Gwendolyn Brooks and LeRoi Jones poetry reading (Part 1 of 2)

I thought I would begin by reading excerpts from a foreword to this new book The New Negro poets U.S.A. which was collected by Langston Hughes. I think you might be interested in many of the poets Terr who will be figures in the days to come. I began at the present time poets who happen also to be negroes are twice tried. They have to write poetry and they have to remember that they are negroes. Often they wish that they could solve the negro question once and for all and go on from such success to the composition of textured sonnets. Or a buoyant villain ells about the transience of a raindrop. Or the gold star of the sun. They are likely to find significances in those objects not instantly obvious to their fair fellows. The raindrop made same to them to represent racial

cheers and those might seem indeed other than transcendent. The golden sun might remind them that they are burning in the work of most of today's negro poets. The reader will discover evidences of double dedication hints that the artists have accepted a two headed responsibility. If you have favored a tract without wives or emblems of any racial kind and even those few in their deliberate renunciation have in effect spoken racially have offered race fed testimony of several kinds in 1950. I remarked in the file and every negro poet has something to say simply because he is a negro. He cannot escape having important things to say. His mere body for that matter is an eloquence. His quiet walk down the street is a speech to the people is a rebuke is a pulley is a school but no real artist is going to be

content with offering raw materials. This is as true today when we white and black are a collective pregnancy that is going to proceed to its inevitability. Getting worse before it gets better. As it was before the major flower of the volcano. That's why I have to say non fictionally. Now I'll begin to read to you some poems first from my first collection a street in Brownsville and the first poem in this book is kitchenette building. Where are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan grade in and grade dream. Next I get a sound not strong like rent feeding a wife satisfying a man. But could a dream send up through onion for you. It's quite an violent fight with fried potatoes and

yesterday's garbage ripening in the hall for laughter or sing an aria down these rooms even if we were willing to let it in. Had time to warm it keep it very clean anticipate a message let it begin. We wonder. But not well not for a minute since Number five is out of the bathroom now we think of luke warm water. Hope to get in it. And that's straight from my own experience. And this one is called the mother and I always preface it by saying that I am not the heroine. And I sympathize with the heroine but I am not sure abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get the damn small Paul was a little or with no hair. The singers and workers that never handled the air you will never neglect or beat them or silence or

abide with a suite you will never wind up the sucking or scuttle off goals that you will never leave them controlling your luscious side return for a snack of them with gobbling mother I. I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children. I have contracted i have eased to my dim dears at the breast I could never suck. I have said sweets if I send if I see your locked and your lives from your unfinished reach if I stole your birth son your name your straight baby to yours and your Again your stilted our lovely loves your two malts your mariages aches and your death. If I poison the beginnings of your breath I believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate though why should I whine whine that the crime was other than mine since anyhow you were dead. Or rather are instead you were never made. But that too I am afraid is faulty.

Oh what shall I say. How is the truth to be said. You were born you had body you die it is just that you never get old or planned or cry. Believe me I loved you all. Believe me I knew you though faintly. And I love it. I loved you all. And a song in the front yard. How many of these poems are out of my experience. Twisted and molded here and there so that they won't be too recognizable. And even so my mother. Shakes and shudders whenever I publish a book wondering which of the neighbors I'm going to put in. I've stayed in the front yard all my life. I want to peek at the back where it's rough and I'm tended and hungry we grow. A girl gets sick of a rose. I want to go in the backyard now and maybe down the alley to where the charity children play.

I want a good time today. They do some wonderful things. They have some wonderful fun. My mother sneers but I say it's fine how they don't have to go in a quarter to nine. My mother she tells me that Johnny may grow up to be a bad woman that George will be taken to jail soon or late on account of last winter he sold our back gate. But I say it's fine honest I do and I'd like to be a bad woman too and wear the brave stockings of night black lace and struck down the streets with paint on my face. And this one is called the preacher ruminates behind the sermon. And the inspiration for it is just sitting in church wondering what the minister is thinking as he says essentially the same things that he said the Sunday before Sunday for that.

