Poetry Blog: "A Work Day in Hard Times"

Famed author Ta-Nehisi Coates to speak Tuesday in Detroit
Julie Hinds, Detroit Free Press Pop Culture Critic
Published 6:49 p.m. ET April 3, 2017

Like a literary superhero, Ta-Nehisi Coates is able to leap the huge stylistic divide between the intellectual commentary and mass-market comic books in a single bound.

He won a National Book Award in 2015 for “Between the World and Me,” a best seller called “required reading” by Toni Morrison. He’s the recipient of a MacArthur genius grant, and he’s  the man called “the single best writer on the subject of race in the United States” by the New York Observer.

Last year, the new “Black Panther” comics series he wrote was an immediate hit. The first issue sold a whopping 300,000 copies. The director of the upcoming “Black Panther” movie, Ryan Coogler, has said he has been influences by the vivid writing of Coates.

You can see Coates in person when the acclaimed author appears at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the University of Detroit Mercy. He will be speaking at an event sponsored by several offices of the college, Blac Detroit magazine and the Michigan Chronicle.

The visit came about through the friendship between Coates and Roy Finkenbine, a UDM history professor. Coates, a national correspondent for Atlantic magazine, phoned Finkenbine while he was researching a 2014 article that became the George Polk Award-winning essay  “The Case for Reparations.”

In the piece, Coates wound up citing Finkenbine, who specializes in the topics of slavery, abolition, the Civil War and the Underground Railroad and also chairs the Michigan Freedom Trail Commission.

The two men have stayed in touch and corresponded by phone and e-mail. This week will be the first time they meet in person.

Finkenbine describes the Coates appearance as a signature occasion for the college. “The last time we probably had somebody of this intellectual importance speaking in Calihan Hall was Robert Frost in 1962. It doesn’t come along that often. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; take advantage of it,” he said in a UDM story on the event.

In a Monday interview with the Free Press, Finkenbine said, “(Coates) has been talked about, and I certainly agree with that, (as) the most original and important thinker on race today in America. He’s not only increasingly well-known, but I think he’s provoking a lot of Americans … to think more deeply and talk about the issue of race.”

UDM had a “phenomenal student and faculty conversation” last week spurred by “Between the World and Me,” according to Finkenbine. The standing-room-only gathering held in advance of the Coates appearance is part of discussions that will continue after Tuesday’s lecture, according to Finkenbine.

The book “Between the World and Me” (which is also the title of Coates’ UDM talk) is written as a letter to the author’s teen son. It has been described as his precise, multilayered, bracingly honest thoughts on what it means to be black in America.

Coates continues to have an impact with his work for Atlantic. His January/February issue story, “My President Was Black,” explored the the meaning of President Barack Obama’s time in office. It generated buzz in cultural circles and on TV when Coates was a guest on NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”

This image released by Marvel Comics shows the cover of the “Black Panther,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Coates’ lifelong love of comic books made him jump at the chance to write Marvel’s Black Panther, one of the first comic books heroes of color. His 11-book series is currently on sale. (Marvel Comics via AP) (Photo: AP)

Debuting this month is Coates’ latest project for Marvel, “Black Panther & the Crew,” which follows Black Panther, the king of a fictional African nation called Wakanda, and a team of black superheroes. Coates is cowriting the series with poet Yona Harvey.

Coates told the New York Times that he wants his work to be seen in some ways as a cohesive whole. “What I want people to feel ultimately is that this is part of the entire oeuvre that I put together. I don’t want it to be ‘Ta-Nehisi Coates just took a break and did comics.’ It is not a break for me.”

The “Black Panther” movie slated for 2018 isn’t being written by Coates, but its director, Ryan Coogler (“Creed”), told vulture.com that Coates’ interpretation of Black Panther has influenced his image of the character and work on the new comic book series.  The film will star Chadwick Boseman in the title role and Lupita Nyong’o, Michael B. Jordan and Danai Gurira.

Coates often gets attention for the difficult issues he addresses. In March, at a Harvard conference called Universities and Slavery: Bound By History, he  drew a warm reception with his thoughts on how colleges must approach their own legacy with slavery.

