I will sit here until
the water comes to boil
the sun becomes too hot to bear
the robins collect two together on the dogwood branch
Category Archives: Uncategorized
I Can’t Hide Mine, Please Don’t Hide Yours: An Open Letter to Ben Affleck
“The People of Russell’s Knob were a blended soup of colors after a couple of generations and made their own circumstance.”
from “Angels Make Their Hope Here”
Dear Ben,
Its unfortunate because of a massive internet hack we are in this particular place discussing your ancestral past. It’s horrible that your private matters were exposed because of something beyond your control. That’s untenable in any situation, but we need to address something right quick…this slavery thing. You were embarassed, and that’s reasonable given the situation and the circumstances that produced it. But Ben Affleck, take it from a Black guy; with a platform like yours, don’t you dare be embarrassed to come from an ancestor who held enslaved people. Because….We need to know.
I don’t think many Black people really understand the profound guilt, shame or embarassment some white descendants of slave holding families feel. It’s not just that many assume personal responsibility for the past or that they grasp that their privilege or power is not just based on perceptions based on skin color. Clearly these…
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Suddenly
our sidewalk trees
surprise
they are abloom
pink
I had not noticed
buds
two little girls were cavorting
hair flying out back of them
loose limbed and carefree
Look! Listen! Stop!
The Buck in the Snow – Edna St. Vincent Millay
White sky, over the hemlocks bowed with snow,
Saw you not at the beginning of evening the antlered buck and his doe
Standing in the apple-orchard? I saw them. I saw them suddenly go,
Tails up, with long leaps lovely and slow,
Over the stone-wall into the wood of hemlocks bowed with snow.Now he lies here, his wild blood scalding the snow.How strange a thing is death, bringing to his knees, bringing to his antlers
The buck in the snow.
How strange a thing–a mile away by now, it may be,
Under the heavy hemlocks that as the moments pass
Shift their loads a little, letting fall a feather of snow–
Life, looking out attentive from the eyes of the doe.
Saw you not at the beginning of evening the antlered buck and his doe
Standing in the apple-orchard? I saw them. I saw them suddenly go,
Tails up, with long leaps lovely and slow,
Over the stone-wall into the wood of hemlocks bowed with snow.Now he lies here, his wild blood scalding the snow.How strange a thing is death, bringing to his knees, bringing to his antlers
The buck in the snow.
How strange a thing–a mile away by now, it may be,
Under the heavy hemlocks that as the moments pass
Shift their loads a little, letting fall a feather of snow–
Life, looking out attentive from the eyes of the doe.
Five
Robbing in the park this morning
He is a thief of life – of earthworms
A black-hatted, tomato-shaped, tomato-colored predator
He is not after seeds or bread crusts – Remember that!
He is a hunter of worms and he stalks them until they wriggle toward sunlight.
Two on Fourth Day of April
Robin’s in the park this morning
eating voraciously on
easy worms after the rain
fat, sassy, haughty
full of the unfortunate un-earthed
Reading, Writing and Appreciating Poetry Month
One on Three of April, 2015
The day turned dark at noontime. (they said it always – it doesn’t – does)
26 years ago, Good Friday was earlier
Don’t believe in direct conversation with a divine . . . understand?
Is a comfort in learned lines though
Oh, Lord! Oh, oh, oh! Oh my god! Uh, uh, uh!
Hail, Mary, full of disappointment.
BLACK HER-STORY MONTH, TOO
NEVERTHELESS, SHE PERSISTED
Maria (nee Miller )Stewart was the first woman to speak before a “promiscuous” audience, i.e. men and women, black and white in early 19th century America. She was the first African-American woman to lecture about women’s rights. Stewart focused particularly on the rights of black women, religion, and social justice among black people. She also became the first African-American woman to make public anti-slavery speeches and is one of the first African-American women to make public lectures for which there are still surviving copies.
