May 16, 2012|By Reed Johnson and Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times

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File Photo

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Carlos Fuentes, Mexican Man of Letters, Dies at 83 | Anthony DePalma | May 15, 2012

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Muere Carlos Fuentes

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A PERSONAL AlYoung.org ASIDE

Whatever Carlos Fuentes wrote I gobbled up with ever-growing admiration and respect. Multilingual, the son of a diplomat, Fuentes had to decide whether he would write in English or Spanish. He chose Spanish. I loved those TV moments when Fuentes responded to his prejudiced Yankee political assailants in crisp, accentless, idiomatic American. He was a tireless fighter and spokesman for social justice, who respected and stuck up for the underdog, and who never sold out to anyone for anything.

In the late 1960s, when I was just beginning to publish, one bilingual venue friendly to writers in Spanish or English was El Corno Emplumado (The Plumed Horn), which billed itself as “A Magazine from Mexico City.” Co-edited by American-born Margaret Randall and Sergio Mondragón, her Mexican husband, El Corno with its global and culturally diverse perspective, was as exciting to read as it was unpredictable. I took pride in having my stuff come out alongside the work of such writers as Ernesto Cardenal, Philip Lamantia, Pablo Neruda, Diane Wakoski, Octavio Paz, Carol Bergé, Cid Corman, Raquel Jodorowsky, Robert Creeley, Carlos Pellicer, Denise Levertov, Dan Georgakas interviewing James Baldwin, and Carlos Fuentes. The list still staggers.

So when novelist-essayist-screenwriter Cecil Brown relocated from California to Paris in the late Sixties, one of the writers in his expatriate circle was Carlos Fuentes. When my name came up for discussion one night, Fuentes told Cecil: “Oh, yes, I know Al Young, he’s a good young writer.” It shocked and thrilled me to hear this from Cecil. Only in the pages of El Corno did Carlos Fuentes and I ever meet. Still, I loved him for acting as if he really did know me and my work. The stories we tell ourselves and one another! The great Carlos Fuentes was truly a master.

–Al Young

____________________________________________

© Ricardo Gutierrez | El País (Madrid)

Muere a los 83 años el escritor Carlos Fuentes

15 de mayo de 2012

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Welcome to San Francisco Peace and Hope, a literary journal devoted to poetry and visual art.

First Anniversary Poetry Reading for
San Francisco Peace & Hope

Open mic followed by featured readers

“Sign-up for the open mic begins at 7pm. The open mic begins as soon as that is over and a few announcements are made. So we are usually underway by 7:10 or 7:15. The feature usually goes on about an hour later.”
– Poet-host DAN BRADY

Sacred Grounds Café
7:00pm
2095 Hayes Street at Cole
SF 94117-1127
415.387.3859
map

Painter Elizabeth Hack, founding director and editor of
SAN FRANCISCO PEACE AND HOPE

_____________________________________________

featured readers

Café Cam

Al Young

Niya C. Sisk

|

Dan Brady | Marvin Hiemstra | Tanya Joyce
Kit Kennedy | Ken Saffran

San Francisco Peace and Hope is proud to announce a poetry reading celebrating the first anniversary of its magazine debut in San Francisco on June 6, 2012, featuring readings by AL YOUNG, , poet-host DAN BRADY, MARVIN HIEMSTRA, TANYA JOYCE, KIT KENNEDY, and KEN SAFFRAN. Founding editor ELIZABETH HACK and creative director NIYA C. SISK will comment on the evolution of SF Peace and Hope, and where the exciting online journal now stands.

Informed by the idealism of the 1960s, San Francisco Peace and Hope is a continuing labor of love produced by the poets and visual artists of the Bay Area. For the new edition — which launches Ftriday, May 18, 2012 — advisor Al Young, California’s former poet laureate, has updated his One Two-Step Foreword. Writer and web designer Niya C. Sisk of Ritual Labs and Niya’s Place, has freshened the journal’s cool look.

Contact: Elizabeth Hack, Founder/Editor
Email: sfpeaceandhope@gmail.com
Website: sfpeaceandhope.com

Sacred Grounds Café | 415.387.3859

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Photo: Kindness of Strangers

In the flickering December light of 2010, following a late Rockridge luncheon devoted to SF Peace and Hope’s launch, Elizabeth Hack, Niya C. Sisk, and Al Young smile for their savvy waitress.

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]]> http://alyoung.org/2012/05/12/first-anniversary-sf-peace-and-hope-reading-sacred-grounds-cafe-june-6-730pm/feed/ 0 http://alyoung.org/2012/05/08/in-memory-of-jimmy-lynn-1924-2011/ http://alyoung.org/2012/05/08/in-memory-of-jimmy-lynn-1924-2011/#comments Wed, 09 May 2012 06:52:42 +0000 Al http://alyoung.org/?p=31292 __________________________________________________

Al Young

Jimmy at home in 2006

Al Young

Mountain View Cemetery, Piedmont, CA

Sandy Simon

Jimmy Lynn (James Curl Lynn), a friend of Al Young, is interred in a crypt beside his mother’s at Mountain View Cemetery in Piedmont, California. An only child, Jimmy took care of Rachel Fuller, his schoolteacher mother — at first on Long Island, then in Oakland — for her last 12 years.

Al Young and Jimmy Lynn at the popular Berkeley Bowl in the summer of 2005.

