On Moby's 15th studio album Everything was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt, the electronic music pioneer presents a view of the apocalypse with an undercurrent of beauty and a dash of hope. KCRW brings us highlights from a live session recorded at Apogee Studio, including some of his classic tracks.
CREDITS
Musicians: Moby- Guitar, Vocals Jonathan Nesvadba- Bass, Vocals Tripp Beam- Drums Julie Mintz- Keys, Vocals Mindy Jones- Vocals
Technical support: Bob Clearmountain, Brandon Duncan, Sergio Ruelas: Recording Engineers JC Swiatek: Editor Justin Preston: Web Video Producers: Subtractive Lighting
Special thanks to Betty Bennett and Bob Clearmountain
Gregg Chadwick speaks at the AACN Symposium at UCLA on Art as a Tool for Social Justice
by Gregg Chadwick
Last Thursday, I spoke at the AACN Symposium at UCLA on Art as a Tool for Social Justice. It was an honor to speak at my alma mater. UCLA's proud history of advancing civil rights was a prime reason I attended the university as an undergraduate. I was inspired by the heroic stories of UCLA alums:
Jackie Robinson as he broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball.
Kenny Washington as he broke the color barrier in the National Football League in 1946
Ralph Bunche at the UN. And as I learned later the advocacy for social justice by UCLA Nursing Grad AfAf Meleis.
As I write this, I am reminded that six years ago today, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was killed for simply being black in America. His death fueled a movement. I also remember that with millions of others, I marched on January 21, 2017 in the #WomensMarch. Our crowd in Los Angeles numbered around 750,000. This year on January 20, 2018, I marched again, and the crowd was estimated by L.A. Mayor Garcetti at 600,000. Artists often use their creations as a sort of reflecting device that mirrors and focuses the viewer’s attention on social and political change. As Marvin Gaye sang so poignantly- “What’s going on.”
Margy Waller on her blog The Bright Ride has a powerful post up entitled Artistic Resistance In Our America . Poignant and on point. She points to Jeffrey Kahane's minor keyed interpretation of America the Beautiful. In our time, where does art stand in the current climate of Resistance against violence, racism, sexism, and anti-LGBT bigotry? As I said at UCLA, art possesses an uncanny ability to communicate ideas and feelings that journalism sometimes struggles to convey. It seems that especially in times of struggle or unrest, art helps us connect to the personhood of others. Jeffrey Kahane helps us connect to the intertwined history of the United States. Kahane seems to play a lament, not for our lost innocence - as Americans we never were innocent with our history of enslavement and brutal conquest. But instead, in Kahane's notes, I hear the slow, dogged pursuit of justice. In my mind's eye as Kahane plays, I see the heroic faces of the justice workers who have come before us and the faces of the current generation of students fighting oppression, gun violence, and tainted water supplies. As Margy Waller writes,"We will resist. We will return.Thank you, Jeffrey Kahane—for a moment of stunning artistic protest."
Bowie Intergalactic Tribute Art Exhibit at the Neutra Museum (Curated by Dulce Stein)
Gregg Chadwick
Changes: David Bowie
41”x25.5” pastel on paper 2017
My pastel on paper artworkChanges: David Bowie will be on exhibit in a David Bowie tribute international multidisciplinary group show at The Neutra Museum in Silverlake. My artwork looks back on Bowie when he released his haunting songWhere Are We Now? which is as much a painting in soft greys as it is a song. A quiet rhythm of drums and synth warp and weft with minor key piano chords and Bowie's plaintive, elegiac voice. Set in a Berlin of memory and dream, Bowie's voice and lyrics question the themes of human bondage, release, freedom, doubt, ageing, and death. Bowie lived in West Berlin between 1976 and 1979 in the Schöneberg district in a house with Iggy Pop while Brian Eno and Tony Visconti were helping record Bowie's Berlin trilogy of albums Low, Heroes, and Lodger in the now legendary Hansa Studios. Years later, Bowie looks back in "Where Are We Now?" and echoes his words about Low, "Berlin has the strange ability to make you write only the important things. Anything else you don't mention." The political and the personal merge in my pastel painting of Bowie. We are left with existential questions and are reminded that bodies age, marriages end, friendships dissolve and memories fade. But Bowie's quietly defiant voice does not give in to any dying of the light.
What: Bowie Intergalactic Tribute Art Exhibit at the Neutra Museum Where: Neutra Museum, 2379 Glendale Boulevard, Silver Lake, California When: Opening Night - Saturday, January 27, 2018, 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm Exhibition runs from January 27 - February 11, 2018 Website: https://www.facebook.com/events/330235890792196/
Points of Departure (An exhibition curated by Maurizzio Hector Pineda)
Gregg Chadwick
Flor De Asfalto (for Sergio Arau)
50”x80” oil on linen 2018
(Installation View)
"These studio artists offer a visual mediation of time, site, and process. In this time of maelstrom and uncertainty,Points of Departureoffers a visual respite for viewers to depart from the daily noise of contemporary life." - Maurizzio Hector Pineda, Curator
My paintingFlor De Asfalto (for Sergio Arau)is featured in the Arena 1 exhibitionPoints of Departure. With his music, words and images, Sergio Arau has inspired me to create a series of paintings that feature him as the main character in my painted movies. Rock Star, actor, director, screenwriter, and artist Sergio Arau has often performed while wearing gear honoring Mexico's most famous wrestling star El Santo (The Man In the Silver Mask). Known as lucha libre, Mexican wrestlers such as El Santo are defenders of the poor and vulnerable. By taking on the persona of the Luchador (wrestler), Josh Kun writes inAudiotopia: Music, Race, and America, Sergio Arau and his bands have mixed "the traditional with the contemporary, the rural with the urban, the American with the Mexican, the charro with the rockero."
