Whitman

I'm on this kick where I'm tired of reading "new" books, or should I say there are no new books worth reading, and unless I'm gonna start getting into biographies, which isn't exactly improbable, I decided to read books that everyone has read, or at least those that are part of the "Cannon" of American and British Literature. These include re-reading favorites like To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Great Gatsby, and reading things that I should have read long ago for the first time like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

So I started my literary journey by reading Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, and I can tell you that I'm impressed. Now I know from personal knowledge that Whitman was a very avid supporter of Abolition as well as Native American rights, so as a person I like him. And his ideas of the poet are amazing. I mean it really makes me feel like I'm just calling myself a word, not living up to the expectations that he has laid out for future generation of poet.

Now Whitman starts his book off with a long essay (meaning I haven't actually gotten to the poem yet). This essay is his feelings on the American Bard or poet. Now we must remember the importance of the poet to early America, the poet was the mouth piece of the New World (and the old for that matter). The poet was the press, the voice, the life line, the entertainment, the poet was IT.

According to Whitman the poet...

"He is no arguer... he is judgment."

"In the need of poems... he is the greatest forever and forever who contributes the greatest original practical examples. The cleanest expression is that which finds no sphere worthy of itself and makes one."

the poetry...

"The best singer is not the one who has the most lithe and powerful organ... the pleasure of poems is not in them that take the handsomest measure and smiles and sound."

"To speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside is the flawless triumph of the art."

Now these are not only keys to good poetry, but keys to good living. According to Whitman, to live a good life is to be a poet. Purely a poet, you are then in touch with your emotions and those of your fellow man, and no poet is above another, because ever pure man or woman is poet, lives poet, and understands poetry.

After all, "it is also not consistent with the reality of the soul to admit that there is anything in the known universe more divine than men and women."

Powerful. I admit that I am only about halfway through this essay and I'm taking my time, trying to pick my way through it, gather meaning, learn. After completion I plan on re-reading of course, and finding some more Whitman, as this is my first pilgrimage into the "classic poets." But his hope and optimism for society is something that definitely uplifts the spirit. Now do I think that his ideas of the poet as the savior of man are grand and over the top? At times yes, but I love them because it gives me something to strive for as the poet, Ving Rhames once said something like "it is not the person in the art, but the art in the person that makes acting powerful." I think this is the same for Whitman and his poet.

Amish

So, I'm watching TV and this commercial comes on where they are showing these guys with beards and overalls cutting wood. Then this guy comes on TV, talking about these wooden cabinets and Amish craftsmanship, and says that if you pay the low low price of 129.99 you can get a roll away fire place that your room is missing. And just to sweeten the deal the heater is free!

Please tell me why the Amish are advertising on TV... they don't have electricity... oh and did I mention that the heater is ELECTRIC!!! How you gonna make a product that you can't use, like people pushing drugs. But what really angers me is the fact that "due to high demand" they are limiting it to two heaters per household. Seriously Amish, who are you to tell me what the hell I can do with my electricity or the "crafty" wooden cabnitted heater that I purchase for your low low price. And my Grandpa Le Roy got one... those Amish convinced the 70-something to get a heater, and it doesn't even heat well! I guess you can just leave it to the Amish to create an electrical item that doesn't work well. I just have one question... where are the Quakers when you need em'? Now those are some religious fanatics you can depend on! Well except for that whole Nixon thing.

JustListen...

What happened to that music that made you groove... you know when you could sit back in your car and ride; those summertime songs that you listen to on Lake Shore Drive, or on your way to the Circle. I want those songs, I want that feeling, I want to not have a care in the world, or for the music to make me think I don't have a care in the world. I miss Smokey Robinson and Bill Withers... well maybe I don't miss them, cause I never had them, I just wish our generation had an alternative to T Pain, and Usher sometimes. The radio tires me out now, I'm tired of thump-thump music as my Grandfather called it. I want to sit and cruse, live in the music, have it take me somewhere, not think about it, just get lost in the lyrics. It makes me think of that question that Barry Gordy asked his focus group in the Temptations TV movie. He said "if you were down to your last dollar, would you buy this record or a sandwich?" I wish music made me hungry again.

As Heritage Streams Through Saxophones and Hi-hats I Contemplate the Breaks

My dad listens to jazz, he really listens, appreciates all the instruments,
nods his head in agreement while the notes play,
grooves with the sharps and flats.
He listens to his jazz, as boom's and bip's re-verb,
Like I read verb from the masters,
study their word choice and tone,
those tones speak to him.
It took me years to discover what it was in his jazz that acceded to my fathers mood.