__________________________________________________

THE HOUSE ON DANA STREET

(from Med Café Stories)

He, the new young man never knew
what to make of Jimmy Lynn’s house
on Dana Street in Berkeley,
writers coming and going, mostly blacks,
talking revolution never tired of
talking about what it was all about
being black
what the whites did to the blacks.
We got those college degrees, yeah!
Some writing movie scripts, some
writing poetry, some doing it all,
Al Young sitting late night on a stool
at the kitchen counter, paying respect
to his older friend,     Al was relaxed,
while Jimmy was in motion,
Al listening to Jimmy telling it like it is.
Listening closely to Jimmy’s paranoia
which as it turned out,
we said one by one, “it wasn’t paranoia,
it was hieroglyphics on the wall.”
World politics vindicated Jimmy.

At Jimmy’s house, some writing novels,
some writing plays, Big Herb
Handsome, devilish, and trailing a
King’s robe behind him.
“Won’t you come in and have a cup of tea
I’ll tell you about my play,
The Day of the Nigger.
Let me explain the storyline, it’s the
day all the white people are killed
except, of course, some women.”
He grinned.
Jimmy, an intellectual who supported his art life
working on the docks,
gave free room and board to one young man,
“until you get a place,” he said.
The new border, light-skinned, ethereal, smiled
dreamily;  was he listening?  to urgent discussions in
this Parisian Left Bank on Dana?
While they talked revolution, the young man’s soul
whispered dreamily,     “Lena Horne   Lena Horne”
He was inside his own song and sweetly melancholic
as if he knew then he would later die young.

When I met him, he was floating, flute in hand
into the Med Café, speaking in rhyme, keeping time.
Some thought it odd but all thought him beautiful, with
sea green eyes and gold skin.
I couldn’t understand his words but sat with him
xxupstairs
where the blacks sat at the Med if not at Robbie’s.
The new boarder dreamily wafted in and out
of the Dana Street flat, like a mirage,
like a collage on the wall,
to be viewed or ignored by writers, musicians, artists,
smoking pot, making movies, talking about Camus as if
the subject was inexhaustible.
Jimmy let him stay there, saying wistfully,
“I just wish the young man would pick up his socks
and underwear from the floor.”
“But he’s so beautiful,” I said.
The young man overhearing, smiled sadly,
“Yes, of course, I am beautiful.
My mother is LENA HORNE!”

– JESSE BEAGLE
from Poetry In Jazz: Selected Writings 1987-2011
(Beatitude Press | Berkeley, CA)

© 2011 Jesse Beagle

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]]> http://alyoung.org/2012/05/08/in-memory-of-jimmy-lynn-1924-2011/feed/ 1 http://alyoung.org/2012/04/04/adrienne-rich-may-16-1929-%e2%80%93-march-27-2012-in-memoriam/ http://alyoung.org/2012/04/04/adrienne-rich-may-16-1929-%e2%80%93-march-27-2012-in-memoriam/#comments Wed, 04 Apr 2012 13:22:11 +0000 Al http://alyoung.org/?p=30770 ________________________________________________

© Lillian Kemp

SONG

You’re wondering if I’m lonely:
OK then, yes, I’m lonely
as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean.

You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely

If I’m lonely
it must be the loneliness
of waking first, of breathing
dawns’ first cold breath on the city
of being the one awake
in a house wrapped in sleep

If I’m lonely
it’s with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is, that knows it’s neither
ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning

© Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich at a Glance (5:58)

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www.gov.ca.gov

Juan Felipe Herrera Named California Poet Laureate by Governor Brown

UC Riverside Professor a renowned poet

Published: 03-22-2012 | California Arts Council

Photo © Randy Vaughn-Dotta

Governor Jerry Brown has appointed Juan Felipe Herrera as the California Poet Laureate. Herrera, 63, is the author of 28 books and currently serves as the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside. He was a professor and chair of Chicano and Latin American Studies at California State University, Fresno, from 1990 to 2004 and a teaching assistant fellow at the renowned Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa from 1988 to 1990. Herrera’s work has received wide critical acclaim, including numerous national and international awards. The appointment requires Senate confirmation.

The mission of the California Poet Laureate is to advocate for the art of poetry in classrooms and boardrooms across the state, to inspire an emerging generation of literary artists, and to educate all Californians about the many poets and authors who have influenced our great state through creative literary expression.

GOVERNOR’S PRESS RELEASE

The California Arts Council manages the nomination process for the California Poet Laureate as established by law. After a call to the general public for nominations, applications are reviewed by an expert peer panel to narrow the number. Panel recommendations are sent to the Governor’s office for additional vetting. The Governor makes the final selection and names the California Poet Laureate, who must be confirmed by the Senate.

MORE ON THE ROLE OF THE CALIFORNIA POET LAUREATE and of the California Arts Council

The California Arts Council and AlYoung.org congratulate Mr. Herrera.

_______________________________________________________

Book-banning has a distasteful history. Catholic priests burned Mayan books in 1562, Nazi Germany banned 4,100 or so books from 1933 to 1939.

— Winona LaDuke
(“To the Women of the World: Our Future, Our Responsibility,” an essay)

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Debate: Tucson School’s Book Ban After Suspension of Mexican American Studies Program, Pt. 1
<Democracy Now>

Debate: Tucson School’s Book Ban After Suspension of Mexican American Studies Program Pt. 2
<Democracy Now>

_____________________________________________________

Courtesy Salon.com

Friday, Jan 13, 2012 2:47 PM PST

Who’s afraid of ‘The Tempest’?

Arizona’s ban on ethnic studies proscribes Mexican-American history, local authors, even Shakespeare

BY JEFF BIGGERS
Salon.com

As part of the state-mandated termination of its ethnic studies program, the Tucson Unified School District released an initial list of books to be banned from its schools today.  According to district spokesperson Cara Rene, the books “will be cleared from all classrooms, boxed up and sent to the Textbook Depository for storage.”

Facing a multimillion-dollar penalty in state funds, the governing board of Tucson’s largest school district officially ended the 13-year-old program on Tuesday in an attempt to come into compliance with the controversial state ban on the teaching of ethnic studies.

