Frequently updated since the earliest posting of January 12th, 2010.

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Video footage © Yahoo News

US hospital ship Comfort leaving Haiti ~ Yahoo News, 9 March 2010

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Haitian poet Boadiba’s EARTHQUAKE DIARY (introduced by Ishmael Reed)

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Note Arundhati Roy’s comment below on how big-money media have perfected the coverage of crisis, disaster and catastrophe in the 21st century.

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“What are we? Since that’s your question, I’m going to answer you. We’re this country, and it wouldn’t be a thing without us, nothing at all. Who does the planting? Who does the watering? Who does the harvesting? Coffee, cotton, rice, sugar cane, cacao, corn, bananas, vegetables, and all the fruits, who’s going to grow them if we don’t? Yet with all that, we’re poor, that’s true. We’re out of luck, that’s true. We’re miserable, that’s true. But do you know why, brother? Because of our ignorance. We don’t know yet what a force we are, what a single force – all the peasants, all the Negroes of the plain and hill, all united. Some day, when we get wise to that, we’ll rise up from one end of the country to the other.”
– Jacques Roumain (1907-1944),
Masters of the Dew
(Gouverneurs de la rosée)
Translated from the French by Langston Hughes and Mercer Cook

Courtesy photo
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UPDATE

SARKOZY IN HAITI: Two Accounts

© AP Photo: Boris Horvat

First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy comforts a Haitian child

© Reuters

>>> Sarkozy visits Haiti, unveils major aid package

By Pascal Fletcher
19 February 2010
Reuters

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced a financial and aid package of nearly half a billion dollars on Wednesday to assist quake-hit Haiti, as he became France’s first head of state to visit the former French Caribbean colony.

The support package totalling 326 million euros (285 million pounds) included cancellation of 56 million euros of debt, 100 million euros of fresh funds to be provided over two years and 65 million euros to be channelled through the European Union.“I have come to tell Haiti’s people that they are not alone … France will be at your side in the long term,” Sarkozy told a news conference in the grounds of the Haitian presidential palace which partly collapsed in the January 12 earthquake … continued

BBC video footage of Sarkozy in Port-au-Prince

>>> Mass protests greet Sarkozy visit to Haiti

By Alex Lantier
19 February 2010
WSWS.org

French President Nicolas Sarkozy traveled for a one-day visit to Haiti on February 17, amid rising popular opposition to the Western-backed Préval government and international tensions over how to rebuild the country. The US military occupied Haiti after the devastating January 12 earthquake that killed over 200,000 people, wounded over 250,000, and destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure.

Sarkozy, the first French head of state ever to visit Haiti, was greeted with street protests by thousands of Haitians demanding the return of elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Ousted by a US- and French-backed coup in 2004, Aristide was exiled to the Central African Republic, a former French colony. President René Préval, a former prime minister under Aristide in the 1990s, came to power in 2006 in elections supervised by the provisional government of Boniface Alexandre that was installed by the coup.

Préval tried to address the crowd outside the presidential palace. However, crowds shouted him down, and Préval left in a luxury Jeep, surrounded by bodyguards … continued

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© Associated Press

A man listens to a radio at a refugee camp in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Over to You: the BBC’s daily Connexion Haiti broadcasts are helping people reunite and solve everyday, hour-to-hour, minute to-minute problems.

Courtesy WSWS.org

Four weeks after earthquake —

Haiti: hunger sparks growing protests

By Bill Van Auken
World Socialist Web Site
9 February 2010

On Sunday, Haiti saw one of its largest protests since the January 12 earthquake. as four weeks after the disaster, frustration with continuing hunger and homelessness mount …

Read the rest of this shameful story

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Haitians react to Pat Robertson’s ignorant ‘devil pact’ insult

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´     © NYDailyNews.com

HAITI: Two Weeks Following Earthquake, Needs Are Changing
26 January 2010

© Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders: An Overview

(more…)

HAPPY 80th BIRTHDAY, ORNETTE ~ Jazz on the Tube
Born March 9, 1930 at Fort Worth, Texas

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© Chris Felver

Ornette Coleman

© 2006 by Lee Friedlander / New York Times

Ornette Coleman biography at PBS.org

Nate Chinen: Ornette Coleman, Starring as Himself (New York Times, 27 September 2009)

Ben Ratliff: Seeking the Mystical Inside the Music (New York Times, 22 September 2006)

© John Abbott/Photography

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ORNETTE

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Courtesy photo

The poetry of Gabriela Mistral — one of Chile’s great 20th century poets, the first Latin American awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature — was also translated by Langston Hughes

Hay besos que calcinan y que hieren,
hay besos que arrebatan los sentidos,
hay besos misteriosos que han dejado
mil sueños errantes y perdidos.