Those songs that go on too long,
pauses too pregnant with forced emphasis,
like those poems I never finished.
The ones too poetic to mean anything,
phrases phrased to rhyme for rhyme,
a series of
one,
word,
lines,
that stream of words that run on unchecked by comma or semicolon simply to comply with the act of insurrection that all poems should be because poets are rebellious
It's those songs he rejected, skiped over,
didn't mention in his monthly "you should hear."

As I sit and listen to his music, I mean really listen,
I hear those C's, D's, and E flats.
I note the notes that fall, and the ones that don't,
realizing that what my father nods in agreement to,
is how the lines
break.

Ms. Kitt

Many would not consider her a Legend, and many don't even know who she is, or was, but what she was, was legendary. I mean, the first black superhero, or super-vilain rather. Ms. Kitt played Cat Woman in the Original Batman TV series that began in the 60's. I mean she was cool, sexy, intreaging exotic, made every man melt, even if they couldn't admit it to their mainstream white friends around the water cooler the next morning.

Obviously I wasn't around in the 60's and the only thing I know about that Batman series is the reruns that I was able to catch on TV-Land as a pre-teen. I found it to be lame.... I mean really lame, with the huge POW's and BAMMMMM's that would pop up on the screen when the fighting began; the very strange, and close, relationship between the men in tights, Batman and Robin; and all of the "Holy rusted metal, Batman," and "Gee wizz! Here they come!" that came out of the very slack dialogue. But the one thing I remember is that Cat Woman always got away, and always had those Heroes wrapped around her little finger... one word... cool.

But at the time of those re-runs Ms. Kitt was just a lightskined black chick in a mask no face for me, just a voice. Then I saw Boomerang. Again a movie that is under most people's radar, but in the Black Cinema circuit it is a classic. Staring Eddie Murphy, Robin Givens, Halle Berry, and of course Ms. Kitt as Lady Eloise... again she was cool, confident, sexy, even as the aging matriarch, and semi-sexual predator... but she was hilarious. This is the Eartha that I learned to love, watching her in comedic roles, even as the millionaire heiress on Living Single... cool.

Now I'm not claiming to be the biggest fan, or to have her albums, but I do respect the hustle. She was awesome, killing the game on the stage (Paris, Broadway, Off-Broadway, and on tour as a musical artist), and screen (TV and Movies). I mean we are talking about a 70 year old woman who could still do a one handed hand-stand... cool.

So Miss Eartha Kitt you will be missed, well at least by me, and I will be spending the next month renting her movies and downloading her music. I'm going to let her go out with a bang, by gaining at least one more serious admirer, and maybe, just maybe I can learn some of that sexy that came so easy to her, if I can get that down, then maybe I can be cool too.

The Morning After (or November 5th)

In bed

- satisfied

- and exhausted

I lay,

with smile

completely unable

- and unknowing

of how to voice

new thoughts

New answers that went

- unquestioned

In the

days

weeks

months

Before this morning.

Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes

Is there an attack? Maybe one on our possitive Black role models? I think it might be so. Just one day after Chicago's own Bernie Mac passes away, so does singer/song-writer Isaac Hayes. It might not seem like much, just a commedian, just a dude who wrote some songs. But that was one less drug dealer, one less thief, one more notch on the belts of African-Americans, and one more dream for our youth. I don't really understand. I'm not saying that I wish death on anyone, but why is it that the 50 cent's of the world always seem to survive... they always seem to get away clean. I know that it's all written, that Bernie and Isaac had their name in the book way before I understood the entity that is God. I also understand that they died of natural causes, they weren't doing what they shouldn't have been doing. No affairs, no car crash, just working out, or trying to get better. These things I know. What I don't know is what we are going to do when I'm upset about these things, and my younger sister isn't. She doesn't know music past Miley Sirus, and Alicia Keys. She doesn't understand what it means to win a Grammy and an Oscar for music that you did not sample but actually composed; and, although she's seen the Bernie Mac show, and heard of The Original Kings of Comedy, she doesn't know what it meant to Black chicago for Bernie to get a HBO comedy special, or to be on one of the first seasons of Def Comedy Jam. To me it ment a lot. And I want to thank Isaac and Bernie for their contributions. For those who didn't appreciate you before you died, and for those who appreciate you even more now, I want to say thank you. Rest In Peace.