“I think every single one of these universities needs to make reparations,” Coates said according to the Huffington Post. “I don’t know how you conduct research that shows that your very existence is rooted in a great crime, and just say well, shrug — and maybe at best say ‘I’m sorry’— and you walk away.”

What will Coates talk about  in Detroit? Something that should and will pack an auditorium, it’s safe to say.

Contact Julie Hinds: 313-222-6427 or jhinds@freepress.com.

Ta-Nehisi Coates
6:30 p.m. Tue. (doors at 5 p.m.)
University of Detroit Mercy
Calihan Hall, McNichols Campus

Monday April 3, 2017 – “there are birds here” Jamaal May

Ta-Nehisi Coates on campus tomorrow:  5:00 pm for a group of invited students in intimate conversation,  6:30 in our field house for a wider public gathering.  Gathering with what expectations?  To listen to a man whose voice, written or spoken, awakens hope that paying attention in hard times matters.  To listen to a man whose voice requires attention in the present tense, requires the courage to pay attention.  I am thrilled that I can be there listening.

To prepare, I turned to Detroit poet, Jamaal May,  a Detroit voice that awakens hope that paying attention in hard times matters, whose voice requires attention in the present tense, requires the courage to pay attention.  Every poem does best when read aloud, with pauses.   Today’s, perhaps, especially so by the 3rd or 4th reading.

Have a blest day.

john sj

There Are Birds Here

By Jamaal May

For Detroit
There are birds here,
so many birds here
is what I was trying to say
when they said those birds were metaphors
for what is trapped
between buildings
and buildings. No.
The birds are here
to root around for bread
the girl’s hands tear
and toss like confetti. No,
I don’t mean the bread is torn like cotton,
I said confetti, and no
not the confetti
a tank can make of a building.
I mean the confetti
a boy can’t stop smiling about
and no his smile isn’t much
like a skeleton at all. And no
his neighborhood is not like a war zone.
I am trying to say
his neighborhood
is as tattered and feathered
as anything else,
as shadow pierced by sun
and light parted
by shadow-dance as anything else,
but they won’t stop saying
how lovely the ruins,
how ruined the lovely
children must be in that birdless city.

Jamaal May, “There Are Birds Here” from The Big Book of Exit Strategies. Copyright © 2016 by Jamaal May. Reprinted by permission of Alice James Books.

Friday,  March 31, 2017  “we need the humanities more than ever to counter nationalism and demagoguery.”

I happened upon Nicholas Kristof’s March 30 column about the importance of art and the humanities.   In the process, he’s written a strong explanation for why the “Work Day in a Hard Time” poetry list exists and appears (mostly) M-W-Fr each week.

At the head of our Archive Blog appears the List’s Mission Statement, written in September 2013 when our city was awash in dire predictions of Detroit’s impending collapse and the US Congress awash in venomous partisan divides.  A tough time too on our Detroit campuses.  It’s worth repeating here on this Friday for a post without a new poem.

Have a blest weekend.

john sj

Nicholas Kristof MARCH 30, 2017

CreditMark Lennihan/Associated Press

So what if President Trump wants to deport Big Bird?

We’re struggling with terrorism, refugees, addiction, and grizzlies besieging schools. Isn’t it snobbish to fuss over Trump’s plans to eliminate all funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting?

Let me argue the reverse: Perhaps Trump’s election is actually a reminder that we need the humanities more than ever to counter nationalism and demagoguery.

Civilization is built not just on microchips, but also on arts, ideas and the humanities. And the arts are a bargain: The N.E.A. budget is $148 million a year, or less than 0.004 percent of the federal budget. The per-capita cost for Americans is roughly the cost of a postage stamp.

The humanities may seem squishy and irrelevant. We have a new president who doesn’t read books and who celebrates raw power. It would be easy to interpret Trump as proof of the irrelevance of the humanities.