Hay besos problemáticos que encierran
una clave que nadie ha descifrado,
hay besos que engendran la tragedia
cuantas rosas en broche han deshojado.

from the poem Besos (Kisses)
© Literary estate of Lucila de María del Perpetuo Socorro Godoy Alcayaga

Some kisses scorch and hurt,
Some kisses enrapture,
Some kisses are mysterious and have left
A thousand dreams wandering and lost.

Some kisses are troublesome and contain
A code nobody has cracked,
Some kisses breed tragedy
As they pull off countless rosebuds.

Anonymous translation

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Photo © Sebastian Martínez/Associated Press

‘State of Catastrophe’ After Chile Quake | New York Times, 28 February 2010

Read the full story …

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President Obama expresses sympathy and pledges support for Chile

Photo © Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America

U.S. President Barack Obama (R) talks with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet during a photo op after a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office at the White House June 23, 2009 in Washington, DC.

CNN Updates, including Chilean President Michelle Bachelet’s ’state of catastrophe’ declaration

Chilean broadcaster Pamela Rodríguez reports from Santiago on Russian TV

Chilean quake has knocked Earth three inches off her axis, shortening our day by millionths of a second

Photo © REUTERS/Pilar Olivares

An earthquake survivor plays soccer next to the tent where he is living with his family five days after a massive earthquake and ensuing tsunami caused widespread destruction in Dichato March 4, 2010.  (Story by Terry Wade and Fabian Cambero ~ Maylasian National News Agency, 5 March 2010)
Courtesy Bernama.com

Earthquake exposes social chasm in Chile (Rafael Azul, World Socialist Website, 8 March 2010)

Chile’s infrastructure after the quake (Pamela Morales, Santiago Times, 3 March 2010)

Chilean newspapers at onlinenewspapers.com

La historia de terremotos en chile

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Blogs, posts, and updates at Alternet

Updates and relief efforts at The Cleanest Line

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RATTLE AND HUM

Olde New England Towne

Read Reverend Peter Bulkeley’s cautionary poem about the 1653 New England earthquake, plus other quake poems at Dark Sky Magazine

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Source: poetacandida.se

Courtesy photo

Cándida Pedersen:

Chile sufre el dolor del terremoto

Este poema está compuesto
con lágrimas de angustia y desesperación,
mis ojos lloran, mi corazón está triste y solo,
porque mi país sufre el dolor
más grande que pisa la tierra.
En enero fue Haití, ahora Chile,
donde el terremoto no tuvo piedad
por los niños ni las mujeres,
quitándole la vida a más de 700 personas
dejando a más de dos millones
de familias sin hogar.

Mañana tal vez le toque a otro país hermano
que viva el pánico con la impotencia de querer vivir
y no poder hacer nada contra este fenómeno.

Ayer en Estocolomo se reunían
miles de chilenos y latinamericanos
pidiendo ayuda para Haití,
pero la tempestad del dolor
atravesó las fronteras
y atacó la gente más pobre de mi país.

Chile es un poema de amor y calor,
pero hoy el arte de la poesía
se viste con tormenta de tristeza
escribiendo el lamento que azota
al pueblo chileno.

Mi alma pide la colaboración de todos los poetas,
extendiendo este mensaje
de solidaridad y hermandad
para todo el mundo,
tratando de unirnos en la agonía
que invade a mi país
que ha sido víctima
por una terrible catástrofe natural,
impidiéndonos el camino a la felicidad,
pero mi luz de esperanza´
aún está encendida
para estrechar lazos de bondad
y ayudar a mi país Chile.

© 2010 Cándida Pedersen
Courtesy of poetacandida.se

CHILE
at InfoPlease (All the Knowledge You Need)

Situated south of Peru and west of Bolivia and Argentina, Chile fills a narrow 2,880-mi (4,506 km) strip between the Andes and the Pacific. One-third of Chile is covered by the towering ranges of the Andes. In the north is the driest place on Earth, the Atacama Desert, and in the center is a 700-mile-long (1,127 km) thickly populated valley with most of Chile’s arable land … Click to continue

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“oh children think about the
good times”
– Lucille Clifton

Courtesy Vox of Dartmouth

Poet Lucille Clifton

Clifton’s VOICES ~ Recipient of the National Book Award

Jay Rey: Lucille Clifton, honored poet from Buffalo, dies ~ The Buffalo News, February 14, 2010

Nick Madigan: Lucille Clifton, one-time poet laureate of Md., dies at 73 ~ Baltimore Sun, February 14, 2010

Dwayne Betts: In Memory of Ms. Lucille Clifton (June 27, 1936 – February 13, 2010) ~ The Atlantic, February 15, 2010

Lucille Clifton reads a poem about the days surrounding 9/11 ~ PBS News Hour

<<Listen>>

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There is a girl inside

There is a girl inside.
She is randy as a wolf.
She will not walk away and leave these bones
to an old woman.

