actress Aida Overton Walker, 1904

“Why Adam Sinned”

(words and music by Alex Rogers, 1876-1930)

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I heeard da ole folks talkin’ in our house da other night

‘Bout Adam in da scripchuh long ago.

Da lady folks all ‘bused him, sed he knowed it wus’n right

an’ ‘cose da men folks dey all sed “Dat’s so.”

I felt sorry fuh Mistuh Adam, an’ I felt like puttin’ in,

‘Cause I knows mo’ dan dey do all ’bout whut made Adam sin.

.

Adam nevuh had no Mammy fuh to take him on her knee

An’ teach him right fum wrong an’ show him

Things he ought to see.

I knows down in my heart – he’d-a let dat apple be,

But Adam nevuh had no dear old Ma-am-my.

.

He nevuh knowed no chilehood roun’ da ole log cabin do’,

He nevuh knowed no pickaninny life.

He started in a great big grown up man, an’ whut is mo’,

He nevuh had da right kind uf a wife.

Jes s’pose he’d had a Mammy when dat temptin’ did begin

An’ she’d-a come an’ tole him

“Son, don’ eat dat – dat’s a sin.”

.

But Adam nevuh had no Mammy fuh to take him on her knee

An’ teach him right fum wrong an’ show him

Things he ought to see.

I knows down in my heart he’d-a let dat apple be,

But Adam nevuh had no dear old Ma-am-my.

ZP_Aida Overton Walker in the all-black Broadway musical, In Dahomey, with lyrics by Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1903

ZP_The Voodoo Man_a song sung by Bert Williams and George Walker, 1901_This black vaudevillian duo had performed Cake-Walks wearing burnt-cork blackface during the 1890s.

ZP_Madame Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones a.k.a. The Black Patti, 1869 – 1933_Madame Jones was an opera singer who gave recitals of arias by Gounod and Verdi along with sentimental songs such as The Last Rose of Summer. She was the first black singer to perform at Carnegie Hall. Though she tried for leads at The Met, the institutional racism of the era prevented her from rising as she should’ve in the world of Opera. Finding herself barred from most concert halls she formed her own classical-music and variety-act touring company, The Black Patti Troubadours, which gave her a comfortable living until around 1915, when the concert-going public’s musical tastes shifted more toward Tin Pan Alley’s bluesy or jazzy pop-songs. Poster from 1899

Josephine Baker, née Freda Josephine McDonald, was born in St. Louis in 1906. In 1921 she ventured to New York City, danced at The Plantation Club in Harlem, and became a popular and well-paid chorus girl in Broadway revues. In 1925 she travelled to Paris where she wowed ‘em with her athletic elegance and fresh humour. Parisians were mad for all things “Negro” and “Exotic” so Baker shrewdly “invented” herself for France – yet somehow remained sincere and real. She became a French citizen, spied on the Nazis for her government during WW2, raised a dozen adopted children – her rainbow tribe – and, from the 1950s onward, was a tireless campaigner for Civil Rights in the U.S.A. She died peacefully in 1975 after having given a performance at the Bobino music-hall theatre in Montparnasse.

ZP_Aaron Douglas’ 1929 dustjacket illustration for The Blacker the Berry – A Novel of Negro Life, by Wallace Thurman 1902-1934

ZP_Claude McKay, 1889-1948, Jamaican-born author of the frank and intense 1928 novel, Home to Harlem

ZP_Bessie Smith, 1894 to 1937, was the biggest Blues singer of the 1920s. Her sexual frankness through the use of metaphor is an absolute marvel – even in 2013. Poet Langston Hughes would’ve been familiar with her spicy lyrics.