The list of removed books includes the 20-year-old textbook Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, which features an essay by Tucson author Leslie Silko.  Recipient of a Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award and a MacArthur Foundation genius grant, Silko has been an outspoken supporter of the ethnic studies program.

“By ordering teachers to remove ‘Rethinking Columbus,’ the Tucson school district has shown tremendous disrespect for teachers and students,” said the book’s editor Bill Bigelow. “This is a book that has sold over 300,000 copies and is used in school districts from Anchorage to Atlanta, and from Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine. It offers teaching strategies and readings that teachers can use to help students think about the perspectives that are too often silenced in the traditional curriculum.”

© 2012 by Jeff Biggers | Salon.com

>>> To read Jeff Biggers’ full  Salon.com account of Tucson’s heinous book ban, click here >>>

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Authors on Tucson’s Mexican-American Studies Banned Book List Respond

Courtesy COLORLINES.com

Colorlines

By JORGE RIVAS,
Tuesday, January 31 2012, 10:05 AM EST

Go to the original

Arizona’s ban on the Mexican American Studies curriculum used in Tucson high schools went into effect on January 1st. Several authors who are on the banned list have made statements.

“Administrators told Mexican-American studies teachers to stay away from any class units where ‘race, ethnicity and oppression are central themes,’”Jeff Biggers wrote on Salon.com.

That list of banned books includes Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Rethinking Columbus, Critical Race Theory, Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Chicano!: the History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement.

The Progressive has compiled responses from authors included in the ban including Sherman Alexie, Winona La Duke, and Junot Diaz.

Alexie’s book “The Lone Ranger and Tonto’s Fist Fight in Heaven,” was on the banned curriculum of the Mexican American Studies Program. An excerpt from his response via The Progressive:

Let’s get one thing out of the way: Mexican immigration is an oxymoron. Mexicans are indigenous. So, in a strange way, I’m pleased that the racist folks of Arizona have officially declared, in banning me alongside Urrea, Baca, and Castillo, that their anti-immigration laws are also anti-Indian. I’m also strangely pleased that the folks of Arizona have officially announced their fear of an educated underclass. You give those brown kids some books about brown folks and what happens? Those brown kids change the world. In the effort to vanish our books, Arizona has actually given them enormous power. Arizona has made our books sacred documents now.

Winona LaDuke responded on the Indian Country Today Network, an excerpt below:

My essay “To the Women of the World: Our Future, Our Responsibility” was also included in the book. Interestingly enough, if I were going to ban one of my essays from a public school, this would probably not be the one. The essay is the transcript of my opening plenary address to the United Nations Conference on the Status of Women in 1995, held in Bejing, China. Other books and writings banned include those by famed Brazilian educator Paulo Friere and, in a multiracial censorship move, Shakespeare’s The Tempest was also banned.

Book-banning has a distasteful history. Catholic priests burned Mayan books in 1562, Nazi Germany banned 4,100 or so books from 1933 to 1939.

Junot Diaz’s book “Drown” was also part of the banned curriculum of Mexican American Studies. Diaz won the Pulitzer prize for “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” His response to the Progressive is below:

This is covert white supremacy in the guise of educational standard-keeping—nothing more, nothing less. Given the sharp increase of anti-Latino rhetoric, policies, and crimes in Arizona and the rest of the country, one should not be surprised by this madness and yet one is. The removal of those books before those students’ very eyes makes it brutally clear how vulnerable communities of color and our children are to this latest eruption of cruel, divisive, irrational, fearful, and yes racist politics. Truly infuriating. And more reason to continue to fight for a just society.

© 2012 COLORLINES.com

_____________________________________________________

from AMERICAN INDIANS IN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE (AICL)

Edited and compiled by Debbie Reese

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

AICL Coverage of Arizona Law that resulted in shut down of Mexican American Studies Program and Banning of Books

This is a comprehensive set of links to AICL’s coverage of the Arizona law that led to the shut down of the Mexican American Studies Program in Arizona and the subsequent banning of books used in the program. It will be updated as my coverage continues. My primary source of developments is David Abie Morales, a blogger in Tucson who writes The Three Sonorans.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

• Teaching critical thinking in Arizona: NOT ALLOWED

• Mexican American Studies Department Reading List

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

• Authors banned in Tucson Unified School District respond

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

• Copies of books in TUSD Libraries?

• “Reports of TUSD book ban completely false and misleading”

• TUSD vs The Tempest: To teach or not to teach

Thursday, January 19, 2012

• What Mark Stegeman said…

• What Huppenthal said…

Friday, January 20, 2012

• Three of the banned books were approved in 2007, but not properly?!

• Video: What Huppenthal saw

• National Association of Multicultural Education responds to closing of Mexican American Studies Program

Saturday, January 21, 2012

• A Sampling of Children’s Books used in the Mexican American Studies Program

• Dear Editors at the New York Times

Sunday, January 22, 2012

• ALA Midwinter Discussions of Tucson Ban of Mexican American Studies Covered by CNN

• Progressive Librarian’s Guild: Statement of Censorship and the Tucson Unified School District

Monday, January 23, 2012

• Stegeman’s January 22, 2012 letter

• Tweeting Tucson Events

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

• Curtis Acosta’s Letter

Friday, January 27, 2012

• Nationwide Responses to the shut-down of the Mexican American Studies Department

Saturday, January 28, 2012

• Updates regarding shut-down (includes Curtis Acosta’s letter “Behind the Curtain” and video interviews of middle school students who walked out of school on Tuesday)

Sunday, January 29, 2012

• Chris Crutcher on Matt de la Pena’s Book Being Banned: “This is racism, plain and simple.”