She is a green tree in a forest of kindling.
She is a greeen girl in a used poet.

She has waited patient as a nun
for the second coming,
when she can break through gray hairs
into blossom

and her lovers will harvest
honey and thyme
and the woods will be wild
with the damn wonder of it.

– Lucille Clifton

© Estate of Lucille Clifton

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Click a look inside

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Lucille Clifton at Wikipedia

Books by Lucille Clifton at Library Thing

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Courtesy photo

LUCILLE CLIFTON: 1936 – 2010

Beloved and admired friend and staff member, Lucille Clifton died Saturday, February 13. She had been invited back again to Squaw Valley this summer as a Special Guest. We had so looked forward to seeing her again. She had been a regular staff member since 1991 and continued to return almost every other year since then. She last taught in Squaw in 2008.

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LUCILLE CLIFTON: 1936 – 2010
Lucille was a major figure in American letters. She was an award-winning poet, fiction writer and author of children’s books. BOA Editions published her most recent collection, Mercy, as well as Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1969-1999, which won the 2000 National Book Award for Poetry. Two of Clifton’s BOA poetry collections, Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980 and Next: New Poems, were chosen as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in 1988, while Clifton’s The Terrible Stories (BOA) was a finalist for the 1996 National Book Award. Clifton served as Distinguished Professor of Humanities and holder of the Hilda C. Landers Endowed Chair in the Liberal Arts at St. Mary’s College of Maryland until her retirement in the fall of 2005. She continued to serve St. Mary’s as Professor Emeritus and Friend to the College. She was appointed a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and elected as Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 1999. In 2007 she was awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, which honors a living U.S. poet whose lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition. This year, 2010, she was awarded the Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America to honor “distinguished lifetime service to American poetry.”At the Poetry Workshop in Squaw Valley, she was a warm and wise presence, a listener as well as a storyteller. She wrote new poems each day along with the other staff poets and participants, and even her rough drafts were fine examples of her work. Lucille composed her daily poems on a typewriter, working on one of Oakley Hall’s shabby IBM Selectrics.

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We still remember her final poem of the 2008 week, how it achieved what Lucille’s work did so well – three spare lines that captured the spirit of the previous night’s party at the Hall House, the week itself – and much more. That poem, the last, as it turned out, that we would see from our old friend, went something like this:

over the mountains
and under the stars it is
one hell of a ride

There is an empty place where once there was Lucille, but we are fortunate to have her words to help us fill it.

A Community of Writers scholarship to honor Lucille has been established. If you wish to contribute, please send donations made to Squaw Valley Community of Writers and mail to:

Squaw Valley Community of Writers
Clifton Scholarship
PO Box 1416
Nevada City, CA 95959

Tax ID: 23-7179177

Or visit JustGive.org and donate with a credit card.
www.squawvalleywriters.org

Courtesy photo

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Ed Thigpen, Jazz Drummer, Dies at 79
By Peter Keepnews
The New York Times, January 26, 2010

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“Do you know why they call a drummer’s seat a throne? Because drummers are kings and queens.”
–Ed Thigpen, August 1984

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© Heinz Kronberger

JAZZ DRUMMER ED THIGPEN DIES AT 79

By Jesse Werner
10 February 2010
WSWS.org

On January 13, 2010, American jazz drummer Ed Thigpen died in Copenhagen at age 79. With a career spanning nearly six decades, he was an underrated master in his field. Although his finely crafted technique, artful subtlety and musicality at the drums made him a respected figure in the international jazz community, Thigpen received relatively limited recognition during his lifetime in the United States, his native country.

Read the rest of this story

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Ed Thigpen Discography

Photo courtesy of AllAboutJazz.com

… and scores more

Ed Thigpen Online

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© Nicola Fasano

Ed Thigpen: Master of Time, Rhythm & Taste (2009)

Ed Thigpen: Solo Brushes

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Drummer Matt Wilson: Remembering Ed Thigpen
at NPR’s A Blog Supreme

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Courtesy photo

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Courtesy Examiner.com

Sir John Dankworth in concert with vocalist Dame Cleo Laine, his life-long love and musical collaborator — the UK’s jazz royalty couple.

