AND THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU'RE AWAY FOR SO LONG


I’ve been away for so long. Away from this repository for my thoughts. This time now reminds me of how ephemeral time is. Indeed. While I was away, engaged in the living of life, the leaves have grown crisp and brown at the edge; the wind swift and chilled. Acorns are strewn about the ground for those bushy-tailed creatures who have enough good sense to prepare for hard times. (What a lesson we humans could learn!) The growth of the grass has slowed and every morning dew coats the earth a shimmering silver. The sun is a good and welcome friend these days; for those of us in the Northeast know that this kind of bright, warm light is what we shall all be longing for once Winter makes her arrival. We—at least, I—rush to it, to the neglect of long-put-aside chores, projects, necessary self-promotion and, in my case, novels—wanting to drink in as much of it as is humanly possible; wanting to package it in a jar, tuck it in my closets for the dark and dismal days of snow and ice and muddy slush. Today I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for so many things: the book now published and out in the world on its own, the writing workshop (my first teaching assignment!), for the new poems that are filling the empty spaces, for the novel that I can now return to, for my husband and children who keep me grounded and sane with simple, ordinariness, for my girlfriends near and far—the puzzle pieces of my life who, together, make up the complete woman I want to be when it’s all said and done.

First: the book launch.

Simply said, the night was magical. Alive. A living, breathing organism. There was a lot of preparation (both mental and physical) leading up to the night and of course, as always, my last minute indecisions about what to wear. I live on vibes, I move on vibes. What is set aside to be worn is easily cast aside when I examine my mood, the wind, the flow of air into and around my soul. I am visual, drawn to vibrant colors like oranges, blues, reds and greens. I knew I’d be wearing a wrap (sarong) that I’d bought on vacation. It has beautiful waves of orange and gold, mud earth brown and a hint of sage. I remember how irrevocably drawn to it I was a the time, the moment I touched its fringes. Yet it’s colors are the kind that are difficult to “match up” with anything, so I went in search of a sage green shell, opting for a “coordinated” look instead. I found the perfect one. Next, the necessary and very careful selection of accessories. I remembered the necklace and earring set from Kenya, sent to me from my loving Sisterfriend, Nehanda Dreams. I also thought of my silver ring and a silver bracelet artfully crafted in swirls with a topaz teardrop at the center—silver for the feminine energy. My locs were braided into an “up-do” style and quite pretty. A tad of gloss on the lips made the look complete.Spouse looked at me with the look of a man who still loves his woman after two babies, ten hairdo's, twenty extra pounds and a whole lotta ups and downs. He smiled and said, “You look beautiful.” I felt radiant, as if carried in the arms of the Creator. I felt fortunate to be loved.

The host who introduced me was gracious and kind. She said that mine is a “remarkable new voice in contemporary literature” and for that I was deeply humbled. She spoke about my stories, particularly the one entitled “What Remains,” and the craft that went into the making of the piece. Another friend and writing colleague spoke about me as a person who, “deeply questions the meanings and truisms of life” saying that “this is what you want in your writers because it tells you that they are seeking and those are the writers who find the answers that we all begin to live by.” How humbling! And how remarkable the ways in which people see you!

The room was near complete capacity—a great deal of students for which I was very glad—my friends and good folks who support the arts. My heart is with the young people who are still fresh, still malleable to the discussion of ideas and creation of workable solutions. Before the reading began I spoke briefly about how I began my life as a writer, which was first as a reader. I spoke about how I’ve been avidly reading all of my life and, as I say in the opening of my Introduction in the book that “the moment I discovered Black women writing, I discovered my Self.” I urged the students to not only read but to think critically about what is being read. And of course, I could not step away from that podium without urging everyone in that room to be involved in the political process because even by NOT voting, you are voting.