So you think that he has time for some private thoughts of his own behind the sermon. I think it must be lonely to be God. Nobody loves a master no. Despite the bright hosannas bright dear Lord's and bright determined reverence of Sunday eyes a picture of Jehovah striding through the hall of his importance. Creatures running out from servant corners to work lying to shout appreciation of his merits but who walks with him dares to take his arm to slap him on the shoulder. Tweak his ear buy him a Coca-Cola or a beer to prove his politics. Call him a fool perhaps. Who know. He tires of looking down those eyes are never lifted never straight. Perhaps sometimes he tires of being great in solitude without a hand to hold.

And see. And this one is called Negro hero and it's to suggest Dorian Miller. I had to kick their law into their teeth in order to save them. However I have heard that sometimes you have to deal devilishly with a drowning man in order to swim them to shore or they will haul themselves and you to the trash and the fish beneath. When I think of this I do not worry about a few chipped teeth. It is good I gave glory it is good I put gold on their name or they would have been spikes in the afterword hands. But let us speak only of my success and the picture is in the Caucasian dailies as well as the negro weeklies for I am a gem. They are not concerned but it was hardly the enemy in my fight was against but

them it was a tall time. And of course my blood was boiling about in my head and straining and how a wing and singing me on. Of course I was rolled on wheels of my boyish to get at the gun. Of course all the delicate rehearsal shots of my childhood mast and Mirage before me. Of course I was child and my first swallow. Of the liquor of battle bleeding black hair dying and demon noise made me wild. It was kinder than that though and I showed like a banner my kindness. I loved and a man will guard when he loves their white down democracy was My Fair Lady with her knife lined call straight in the softness of her sweet flowing sleeve. But for the sake of the dear smiling mouth in the starter promise I toyed with my life. I threw back. I would not remember entirely the knife. Still am I good enough to die for them is my blood bright enough to be spilled was my

constant Back question. Are they clear on this or do I intrude even now. Am I clean enough to kill for them. Do they wish me to kill for them. Or is my place while death licks his lips and strides to them in the galleys still in a southern city a white man said. Indeed I would rather be dead. Indeed I'd rather be shot in the head or ridden to waste on the back of a flood and saved by the drop of a black man's blood. Naturally the important thing is I help to save them. Them and a part of their democracy. Even if I had to kick their law into their teeth in order to do that for them and I am feeling well and settled in myself because I believe it was a good job despite this possible horror that they might prefer the preservation of their law and all its dignity and there now I say to the continuation of their creed and their lives.

And this is call the white troops had their orders but the new girls look like men. And it's one of a series of soldier assignments which was in the back of that first book a street in Brownsville. They had supposed their formula was fixed. They had obeyed instructions to devise a type of cold a type of hooded gaze. But when the negroes came they were perplexed. These Negroes looked like men. Besides it taxed time and the temper to remember those congenital iniquities that cause disfavor of the darkness such as boxed their feelings properly complete to tags a box for dark men and a box for other would often find the contents had been scrambled or even switched. Who

really gave two theories neither the earth nor have an ever tramples. And there was nothing startling in the weather. Of course the soldiers wouldn't have said two figs but I did it. Yes. That was if the end of those that are read from a street in Brownsville and an eight hour I'll read two sonnets from a series of sonnets called the Children of the poor. What shall I give my children who are poor or who are adjudged the least wise of the land who are my sweetest lepers who demand no velvet and no velvet to the lure but who have begged me for a brisk contoured crime that they are quite sorry contraband

because unfinished graven by a hand less than angelic admirable are sure. My hand is stuffed with Moe designed device but I lack access to my proper stone and plenitude of planned shall not suffice nor grief nor love shall be enough alone to ratify my little have those who bear a cross and autumn freezing everywhere. My dears die for festival colored brightness that is their motion and mild repartee and chanted a macabre mockery. Charming the rainbow radiance and to tightness and to a remarkable politeness that is not kind and does not want to be. May not they in the crisp and counters see something to recognize and read as rightness. I say they may so granite lay discreet but little crooked questionings in-bound can see themselves on

most familiar ground. Coal. An old predicament of the breath. Adroit the shapely prefaces complete accept the University of death. And there are the poor desperate mother is wondering just how much death has to frighten her children because they have already experienced so many. She feels of the qualities of that state. Throughout these poems I was carrying one young woman. When we start and she's seven years old and she goes on through school years and marriage and disillusionments with marriage and she becomes a widow and she thinks about her children and wonders about their their futures and she thinks about herself and wonders about her future. And here she is