Breaking news
Saturday, 06 February 2010 20:18

Sir John Dankworth, who died today aged 82, was one of the totemic figures of British jazz, the first major jazz musician and the first British bebopper to be knighted, a leading musician, who with his wife Dame Cleo Laine, became known to the broader public beyond the jazz world and to an international audience, particularly in America.

Sir John had been in poor health for same time and back in November, before the London Jazz Festival where he was due to appear, was hospitalised with some fears that he would not make the concert. But made it he did even sitting on the stage in a wheelchair for the duration of the concert.

Born in Essex in 1927, Dankworth grew up in Walthamstow in a family of musicians and began to play clarinet after gaining a liking for the music of Benny Goodman. He later took up saxophone and studied at the Royal Academy of Music before national service. A high flier soon on the jazz scene in the UK he became a favourite with readers of Melody Maker in the late-1940s and was voted musician of the year, touring further afield with Sidney Bechet and even played with Charlie Parker in Paris. His group the Dankworth Seven became a favourite on the local scene in the 1950s and later his big band extended the scope for his writing activities and ambitions and played at the Newport Jazz Festival in the States. Cleo Laine’s singing was a feature of his band’s performances and the pair married in 1958.

Dankworth began a parallel career as a film and TV composer and became known to a wider public for the music he wrote for The Avengers, Tomorrow’s World and Modesty Blaise. He made the charts with ‘African Waltz’ and became a frequent presence on radio and TV.

Aside from his musical career he developed a theatre, The Stables, in the garden of his home at Wavendon in Buckinghamshire which flourishes to this day and he became heavily involved in jazz education and as an ambassador for jazz. For his services to the music he was made a knight bachelor in the 2006 New Year’s Honours List.

– Stephen Graham

Stephen Graham — a regular contributor to Jazzwise.com, the UK’s best-selling jazz publication — filed this early obituary on the internet while news of Johnny Dankworth’s death was breaking over the BBC.

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Courtesy Photo

John Fordham: Sir John Dankworth obituary
UK Guardian, 7 February 2010

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BBC tribute to Sir Johnny Dankworth ~ 7 February 2010

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Courtesy photos

The Charlie Parker-influenced Johnny Dankworth in 1955 and 2005

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A Johnny Dankworth Discography

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Cleo Laine & Johnny Dankworth swing “Lady Be Good”
~ Marina Del Rey, CA, February 1965

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Visit the home of Dame Cleo Laine
& Sir John Dankworth

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

Like democracy, this page is always under reconstruction

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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 Gotta 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 in 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.

(more…)

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Click book image

Howard Zinn
August 24, 1922 ~ January 27, 2010

Howard Zinn, Historian, Dies at 87
NYTimes.com | Associated Press; January 27, 2010

Howard Zinn himself on “Human Nature and Aggression”

Howard Zinn’s lesson to us all
Victoria Brittain: UK Guardian, 28 January 2010

An assessment of A People’s History of the United States
Tom Eley: World Socialist Web Site, 15 February 2010

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Click book image

J.D. Salinger
(January 1, 1919 ~ January 27, 2010)

J.D. Salinger, author of ‘Catcher in the Rye,’ dies
Bart Barnes: Washington Post; January 28, 2010

© Time, Inc

Professor Amy Hungerford lectures on Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, reminding her students that storytelling is a verbal art we all too often confine to silent reading. “[Salinger] thinks so highly of that capacity of literature to embody the human voice,” she explains, “that he imagines a whole religious world around it.” ~ Yale Lectures

J.D. Salinger (1919-2010): An Appreciation
James Brookfield, World Socialist Web Site ~ 2 February 2010

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Django Reinhardt “et son orchestra” at Bal Tabarin, 1944 ~ A dance sequence inter-cut with shots of Marlene Dietrich (and off-camera laughter possibly from French jazz pundit Charles Delaunay), this is footage so rare that you’ll even spot a colored GI in uniform with a colored partner out there on the dance floor, jitterbugging like everybody else. Through all of it, the nimble two-fingered Django tears up Cole Porter’s “Night and Day.”