Bessie Smith

“Empty Bed Blues” (recorded in 1928, lyrics by Smith)

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I woke up this morning with a awful aching head
I woke up this morning with a awful aching head
My new man had left me, just a room and a empty bed
.
Bought me a coffee grinder that’s the best one I could find
Bought me a coffee grinder that’s the best one I could find
Oh, he could grind my coffee, ’cause he had a brand new grind
.
He’s a deep sea diver with a stroke that can’t go wrong
He’s a deep sea diver with a stroke that can’t go wrong
He can stay at the bottom and his wind holds out so long
.
He knows how to thrill me and he thrills me night and day
Oh, he knows how to thrill me, he thrills me night and day
He’s got a new way of loving, almost takes my breath away
.
Lord, he’s got that sweet somethin’ and I told my girlfriend Lou
He’s got that sweet somethin’ and I told my girlfriend Lou
From the way she’s raving, she must have gone and tried it too
.

When my bed get empty make me feel awful mean and blue
When my bed get empty make me feel awful mean and blue
My springs are getting rusty, sleeping single like I do
.

Bought him a blanket, pillow for his head at night
Bought him a blanket, pillow for his head at night
Then I bought him a mattress so he could lay just right
.
He came home one evening with his spirit way up high
He came home one evening with his spirit way up high
What he had to give me, make me wring my hands and cry
.
He give me a lesson that I never had before
He give me a lesson that I never had before
When he got to teachin’ me, from my elbow down was sore
.
He boiled my first cabbage and he made it awful hot
He boiled my first cabbage and he made it awful hot
When he put in the bacon, it overflowed the pot
.
When you git good lovin’, never go and spread the news
Yes, he’ll double-cross you, and leave you with them empty bed blues.

ZP_Gladys Bentley, 1907 – 1960, in a retouched and colourized 1920s photograph_Bentley was an openly lesbian Blues singer who often performed at Clam House, a gay speakeasy in Harlem.

ZP_Fire!, the 1926 one-issue-only Harlem literary journal that appalled and offended the Black middle-class

ZP_Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, 1874 – 1938_PuertoRican-born and mixed race, he settled in Harlem in the 1890s and was determined to untangle and reveal the African thread in the fabric of the Americas. Historian and activist, Schomburg was one of the intellectual backbones of The Harlem Renaissance.

ZP_The Crisis – A Record of the Darker Races, founded in 1910, was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s monthly journal. Edited by W. E. B. Du Bois, it featured, in a 1921 issue, the first published poem of a 19 year old Langston Hughes – The Negro Speaks of Rivers.

Tsimshian photographer Benjamin Haldane_portrait of David Kininnook of Saxman, Alaska_1907

Benjamin Haldane_Little boy with toy pistol

Richard Throssel (Creek/Crow)_Smoking Cigarette_1910

Richard Throssel_Two little girls

Horace Poolaw (Kiowa)_Little boy_1929

Horace Poolaw_Trecil Poolaw Unap_1929

Martín Chambi, Quechua/Peruvian portrait photographer_Self-portrait_1922

Martín Chambi_Ezequiel Arce’s Family with their harvest of potatoes_Cuzco, Perú_ 1934

Luis González Palma_Mestizo photographer from Guatemala_La Lotería II_1989

Luis González Palma_El Angel_1990

Shelley Niro (Bay of Quinte Mohawk)_The Rebel_1987

Shelley Niro_Mohawks in beehives_1991

Nish Photoluver_The Rez 2000

Nish Photoluver_Clothesline, Northern Ontario_2000

Nish Photoluver_Wow

Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie (Seminole-Muscogee-Navajo)_Grandma_2003

Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie_Chi-bon_2003

Jordan Bennett (Mi’kmaw skateboarder/photographer)_Traditional Mi’kmaq Surfboard_2007

Beckie Etukeok (Inupiaq/Tlingit)_Bipsurruk (Red Salmon)_2009

Peggy Fontenot_Robert Banks, Cherokee Freedman, 2008_from Fontenot’s Merging Cultures series about Black Indians

Kimowan Metchewais (Cree, Cold Lake First Nation)_Cold Lake

Kimowan Metchewais_War Pony_2010

Larry McNeil (Tlingit)_photo-collage from I’m Angry You Are Bad:  Raven, carbon emissions, and the global climate crisis_2011

Zócalo Poets – ¡qué reunamos aquí en la gran plaza de poemas!

