My Aunt ELLA MAE

She was the first to tell me of  Juneteenth
her grandfather’s holiday when she heard him preach

I see her singing in that tree of transformation
from “slavery to freedom”  in Austin by the river

the library was segregated     never any Alamo
for us     she said we invented Texas chilli instead

at Griffis AFB  in Rome New York   bacon & three
sunny-side-up eggs    my Uncle Barrett Johnson had given

me my first driving lesson   between his knees
we sped    I stepped in a hole at Delta Lake

he pulled me out     on River Rd    at Four Corners
between Rome and Utica    four people died

he was last     hitting a tree at a terrible
bend with no tombstone   I was teaching at Hamilton NY at the time

my friend Josephus Long    Hudson River School
painter from New Paltz   came to Esopus at 19

to work at Wiltwyck School for Boys   on the old
Roosevelt estate given to the State for wastrels

at retreat   I made them write letters home from 600 School on campus
in Joe and Lynn’s salon in Back Bay    salmon my father would eat

on the dining room wall a cub scout and two
of the prettiest girls I’d ever seen in curls at Easter

I had a negative made of his print    gave it
to your mother(Michon & Cynthia)  she had met my plane(not Love

Field)   I sat her down   “me and your uncle
had nothing when we left Guthrie, Oklahoma with Michon”

she then corrected the impression that she had “empty bed blues”
(she had the world she wanted in that old jalopy  had met

your Dad at Prairie View    wanted me to know just how
we’d come to be together as adults    first cousins

my first visit to Dallas  at SMU  a white finishing school
she met my son  Patrice   at   15   for the first time

she’d brought him a gift   more for herself   though she had
to stay seated while we sprinted off for Savannah’s hurricane

her whole family   tall   dark    and handsome    smart
taught in the best black colleges    we did for ourselves

the ritual of “Juneteenth” always in my “craw”   this was
why   I went to a black librarian at U Houston asking about

that ritual    was told “there was nothing in writing”  picnics though
went up five floors to ‘archives’ in the same building

a white researcher opened the file    my assistant(white)
gasped   Ralph Waldo Ellison called it ‘trained incapacity’    (Veblen)

The Big “E” had written “Juneteenth” as the only excuse-- in 25th QRL
for freedom   Reverend Bliss(almost white)   and Reverend

Hickman   (black   a jazz musician)  gave twin sermons
after Galveston   1865   the last place where Lincoln’s

“Proclamation” was read to the ex-slaves   who would not be
idle   General Granger   who certainly could read

read from the document   some of his soldiers could read
many could not   your mother loved to tell me stories of the Brazos

(she was from Austin   I loved her accent   her poise
a sweetness   unknown in my native Brooklyn village   except

for my mother   who didn’t believe in writing things down)
yet she wrote in a journal for you   Michon   and  loved

your mother   as I did   her bacon grease   glossing
three eggs in her Texas skillet   Joe Long’s mama   Eva Long

was her best friend in Rome NY   she took you and Cynthia
home to Texas when Barrett died   then I found you both in tintypes

@Michael S. Harper

 

Commencement Address: California State University at Los Angeles: 6 7 08

“After Long Silence,” Yeats: Mrs. Robinson in “History of English Language”
Berryman’s Dream Songs
“Intaglio” by Henri Coulette
Isherwood on “Literature Between the Wars”—Auden’s “September 1, 1939”
David Laird, Melvin’s brother, Ph.D at 21 from U-Chicago—first A paper read aloud
“Statement” controlled by poets who did not write, or read in Open Stacks
JOS & “Blues for Pablo”—LACC, LASC, Stanford, Iowa, Princeton, “Brother John”
The Raw & the Cooked—WCWms IN THE AMERICAN GRAIN
EPIC OF SEARCH, Provincetown Players, O’Neill, Swerdlow, signed copy of IM—Dillard;quarreled about “All God’s Chillun God Wings” and TSEliot review of play
Post Office: Tour 3; WWH in registry;part time; facing table; continuity;Glendale
THE NEXT NINETY YEARS, Cal Tech Pr: Huntington Library, San Marino
Forbidden and Taboo: passport & draft notice; Iowa(WW, HC & CI);”haircut”
The function of memoir; JFK & Freedom Riders;”A Raisin in the Sun”—MIDLAND
DJ, HC, PE, petrarchan sonnet, quarrel with JB on “Henry” as minstrel voice used in dementia for LOVE&FAME delusion;father’s suicide; Okla. & competition(Carol Veney), UW, Seattle; JAW & “The Far Field”—Roethke’s father’s roses. E.Bishop
Denise Levertov & W. H. Auden and cab for Engle parties: Mrs. Lemme, shoeshine
What poems would I read of my own: the lyric & the narrative: sound&sense.
Byron Geyer: “Mr. Harper has to learn but thoroughly, that being a negro(sic)is not as bad as he supposes; once free of this sensitivity he will be a strong teacher”—JC credential and PCC visit, Master Teacher a drunk; Rose Bowl Queen & Court; Mack Robinson; Coulette’s “Blue-Eyed Precinct Worker”—Fruman & Fick, criticism: the Damaged Arcangel(Coleridge) and criticism as commentary(theory)rather than ‘poetry of a grown man’—JAW. BLUES & LAUGHTER. Langston Hughes & Gwendolyn Brooks & Margaret Walker;why no replication for a doctorate with poetry dissertation; why no support; reading the competition; selling pennants;20 W. Harrison;Oliver Jackson and the African Continuum. Paul Friedman from Brooklyn; Roth & plagiarism(Golding & Ish)—
What Do You Sound Like when You talk, when you SING. Lady Day! ‘Discovery’
9 Units of “C”—lifeguard duty in the various neighborhoods; protesting the lack of Mexicans on campus, in a Mexican neighborhood;”you must be the smartest person in class”—Music Bldg practice rooms; open stacks; the commute & graveyard; bus & trolley until one has his own ‘ride;’ Paul Zall and Philip Friedman; Dorothy Parker; plays for Lester Young; Dexter Gordon; the Renaissance Club;GIANT STEPS. “Meet Life’s Terms But Never Accept Them”—titles of books; theory of increment; why it helps to teach! “Savage”—BROTHER JOHN & BIAFRA BLUES as framing devices. Vietnam & Paris.

