Holly Bass Reviews Alice Walker

The following review was written by Holly Bass.

Gwendolyn Brooks famously said, “Poetry is life distilled.” Alice Walker’s newest book, Hard Times Require Furious Dancing, reveals the evolution of an activist-writer who has distilled her own practice to its purest and simplest form. These are humble poems, composed of sparse lines, often only one or two words in length. But this brevity is not the absence of craft or attention to language. Rather, these poems represent an intentional choice on the part of a mature writer to set aside flourish and embellishment in favor of honesty.  These poems are mantras or prayers with meditative silences humming between their lines.

The work is about getting to a truth, often a very personal truth full of surprising rawness and intimacy. In “I Will Keep Broken Things,” she writes, “I will keep/ your/ wild/ free/ laughter/ though/ it is now/ missing/ its/ reassuring /and/ graceful/ hinge/ ...I will keep/ broken/ things./ I will keep / you: pilgrim / of/ sorrow./ I will keep/ myself.”

These are poems of personal pain and global distress, and love as a form of activism. Walker’s long history of activism is represented not only in the content of the book, but in form as well. Whereas previous recent collections were published by a major house, this newest book was released by an independent publisher, New World Library, that participates in the “Green Press Initiative” powering its offices with solar panels and printing books with 100% recycled paper. The poems themselves reside squarely in the space where the “personal is political.”

The title is a celebration of humanity and an acknowledgment of the fraught times in which we live. In her introduction, she speaks of the need to “dance our sorrows away, or at least integrate them more smoothly into our daily existence.” This theme carries throughout the book, balancing what might be termed an optimistic resignation—yes, our world continues to be marred with oppression and violence, but even if we cannot solve or fix it, we must continue to do the work of dismantling power, no matter how Sisyphean the task.

In the poem “Loving Humans,” written for Aung San Suu Kyi, she writes, “Loving humans/ is tricky/ sometimes/ a slap/ in the face/ is all you get/ for doing it/ just right.”  She continues, “Loving humans/ means/ writing poems & songs/ novels & plays, slogans, chants/ & protest signs...”

Like “Loving Humans,” many of the poems, composed over the course of one year, are written in first person and directed toward specific individuals or entities: activist friends, the grandson she has never met in person, deceased family members whose spirits she continues to carry, even to her decades-old BMW car and beloved animal companions.

At times they recall the spiritual sensibility of Persian poetry. Take, for example, “The Taste of Grudge,” the collection’s longest poem, written in thirteen parts:

I do not

regret

that

I am

imperfect

In each crack

there is

an orchid

growing

…

This we know:

We were

not meant

to suffer

so much

& to learn

nothing.

Ultimately, the book resounds with love-- for women, for the earth, for peacemakers and for humanity. The poems remind us of our own capacity to change ourselves and the world in which we live. To turn our sorrow into “beauty, form and beat.”

Even So by Alice Walker

Love, if it is love, never goes away.

It is embedded in us,

like seams of gold in the Earth,

waiting for light,

waiting to be struck.

Hard Times Require Furious Dancing

Alice Walker

New World Library 

$18.00

A free review copy of this book was provided to Split This Rock by the publisher. 

The Root's 30 Top Black Performance Poets

To cap off National Poetry Month, The Root recently compiled one badass list of the top Black Performance Poets "who revitalize the art on page and stage." Over here at Split This Rock, we were thrilled to see our beloved Patricia Smith (featured poet at the 2008 and 2010 festivals), and Lenelle Moïse (featured poets at the 2010 festival) make the list.

DC was also finely represented by local favorites and friends: Holly Bass, Sonya Renee Taylor, and Asha Shannon - who just might be the youngest poet on the list at 17, and who recently slammed her way to a spot on the DC Youth Slam Team.

And after experiencing Douglas Kearney on the Poets Rewriting Race Panel at AWP 2011, we have to agree with this pick and The Root's accurate description of Kearney's "unmatchable ability to translate printed stanzas into explosive, endearingly bizarre live shows."

Props to The Root for quite a comprehensive list representing an expanse of styles and voices.

Check out the full list here: http://www.theroot.com/multimedia/top-30-black-perform-formers

Poem of the Week: Holly Bass

The Furious Dance

an occasional poem in celebration of Alice Walker and her book of poetry, Hard Times Require Furious Dancing

October 2, 2010 (presented with tap dancer Melissa Frakman)

Photo Credit: McKenzie Johnson

What is a furious dance?

It is not polite.

Does not shuck and jive or shuffle along.

It is not beige.

It is bold. In your face. Ready for revolution.