Zócalo Poets – meet us in the Square!

¡Mándanos tus poemas – en cualquier idioma! 

Send us your poems – in any language!

zocalopoets@hotmail.com

Rita Letendre in Montréal during the early 1970s

Rita Letendre_Incandescense_oil on canvas_1968

Rita Letendre_Sunrise_a mural on the side of Neill Wycik Residence, Gerrard Street East in Toronto_1971

Rita Letendre_Blues_acrylic on canvas_1972

Rita Letendre_Malapeque II_1973

Rita Letendre_Romir_serigraph on paper_1979

Rita Letendre_Always, is it?_oil on canvas_2011

Rita Letendre receiving The Governor-General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts from Governor-General Michaëlle Jean in 2010

.     .     .     .     .

Rita Letendre, born in Drummondville, Québec, in 1928, is an internationally-acclaimed painter.  She is one of the great stars of Canadian art, emerging with a breath-taking Modernist boldness during the 1970s and 1980s.  Her father was Québécois and her mother Abenaki (an Algonquian people).   In her twenties she associated with Paul-Émile Borduas’ automatistes and her first solo show took place at the Montreal gallery L’Échourie in 1955.  Her paintings in hard-edged, geometric abstraction – with their strong arrow motif – are instantly recognizable.  The artist, a force even in her 80s, says:  “La lumière, depuis le premier choc à la naissance, jusqu’au dernier souffle – la lumière est la vie.  En tout cas, ç’a été ma vie!” / “Light, from the first shock at birth up to the last breath, is life.  Anyway, that’s been my life!”

.     .     .     .     .

Hoy llegamos a las 100 mil visitas…Today we reach our 100 thousandth visitor at ZP…

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Hoy, Zócalo Poets llegan a las cien mil visitas de nuestras páginas de web – desde mayo de 2011.  Les agradecemos a ustedes – los lectores de ZP.

Los paises-visitantes los 10 principales son:   México, EE.UU., Perú, Canadá, Bolivia, India, Reino Unido, Argentina, España, Francia.

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Los 5 idiomas más buscados en nuestro sitio de web son:

1.  Español

2.  Inglés

3.  Quechua

4.  Maya

5.  Francés

.

Entre 300+ aportes de poemas los 10 más buscados son:

Poemas de amor del idioma maya,

Poemas de amor en el idioma quechua / Sunqupa Harawinkuna,

Poemas de amor del idioma zapoteco,

Poemas para el Día de la Madre – la Madre Luna, la Madre de Dios y la Madre Patata – todos del idioma quechua,

Poema para el Día de Acción de Gracias,

Nezahualcoyotzin: in xochitl in cuicatl / Nezahualcóyotl: su ‘flor y canto”(poesía náhuatl)…y poemas del siglo xxi, inspirados en él,

Oración a La Virgen de Guadalupe,

Macuilxochitzin / Macuilxóchitl: poesía mexica del siglo xv,

Nicolás Guillén: Bongo Song / La canción del bongo,

Louise Bennett-Coverley and Jamaican Patois: a unique truth.

.     .     .

Zócalo Poets has just reached the 100,000 mark – that’s how many of you have visited our multilingual poetry website since we began in May of 2011.

We are grateful to our readers – keep spreading the word!  Poetry enlarges our lives, and its emotional, intellectual and spiritual value for us cannot be quantified;  we need it.

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Our top ten visitor-countries are:

Mexico, U.S.A., Peru, Canada, Bolivia, India, United Kingdom, Argentina, Spain, and France.