ANCIENT HISTORY, UNDYING LOVE

                                       "Because you had asked for your innocence,
                                         I turned back all the clocks of the world."

                                               ["SF" by Henri Coulette, COLLECTED POEMS, U. Arkansas Pr. 1990]

"You were a hidden treasure and loved to be known, Beloved"
(I shall  begin on the theme of the sacraments  and the ‘forbidden’)

If your seduction was to "the word" it was to you to whom I spoke in whirling cadences
(to trifle with a woman whose brother's name was 'Michael' was anathema  even unto me)

My teacher  my mother who taught me to read before shul  catechism storefront  the golden rule
("do not sleep with women you cannot take care of"    her mantra   taught to me at five)

I lost all neighborhoods at thirteen  including my grandmother's rose garden   never to be recovered
(that wound was the theme  'strong in the broken places'      end of my  'magic circle')

No doubt I was telling you this   when I sang in need of completion    your steady penmanship a key
(when conjuring through apartheid streets  your written tomes held   comeliness    rapier-ready)

Coulette  spoke   about “Omar”  whose powers of seduction were false rhymes with little reason
(for there is no going back   no “innocence” to behold in the flesh   a captive woman)

Yet on  luncheon program at UCB  in November 2004    introduced by Robert Haas

(who did not stay  taught his class   the current local 'hall of fame' on the very street I lived on in 1964, 1704 Addison Lane:’a friend told me/he’d arisen above jazz/I leave him there’—“Alone”)

I looked for audience forty years for that one beacon I sang to as a man  "the child still alive"  in song: broken nest at 151 Saturn Avenue off 17th St: twin viewing of 2 SF bridges as the genie flies

(and you that image I sought  Rumi  poet of the “beloved” buried in Konya  and sought again   “remembering your name”)

{Michael S. Harper, written on Paul Robeson's natal day, patriot, linguist, singer of folksongs world-wide, for Nicola Boynoff, my "Nikki"—“the tongue is the customer of the ear”—Rumi, the dervish}

1962: Veterans Day: UCLA Study Regimen: Some Indiana (Hoosier Klan Reflections)

 

They are counting the names of the Vietnam Veterans names on the Mall
of Maya Lin’s vision of reconciliation: my father wanted to see these names

the Wall of Names was iridescent
in the rains of the postal overnight mails:

he had invented.  He dressed in the suit & ties of my  mother’s benefaction
making the planes for tidal meetings of the schemata of zones across worlds

of Athens, Ohio  where her parents had taught and made art in forms
then I taught their son, Tan Lin, at Carleton College as “Benedict” Professor

the commute from Logan to Humphrey Fields the music of compromise
the Northwest Airlines commutation to the orient a veiled enterprise to war:

I had already done time in Cincinnati as “Elliston” poet over Stowe’s landing:
trips to Hillcrest Cemetery the darkened plain over the ancestors of slavery

“Beloved” would come full circle in the swim of blood over murdering kin
Morrison was to sing: libretto of Margaret Garner’s hanging tree she made:

Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman had sung the sorrow songs of Dutch &
Maryland foggy bottom: and Lincoln had yodeled across anvils of bondage

a world of bandages.  I saw the legs amputated by the surgeons and bombardment
as Twain ran away into the annals of other worlds: Chinese immigrants dead on trestles

what mountains to cross and dig one’s way under is Jay Gould’s story:
Grant’s memoirs itemized the benefits of open cauldrons in trench warfare munitions

I expect you to catch up to innovations in the laboratories  in the fields of tempered iron
trenches of blood you can only identify in mustard gas  barbed wire  home visits:

‘Goodbye to All That’ a rhythm of prosaic cadences of a lost world of heraldry & books
it was later that public schools came out of the klan ku klux of Indianapolis

Crispus Attucks a named school for the first to die at Boston Tea Party  later 1770 stamp acts: when the “Yankee Pedlar” traveled westward to sell slaves and trinkets Douglass’s

54th & 55th Odes of Saint Gaudens and the Union Dead  the Confederates already conduits in lakes & streams: Ode to the Confederate Dead: geography is fate @ WCWms

1925 booklore  “history for us begins in murder and enslavement not discovery”
In the American Grain: Melville and Whitman: Hawthorne and James before and after

Emancipation: and so we broke covenance over a theory of amendments: honorable &

“American Gothic” and therefore documentary over the Works Project Administration
of immigrants and slaves and open lands and Bureau of Indian Affairs: manifest destiny

you have buried your dead in the living lore of battle tapestries as ironies of scar tissue
“let our scars fall in love” the poets cry  & in the pocked upas fauna of cannon: screams

@Michael S. Harper, 2007