INAUGURATION Celebration with Albany State University Students

(Poet and Professor Doris Davenport in the center, flanked by performance artist Seed and celebratory students!)

Most of the time my laureate blog is devoted to North Carolina writers and events, but on this historic day, the Inauguration of our first African-American president Barack Obama, I decided to turn this post over to former NC resident and NC Arts Fellowship winner doris davenport and her students at Albany State University. I was born and raised about 25 miles down the road from Albany, so being a part of ASU's second annual Poetry Festival was like going back home.

I began my workshop with two poems by our new president, written when he was a nineteen year old college student. You may find those poems at on this blog at http://ncpoetlaureate.blogspot.com/2008/11/barack-obama-poet.html. The students jumped right into those poems, no doubt about it, and some of what came out of the afternoon's gathering follows.




(Professor Davenport applauding her students!)

From Dr. Doris Davenport, Professor of English, Albany State University:

“Night Soil of Dream” Poetry Workshop Poems*
led by Kathryn Stripling Byer
13 November 2008
2nd Annual Poetry Festival,
Albany State University, Albany GA



(Festival Display at Library where the workshop was held.)




(* In a well-attended workshop of at least 35 students, all of them created poems in the two hour workshop, using the prompts of two poems by President-Elect Barack Obama. Of that number, at least twelve read in the Performance segment that night. And of that twelve, here are some of the poems written and submitted.)

Our first young poet is Shawn Sessions. He was the first student brave enough to read what he had written in his small group. Right away, I knew we were going to hear some fabulous poetry before the workshop was over. Shawn is a young man with a whole lot of talent.


(Shawn Sessions)

UNDERGROUND by Shawn Sessions

Tossing and toiling as the water drowns my feet, I feel
the wind lifting my worries away. As I crash and
burn, these feelings churn through my body, teasing
me. Relieving my soul, this darkness asks me, “Can
you stay a little longer?” And though I would love to
say yes, I regretfully turn away cause I know
daylight is on its way. As my alarm clock echoes
loudly, I open my eyes as if being born for the first
time, Hello, my name is Shawn!


---------------------------------

Quavis Carter's impassioned poems, read with real urgency, stirred my emotions and made me realize yet again how powerful an event the election President Obama was, and will continue to be, to these students.

Two by Quavis Carter

"Times Change"

Neva thought I’d be at ASU better yet any college
I mean I always had good sense and book knowledge
Back then all I wanted was a fancy car with big rims
Now I take up time reading and studying for exams.
I have matured a lot maybe bcuz of my age
I’m still young times changed and Mr. Carter has turned da page.

"Black"

We were chosen 2 be slaves bcuz we were stronger than others
We make the best athletes & black women make the best mothers
Many black ppl won freedom & one black man won an election
So if you’re black look in the mirror & be proud of your skin complexion
Back many years ago we were on the plantation
Now they have HBCU’s* and we can earn education
I don’t care what anybody say we have come along
Want me 2 prove it Nov. 4 2008 remember that day.

(*Historically Black Colleges & Universities)

---------------------------------------------------
Cassandra Starr nearly moved me to tears as she read "Tapestry." In it you can hear echoes of President Obama's poem about his grandfather. Cassandra is clearly a poet, and I hope she will continue to follow that calling.



(Cassandra Starr, second from right, and friends)



"Tapestry" by Cassandra Starr


Locks of hair
lengthy, salt and pepper colored,
sitting on the cerulean couch
firmly planted in the middle
of the living room,
in front of a painting
of a flower
that reminds me of her,
stunning, similar to the
petals of a flower,
for she has many layers,
mother, caregiver, quilter.
While sitting firmly
on the couch,
I see her hands,
fragile, small, worn from years
of work
sewing, sewing various pieces
signifying history,
for I am a mirror image
of her,
she is . . . grandmother,
binder of my
family’s tapestry.


-------------------
What to say about Maggie Emily? She's a spectacular emcee, as she proved earlier at the morning session of readings by faculty and students. AND he's a promising poet. Maggie, I would guess, could be just about anything she chooses to be.



