keep revel with me

I am a big fan of poems that are in conversation with other poems or poets. Some of those are collected under the poems in conversation tag, although my tagging system, like many other parts of my poetry organization, is not the most consistent or reliable. This poem is not only in conversation with John Keats (I posted a lot of Keats in the early years and then ran out of favorites, but I do go back to him often), it's also a spring poem, and this morning I took myself for a walk to get an iced latte and a bagel sandwich and sat outside on a park bench in the sunshine. And, last but not least, I love the Harlem Renaissance poets, especially as a New Yorker.

(For Carl Van Vechten)

I cannot hold my peace, John Keats;
There never was a spring like this;
It is an echo, that repeats
My last year's song and next year's bliss.
I know, in spite of all men say
Of Beauty, you have felt her most.
Yea, even in your grave her way
Is laid. Poor, troubled, lyric ghost,
Spring never was so fair and dear
As Beauty makes her seem this year.

I cannot hold my peace, John Keats,
I am as helpless in the toil
Of Spring as any lamb that bleats
To feel the solid earth recoil
Beneath his puny legs. Spring beats
Her tocsin call to those who love her,
And lo! the dogwood petals cover

Her breast with drifts of snow, and sleek
White gulls fly screaming to her, and hover
About her shoulders, and kiss her cheek,
While white and purple lilacs muster
A strength that bears them to a cluster
Of color and odor; for her sake
All things that slept are now awake.

And you and I, shall we lie still,
John Keats, while Beauty summons us?
Somehow I feel your sensitive will
Is pulsing up some tremulous
Sap road of a maple tree, whose leaves
Grow music as they grow, since your
Wild voice is in them, a harp that grieves
For life that opens death's dark door.
Though dust, your fingers still can push
The Vision Splendid to a birth,
Though now they work as grass in the hush
Of the night on the broad sweet page of the earth.

"John Keats is dead," they say, but I
Who hear your full insistent cry
In bud and blossom, leaf and tree,
Know John Keats still writes poetry.

And while my head is earthward bowed
To read new life sprung from your shroud,
Folks seeing me must think it strange
That merely spring should so derange
My mind. They do not know that you,
John Keats, keep revel with me, too.

—Countee Cullen (1903-1946), "To John Keats, Poet. At Spring Time," Spring 1924. The poem title actually has an asterisk at the end and an asterisk-marked footnote with the date (Spring 1924), which I enjoy a lot, personally. Love a footnote.

sing america

Sometimes you've just gotta throw up your hands and post some real classic Langston Hughes.

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

—Langston Hughes (1902-1967), "I, Too," in this case from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (Vintage Books, 2004), but first published in 1926.

rivers ancient as the world

Variations on a theme: I was reading around in the Harlem Renaissance, after posting Claude McKay yesterday. Then I was looking for Harriet Tubman poems, in light of today's currency news, and thinking about Langston Hughes's "Freedom Train," which is not really about Tubman or the Underground Railroad, except for the ways in which it is; then I realized that I have never actually posted my favorite Hughes poem. I can't even tell you why this one is my favorite, but it is; it's a classic.

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its
     muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

—Langston Hughes (1902-1967), "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," 1920/21, though in this case from Collected Poems, 1994. 

america

Today is the New York Primary, in which I am about to go vote, and I thought a thematic sonnet for the occasion seemed appropriate. I also really, really love this poem. If you live in New York, please vote today!

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate,
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

—Claude McKay (1889-1948), "America," from Liberator (December 1921).

toward the summer isle

I am in a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad mood, and having kind of a shitty day, but here is a poem that makes me feel just a little less like killing everyone in the world.

Some day, when trees have shed their leaves
   And against the morning's white
The shivering birds beneath the eaves
    Have sheltered for the night,
We'll turn our faces southward, love,
   Toward the summer isle
Where bamboos spire the shafted grove
   And wide-mouthed orchids smile.

And we will seek the quiet hill
   Where towers the cotton tree,
And leaps the laughing crystal rill,
   And works the droning bee.
And we will build a cottage there
   Beside an open glade,
With black-ribbed blue-bells blowing near,
   And ferns that never fade.

—Claude McKay (1889-1948), "After the Winter" in this case from Claude McKay: Complete Poems (University of Illinois Press, 2004).

get with the music

So I was thinking about the Harlem Renaissance (my spreadsheet says Night Funeral in Harlem for today, but first I got distracted by other Hughes poems, and then I got distracted by other poets, and I like to break my own rules), and then I watched the first episode of the new season of Treme (still love it, still heartbreaking), and then I thought -- well. Maybe this one.