Monday, January 30, 2012

• Arizona School Censorship Hit by Salvo of Protest from Free Speech Orgs and Educators

• Statement in Opposition to Book Censorship in the Tucson Unified School District

• TUSD Superintendent Pedicone Scolds University Professors

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

• American Indian Library Association’s Statement on Ethnic Studies Programs in Arizona

Thursday, February 2, 2012

• Go to the NO HISTORY IS ILLEGAL website (art/photo of teen using bullhorn to read aloud from Sherman Alexie’s Ten Little Indians

Friday, February 3, 2012

• Live Stream: Teach-In on Tucson with MAS Teachers

• TUSD Board Member, Michael Hicks: “if you do not trust your employee, you need to remove the employee.”

Monday, February 6, 2012

• What did Curtis Acosta teach in his Mexican American Studies course? (Answer: Barack Obama’s 2004 DNC speech)

Friday, February 10, 2012

• Debbie Reese reads from Delgado and Stefancic’s CRITICAL RACE THEORY

Sunday, February 12,  2012

• Critical Thinking about Thanksgiving: Not allowed in Tucson

Saturday, February 18, 2012

• Arizona Legislation to “prohibit public school teachers from using partisan books or any partisan doctrine”

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

• Short Stories, Essays, Speeches, Poems, and Music Banned in TUSD

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012

• Sherman Alexie, New Bills Proposed in Arizona, Citizens United

Thursday, February 23rd, 2012

• Yale University holds Teach-In; Former MAS Students Skype In

Friday, February 24th, 2012

• February 23rd update from Curtis Acosta

_________________________________

Additional information outside of AICL:

For insider updates from Tucson, read these blogs (on a daily basis):

• David Abie Morales at The Three Sonorans at Tucson Citizen

• David Safier at Blog for Arizona

Tuesday, January 24, 2012:

• American Library Association Resolution Opposing Restriction of Access to Materials and Open Inquiry in Ethnic and Cultural Studies Programs in Arizona, and a link to HB 2654 referenced in the ALA resolution, Arizona House Bill 2654

• Arizona Congressman Grijalva urges investigation of Arizona law

Wednesday, January 25, 2012:

• CNN is reporting that Norma Gonzales, a teacher who taught in the MAS program, has been reassigned to teach American history and was asked to teach out of a textbook that says the Tohono O’odham tribe mysteriously disappeared. She has two Tohono O’odham students in her class. Among the books no longer being taught in the shut down MAS program is Ofelia Zepeda’s Ocean Power. Zepeda is Tohono O’odham, teaches in the American Indian Studies program at the University of Arizona, and won a MacArthur Genius Grant.

Monday, January 30, 2012:

• The “Joint Statement in Opposition to Book Censorship in the Tucson Unified School District” coordinated by the National Coalition Against Censorship

Efforts to support Mexican American Studies teachers and students:

• Donate to Save Ethnic Studies

• Librotraficante Caravan from Houston to Tucson

• Sign the petition at Save Ethnic Studies and receive updates from them

______________________________

To order a copy of Precious Knowledge, a documentary of the Mexican American Studies program (view trailer here):

1. Send an email to preciousknowledgedvd@gmail.com

2. Send a check made out to DOS VATOS PRODUCTIONS to:

Dos Vatos Productions

4029 E. Camino de la Colina

Tucson, AZ 85711

The DVD is priced as follows—Individual: $28, Community Group, High School, Public Library, Non-profit: $40, University and public performance rights: $200

© 2012 American Indians in Children’s Literature

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CONTEMPLATING THE ARIZONA BOOK BAN

By Ernie McCray

“I’m a native Tucsonan (Born April 18, 1938 at St. Mary’s Hospital) who has lived in San Diego since 1962, working with children as a teacher, vice-principal, principal. I retired from San Diego City Schools in 1999 but I’ve continued working with young people in the areas of drama, writing prose and poetry, playwriting, and movement. I’m a father, grandfather, great grandfather, husband, athlete, and community activist who rises everyday to do what I can to make the world a better place. Working with children makes that a somewhat easy task as they are game for anything.” [Mr. McCray, former Arizona Wildcat, is also a basketball legend  -- A.Y.]

There’s this book ban
in Arizona
which is supposedly
in the USA
where book banning
isn’t supposed to take place
but they went on and did it anyway.

And it happened “quicker than
you can say,
Jack Robinson,”
an idiom
from a long ago day.

Here’s a play by play.
First there was
SB1070
that they say
was to get a hold
on immigration
aka
Harass a Mexican
to make your day.

And before you could yawn
and say: “What’s going on?”
Mexican American Studies
was gone.
And the book banning
came along
like lyrics
free versed
in a rap song.

Lawd, have mercy,
something’s gone
way wrong.
When I took
a look
at the books
on the list
that Arizona doesn’t want to exist,
I wondered,
“Am I stoned?”
It was chilling
to my old bones.
I counted 88.
And according to the
Grand Canyon State,
William Shakespeare’s
“The Tempest”
doth not appeareth too great!
And it blew my mind
to find
James Baldwin’s
“Fire Next Time”
as that book
was as essential
as oxygen
in the development
of my Colored, Negro, Black, African American
social and political mind.
Because of cats like James
I ain’t the least bit blind.
And Paolo Freire,
my main man,
loving mentor to the oppressed,
blessed with the gift to help a people in distress rise like birds lifting to the skies, on to hopes and dreams, banned.
Ain’t that a trip?
Cast aside
by people who’s brains
are made of “Yee! Ha!” and rawhide.
Alongside Howard Zinn,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
our long time friend,
who hipped us
to a People’s History.
Jonathon Kozol
who exposed before us all
the Savage Inequalities,
in our communities,
in our society,
inequities
to which our schools give root.
And those fools
Fahrenheit 451?d
Zoot Suit
and other Luis Valdez plays
that help folks
understand their roots,
their pachuconess,
their vatoness,
their eseness,
their chicaness…;
And down, too,
went Culture Clash.
They flatout don’t want
young Chicanos
to think and laugh.
Oh, man, that’s a gas.
It’s like a mass dash
to bash what they see as the underclass.
And what’s their fear of
“Like Water for Chocolate?”
an immaculate love story
of tense human emotions,
intertwined with food and
recipes and Mexican traditions…