(Maggie Emily)



"Pull Back" by Maggie Emily

The thin sheets, icy
stacked smartly
against the
thumping warm
whole hold whole
cordial cold, hello
“wonderful, and you?”
we smile, or mouths
do - eyes glossy
stare - somehow
the image through the
glass (filtered image)
is distorted you - I
loves-hates hot cold
I cannot feel the difference
(trying to) pull back I rush (trying to ) forward
(trying to) pull back I rush (trying to ) forward
the shattering sheets split and under
the pressure they dissipate


-----------------------
Tiarra Mitchell is a firecracker! If you could hear her read the poem below, you'd know what I mean. The rhythm of this poem is irresistable. She blew me away!


(Tiarra Mitchell, foreground, with friend)


glistening beautifully I, I, I, I...
feel...
she pounding, throbbing, hanging in...
flowing down fluidity
speaks turquoise skies
she flutters, flies, flagellant singing...
"I bust the windows out your car"
highlighted anger
damn..ummm...ummm..good..
addicted, trembling
YELLING, HELP REScue me...please
hangover of juicy love that it..that she..that we..that I
us,we,she come together
STOP breathing...life
ambiguity with tongue loaded, softly, moist feelings, dry dreams
leave, leave, leave me
be, being, being
a new woman...
today, today...I am you
only beep beep, beep beep
loud whispers, slow whispers, no whispers
no talk
just you
those eyes
that glare
that feelings, so natural, that way
I, I, I, I, I,....feel

--------------------------------


(Performance Poet "Seed," who led a multi-genre workshop during the festival)
----------------------------


"Geno" won my heart with this poem, and not only because it has one of my favorite foods, salmon croquettes, in it. This poem shows how powerful names can be for a writer.


"Maria and Laura" by Wilbur E. “Geno” Jordan, Jr.

I do love the two names Marian and Laura . . .
and most people with those names.
These two names make me
think of hot homemade vegetable
soup on a cold day and
catered Thanksgiving dinners
for 25. They bring lace
overlay and pearl strands
to mind. The two, Marian and
Laura, Wylie and Hart,
Stokes and Jones, Bishop Allen
and John Wesley, hymns and
jazz, salmon croquets with
grits and Special K with fruit.
The loved of my life . . . Marian and Laura,
my grandmothers.



(Wilbur E. “Geno” Jordan, Jr.)

--------------------------------

Mr. Daniel Forsythe gave us a poem full of good sounds and raw emotion--t(he mind leaks (great image) and the heart fills}. I loved listening to this one!

Two by Daniel Forsythe

(1)
Laughing, yeah laughing
At you, laughing because
You don’t get me
Laughing & smiling
All because of you.


(2)

The love that’s lost
The desires gone
While the embers burn bright
For the love I lost

Moving through
All the pain
The subtle feeling
When I hear her name
The love that’s lost

The sun shines
But is much dimmer
The moon is bright
But not as bright as nights I remember
The love that’s lost

The soul grows weak
The body pursues
The mind leaks
And the heart fills
With the blues
The love I lost

Love me tender, love me right
But the love is lost, tonight.


--------------------------------------------
JUST HANGIN' OUT AFTER THE WORKSHOP, and POSING FOR THE CAMERA, TOO:

Barack Obama, the Poet?

Regardless of the way you voted last Tuesday, I think readers of this blog will find the article below pretty interesting. Turns out we have a President-elect who wrote poetry when he was in college and not bad poetry at that, I'd say, despite Harold Bloom's condescension. If he'd been a student of mine, I'd have thought, hmm, there are some things here we an work with. Who knows what might happen if he has the desire to continue? I shudder to think of what Bloom would have said about my 19 year old's poems turned in to my first writing class.

So former President Jimmy Carter is "the worst poet in the United States," according to gatekeeper Bloom? Well, he might open The New Yorker on any given week and find some poetry far worse ---or the American Poetry Review. This does not mean that I have not come upon poems in The New Yorker that I wish I had written. It simply means that I have also come across some stinkers. I recall William Matthews telling me many years ago that there wasn't as much good poetry out there as people (mostly poets) wanted to think. And the best, most meaningful, poetry is not always in the prestigious journals where Bloom no doubt expects to find it.