and being a bird that is U.S. is at her window a tree a light and diplomatic bird is lenient in my window tree. A quick dilemma believes discloses twist and tack to me who strangles his extremist need for pity of my eminence. Utmost ache and Walker CO is prosperous and proper science. He can abash his barman sides the fan to Cheney of his range pass over vast and secular and apt and admirably strange augmented by incorrigible conviction of his symmetry. He can't afford his day. He can't afford to pity me. Whose hours at best are sorbate ages lashed with riot red and black. Tabasco at the lapping waves searchlight in the secret cracked

open APA style like height and tell my hum how to start bird balance bleach and make miniature Valhalla of my heart. And this won the rights for cousin and it was written because I had a friend that time who died and she was such an exuberant sort of person that even as they were taking her casket out it just seemed as though she couldn't possibly be there must still be living carried her unprotesting out the door kicked back the casket stand. But it can't hold her that stuff and satin aiming to enfold her. The lid's contrition nor the bolts before. ALL TOO MUCH TOO MUCH. Even now surmise she rises in the sunshine. There she goes back to the bar she knew and the repose in love

rooms and the things in people's eyes too vital and too squeaking must emerge even now she does the snake hips with a hiss slops the bad wine across her Shantung talks of pregnancy guitars and bridgework walks in parks or alleys comes haply on the verge of happiness haply hysterics is. And this one is called Beverly Hill Chicago and I know there's a Beverly Hills Chicago wherever you go. But this particular section. My husband and I used to enjoy driving through when we were much younger and we had mired the mansion's there and thought how wonderful it must be to live there and the people who live there must be a little bit different. The Dr. Brown coughing beneath their feet only a while for the handy man is on his way. These people walk their Golden Gardens. We say ourselves

fortunate to be driving by today that we may look at them in their gardens where the summer ripeness arrives but not raggedly even the leaves fall down and lovelier patterns here and the refuse the refuse is a neat brilliancy when they flow sweetly into their houses with softness and slowness touched by that everlasting go. We know what they go to to tea but that does not mean they will throw some little black dots into some water and add sugar in the juice of the cheapest lemons that are so while downstairs that woman's vague phonograph bleats not me or kids. And the living all to be made again in the sweating is physical manner tomorrow. Not that anybody is saying that these people have no trouble merely that it is trouble with a gold flecked beautiful banners. Nobody is saying that these people do not also at least cease to be. And sometimes their passings are even more painful

than ours. It is just that so often they live till their hair is white. They make excellent corpses among the expensive flowers. Nobody is furious Nobody hates these people at least nobody driving by in this car. It is only natural however that it should occur to us how much more fortunate they are than we are. It is only natural that we should look and look at their wood and brick and stone and think while a breath of pine cones. How different these are from our own. We do not want them to have less. But it is only natural that we should think we have not enough. We drive on we drive on. When we speak to each other our voices are a little gruff. That song Not me a kiss I'm sure dates me irretrievably. And in the bay nadirs which was published in 1960 the

first in my little bow town gal. Featuring Roger of Rhodes. I was thinking here of the predicament of the negro male who too often cannot do what he would like to for his princess. My little bow town gal has gone about town with powder and blue dye on her pale lids and on her lips dyes sits quite permanently. I'm scarcely healthy hearted or human What can I teach my cheated woman. My town Delilah all my black blond will not be homing soon. None shall secure hers save the light. The detective fingers of the moon. I'm sure you all know what I mean by black wads while most of you will know it. And this one strong man riding horses and then after notice last year after the Western. Is the result of looking

at that cowboy picture on the television called Rawhide. And when this series was begun there were two very stalwart. Up looking young men on horses always look so straight and firm and as if nothing could ever conquer them. And I imagined a small. Gentleman Lester here and he happens to be a Negro but it could be anyone who feels less than the Cowboys. And I wonder just what he would think as he looked at such a picture. Strong men riding horses in the West on a range five hundred miles up dolls and reaching from dawn to sunset rested blue to orange from hope to climb. Except that strong men are desert I say except that strong men are pasted to stars already have their cars beneath them. Reckless