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Our 5 most-searched-for poem-languages are:

1.  Spanish

2.  English

3.  Quechua

4.  Maya

5.  French

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Among 300-plus searched-for poetry posts our top 10 are:

Poemas de amor del idioma maya,

Poemas de amor en el idioma quechua / Sunqupa Harawinkuna,

Poemas de amor del idioma zapoteco,

Poemas para el Día de la Madre – la Madre Luna, la Madre de Dios y la Madre Patata – todos del idioma quechua,

Poema para el Día de Acción de Gracias,

Nezahualcoyotzin: in xochitl in cuicatl / Nezahualcóyotl: su ‘flor y canto”(poesía náhuatl)…y poemas del siglo xxi, inspirados en él,

Oración a La Virgen de Guadalupe,

Macuilxochitzin / Macuilxóchitl: poesía mexica del siglo xv,

Nicolás Guillén: Bongo Song / La canción del bongo,

Louise Bennett-Coverley and Jamaican Patois: a unique truth.

.     .     .     .     .

Illustration:  ” Joyfully I see ten caribou ! “  Stonecut print by Inuit artist Kananginak Pootoogook

Zwelethu Mthethwa (born 1960, Durban, South Africa) photographed pre-adolescent and teenage boys in KwaZulu-Natal in 2010. The boys are adherents to the doctrines of a branch of the charismatic Shembe Nazareth Baptist Church.  Mthethwa named this photograph series “The Brave Ones”.  He has specialized in photo-essays of sometimes-marginalized people in South Africa’s “Townships”, including migrant workers, miners and sugarcane harvesters.

Zanele Muholi (born 1972, Umlazi, South Africa) is a lesbian photographer and “visual activist”.  Among numerous projects, she has documented the lives of South African lesbians, some of whom have suffered from persecution and  violence.

ZP_Nhlanhla Esther Mofokeng, Thokoza, Johannesburg_© Zanele Muholi_2010

ZP_Anelisa Mfo Nyanga, Cape Town_© Zanele Muholi_2010

ZP_Martin Machapa_photograph © Zanele Muholi

ZP_Rotimi Fani-Kayode_Untitled, 1987_Rotimi Fani-Kayode was born in 1955 in Lagos, Nigeria, and he died of an AIDS-related heart attack in London, England, in 1989.  Of photography he said:  “It is the tool by which I feel most confident in expressing myself.  It is photography therefore — Black, African, homosexual photography — which I must use not just as an instrument but as a weapon if I am to resist attacks on my integrity and, indeed, my existence on my own terms.”

ZP_Rotimi Fani-Kayode_Nothing to Lose IX (Bodies of Experience)_1989

ZP_Rotimi Fani-Kayode_Every Moment Counts II_1989

ZP_Rotimi Fani-Kayode_Tulip Boy_1989

ZP_La femme américaine libérée des années 70_© Samuel Fosso (as both photographer and model)_1997.  Samuel Fosso was born in 1962 in Kumba, Cameroon.  At the age of 12 he began to work as an assistant to a portrait photographer.  By the end of his teens he had his own studio where he frequently shot self-portraits, many of them fanciful or referencing famous figures in Black popular culture.

ZP_Samuel Fosso_From the series Autoportraits des années 70_Selfportrait as Angela Davis

ZP_Samuel Fosso_From the series Autoportraits des années 70_a teenaged selfportrait as himself 2

ZP_Samuel Fosso_From the series Autoportraits des années 70_a teenaged selfportrait as himself 1

ZP_Ugandan Bishop Christopher Senyonjo, born 1932_In 2002 he was stripped of his bishopric by the Archbishop of The Church of Uganda (Anglican) for his LGBT rights sympathies.  This heterosexual Man of the Lord continues to be vocal in support of the increasing clamour for human rights in Uganda, knowing that discrimination against gays is “neither in Jesus’ teachings nor is it an African way”.