A solidarity of the body. A rhetoric of rhythm.

A furious dance is the knowing

that despite the opposition's best efforts

to suppress, deny, destroy

we will shake off your oppression

and stamp it into dust

with our furiously dancing feet.

Are you furious

in your peacemaking, in your pleasure making,

your life giving and living? Do you dance the sun up

and give thanks each day?

We must be furious, like our sister Alice

Her words cut through

all the tepid tea parties, the sleight

of hand and misdirection of

pundits, politicos and profit mongers

She speaks truth, sings peace

in her garden of words

fingers coaxing nourishment

from the earth's fertile being

Alice

The eighth and last child of

Willie Lee Walker and

Minnie Lou Tallulah Grant Walker

royalty of "the rural peasantry"

from red clay Georgia

this Daughter, Sister, Mother

Bearer of magic talismans:

a suitcase, a sewing machine,

a typewriter

Walker

She who make inroads

from dirt roads

Who cuts new paths

wherever her feet take her

Spelman to Sarah Lawrence

New York City to Mississippi

Gaza and Washington, DC

Poet, novelist, essayist, anthologist

editor, educator, activist

water-bearer

prophetess

sending us in search

of our mothers' gardens

only to discover that We

are the ones we have

been waiting for

We praise her for teaching

a generation of women the difference

between lavender and purple,

between feminist and womanist

for reclaiming our heroine

Zora Neale Hurston

and returning her arrow-sharp words

to their rightful position

Alice Walker has given us more

than four decades of catalytic language

beginning with a book of poems in 1967

Once

gathering into the global phenomenon

that is The Color Purple

and arriving some thirty books later here

to Hard Times Require Furious Dancing

Require is a word of urgency,

any-means-necessary

That is to say, this is not optional, people

this is a call to action,

to march, to shout, to protest, to love

to dance and dance furiously

our collective humanity.

-Holly Bass

Used by permission.

Holly Bass is a poet and performer. A Cave Canem fellow, her poems have appeared in Callaloo, nocturnes (re)view, Role Call, Beltway and The Ringing Ear, an anthology of Black Southern poetry.

Bass, Poet-in-Residence at the 5th & K Busboys and Poets, was a featured reader for the opening night of Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness 2010.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

Split This Rock
www.splitthisrock.org
info@splitthisrock.org
202-787-5210

Join Pulitzer Prize winning author, ALICE WALKER (The Color Purple), Busboys and Poets, NAACP CEO/President BEN JEALOUS, CODEPINK, Teaching for Change, TransAfrica Forum, Words, Beats and Life, Split This Rock, and many others as we celebrate the publication of Walker's new volume of poetry, Hard Times Require Furious Dancing.

Walker writes in the preface, "though we have encountered our share of grief and troubles on this earth, we can still hold the line of beauty, form, and beat. No small accomplishment in a world as challenging as this one." PERFORMANCES BY:-- DJ EYE AM-- Chelsey Green, Electric Violinist-- Carolyn Malachi, Singer-- Holly Bass, B&P 5th & K Poet-in-Residence

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

June Sunday Kind of Love

Sunday Kind of Love
Sunday June 20, 2010
4-6 pm

Featuring Holly Bass
and participants from
Fantastic Voyage:
A Lyrical City Writing Workshop

Busboys & Poets
14th & V Streets, NW, Washington, DC
Hosted by Katy Richey and Sarah Browning
Cosponsored by Busboys and Poets and Split This Rock
Open Mic at each event!

Admission free, donations encouraged
For more info: www.BusboysandPoets.com browning@splitthisrock.org
www.SplitThisRock.org, 202-387-POET


High Def/High Tech: Poems from
Fantastic Voyage:
A Lyrical City Writing Workshop

In honor of Black Music Month, participants from the Lyrical City writing workshop will offer a mix of sonic textures aided by technology. In addition to live sound poems performed by the group, workshop leader Holly Bass will read "twaikus" posted by writers to Busboys' Twitter account.

Are you ready? Tomorrow's the day!

Tomorrow, the festival begins!

For a detailed schedule, click here.

We'll see you at Check-In at Busboys and Poets 14th and V Langston Room between 2 and 5:30 p.m.

Get pumped with our opening ceremonies at 6:00p.m., also in the Langston Room. Featuring young DC voices, including the Young Women’s Drumming Empowerment Project, the Shakti Brigade, winners of Split This Rock’s World & Me Youth Poetry Contest, and members of the DC Youth Slam Team. With readings of poems by Dennis Brutus, Lucille Clifton, and Mahmoud Darwish, plus the inspiring words of Howard Zinn.