So I read the bulk of my poems and an excerpt from my fiction. I took questions from the audience about finding Voice and about my writing process. I gave suggestions to the ever present question of “what advice would you give to an aspiring writer?” (which is always an interesting question to me since I don’t understand what it means to ‘aspire to write’). Many questions about my Vietnam poem dedicated to both my father and to Maya Lin, architect of the Vietnam War Memorial (a must see for every human being with breath and a voters card) and questions about the Voice in my story “Butterflies In Brooklyn.” More questions about how I came up with such a visual scene in the opening paragraph of "What Remains" (click on the excerpt on the side bar). I felt very warm and special and that dream of being taken seriously as a writer became a solidified reality. It is an oddly humbling experience to have someone ask you to “sign” a copy of your book, something you’ve painstakingly brought to life and to know that someone (in these budget tight times) has spent money and valuable time listening to what you have to say. For that reason, signing becomes for me an act of service, the least that one can do. I went home on a high that evening and slept quite soundly (in part because of the evening, in part because of the celebratory marguerita that followed). I missed the Furious Flower Conference at JMU but felt it had been very, very worth it. And on top of it all I sold quite a few books, too.

I’ve also been very busy trying to finish up the teaching materials for my portion of a writing workshop entitled: INSIDE OUT: Writing and The Creative Process which I taught last Sunday. So busy, I neglected to post it here on the Upcoming Events Page. I really enjoyed putting this workshop together with the other two sisters who taught. We addressed such topics as the Creative Process, Finding/Sustaining Voice and of course, Productivity and establishing good work habits. It was, more or less, a beginners type of workshop for those who’ve scribbled and dabbled but are having that ever present trouble “getting started.” This was my baby; an idea that sparked in my mind and morphed into a three-way street. I learned a great deal about the ways in which teaching materials can/should be presented. I realized how much I’ve learned over the years and it (the process) reinforced some good creative habits that have slipped away over time; habits I need to revisit that would more than likely make me more productive than I am. But doing this taught me a few other things about myself; I realized how much of a solitary person I am and how little I enjoy collaborative work. Opinions can be like hand grenades and how much or how little of one’s original vision for a thing can be totally washed away in the drift is a constant and disconcerting, unpredictable and ultimately inevitable reality. The other thing is that I went home with raving feedback on the Course Evaluation forms. People asked when we’d be teaching again and said they felt “charged” to go home and write (which is always the way one feels after any artistic gathering, I suppose). I supplied “Ocean Music” or meditative music as it’s classified in stores and the participants (mostly women) came away with very insightful, very thought-provoking drafts. I left that evening feeling wonderfully full and empty at the same time—somewhat exhausted overall—which solidified yet another something that I’d been wrestling with: I have no desire to teach with regularity (i.e, -- day to day university or school level teaching) because of how far away it takes you from your own work; how mentally depleting it can be. And I settled in my mind a long-standing internal wrestle I'd had going on. I realized with a new and focused clarity that the MFA (that degree one needs in order to teach in those places and earn some type of sustainable income) would be for my informational purposes only, which in my case does not justify the debt nor the inevitable distraction that those years of study would involve. Which brings me to the discussion of Life Work and something else I have come to learn about my Self, my path, and my duty, as I see it, as a writer.

A quote from Alice Walker, during an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now a year or two ago. Asked to expound upon the difficulty of living as a writer and having learned that her daughter, Rebecca Walker, was often pained during the process, she said:


“I feel like I’ve been a priest for the past 30 years and it’s been damn hard on everyone in my life…but I have not had a choice. I feel like the ancestral priestess up their, whoever, has said this is the work…only you can really do this, right here, because you have been placed right here in Eatonton, Georgia, in this family, where you can actually see what slavery was like; because you are still the sharecropper’s slaves. And then you get to be educated, you end up at Sarah Lawrence College. You’re taught how to write, uh…and you do have to do this, there’s nobody else. All of these things—I take them very seriously. They are like the synchronicity that Jung talks about in a life. Where you start to see that there is a reason for all your joys and your sorrows and you begin to see that there is a work for you to do in the world. And I have done that. And I have been absolutely faithful to it. And it has been difficult to me and it has been difficult to everyone in my life.”