The powers-that-be
simply cannot tolerate imagery
wherein brown children
learn the wonders
of their culture,
who they are,
where they’ve been,
how they’ve come
to the various situations
they find themselves in.
But the powers-that-be
are a bit tardy
because the children
are already
Rethinking Columbus
and the sins
perpetrated against them,
like the one they’re
wrapped up in in this very second.
They already know the truth.
They’ve had Chicano Studies.
Recuerdo?
They live what they’ve learned,
loving life,
feeling good about themselves,
giving to their world,
as that’s what their learning
has concentrated on.
So, powers-that-be,
your hateful ugly grandiose plan
to keep Mexican Americans
from living free
is pretty much over and done.
The Chicanos will win
because when a people
are up on their feet
trekking on a path to full liberty,
a path to a life of dignity,
they can’t help but overcome.
That’s Pursuit of Freedom 101.

Watch out, Arizona!

© 2012 Ernie McCray | From the Soul: An Old Sonoran’s Take on the World

_____________________________________________________

© Asterie Tecson | WSWS

The death of Whitney Houston

Hiram Lee
February 13, 2012
World Socialist Web Site

One receives the news of Whitney Houston’s death at the age of 48 with genuine sadness. Houston was a tremendous singer, whose best performances contained a vibrancy and larger-than-life quality, which endeared her to millions of listeners. Her death at a young age is a tragedy.

Houston’s body was discovered in the bathroom of her Beverly Hilton Hotel room in Los Angeles on Saturday, February 11. The cause of death has yet to be determined, but drugs or alcohol are suspected to have played a role. Houston had been struggling with addiction for years and there were reports that the singer was behaving erratically in the days leading up to Sunday’s Grammy Awards ceremony. She was clearly a troubled individual in need of serious help.

©2012 WSWS.org

>>> Read all of Hiram Lee’s reflective obituary of Whitney Houston as it appeared at the World Socialist Web Site. >>>

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YouTube

Saving All My Love for You

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]]> http://alyoung.org/2012/02/13/in-memory-of-whitney-elizabeth-houston-august-9-1963-february-11-2012/feed/ 1 http://alyoung.org/2012/02/01/langston-hughes-page-restored/ http://alyoung.org/2012/02/01/langston-hughes-page-restored/#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:00:40 +0000 Al http://alyoung.org/?p=11476

Such was the blues
of Langston Hughes xxxx
What was the blues
of Langston Hughes?

Like democracy, this page is always under reconstruction

___________________________________________________

africawithin.com

“My chief literary influences have been Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman. My favorite public figures include Jimmy Durante, Marlene Dietrich, Mary McLeod Bethune, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marian Anderson and Henry Armstrong … I live in Harlem, New York City. I am unmarried. I like ‘Tristan,’ goat’s milk, short novels, lyric poems, heat, simple folk, boats and bullfights; I dislike ‘Aida,’ parsnips, long novels, narrative poems, cold, pretentious folk, buses and bridges.”
– Langston Hughes
(Twentieth Century Authors: A Biographical Dictionary)

___________________________________________________

2012

___________________________________________________
-

Clarence Lang named 2011 Langston Hughes Visiting Professor

Courtesy The Oread

When one looks at African American social movements of the 20th century, the political motivations and leaders of those efforts naturally come to mind. Clarence Lang, the 2011 Langston Hughes Visiting Professor, works to look deeper at such movements, to find out how they were informed by the every day activities of working class African Americans …

>>> Click here to read the whole story >>>

___________________________________________________

Langston Hughes in 1925

Langston Hughes in 1939

Photographs by Carl Van Vechten

Langston Hughes in 1940

Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.
–Langston Hughes
(“Democracy”)

Clickable

Langston Hughes

February 1, 1902~May 22, 1967

Courtesy photo

A pack of smokes, a desk, a lamp, a typewriter, a telephone, and a nimble-fingered Langston Hughes

Courtesy photo

James P. Johnson | 1894-1955 Master stride pianist and Harlem composer of “Carolina Shout” and “The Charleston,”"You’ve Got to Be Modernistic,” “Snowy Morning Blues,” symphonic scores, and further classics.

SNOWY MORNING BLUES

in tribute to James P. Johnson & Langston Hughes

New York, you know, has its New Yorks,
Manhattan her Queens, the Bronx
keepers of flames with all their names intact.
Now that’s a fact. Upside it, though,
you’ll put your heart and everything
you know or thought you knew of snow.

When Snowy Morning Blues plays James P. Johnson’s
game of catch-me-if-you-can, you can. He could, too.
New York ain’t no last word, you know.
Nothing’s what it used to be. And you, the you who sees
out past the end of the world, this snow, this wee wind-
fall he fells us with under eaves the way we all fall
under suspicion in detective movies.
Blam! Blame it on the blues, blame it on a blizzard.

Diamonded, grounded in its ice cream crisscross,
snow makes you take to the country again, harmonica in hand,
craving the guitar of a pianistic You-Gotta-Be-Modernistic
genius — you can’t get into this. Let snow tell its own story.
Let the blues roll on. Let snow fall right on time this time
blue, blank, blackening the city-within-a-city christened
in Dutch: Harlem, Haarlem,
Haaaarrrrrlem.
Vermeer, beware.