too. Too broad of chest to shrink when the rough man hails to fly a wing to redirect the Challenger when the challenge Nicks Sligh arms buttonholes to saddle. I am not white that I pay rent am addled by illegible landlords run if robbers call what mannerisms I present employ are camouflaged and what my mouth's remark to word wall that broadness of the Dar is pitiful. I am not brave at all. And this one is about drop out. We real cool the pool players 7 at the Golden shovel. We real cool we left school we learn we strike straight. We sing and we then gym we jazz Jhoom we die soon.

It will. Atl. Thank you. And I think how really the Chicago Defender sends a man to Little Rock. I've already found out Mr. Jones you know what the last line of this song but I'll be brave nevertheless and you can tear it to pieces way up. It's about. Well it was written in fall 1957 and Little Rock the people bare babes and comb and part their hair and watch them want ads put repair to roof and live while we toast burns. A woman waters mulcher firms time up holes or overturns the many and small concerns in Little Rock the people sing Sunday him like anything through Sunday

pomp and polishing and after Testament into some softened Sunday afternoons with lemon tea and Lorna Doone. I forecast and I believe come Christmas Little Rock will cleave to a Christmas tree and trifle. We from Lafon tensile texture of fast and Little Rock is baseball Barcarolle that hotness in July that uniformed figures are all an implacable and not intellectual battering the hotness or clawing the suffering dust. The open air concert on the special twilight agree when Beethoven is brutal or whispers to Lady like air blanket sitters are solemn as Johann troubles too lean to tell them what to mean. There is love too and Little Rock. Soft women softly opening themselves in kindness or pitying one's blindness awaiting one's pleasure and Azure glory with

anguish rose at the right to wash away all sand the discomfort yours they reteach purple and on solemn blue the wispy soils go an uncertain half have things have they clarified too sure and Little Rock they know not answering the telephone as a way of rejecting life that it is our business to be bothered is our business to cherish bores or boredom. They polite to lies and love and many faceted furze Innes. I scratch my head massage the hater head. I blink across my prim and pencil pad. The saga I was sent for is not down because there is a puzzle in this town. The biggest news I do not dare telegraph to the editor's chair. They are like people everywhere. The angry editor would reply and hundred Harrying of why Andrew they are hurling spittle raw garbage in fruit in Little

Rock. And I sall coiling storm a ride on bright Madonnas and a side of men harassing brownish girls the bows and barrettes and the curls and braids declined away from joy. I saw a bleeding brownish boy the lariat Lynch wish I deplored the loveliest when she was our Lord. And basically that. Here is one that. All other middle aged women in the audience if there are any who will admit to it will understand and perhaps sympathize with a sunset of the city. Kathleen I lean this speaking already I am no longer looked at with luxury or love. My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and balls are gone from the

house. My husband and lovers are pleasant are somewhat polite. And night is night. It is a real chill out. The genuine thing. I am not deceived. I do not think it is still summer because sun stays and birds continue to sing. It is summer gone that I see it is summer gone. The sweet flowers in driving and dying down the grasses for getting their blaze and consenting to Brown. It is a real chill out the Fall Chris comes. I am aware there is winter to heed. There is no warm house that is fitted with my needs. I am cold in this cold house this house whose washed echoes are tremulous down last halls. I am a woman and dusty standing among new affairs. I am a woman who hurries through her prayers. Tin intimations of acquired core to be my desert and my dear really come there shall be such an island being

from grief and small communion with the Master sure twining day and I am inclined this year to consult a dual dilemma whether to dry and humming power or to leap and dad somebody mucked it. Somebody wanted to joke a thing of do with Williams on his way to a Lincoln Cemetery. He was born in Alabama. He was bred in Illinois. He was nothing but applying a black boy Swing Low Swing Low Sweet Chariot nothing but a plain black car driving past the pool hall drive him past the show blind with an his casket. But maybe he will know down through 47 street underneath Yale and northwest