ZP_One of the first “All-Embracing” American churches was Bishop Carl Bean’s The Unity Fellowship of Christ, back in 1982.  Bean believed that “God is Love — and Love is for EVERYBODY.”
In this photograph Oliver Clyde Allen preaches at The Vision Church in Atlanta, Georgia.  Founded in 2005 by Bishop Allen and his partner — now husband — Rashad Burgess (wearing striped tie), The Vision Church is described as being part of a “new progressive Pentecostal movement” and one of Vision’s core beliefs is “that the gospel of Jesus Christ cuts across all barriers that fragment and divide us. We are called to love, affirm, and welcome all people regardless of race, gender, affectional orientation, class, or life situation. We are to be known for our love, compassion, reconciliation, and liberation for all who are oppressed. We emphasize the “whosoever” in John 3:16.”

ZP_American Pastor Larry Burks stepped down in 2011 from a ministry of “fire and brimstone” rhetoric against homosexuality, acknowledging his own homosexuality and the necessity of following his conscience.  Church-going Gay people long to be affirmed in their Being among their congregations.

ZP_Poster for the January 2012 opening of The Good Life Church in Columbus, Ohio.  An initiative of Pastor Michael W. Heard (left), the Church is an “affirming” one, and the preacher is often assisted in his ministry by boyfriend Aaron Leigh, the Church’s ‘First Gentleman’.

ZP_Congregants of Rivers at Rehoboth Church in Harlem, New York City_The Reverend Vanessa M. Brown, a lesbian born and raised in Harlem, states: “We want people to know that they are loved, there’s a safe space for them in the House of God where they can truly worship the Lord and be their authentic selves.”  Many Black gays and lesbians feel welcomed at Rehoboth.

ZP_NBA basketball player Jason Collins on the cover of Sports Illustrated Magazine in May 2013.  In April, Collins “came out”.  He is the first active player in North-American professional sports to do so.  Basketball is one of the most homophobic sports – hockey may be worse – and it’s the fans as much as anyone else.  Yet reactions have been generally positive – helped enormously by high-profile heterosexual players such as Kobe Bryant giving Collins their public support.  Homophobia is becoming less and less “cool”.

The brave pioneer was Justin Fashanu in soccer (he “came out” while playing professionally).  There’s been John Amaechi in basketball (after his retirement), Wade Davis in football,  Orlando Cruz in boxing – the list of “out” athletes – who are role models for youth, of course – will continue to grow.

ZP_Justin Fashanu, the first “out” Black athlete.  May he rest in peace…

ZP_John Amaechi, now a motivational speaker and broadcast commentator

ZP_Wade Davis_Davis’ “An Open Letter to Young Gay Athletes” was featured at http://www.thegrio.com on June 14th 2012.  It is well worth reading…

ZP_Orlando Cruz:  “I wanted to take out the thorn inside me and have peace.”

ZP_Volunteers for Africans in Partnership Against AIDS

ZP_Brazilian visitor to Toronto

ZP_Brothers workin’ it – one heterosexual, the other gay

Sunflower – dawn, high noon or dusk hour –

Why – for me – do you have such power?

You:  my glad grown-up face when I’m

open to joy, not anger’s toy;  when I’m

frank with feeling, not secretly reeling.

In you I go ahead, ask The Question! not

put it to rest and, oh – hope against hope for the best.

You are honesty, innocence – simple, true – and

guess why I love you so? My spirit does grow!

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Alexander Best,  July 31st, 2013

Lily – my childhood flower. I learned to walk

among your stalks. And your ancient sophistication

is part of me now;   your beauty beholds me / I behold you,

and The World is good glimpsed from your point of view.

Of my sad boyhood face there remains a dream-trace,

and your fragrance and form taught me all I should know:

Stand tall and upfront and, well – put on a show.

Elegant, primitive, glowing style…

Lily, you sleep as a bulb under snow,

then you hold your head high in the summer awhile.

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Alexander Best,  July 31st, 2013

Photographs of Lilies in Toronto gardens by Elisabeth Springate  (July 28^th– 30^th, 2013)

Zócalo Poets – ¡qué reunamos aquí en la gran plaza de poemas!

ZP – meet us in the Square!

¡Mándanos tus poemas – en cualquier idioma!