Al Young

© 2001, 2006 and 2007 by Al Young

from The Sound of Dreams Remembered: Poems 1990-2000; reprinted in Something About the Blues: An Unlikely Collection of Poetry

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Historic photo

Langston Hughes in Lawrence, Kansas: Photographs & Biographical Resources
by Denise Low and T.F. Pecore Weso

Langston Hughes, the great American poet who inspired the Harlem Renaissance, spent most of his childhood in Lawrence, Kansas. Authors Denise Low and T.F. Pecore Weso assemble photos & new research about Lawrence sites associated with Langston Hughes. Hughes lived with his grandmother in Lawrence much of the time from his birth in 1902 until his grandmother’s death in 1915. Because of the efforts of Lawrence preservationists, many of the structures are still standing.

LANGSTON HUGHES at PAL
(Perspectives in American Literature):
A Research and Reference Guide
An Ongoing Project
© Paul P. Reuben

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Langston Hughes, the busboy-poet, Washington, DC, early 1920s

« Read the 1967 NY Times obituary account of how busboy on-duty Langston Hughes got “discovered” after he slipped three poems under poet Vachel Lindsay’s luncheon plate at the Wardman Park Hotel, where young Hughes worked. »

Visit the website of DC’s Busboys and Poets, a restaurant, bookstore, fair trade market and gathering place, where people can discuss issues of social justice and peace. Each Busboys and Poets location should enhance the community — allowing us to bring together a diverse clientele reflective of the surrounding neighborhoods. Busboys and Poets creates an environment where shared conversations over food and drink allow the progressive, artistic and literary communities to dialogue, educate and interact. Busboys and Poets is a community gathering place.

First established in 2005, Busboys and Poets was created by owner Anas “Andy” Shallal, an Iraqi-American artist, activist and restaurateur. After opening, the flagship location at 14th and V Streets, NW (Washington DC), the neighboring residents and the progressive community, embraced Busboys, especially activists opposed to the Iraq War. Busboys and Poets is now located in three distinctive neighborhoods in the Washington Metropolitan area and is a community resource for artists, activists, writers, thinkers and dreamers.

BRASS SPITTOONS

by Langston Hughes

Clean the spittoons, boy.
Detroit,
Chicago,
Atlantic City,
Palm Beach.
Clean the spittoons.
The steam in hotel kitchens,
And the smoke in hotel lobbies,
And the slime in hotel spittoons:
Part of my life.
Hey, boy!
A nickel,
A dime,
A dollar,
Two dollars a day.
Hey, boy! A nickel,
A dime,
A dollar, Two dollars
Buys shoes for the baby.
House rent to pay.
Gin on Saturday,
Church on Sunday.
My God!
Babies and gin and church and women and
Sunday all mixed up with dimes and dollars
and clean spittoons and house rent to pay.
Hey, boy!
A bright bowl of brass is beautiful to the Lord,
Bright polished brass like the cymbals
Of King David’s dancers,
Like the wine cups of Solomon.
Hey, boy!
A clean spittoon on the altar of the Lord.
A clean bright spittoon all newly polished –
Come ‘ere boy!

© Estate of Langston Hughes

This spittoon-shaped poem first appeared in New Masses, December 1926; reprinted in Fine Clothes to the Jew, 1927.

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Al Young comments:
Reading in my late teens I Wonder As I Wander — Langston Hughes’ autobiographical follow-up to The Big Sea – I was enthralled and inspired by the tales he weaves of his travels throughout the U.S., Mexico, Cuba, Europe, the USSR, Soviet Asia, and China. One of Hughes’ lingering memoirs describes a voyage that he and 20 other African Americans took to Russia during the Great Depression to make a movie called Black and White. While his 1956 account of this episode does not match up with documents lately uncovered in the U.S. and in Russia, Hughes’ socio-romantic flashback lives on in imagination. This sunny picture invites us to peer into the faces of some amazingly contemporary-looking passengers, who made that fabled crossing: Langston Hughes with his friends aboard the Europa-Bremen, June 17, 1932. Seated front center from left to right are Louise Thompson Patterson and Dorothy West. On board ship was also Ralph Bunche, who was visiting Paris with Alain Locke.

Photograph courtesy of Yale University Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Hughes poses with neighborhood kids in the cramped, flowering confines of what they called “Our Block’s Childrens Garden” — and long before seed-leasing and genetic modification became commonplace.

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AVAILABLE BOOKS BY LANGSTON HUGHES ~ Compiled by Google

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AP Photo

Langston Hughes testifies before the House Un-American Activities Committee, 26 March 1953. Hughes was forced to appear before the House of Un-American Activities. He refused to name the names of other radicals and denied he had ever been a member of the American Communist Party, but he did agree to let particular poems drift from his active repertoire.

• POLITICS AND POETRY Hughes viewed through the prism of Red Scare America
  Excerpt from The Life of Langston Hughes, Volume II (1941-1967)
  © 1988, 1989, 2002 by Arnold Rampersad

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© Roy DeCarava

SHIRLEY EMBRACING SAM, 1952

Gelatin Silver Print by Roy DeCarava

Nothing in black and white to decipher, no diction
to master, just the tenderest picture – pur fiction.
While Captain Marvel’s alter ego shouted “Shazam!”
Shirley was throwing her arms around Sam.
Not only this: her fresh-done air deserves a kiss,
too, just because a hug, well, how can you miss
your target when you know you know your man?
Sam, he looks like he might have some other plan
up that soft, slow sleeve he is suddenly knuckling.