Courtesy photo

Django Reinhardt

DJANGO ~ The Modern Jazz Quartet (in performance at Freiburg, Germany, 1987): John Lewis, composer and pianist; Milt Jackson, vibes; Percy Heath, drums; Connie Kay, drums — in classic musical tribute to the brilliant Gypsy jazz guitarist

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django devotees rhapsodize

Jack Foley

DJANGO

Django Reinhardt – J’attendrai Swing 1939

Imagine a mind as fine and all-encompassing as, say, the mind of Albert Einstein. (At the end of July 1939, Django, Naguine, and the Quintette set off again for England on their third visit in two years. Yet this tour—and Europe in general—was doomed.) And then imagine that there is no place for that mind to discharge itself fully except for one: a guitar. But the guitar is the great instrument of the Gypsies, and this particular Gypsy, whose name—like the Buddha’s—meant “I awake,” knew in his hands that the depths of every note were history, went way back into all the sounds that Gypsies had made throughout their magnificent, tragic, triumphant, banal, thieving, unwritten lives. Music was life—and battle. (“Django’s playing is so beautiful that I almost forget to play, just listening to him.” “I was unaware of his virtuosity and quick ear. To my astonishment, he proceeded not only to play the blues but to embellish them with an evocative gypsy quality.”) Watch him, expressionless, with that elegant, trim, manouche mustache, his eyes cast down, a modest man, unassertive, except with his fingers, and those damaged. There is no emotion he is not capable of with that stringed box in his hands. The fascination is in part because he is a great virtuoso—but there are other virtuosi. The fascination is because no one knows what Django Reinhardt might do at any given moment out of the vast emotional repertoire that his extraordinary intelligence has placed at his disposal—out of those myriad things that have made him the sensitive, sounding instrument that he is. He is limited (“Django spoke little English, if any…”) but his guitar is infinite. “My brother,” he said of Louis Armstrong, whose genius was the same as his.

the illiterate
(the illiterate)
professor
(professor)
speaks with his guitar
(speaks with his guitar)
he is a dark gypsy
(he is a dark gypsy)
with mustache and sly smile
(with mustache and sly smile)
he is speaking farrrrum farrrrum
(he is speaking farrrrum farrrrum)
on a subject of the most
(on a subject of the most)
immense, immediate, life-changing
(immense, immediate, life-changing)
interest
(interest)
and his chords tell us
(and his chords tell us)
what we can do
(what we can do)
what we can do
(what we can do)
Improv / improves sings the guitar
(Improv / improves sings the guitar)
to a classroom masquerading
(to a classroom masquerading)
as a night club
(as a night club)
or a concert hall
(or a concert hall)
the professor
(the professor)
rat a tats & riddles
(rat a tats & riddles)
roars & rambles
(roars & rambles)
tells us with superb intelligence
(tells us with superb intelligence)
of Charlie Parker
(of Charlie Parker)
and of wild
(and of dark)

gypsy
(gypsy)

ways
(ways)

– Jack Foley
© 2010 Jack Foley

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Page under construction

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Courtesy photo

© civilianism.com

NOTHING IS WASTED

The elm outside my window
endures a slow death,
giving life to the downy
pecking at the insects
destined to destroy it.

My young cousin, consumed
by cancer cells, nurtures
her unborn child, her body
a conduit of nourishment
and love as it withers
around its healthy seedling.

Nothing is wasted.

The poet confined in solitary
writes his story on the walls
of his cell, dipping his fingers
in the inkwell of his
self-inflicted wound, his words
spiraling a revolution
that begets a new generation
of freedom, of hope.

My friend, Earl Robinson,
once asked me to “use” him—
for what is more pitiable,
he added, than a useless thing?

And I in turn ask you to use me.

– Gloria Vando

© 2010 by Gloria Vando

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In her Promesas: Geography of the Impossible (1993), the Nuyorican poet Gloria Vando contests the dominant ideologies and national mythographies in Puerto Rico and the United States. Interlacing the lyrical and the confessional with the political, Vando positions herself on the outside of the pedagogical narratives of nationalism in both insular and metropolitan spaces. Rather than simply embrace a sense of belonging to both places, cultures, and nations at once, Vando chooses to belong ni de aquí, ni de allá (neither here, nor there). Out of her sense of marginalization as colonial, feminist, and (second-class) citizen, Gloria Vando reconfigures the limits of both national and diasporic discourses and redefines their traditional referents and articulates alter/native narratives of identification, dislocated yet unwilling to assimilate.
– Khader, Jamil,
Decolonizing the Commonwealth: A Postcolonial Reading of Gloria Vando’s Promesas: Geography of the Impossible

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