“Most of our color have dragged out a miserable existence of servitude from the cradle to the grave. And what literary acquirements can be made, or useful knowledge derived, from either maps, books or charm, by those who continually drudge from Monday morning until Sunday noon? O, ye fairer sisters, whose hands are never soiled, whose nerves and muscles are never strained, go learn by experience! Had we had the opportunity that you have had, to improve our moral and mental faculties, what would have hindered our intellects from being as bright, and our manners from being as dignified as yours?… And why are not our forms as delicate, and our constitutions as slender, as yours? Is not the workmanship as curious and complete? Have pity upon us, have pity upon us, O ye who have hearts to feel for other’s woes; for the hand of God has touched us. Owing to the disadvantages under which we labor, there are many flowers among us that are…born to bloom unseen.
Stewart’s address in 1832 at Boston’s Franklin Hall, is notable in that Stewart used it to support a vision of black nationalism. Framed as a “black jeremiad”, Stewart’s speech followed in the tradition of the jeremiad as a rhetorical device in American discourse and refers to the prophet Jeremiah, author of the book of Lamentations. It is a melancholy disputation and it embodies warnings of further judgment and greater sufferings to come. Maria Stewart’s “black jeremiad” then was a means by which a black American woman warned whites of “the judgment that was to come for the sin of slavery.”
See more information on Maria Stewart at: http://www.blackpast.org/1832-maria-w-stewart-why-sit-ye-here-and-die#sthash.Hg3OKlKl.dpuf
For more background on Maria Stewart’s 1832 speech: http://archive.vod.umd.edu/civil/stewart1832int.htm
Link here for pix and info about Maria Stewart and six other women whose feminism was necessarily radicalized by the simple act of standing up and speaking out as Black women. http://bit.ly/1zRHA7O
Read a book of Maria Stewart’s speeches
I’m old enough to have remembered the events as portrayed in Ava Duverney’s film, “Selma.” Everything about the film seemed pitch perfect to me though I realized while watching that the lesson, for me, was that we Americans do not see things in the same ways. I can’t actually explain why this continues to surprise me. I remember the excitement of MLK’s speeches. I remember his words as always reasonable, charitable, intelligent. When I recall that people didn’t agree, that some people still don’t, I still shake my head in disbelief.
Kudos to Ms. Duverney for her beautiful film. Like so many Black women artists before her, she has made a way from no way.
Civil Rights marchers on Edmund Pettus Bridge
For Your FEBRUARY enrichment read:
ANGELS MAKE THEIR HOPE HERE
STAND THE STORM
RIVER, CROSS MY HEART
for more information about Breena Clarke’s books: www.BreenaClarke.com
Celebrate Peace#ANGELSMAKETHEIRHOPEHERE
Cheryl and Breena
Breena and Victoria
Edna Mae and Ludy
I’m recapping, summing up, pulling up my socks and getting ready for the New Year. Below are links to blogposts, videos, highlights, images and related materials for ANGELS MAKE THEIR HOPE HERE.
ANGELS MAKE THEIR HOPE HERE blog posts:http://bit.ly/1vimpLq
FESTIVAL OF WOMEN WRITERS HOLIDAY BOOK GIFT GUIDE:
http://bit.ly/1RdT12v
READING THE PAST review of ANGELS MAKE THEIR HOPE HERE:
http://bit.ly/1oLGSyu
WEEKEND EDITION SATURDAY on NPR, talking about the People of Russell’s Knob:
http://n.pr/1qQzmq7
Listen to an excerpt of the audiobook edition of ANGELS MAKE THEIR HOPE HERE, read by Love Carter:
http://bit.ly/UZxal7
View Breena Clarke and Helmar Cooper reading from ANGELS MAKE THEIR HOPE HERE:
http://youtu.be/WhO8BOOCM7U?list=FLrcYvaapzvUiyxMNEYzZ5Lg
Look at some of the images I’ve collected in reference to ANGELS MAKE THEIR HOPE HERE:
https://www.pinterest.com/breenac/angels-make-their-hope-here/
Other novels by Breena Clarke:
to read an excerpt of STAND THE STORM: http://bit.ly/T2KRhy
to read an excerpt of RIVER, CROSS MY HEART :http://bit.ly/1nx172Q
http://bit.ly/1vimpLq Who are the progen
http://bit.ly/1vimpLq Who are the progenitors of our nation? I’m discussing the trip-racial community of Russell’s Knob and my novel, ANGELS MAKE THEIR HOPE HERE at LATE NIGHT LIBRARY
breenaclarkebooks 