To keep their domestic economy from buckling,
Korea waged war on Korea. General Ike held forth,
while America glazed over her own South-North
struggle. “Are you now or have you ever been?”
Senator Joseph McCarthy, ugly as homemade sin,
asked over and over and over again. “You can tell
just by looking at him,” Shirley told Sam. “Hell,”
Sam said, “I can tell he prejudiced by the way he talk.
He knows who to strike out, he knows who to walk.”

On some jukebox down the street Roy Hamilton sang
“You’ll Never Walk Alone.” The new song rang
up through the window and rested on Sam’s mind.
Just back happy from his Saturday morning grind
(a job is a job is a job), he’s gotten home early,
even to his own delight. And there stood Shirley,
fragrant, glad to see him again, to have him to herself
for the rest of the weekend. There on a dusted shelf
in the next room, the kitchen, next to the dream-book,
she’s got two tickets for them. Tonight she’ll cook
his favorite supper: meatloaf, rice and butterbeans.

Tonight they’ll duck out on these domestic scenes
their pal Roy DeCarava likes to hang out and shoot.
They’ll put on the dog, get up off some loot,
sip them some Four Roses, some cold Champ Ale.
The dress in the closet she bought at that sale,
Shirley will put the thing on and let her hair down.
Clean, these two have been known to clown.
They’ll go out and party, catch them some Dinah –
the hell with Korea, the U.S., McCarthy, Red China!
Did Shirley go curl her hair just for Sam? Partly.
Will they miss church tomorrow? No, not hardly.

Al Young
© 2001 and 2006 by Al Young

from Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons: Poems 2001-2006 reprinted in Something About the Blues: An Unusual Collection of Poetry Commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, this poem was composed to celebrate the beautiful, yea-saying spirit of “Shirley Embracing Sam,” one of the many Roy DeCarava photographs that illustrate Langston Hughes’ text for The Sweet Flypaper of Life, a book for younger readers published after the poet’s death.

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Associated Press

Poets Marianne Moore and Langston Hughes, New York 1952

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Gwendolyn Brooks with Langston Hughes, promoting The Poetry of the Negro (1746-1949), Chicago 1949
Courtesy University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaigne

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Snapshot of Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes and James Baldwin

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Partial draft typescript of “Harlem” with the poet’s handwritten corrections
Courtesy Kennedy Center

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In 1958, in sessions produced by Leonard Feather, Langston Hughes recorded some of his poetry with one band led by Charles Mingus, and another led by trumpeter Henry Red Allen.
Click here to sample Langston Hughes reading ‘Consider Me’ with the Mingus ensemble

• Critic Alan Kurz’s review of Consider Me, a portion of the Hughes/Mingus collaboration

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Langston Hughes on his Harlem doorstep, 1958
Courtesy Columbia University

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© Carl Van Vechten

Langston Hughes — the suave Ellingtonian, circa 1959

DINNER GUEST: ME

I know I am
The Negro Problem
Being wined and dined,
Answering the usual questions
That come to white mind
Which seeks demurely
To Probe in polite way
The why and wherewithal
Of darkness U.S.A. —
Wondering how things got this way
In current democratic night,
Murmuring gently
Over fraises du bois,
“I’m so ashamed of being white.”

The lobster is delicious, The wine divine,
And center of attention
At the damask table, mine.
To be a Problem on Park Avenue at eight
Is not so bad.
Solutions to the Problem,
Of course, wait.

Langston Hughes
© Estate of Langston Hughes

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Draft typescript facsimile: The Ballad of Booker T.

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A GAY PERSPECTIVE

Bronze Buckaroo’s remarkable blog: The Life of Langston Hughes

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Langston Hughes’ liner notes for the 78 rpm album, Josh White Sings Easy (1943)

Josh White as drawn by David Stone Martin
Visit Stefan Wirz’s stunning German-based music site for an extensive Josh White discography compiled by Wirz and featured on the web site of Josh White, Jr.

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Langston Hughes by Gordon Parks

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Click here to read all of Steve Smith’s New York Times review of Langston Hughes’ Ask Your Mama

© Ari Mintz for the New York Times

L~R: Tracie Luck and Jessye Norman in “Ask Your Mama!” at Carnegie Hall in March of 2009

Music Review | ‘Ask Your Mama!’

Playing Langston Hughes’s Jazzy Verse

By STEVE SMITH

Published: March 17, 2009 The New York Times Among the challenges confronting any composer intent on setting to music “Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz,” a set of poems completed by Langston Hughes in 1961, probably the most daunting is that Hughes already called the tunes. His dazzling poems, by turns earnest, raffish and folksy, bulge with references to famous musicians and familiar sounds. Alongside verse set entirely in capital letters, Hughes provided detailed musical cues, some referring to specific songs or instruments, others pointing to general modes and tones. Hughes, who began the work while attending the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival, reportedly planned to create a musical version with the jazz bassist and composer Charles Mingus, among others, but died before seeing it through …

Click here to continue

© 2009 The New York Times

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Poet Karren LaLonde Alenier on Holly Bass,
Washington Música Viva, and
‘Channeling Langston’

A youthful Washington Música Viva performs the poetry of Langston Hughes to original music composed by Charles Mingus (with new music by Charley Gerard). Holly Bass, reader; Pepe González, bass; John Kamman, guitar; Chris Royal, trumpet; Carl Banner, piano; Charley Gerard, alto saxophone; and Harold Summey, drums ~ 2008.

Click here to peep what Michon Boston had to say on the occasion of Langston Hughes’ 107th birthday in January of 2009. Citing a passage from The Big Sea, the first of Hughes’ two engrossing memoirs, the poet-performer quotes the poet on his early 20th century assessment of Washington, DC’s “colored aristocracy,” a social class later redubbed the “black bourgeoisie.”