Yet the humanities are far more powerful than most people believe. The world has been transformed over the last 250 years by what might be called a revolution of empathy driven by the humanities. Previously, almost everyone (except Quakers) accepted slavery and even genocide. Thomas Jefferson justified the “extermination” of Native Americans; whippings continued in American prisons in the 20th century; and at least 15,000 people turned up to watch the last public hanging in the United States, in 1936.

What tamed us was, in part, books. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” famously contributed to the abolitionist movement, and “Black Beauty” helped change the way we treat animals. Steven Pinker of Harvard argues that a surge of literacy and an explosion of reading — novels in particular — “contributed to the humanitarian revolution,” by helping people see other viewpoints. There is also modern experimental evidence that reading literary fiction promotes empathy.

The humanities have even reshaped our diet. In 1971, a few philosophy students, including an Australian named Peter Singer, gathered on a street in Oxford, England, to protest the sale of eggs from hens raised in small cages. This was an unknown issue back then, and passers-by smiled at the students’ idealism but told them they’d never change the food industry..naïve? Today, keeping hens in small cages is illegal in Britain, in the rest of the European Union and in parts of the United States. McDonald’s, Burger King, General Mills and Walmart are all moving toward exclusively cage-free eggs, because consumers demanded it.

Singer, now a Princeton University professor, is a wisp of a man who defeated an agribusiness army with the power of his ideas and the muscle of the humanities. (Singer has a terrific recent book, “Ethics in the Real World,” that wrestles with how much we should donate to charity, and whether wearing a $10,000 watch is a sign of good taste, or of shallow narcissism.)

In short, the humanities encourage us to reflect on what is important, to set priorities. For example, do we get more value as taxpayers from Big Bird and art or music programs, or from the roughly $30 million Trump’s trips to his Mar-a-Lago golf resort will cost us when he’s tallied nine visits in office (he’s already more than halfway there)? That’s also more than the cost of salaries and expenses to run the National Endowment for the Humanities, not including the grants it hands out.

Do we get more value from billions of dollars spent on deportations? Or from tiny sums to support art therapy for wounded veterans?

Then there’s our favorite bird. The Onion humor website reported: “Gaunt, Hollow-Eyed Big Bird Enters Sixth Day Of Hunger Strike Against Proposed Trump Budget.” In fact, Big Bird will survive, but some local public television stations will close without federal support — meaning that children in some parts of the country may not be able to see “Sesame Street” on their local channel.

In 2017, with the world a mess, I’d say we need not only drones but also Big Bird, and poetry and philosophy. Indeed, our new defense secretary, Jim Mattis, apparently shares that view: He carried Marcus Aurelius’s “Meditations” to Iraq with him.

It’d be nice to see Mattis drop off “Meditations” for the new commander in chief. And maybe present the first lady a copy of “Lysistrata.”

Look, I know it sounds elitist to hail the humanities. But I’ve seen people die for ideas. At Tiananmen Square in China in 1989, I watched protesters sacrifice their lives for democracy. In Congo, I saw a tiny Polish nun stand up to a warlord because of her faith and values.

The humanities do not immunize a society from cruelty and overreaction; early-20th-century Germany proves that. But on balance, the arts humanize us and promote empathy. We need that now more than ever.

Wednesday, March 29  —  e e cummings – “. . . the voice of your eyes . . . ”

Early spring,  mid-semester, lots of neighborhood hustle and growth,  clean elegant sunshine,  leaves budding out.    Perfect day for e e cummings’ exquisite love song.

In these hard and strident weeks, it helps to let a strong love poem work its word magic deep down where the soul’s muscles get stiff with fatigue and need some tending.

Try it out loud with pauses and take some time to look at the leaves showing themselves.

Have a blest day.

Today’s post   “Somewhere”

Somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

e e cummings

October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._E._Cummings

Monday, March 27  “your graceful
confident shrug and twist  . . . ”

Is it harder to stand still in a place of grief or a place of joy?   That question came up last evening in the kind of conversation often called “spiritual direction.”  A friend was finding words to describe a liberating moment of joy that took her/his breath away and promised to require weeks or months of revisiting the joy, learning not to be afraid of such a depth of hope.   My friend and I agreed, as it turned out, that learning to be still with grief, hard as that is,  can come more readily than learning to be still with joy.