(Harold Bloom)

As for Bloom's closing advice, how many writers have stories of being told just that--don't go on with it? Maxine Kumin, a poet I deeply admire has a similar story about her first poems being insulted by a prof. when she was in college. Allen Tate told me nothing was happening in mine, when I was a student at UNCG. I was too polite to shrug, but I did so inwardly. The truth is, young (or middle-aged or elderly) writers who have the passion to write usually don't ask their teachers if they should go on with it. They know they have to.


(Maxine Kumin)



Obama as Poet
(www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/prespoetry/bo.htm)


When President-elect Obama was a 19-year-old student at Occidental College, he published two poems in the spring 1982 issue of Feast, the school's literary magazine. The first poem, "Pop," appears to capture a moment between the young Obama and his maternal grandfather, Stanley Dunham. The bond between the two is reinforced at the end of the poem by the framing and reflective properties of Pop's glasses.

"Pop"

Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken
In, sprinkled with ashes,
Pop switches channels, takes another
Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks
What to do with me, a green young man
Who fails to consider the
Flim and flam of the world, since
Things have been easy for me;
I stare hard at his face, a stare
That deflects off his brow;
I’m sure he’s unaware of his
Dark, watery eyes, that
Glance in different directions,
And his slow, unwelcome twitches,
Fail to pass.
I listen, nod,
Listen, open, till I cling to his pale,
Beige T-shirt, yelling,
Yelling in his ears, that hang
With heavy lobes, but he’s still telling
His joke, so I ask why
He’s so unhappy, to which he replies...
But I don’t care anymore, cause
He took too damn long, and from
Under my seat, I pull out the
Mirror I’ve been saving; I’m laughing,
Laughing loud, the blood rushing from his face
To mine, as he grows small,
A spot in my brain, something
That may be squeezed out, like a
Watermelon seed between
Two fingers.
Pop takes another shot, neat,
Points out the same amber
Stain on his shorts that I’ve got on mine, and
Makes me smell his smell, coming
From me; he switches channels, recites an old poem
He wrote before his mother died,
Stands, shouts, and asks
For a hug, as I shink, my
Arms barely reaching around
His thick, oily neck, and his broad back; ‘cause
I see my face, framed within
Pop’s black-framed glasses
And know he’s laughing too.

When asked to comment on the merit of "Pop," Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities and English at Yale University, described it as “not bad—a good enough folk poem with some pathos and humor and affection.... It is not wholly unlike Langston Hughes, who tended to imitate Carl Sandburg." [1] Obama's poetry, Bloom makes clear, is much superior to the poetry of former President Jimmy Carter (Bloom calls Carter "literally the worst poet in the United States").

President-elect Obama's second poem, "Underground," is more exotic and obscure:

"Underground"

Under water grottos, caverns
Filled with apes
That eat figs.
Stepping on the figs
That the apes
Eat, they crunch.
The apes howl, bare
Their fangs, dance,
Tumble in the
Rushing water,
Musty, wet pelts
Glistening in the blue.

Bloom feels that "Underground" is the better of Obama's two poems, reminiscent of some of D. H. Lawrence's poetry: “I think it is about some sense of chthonic forces, just as Lawrence frequently is—some sense, not wholly articulated, of something below, trying to break through.” [2]

While President-elect Obama's poetry displays some signs of talent, by choosing politics over poetry he made, like the other poetry-writing presidents before him, the right career choice. As Bloom notes: “If I had been shown these poems by one of my undergraduates and asked, Shall I go on with it?, I would have rubbed my forehead and said, On the whole, my dear, probably not. Your future is not as a person of letters.“

Notes

1. All quotations by Harold Bloom from Rebecca Mead's "Obama, Poet," (http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2007/07/02/
070702ta_talk_mead, The New Yorker, July 2, 2007).

2. To read other assessments of Obama's poetry, many less positive than Harold Bloom's, see "Obama's Poetry Skills Draw Scrutiny" (http://media.www.oxyweekly.com/media/storage/paper1200/news/2007/04/04/News/
Obamas.Poetry.Skills.Draw.Scrutiny-2822022.shtml, The Occidental Weekly, April 4, 2007).