Send us your poems – in any language!

zocalopoets@hotmail.com

Hielo – Limón_Hasta luego, Verano…

Hallowe’en, in its contemporary North-American manifestation, owes as much to pop-culture notions of corpses, cannibals and zombies in B-movies – and to Michael Jackson’s 1983 music video for his “monster” hit-song Thriller – as it does to the murky past. So it can be difficult to recognize Hallowe’en as a festival that evolved out of a pre-Christian Celtic seasonal ritual – Samhain.  Samhain means, in Old Irish, “Summer’s end”. Around about October 31^st all the harvest would’ve been gathered in, and the darker half of the year was beginning. The folk belief was that on that night of Samhain all spirits traveled easily back and forth between “our” world and the “other side of the veil” – making spiritual activity, including ‘visits’ from dead ancestors, and appearances by Aos Sí or “fairies” – who might enchant you or make malevolent mischief – particularly lively. The Aos Sí were respected and feared, and people appeased them with offerings of food and drink and with a portion of the crops. Pleasing the capricious Aos Sí meant that people and their livestock would survive the coming winter. The souls of the dead were also said to return to their homes, and so a place would be set for them at the board and a stool put for them by the fire. Ritual bonfires were built out of doors, and the flames allowed to go as high as they could go, in a kind of “imitative or suggestive magic”: that of the Sun and its power for growth and for keeping at bay the darkness and decay of winter. Flame, smoke and ash were believed to have both cleansing and protective strength. Candles were lit and placed on the window ledge and a hollowed-out turnip, magelwurzel or beet with a candle within would be set at the threshold to one’s cottage or hut.  By the 16^th century “guising” began to appear in Scotland and Ireland. “Guising” meant going from house to house “in disguise” or in costume, and reciting verses or singing songs in return for food and drink – or a blessing; the origin is clear there for what we now call “trick or treating”. Many guisers went disguised as malevolent spirits or fearsome beings – both in imitation of the Aos Sí and to “frighten them back”. Some carried a candle-lit turnip with them in the dark – what we now might call a “jack-o-lantern”.  The Roman-Catholic Church in Ireland did – over the centuries – attempt to “disappear” Samhain into the religiously-sanctioned All Hallows Day which falls on November 1^st, but, as academic folklorist Jack Santino has written: “The sacred and the religious are a fundamental context for understanding Hallowe’en – [certainly] in Northern Ireland – but there, as throughout Ireland, an uneasy truce exists between customs and beliefs associated with Christianity and those associated with religions that were Irish before Christianity arrived.”

19th-century Irish immigrants to the USA began to use that beautiful Native-American autumn vegetable – the pumpkin – for their jack-o-lanterns, and this made a brilliant adaptation of an old custom to a superior material!

Fearsome or funny, our pumpkins will frighten approaching spirits or charm them into laughter.  And so:  Kind spirits, come!  Baleful ones,  A-WAY!   Hard stone eyes, garlic eyes, drink-can tab eyes, money eyes:  these’ll do the trick.  Now let’s roast those pumpkin seeds!

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Just above:  Two flags hand-drawn by citizens during 1964 as part of designing a New Canada Flag to replace the old Canada Red Ensign.  The submission immediately above included the following note: “Indians were here 20,000 years ago, getting along peacefully until the White races came and stole nearly all they own. They are the true Canadians.”  That statement is as polemical in 2013 as it would’ve been in 1964.  History is cruel but the future may well be just.  November 11th – Remembrance Day – makes us ponder human beings and their all-too-human culture:  shipbuilding, trade, conquest, slavery, immigration, resistance, renaissance, reconciliation, mestizaje, and evolving nationhoods…

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Invincible Peoples

Forgotten not gone

For Invisible Peoples

I’m beating my drum

Irrepressible Peoples

Our Story is long

Oh my Sister, my Brother

The Future is Now

—And Something be lost

—And Something be won

Invincible Spirit

Yes, Hear my Song!

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