And a quote from brother Kalamu Ya Salaam, poet/teacher/critic/literary activist who attended and moderated at the Furious Flower Conference and made a comment about what was and wasn’t at there (making reference, too about what is and isn’t within the body of Cave Canem) and about the bland-ness of today's poetry (and writing) how so much of it is personal yet not political like during the BAM (the Black Arts Movement):


“…and no one has the right to tell anyone else what they have to write. Ultimately, all writing comes out of the life that the writer lives. My question is: where do we stand on the major issues of the day? I think writers need to be involved in struggle not as writers per se, but as concerned people. Further, once we are actively engaged in struggle, our participation in struggle will inspire our written work. It may inspire us directly so that we write overly political pieces, or it may inspire us indirectly so that we write with a passion for living and self expression although not necessarily about a particular issue. My concern is that too often political involvement is totally absent from the lives of many of us today. I understand that many of us are caught up under the heavy manners of institutions, corporations, and governments that make it difficult, dangerous and sometimes impossible for us to speak out without suffering severe repercussions. I understand that livelihood is often dependant on compliance with restrictive rules and regulations. I understand that some of us have very little room for self expression, but there is a big difference between caution on the one hand and, on the other hand, outright cowardice, collusion and/or callous indifference to the major issues of the day. My concern is that the poetry of the personal is cool for what it is but there is more to life than the individual view, that concentrating inwardly or to put it another way: if we remove the black arts movement poets (and those self-admittedly directly influenced by BAM, eg Ethelbert Miller, Tony Medina) from the mix of poets represented at Furious Flower, what would be the nature of the poetry that remains and where would be the furious in the flowering?

I am not calling for one way to write. Everyone should write what the want to. But I am criticizing a lack of engaged and socially conscious literature. I am criticizing the very nature of most academically oriented poetry in this era of American neo-imperialism.

...I want the whole spectrum of social life represented in our poetry and not simply an insistence on only one part. I embrace both personal poetry and I embrace political poetry. Not one without the other. I want both. And when I see the absence of either one, I will speak out about what I perceive as a major deficit. We need both the furious and the flower. --Kalamu Ya Salaam



What I wish to extrapolate here is the beginning line: “I think writers need to be involved in struggle not as writers per se, but as concerned people. Further, once we are actively engaged in struggle, our participation in struggle will inspire our written work.”


As far as I am concerned, I, at this time, feel more than ever before that this is the work that I am put here to do. And like Alice, it has been painful. Being a nurse and a mother makes me highly sensitive to the conditions of suffrage. Knowing what I know about AIDS and HIV, how the virus literally attacks every healthy cell in the body from head to foot, is painful information. And coupled with the knowledge that the international community is doing very little to thwart it’s rampant spread on the African continent makes me ill. Knowing that women are cutting wire with their teeth, right now, in Sudan, to build huts (see current issue of TIME magazine) makes me ill. Knowing the numbers of Cambodian girls sold into prostitution by the age of 6 makes me cringe. Knowing the suffrage of my ancestors whose story still has not been adequately reported makes me furious.


And so I have come to the place, after having experienced how moved people can be by my writing and by the honesty that I strive to put forth on the page, I have come to know and appreciate this thing we called Voice and I am committed not to entertainment, not to worldwind book tours and fame, but for the illumination of those who cannot speak for themselves—the women, the children especially. For my father sent into the Vietnam War who I, unfortunately, never had a chance to know. For the men and women in Iraq now who are brainwashed to believe that self-sacrifice and patriotism are interchangeable terms. I take on the cloak that my good friend and mentor, E. Ethelbert Miller terms “literary activist,” with the knowledge that this is the least I can do, the very least I can do, for the gift of having been alive.


Writing is no longer all encompassing for me; rather, I strive everyday to be engaged. Engaged in my children, in my environment, in nature, in life. I strive toward true gratitude; a gratitude that asks not for more and more and more but asks now, “How can I serve?” Yes, I am a poet and a writer but I am also a human and I understand now, with greater clarity, what the great poet Rumi meant when he wrote:


I am not a poet
I don’t earn my living from poetry

I don’t need to boast
My knowledge
Poetry is the wine
Of love that I
Accept only from
The hands
Of my
Beloved


And I strive not for the writer-li-ness of writing, but toward the art of living fully.

ANGEL