corner prairie that he loves so well. Don't forget the dance halls. Warwick and savoring where he picked his women where he drank his liquid joy. Born in Alabama bred in Illinois he was nothing but a flying black boy. Swing Swing Low Sweet Chariot nothing but a plain black Peter. I wonder if the elephant is lonely in his stall when all the boys and girls are gone and there is no shout at all and there is no one to stand there for no one to note his might as he hunched up as I do against the dark of night. That poem was originally to be a book Brownsville boys and girls and for some reason the editor left it out so when the next adult collection I sneaked it in but it really belongs with the children's

poems. The crazy woman I shall not sing on my song. My song should be gay. I'll wait until November and sing a song of gravy. I'll wait until November. That is the time for me. I'll go out in the frosty Dar and sing most terribly and all the little people will stare at me and say that is the crazy woman who would not sing in May. And I would. I was a crazy woman because I always did like fall better than summer. Oh Mary. My last defense is the present tense. It little hurts me now to know I shall not go Cathedral hunting in Spain nor Cherry in Michigan or Maine and she doesn't seem too sad

about this being the end of the road. The bean eaters they eat beans mostly. This whole yellow pear dinner is a casual affair plane trip wire on a plane and creaking would turn for one or two who are mostly good too who have lived there day but keep on putting on their clothes and putting things away and remembering remembering with twinkling eyes and whinges as they lean over the beans in their rented back room that is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths tobacco crumbs the vases and fringes. And may I read one of the children's poems which was named for my daughter and she's been begging me all day to please read this poem for her. So if you will bear with me I'll read one called

Nora. I was not sleeping when brothers said goodbye and laughed and teased my head and went white rockets out of the door as he has done most days before. But it was fun to curl between the white warm sheets and not be seen and stay a minute more alone keeping myself from my very own. 1. I think if you. Be so kind. One more children's farm out of here. It's about Marian Anderson. I think it might be that when I hear Marian Anderson saying I am a stuff kind of thing heart is like the flying air I cannot find it anywhere thing. I am home and warm and young and very old

but mostly I am a stuff less thing. When I hear Marian Anderson sing. And I read The Ballad of Rudolph. I don't know what your housing problems are here but in Chicago at least sometimes when Negroes move into an unbroken neighborhood Well there is quite a deal of trouble. And this poem is about such an experience. It's not based on any facts that I happen to know but there it is. Rudolph Reed was oak and his wife was oaken two and his two good girls on his good little man. Oakland As they grew. I am not hungry for berries. I am not hungry for bread but hungry hungry for a house or at night a man and bed. And they never hear the

plaster stirred as if in pain and they never hear the roaches falling like that rain. Never wife and children need go blinking through the gloom where every room of many rooms will be full of room. All my home may have its east or west or north or south behind it. All I know is I shall know it and fight for it when I find it. It was in a street of bitter white that he made his application for Rudolph read was all cleaner than others in the nation. The agents steep and steady stare corroded to a grin. Why you black hole tough all hell of a man move your family in. Nary a grin grin Rudolph read nary a curse Kirsty but moved in his house with his dark little wife and his dark little children. A neighbor would look with a yawning eye that squeezed into a slit. But the Rudolph reads and the children three

were too joyous to notice it for were they not ferment a home of their own. With Windows everywhere and a beautiful banister stair and a front yard for flowers and a backyard for grass. The first night a rock biggest tooth is the second Iraq biggest three. But nary a curse cursed Rudolph read the oaken as man could be. The third night a silvery ring of glass patience ached to endure but he looked an LOL small Mabel's blood was staining her gaze so pure. Then up did rise our Rudolph read and pressed the hand of his wife and went to the door with a 34 and a beastly butcher knife. He ran like a mad thing into the night and the words in his mouth were stinking. By the time he had heard his first white man he was no longer thinking. By the time he had heard his fourth white man Rudolph Reed was dead. His neighbors gathered and kicked his

corpse nigger his neighbor's small Mabel whimpered all night long for calling herself because her own. Mother did no thing but change the bloody goddess from a very lawn. It was from a very long poem called riders to the blood red rare. I'll read the last part. This is of course to honor the Freedom Riders and the Syrians and the walk ins and all of their their fellows and also those who are pleased to help them in their struggle. I recollect the latter Leeson live and labor that defile the bone that my blood and blood line all my climate My foster designers designed and disciplined. But my detention