St. Ignatius has a teaching about contemplation that suggests that both are equally important. “Attention should be paid to some more important places (i.e., in my memory of already lived experience) in which I have experienced understanding, consolation or desolation.” (Sp. Exercises par # 118).    Ignatius suggests that when I notice any of these three memories wanting my attention, I try to experience the specific memory with as much sensual recollection as possible (e.g., what time of day was it?  who was there? what were you saying to each other? what was the weather like?  what did the place smell like? . . . etc.” ) The teaching is that finding my way into a memory that wants my attention is best understood as a sensual journey that helps me get there, and stay there for a while.

Both of us were surprised that we had encountered this invitation to deep presence in a moment of shocking joy.   The memory will take some living into, perhaps for months and years.

All of which reminded me of one of Denise Levertov’s deepest poems.   Try it out,  reading aloud with pauses.  N.B., the core metaphor is a Houdini-like supple risk-taker on a high wire above a deep pit.

Have a blest work week,

john st sj

Today’s Post

The Poem Rising By Its Own Weight
The poet is at the disposal of his own night.
Jean Cocteau

The singing robes fly onto your body and cling there silkily,
You step out on the rope and move unfalteringly across it,

And seize the fiery knives unscathed and
Keep them spinning above you, a fountain
Of rhythmic rising, falling, rising
Flames,

And proudly let the chains
Be wound about you, ready
To shed them, link by steel link,
padlock by padlock–

but when your graceful
confident shrug and twist drives the metal
into your flesh and the python grip of it tightens
and you see rust on the chains and blood in your pores
and you roll
over and down a steepness into a dark hole
and there is not even the sound of mockery in the distant air
somewhere above you where the sky was,
no sound but your own breath panting:
then it is that the miracle
walks in, on his swift feet,
down the precipice straight into the cave,
opens the locks,
knots of chain fall open,
twists of chain unwind themselves,
links fall asunder,
in seconds there is a heap of scrap-
metal at your ankles, you step free and at once
he turns to go —
but as you catch at him with a cry,
clasping his knees, sobbing your gratitude,
with what radiant joy he turns to you,
and raises you to your feet,
and strokes your disheveled hair,
and holds you,
holds you,
holds you
close and tenderly before he vanishes.

Denise Levertov in The Freeing of the Dust

Denise Levertov
b. October 1923  d. December 1997

Friday,  March 24
“some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.”

One of my soul friends of many years emailed Rumi’s “Guest House” yesterday.   When readers send poems, they create a place of stillness in me and sometimes change my plans for a given day’s post.  So it is this morning.

Rumi’s poem creates a still place alive with realism and laughter, grief and joy.   Aloud with pauses.

Blessings on our weekends.

john sj

Today’s Post “The Guest House”

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī  (جلال‌الدین محمد رومی‎)   Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic 1207-1273.

Tuesday night, March 21
A couple days ago one of our readers wrote asking about a specific poem:

“please remind me who was author of the poem of Kindness, I saved it as a word document failed to acknowledge author.
It has touched me and its part of my journey,”

Her/his request reminds me to remind all 2283 of you that  you can find any poet, poem, or word on our permanent archive blog.   All 458 posts since the first one are available at https://sites.udmercy.edu/poetry    in chronological order (most recent one on top, first one ever, Sept 25, 2013, on the bottom).  So to answer this reader’s query about “the author of the poem of Kindness” I went to the archive, wrote “kindness” in the search box, found c. 20 poems that use the word.  But, since this was a recent poem, I found it 2nd from the top,  easy.

You can do this too.