1. OVERTURE

“Obviously there is much to be said for the
conscious cultivation and extension of taste, but
there is also something to be said for the
functional reaction to artistic design (and
honeysuckles) as normal elements of human
existence.”
—Albert Murray

(three four)    The ancestors are humming: Write a poem, girl.
Turn the volume up, they say. Loud-talking. Talking loud.
On piano someone plays a boogie-woogie run:
Omni—Albert Murray     Omni Omni     Albert Murray.

In my mind and in his I think a painting is a poem.
A tambourine’s a hip shake and train whistle a guitar.
Trains run North/South home their whistles howling
    Afro . . . . Am.
Black and blue Blue Afro-blue blue-black and blue blew
   blew.

I can picture Bearden with his magazines and scissors.
I can see guitar shapes, curves like watermelon rinds.
Will I find names like Trueblood and the shapes for my collage?
Omni—Albert Murray     Omni Omni     Albert Murray.


2. ELLINGTONIA

“So much goes on in a Harlem airshaft. You
hear fights, you smell dinner, you hear people
making love. . . . You see your neighbor’s
laundry. You hear the janitor’s dogs. . . . One
guy is cooking dried fish and rice and another
guy’s got a great big turkey. . . . Jitterbugs are
jumping up and down always over you, never
below you.”
—Duke Ellington

I might have jitterbugged at the Renaissance ‘room,
thrown upside down by some zoot-suited don
in a vicuna coat, smell of Barbasol—
I might have been a barfly with her wig turned ‘round.

I conjure smoke-blue clubs from family tales,
names, like “Do Nothing ‘til You Hear from Me.”
Duke’s square-toed leather shoes, his droop-lid eyes,
his—This is a black and tan fantasy.

Not shoes, not conjure, shaving cream, cologne.
“Tootie for Cootie” unafraid of rhyme.
Bold music, bold as sunflowers. Rhyme is real.
Blow smoke rings when you say “Mood Indigo.”


3. INTERLUDE

Albert Murray do they call you Al
or Bert or Murray or “Tuskeegee Boy”?
Who are the Omni-ones who help me feel?
I’m born after so much. Nostalgia hurts.


4. STELLA BY STARLIGHT

(after the tune, played by Monty Alexander on
piano and Othello Molyneaux on steel drum)

Red hair in summertime,
ashy toes, dust-knuckled,
the slim curve of autumn
in sight. In summertime
rhiney, shedding burnt skin,
petticoats, pantaloons.
I’m a rusty-butt sun-
baby, summer is gone.

No more corn and no blue-
berries. Sweet tomatoes
overripe. No more ice
blocks with tamarindo,
sweaty love in damp white
sheets, sunflowers, poppies,
salt in summertime,
sun-stoked bones. Summer jones.

Starlight cools as the edge
of fall. “Stella by Star-
light” steals stars for letters.
Each l and each t pricks
the sky like a star or
a steel drum quiver on
a note ‘til it shimmer.
Who is Stella? Summer’s


5. BEARDEN AT WORK

”Regardless of how good you might be at
whatever else you did, you also had to get with
the music.”
—Romare Bearden

Paper-cutting rhythm, snips of blue foil
falling onto water-colored paper,
colored people into place. Eye divines
arrangement, hands slide shifting paper shapes.
Panes of color learned from stained-glass windows,
pauses     spacing     rests     from Fatha Hines.

Odysseus is blue. He can’t get home.
In Bearden’s planes: collage on board, shellac.
Watch Dorothy, children, enter Oz.
Look, Daddy, color! No more white and black.
This is the year of the color TV.
Odysseus is blue and now is black.

New York City at Christmastime. Christmas
tree—shapes like Bearden in a Bearden blue.
Tin stars falling on a yellow paper
trumpet. Blue sucked in, blues blown back out.
Black folks on ice skates shine like Christmas trees.
New York glitters like a new idea.


6. CODA

Omni: having unrestricted, universal range.
Coda: a concluding passage, well-proportioned clause.
On piano someone plays a boogie-woogie run:
Omni—Albert Murray     Omni Omni     Albert Murray.

—Elizabeth Alexander, “Omni—Albert Murray” from The Venus Hottentot (Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota), 2004.