and my massive stain and my distortion and my calvary I grind into a little light. Loren there most so live to read man's inhumanity and I remark my matter is not all man's chopped in China and India indented from Israel. What's Arab is resented. Europe candies custody and more. Behind my exposé I formalized my pity. I shall cite star and esteem. All that which is a woman human and hardly human. Democracy and Christianity recommends with me and I ride ride I ride on to the end where glowers my continuing Calvary. I my fellows and girls can you can sort solve our spread hands in this country for a love ride into a rare ready menagerie to fail

to flourish to wither or to when we lurch distribute we x stand begin. I am. Thank you. Now from this collection over here I would like to read a short story that I have in here very short called The Life of Lincoln West. The ugliest little boy that everyone ever saw. That is what everyone said even to his mother it was apparent when the blue apron nurse came into the northeast end of the maternity ward bearing his squeals and plump bottom looped up in a scant receiving blanket bending to pass the bundle carefully into the waiting mother hands

that this was no cute little ugliness. No slide baby waywardness that was going to inch away. As with baby fair baby girl and baby Spock read the pendulous lip the branching ears their eyes so wide and wild the vague vibrant Brown of the skin and most disturbing the great hair. These components of that look bespoke the sure fire the D grain. His father could not bear the sight of him. His mother high piled her pretty dyed hair and put him among her hairpins and sweethearts dance slippers torn paper roses. Although he was not less than that he was not more. As the little Lincoln grew uglier upward and out he began to understand that something was wrong. His little ways of trying to please his father the bringing of matches the jumping aside at warning sound of also

large and rushing stride. The smile that gave and gave and gave successful even Christmases and Easters were spoiled. He would be sitting at the family feasting table really delighting in the displays of mashed potatoes and the rich gold in fact crust of the ham. Or the festive fowl when he would look up. And find somebody feeling indignant about him. What a pity. What a pity. No love for one so loving the little Lincoln loved everybody. And it's the changing Caterpillar his much missing mother his kindergarten teacher his kindergarten teacher whose concern for him was composed of one part sympathy and two parts repulsion. The others ran up with their little drawings. He ran up with is. She tried to be as pleasant with him as with others but it was difficult for she was all beauty all daintiness all tiny vanilla with blue eyes and

fluffy sunny hair. One afternoon she saw him in the hall looking very bleak against the wall. It was strange because the bill had long since around and no other child was in sight. Pity flooded her. She buttoned her gloves and suggested cheerfully that she walked him home. She started out bravely holding him by the hand but she had not walked far before she regretted it. The little monkey must everyone look and clutching her hand like that literally pinching it. At seven the little Lincoln loved the brother and sister who moved next door. Handsome well-dressed charitable often to him. They enjoyed him because he was resourceful and made up games told stories. But when there are more acceptable friends came around they turned their handsome backs on him. He hated himself for responding gratefully to their later hireling hated himself for his feeling of

well-being when with them despite everything. He spent much time looking at himself in mirrors. What could be done. But there was no shrinking his head. There was no binding his ears don't touch me cried the little fairy like being in the playground. Her name was Norris and the many children were playing tag but when he caught her she recoiled jerked free and ran. It was like all the rainbow that ever was going off forever. All all the sparkling is in the sunset West. One day while he was yet seven a thing happened in the downtown movies with his mother a white man in the seat beside him whispered loudly to a companion and pointed at the Little Wing. There that's the kind I've been wanting to show you. One of the best examples of the species not like those deluded Negroes you see so much of on the streets

these days. But the real thing. Ugly and odd thing. His mother her dyed hair had never looked so red around the dark brown velvet of her face jumped up shrieked. Go to go. She did not finish. She yanked to his feet a little Lincoln who was sitting there staring in fascination at his assessors at the author of his new idea all the way home he was happy. Of course he had not like the word ugly. But after all should he not be used to that by now. What had struck him. Among words and meanings he could Little understand was the phrase the real thing. He didn't know quite why but he wiped there. He liked that very much. When he was hurt too much stared at too much left alone. He thought about that he told himself. After all I am the

real thing. It comforted him for almost four years. It meant a lot to him. It was.