The Opening Night reading takes place at 8:00 PM at Bell Multicultural High School.
Featuring Andrea Gibson, Wang Ping, Cornelius Eady and Busboys and Poets Poets in Residence Holly Bass, Beny Blaq, and Derrick Weston Brown.

Andrea Gibson, a powerful live performer, was the winner of the 2008 Women of The World Poetry Slam (Detroit), and has placed 3rd in the world for the last three years by the iWPS. She won a DIY Poetry Book of the Year and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her first book, Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns. She has been showcased on Free Speech TV, the documentary Slam Planet, NPR, Air America, and Independent Radio Stations nationwide. She has recorded four full-length albums of poetry, the most recently, Yellowbird, in which her poetry is accompanied by piano, global drums, dobro, violin, and music by Kim Taylor, Chris Pureka, and Devotchka. The Denver Westword has said, “If slamming were professional boxing, Andrea Gibson would be the light weight you don’t think much of until she’s knocked you flat on your ass.”

Wang Ping was born in China and came to USA in 1985. Her publications include American Visa (short stories, 1994), Foreign Devil (novel, 1996), Of Flesh and Spirit (poetry, 1998), The Magic Whip (poetry, 2003), The Last Communist Virgin (stories, 2007), all from Coffee House Press. New Generation: Poetry from China Today (1999), an anthology she edited and co-translated, is published by Hanging Loose. Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China (2000, University of Minnesota Press) won the Eugene Kayden Award for the Best Book in Humanities. In 2002, Random House published its paperback. She had two solo photography and multi-media exhibitions--“Behind the Gate: After the Flooding of the Three Gorges” at Janet Fine Art Gallery, Macalester College, 2007, and “All Roads to Lhasa” at Banfill-Lock Cultural Center, 2008. She is the recipient of National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council of the Arts, Minnesota State Arts Board, the Bush Artist Fellowship, Lannan Foundation Fellowship, and the McKnight Artist Fellowship. She is associate professor of English at Macalester College.

Cornelius Eady's latest book of poems, Hardheaded Weather (Marian Wood/Putnam, 2008), was nominated for an 2008 NAACP Image Award. He is co-founder (with Toi Derricote) of Cave Canem, a national organization for African American poetry and poets, and Associate Professor of English at The University of Notre Dame. He is the author of six other books of poetry. His Victims of the Latest Dance Craze won the 1985 Lamont Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and his The Gathering of My Name was nominated for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize. Additional honors include the Prairie Schooner Strousse Award, a 2002 Oppenheimer Award for the best first play by an American playwright, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. He is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Notre Dame. [Photo credit: Chip Cooper]

Holly Bass is a writer and performer. Her most recent body of work explores the endless allure of booty—from the Venus Hottentot to video vixens. A Cave Canem fellow, her poems have appeared in Callaloo, nocturnes (re)view, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Role Call, and The Ringing Ear. Her work has been presented at the Kennedy Center, Arena Stage, the Whitney Museum, and the Experience Music Project in Seattle. She is the Cullen Poet-in-Residence for Busboy and Poets' 5th & K location in Washington, DC, where she coordinates open mic nights and writing workshops for the public. She has received grants from the DC Arts Commission and a 2008 Future Aesthetics grant from the Ford Foundation/Hip Hop Theater Festival. [Photo credit: YTanou Photography]

Brooklyn, NY, native Beny Blaq discovered he had an interest in poetry at the age of 13. Inspired by the art form of poetry and spoken word, which he calls the "greatest forum of expression," he decided to give his writing life. He has performed and featured nationally at open mic venues and community events and at more than 50 colleges and universities. Beny has conducted writing workshops in public schools, headlined in the play, "Prison Poetry," at the historic Lincoln Theatre in Washington, DC, and appeared on radio and TV outlets such as BET's Lyric Cafe, TV One and WHUR, as well as HBO’s hit series “The Wire.” He is the Poet-In-Residence at Busboys and Poets in Shirlington, Virginia.

Derrick Weston Brown holds an MFA in Creative Writing from American University. He has participated in VONA and is a Cave Canem fellow. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ginosko, Mythium, The Columbia Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Drunken Boat, and MipOesia. In 2006 he released his first chapbook of poetry, The Unscene, and has recently completed a full-length manuscript, Wisdom Teeth. He teaches poetry at Hart Middle School in Washington, DC. He is the Poet-In-Residence at Busboys and Poets' 14th & V location in Washington, DC, and the bookstore, which is operated by the nonprofit Teaching For Change.