Here is Naomi Shihab Nye’s compelling poem, “Kindness”  again.  I’ll use it for today’s post.  (n.b., I wrote this about 11:15 Tuesday night.  Tomorrow morning I’ll be making coffee for 12 people coming for the Half-day Mission Retreat.  Responding to our reader’s question can serve as a reminder of the list’s  search tool and at the same time, re-up a wonderful poem only 2.5 weeks since it first appeared.  I am reading it as my last thing before saying goodnight to the city.  It will be in your mailbox tomorrow morning. 😊)

Sure,  it helps to read a strong poem “out loud .  .  .  with pauses”

john sj

Monday, March 20, 2017  

— “laughter begets liking,

and liking begets joy, and joy begets love”

Meister Eckhart  (c. 1260 -c. 1327)

Meister Eckhart, a German Dominican, theologian, philosopher and mystic, was known along with his writings for sermons addressed to ordinary people as well as to women and men more visibly active in Church life.   Eckhart died just twenty years before the peak of the European pandemic known as The Black Death which killed 30% to 60% of Europe’s people.  One might be inclined to set his intuition about the identity of God as embodied in laughter and affection as an antidote, before the fact, to address the terrified and violent fears that convulsed Europe in the mid-14th century;  the living worked to bury some 100 to 200 million of those who died around them.  A grim time badly in need of the rebirth of Europe’s sense of humor and playfulness.

How does a university simultaneously challenge its students to risk the terrors of self-discovery and of attention to the whole fabric of human behavior while encouraging in those same students a resilient sense of humor about that same human condition?   It is one of the great challenges of teachers and one of the great gifts that great mentors offer their students.

This saying of Meister Eckhart might make a good short text to read out loud in front of your mirror when winter grows overlong or students show their less attractive sides when under pressure, from fear that they do not have the inner stuff to find their voice and engage the real world with generous desires.

Have a good day.

john st sj

Today’s Post — This saying is attributed to Meister Eckhart.

Indeed I say, the soul will bring forth Person
if God laughs to her and she laughs back to him.
To speak in parable, the Father laughs to the Son
and the Son laughs back to the Father;

And this laughter begets liking,
and liking begets joy, and joy begets love,
and love begets Person,
and Person begets the Holy Spirit.

{first posted Feb 18, 2014}

Friday. March 17  — an immigrant story from decades ago – “her real name was  – – – – >  Silvia:  S-i-l-v-i-a”

John McPhee’s brief, tightly woven, contemplation of an Irish immigrant dear to him, first appeared on the list one year ago yesterday.  Think it has something to do with St. Patrick’s day in the U.S.

The poem is one of the shortest of the 458 posted since September 2013 when the list began.   Even more helpful, with a brief poem, to read out loud with pauses.

Have a blest weekend.

john sj

Wednesday  March 15  —  is it spring yet?

A clean sky & a bright moon, 17 degrees, sun and wind on the way.  My university hosted a Conference of Mercy Higher Education site visit from Sunday afternoon until yesterday about noon.  To prepare, a seven person university host team searched the three campuses for evidence that when we do what universities do — research, teaching, mentoring, service —  Catherine McAuley and her successors are alive as leaven and vision.   The searching yielded a 21 page self study we sent to the four visitors a month ago.  It organized & framed five months of conversations among students, faculty, staff, and trustees, the fruit of some disciplined attention.  When they delivered their exit observations, they and lots of us Detroit Mercy regulars felt the work was worth it.

The late Nor’Easter along the Atlantic coast required some nimble adaptations,  the search team lost their DC area chair to the snow and a street-smart veteran of such visits stepped in a couple of hours before the opening dinner at Detroit’s Traffic Jam and Snug.  By departure time,  the foursome reminded me of a well coached hockey team which can manage line changes quickly.  Here in Detroit our snow has been notable and beautiful but less an attention-getter than back East.   For winter lovers though,  each below freezing day garnished with wind and sun can make you want to go out and play like a kid.

Meanwhile, the wearing tensions in the President’s 100 days continues to stir fear and contention.  Paying attention to both my university’s strengths and challenges, and this country’s as well led me back to a wonderful story posted in March of 2014.    Strictly speaking,  it’s not poetry but what Lance Swain did fill that day with beauty.  Reading it three years later refreshed my spirit; yours too I hope.

Have a blest day.

john sj