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From an early age, Langston Hughes heard and spoke Spanish, a language he loved; acquired during extended visits to his father’s estate in Mexico. Later as a working expatriate in France, Hughes learned and studied French, the international language then crucial to aspiring writers. An avid translator, he rendered into English work by Spain’s Federico García Lorca, Chile’s Gabriela Mistral, Cuba’s Nicolás Guillén, and Haiti’s Jacques Roumain.

Afro-Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén and Langston Hughes, Havana, circa 1950

Towne Street Theatre
4101 Budlong Avenue #4
Los Angeles, CA 90037

Phone 213.624.4796 / FAX 323.294.0507
info@townestreet.org

Baltimore Afro-American Archives

L-R ~ An aloof Langston Hughes poses with Soviet proletarian writer Mikhail Soltzov, Ernest Hemingway, and Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén in Madrid, 1938. As foreign correspondent for The Baltimore Afro-American, Hughes was covering the Spanish Civil War.

• Weblog of the American Literary Translators Association Langston Hughes Panel
  Saturday, October 21, 2006

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Escuche el Blues Abatido / Listen to the Weary Blues

Escuche el Blues AbatidoPoemas de Langston Hughes traducidos al castellano por Jorge Heredia

Blues/Blues Abatido www.jorgeheredia.com

“The Weary Blues,” escrito por Langston Hughes en 1923, incorpora las características musicales del Jazz, y de los Blues en la poesía. Hughes fue uno de los impulsores del conocido como Renacimiento de Harlem, un movimiento que se caracterizaba por la imitación de los sonidos e improvisaciones del jazz en la poesía.

EL BLUES ABATIDO

Zumba una melodía somnolienta y sincopada
Meciéndose adelante y atrás en un canto suave,
Escuché un negro tocar. La otra noche en la avenida Lenox
Bajo la penumbra pálida de una vieja luz de gas
Se balanceaba lento… Se balanceaba lento…
Al compás de este Blues Abatido.
Sus manos de ébano sobre las teclas de marfil
Haciendo gemir al pobre piano con melodías.
¡Oh Blues!
Balanceándose en su taburete desvencijado
Tocaba esa melodía tan triste como un tonto musical
¡Dulce Blues! Sale del alma de un hombre negro.
¡Oh Blues! Con una voz profunda canta ese tono melancólico
Escuché un negro cantar, y ese viejo piano que gime—
“No tengo a nadie en este mundo,
No tengo nadie más que yo.
Ya es es hora de dejar esta cara
Y guardar mis problemas.”
Pum, pum, pum golpeó el suelo con el pie.
Tocó algunos acordes y después cantó un poco más —
“Tengo el Blues Abatido Y no me puedo contentar.
Tengo el Blues Abatido
Y no me puedo contentar—
Nunca más seré felíz quisiera morír.”
Hasta bien entrada la noche canturreó esa melodía.
Las estrellas salieron y también la luna.
El cantante dejó de tocar y me fui a la cama con el
Blues Abatido todavía en la cabeza.
Durmió como una roca o un hombre que estaba muerto.

Spanish translation © Jorge Heredia

THE WEARY BLUES

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull of the pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway…
He did a lazy sway…
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man’s soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with that melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan –
“Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
Ain’t go nobody but ma self.
I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’
And put ma troubles on the shelf.”

Thump, thump, thump went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more –
“I got the Weary Blues
And I can’t be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can’t be satisfied –
I ain’t happy no mo’
And I wish that I had died.”

And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.

Langston Hughes
© Estate of Langston Hughes

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In POETRY SPEAKS Expanded (edited by Elise Paschen and Rebekah Presson Mosby) Al Young introduces Langston Hughes

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Drowning Saxophone | © Eric Drooker

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Page always under reconstruction

Subatomic preon particles ||| Billiard balls in motion

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Visit Santa Clara County poet laureate Sally Ashton’s blogspot

* Sally Ashton’s three-voice poem, Stateside, at 99 POEMS FOR THE 99 PERCENT, a blog featuring 99 poems that address the social, political, economic, aesthetic, and cultural realities of the 99 percent

Read “In your body all bodies lie,” the Kenneth Patchen prose-poem that continues to inspire Al Young

Courtesy photo

Jazz & poetry partners Booker Ervin (1930-1970), saxophonist with the Charles Mingus Quintet, and poet Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972)

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© David Gross | superbone.com

BOB BROOKMEYER: Trombonist, valve trombonist, bandleader, composer and arranger (1921-2011)

Bob Brookmeyer & Friends (Gary Burton, Stan Getz, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Elvin Jones) perform Hoagie Carmichael’s deathless “Skylark” in 1964

BobBrookmeyer.com

Charles Paul  Harris/Getty Images

JOHNNY OTIS: Drummer, vibist, pianist, bandleader, composer, arranger, singer, talent scout, producer, broadcaster, organic farmer, painter, preacher (1921-2012)

The 1989 NPR|Fresh Air Interview

Johnny Otis, R&B’s renaissance man, dies at 90 | Hiram Lee | World Socialist Website | 23 January 2012

Official Johnny Otis website

Courtesy Soul_Portrait

Courtesy newsone.com

ETTA JAMES: Singer, songwriter, bandleader, storyteller (1938-2012)

The 1994 NPR|Fresh Air interview

“Sing like your life depends on it”: Etta James—1938-2012 | Paul Bond | 26 January 2012 | World Socialist Web Site

Beyoncé remembers Etta James

© AP Photo | Ringo H.W. Chiu

Family, friends gather for Etta James’ funeral

Saturday, January 28, 2012  | AP

© NY Times

Etta James: “Something’s Got a Hold on Me” (1962)

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page under construction

AlYoung.org

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