My paintingFlor De Asfalto (for Sergio Arau) carries Sergio Arau into a Los Angeles seemingly pulled from the lyrics of his songs or gathered from scenes of his films that were left on the cutting room floor.
Gracias Sergio!
On the Curator: Maurizzio Hector Pineda is an emerging curator from EL Salvador who currently lives and works in Southern California. His most recent curatorial post was at the Torrance Art Museum as an assistant curator. During his tenure at the Museum he co-curated The Gildless Age, 2016 and developed the 2017 SUR: Biennial with a focus on Cuban contemporary art for the TAM.
What: Points of Departure Where: Arena 1 Gallery, Santa Monica Art Studios, 3026 Airport Ave. SM 90405 When: Opening Night - Thursday, January 25, 2017, 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm with a performance by Doni Silver Simons at 7:30 pm Thursday, January 25 12-6 pm Friday, January 26 12-6 pm Saturday, January 27 12-6 pm Sunday, January 28 12-6 pm Website: www.greggchadwick.com
Cost: This exhibition is free
MORE ART HERE is located across the street from and concurrent with Art Los Angeles Contemporary and just a short shuttle ride away from the stART Up Fair LA in Venice.
Complimentary Shuttle between MORE ART HERE and stART Up Fair at The Kinney Hotel and will be available hourly. The shuttle stops will be located on the west side of 3026 Airport Avenue and The Kinney Hotel, Venice.
If you happen to be in Memphis this season, please stop by the L Ross Gallery for this year's Holiday Exhibition. My painting Memphis Train (Arcade Restaurant) is featured in the show.
L Ross Gallery Gallery Artists Holiday Exhibition December 1 - 30, 2017 5040 Sanderlin Ave, Suite 104, Memphis, TN More at: L Ross Gallery Holiday Exhibition
"Laced with 22 tracks, Trip shreds the public's perception of Aiko and allows everyone to walk into the life of Penny, a nickname she was given by her great-grandfather when she was a child. For the first time, Aiko gives listeners a front row seat and allows them to watch her undergo a whirlwind of emotions, including love, pain, depression and, ultimately, triumph."
Gregg Chadwick Flor De Asfalto (for Sergio Arau) 56”x86” oil on linen 2017
With his music, words and images, Sergio Arau has inspired me to create a series of paintings that feature him as the main character in my painted movies. Rock Star, actor, director, screenwriter, and artist Sergio Arau has often performed while wearing gear honoring Mexico's most famous wrestling star El Santo (The Man In the Silver Mask). Known as lucha libre, Mexican wrestlers such as El Santo are defenders of the poor and vulnerable. By taking on the persona of the Luchador (wrestler), Josh Kun writes in Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America, Sergio Arau and his bands have mixed "the traditional with the contemporary, the rural with the urban, the American with the Mexican, the charro with the rockero."
My paintings in Luchador's Dream carry Sergio Arau into a Los Angeles seemingly pulled from the lyrics of his songs or gathered from scenes of his films that were left on the cutting room floor.
Gracias Sergio!
The exhibition runs from September 7 - October 7, 2017
(Luchador's Dream is, in true rock n' roll fashion, a completely unaffiliated, and unofficial satellite exhibition of 2017: Año de México en Los Ángeles / Mexico in Los Angeles 2017)
What: Luchador’s Dream - Inspired by Sergio Arau (New Paintings by Gregg Chadwick)
Where: La Galería de la Cocina - Santa Monica Art Studios, 3026 Airport Ave. SM 90405
When: Opening - September 15, 2017, 6:00pm - 8:00pm
First Reveal - I have been working on this large painting 4.5 feet by 7.5 feet for quite a while now. Great thanks to @SergioArau and @YareliArizmendi for their art and inspiration. In process - "Ask the Dust (Sergio Arau)" #literature#art🎨#artistsoninstagram#losangeles
I first heard U2's 1987 album The Joshua Tree in Western Australia. The album's Cinemascope sound provided the soundtrack for my next few months traveling the breadth of that expansive country from Perth, to Uluru (Ayers Rock), to Darwin, to Melbourne, to Sydney. Having spent a number of summers as a kid traveling across the grand deserts of the United States, I could hear the arid landscape in U2's songs. And while riding through the red deserts of Australia's outback I felt right at home. I gazed at Anton Corbijn's evocative black and white photography each time I pulled The Joshua Tree out of the cassette case and popped it into my Walkman. My brother Kent is a poet, and I thought of him often as I listened to the poetic, atmospheric wash opening the album. In those Australian months, I often peered out of a bus window as we careened through the desert dust with Bono's plaintive wail in my ear. From Bullet the Blue Sky, to Red Hill Mining Town, to Mothers of the Disappeared the songs on The Joshua Tree echoed and expanded a growing mistrust of the dangerous elements in Reagan era U.S. and Thatcher era U.K. policies. Thirty years later, in our even more dangerous era under Trump, the political and emotional concerns embedded in The Joshua Tree ring loudly. It is fitting that U2 is playing the entire album from start to finish on their most recent tour.
Last Saturday, May 20, 2017, I joined an enthusiastic throng at The Rose Bowl in Pasadena to listen to U2's 30th Anniversary take on their groundbreaking album. Before U2's set began, a series of powerful poems was scrolled across the screen behind the stage.
There were many beautiful musical moments at the Rose Bowl, from Edge's chiming guitar, to Adam Clayton's deep, fat bass, to Larry Mullin's powerful drumming, to an engaged Bono. For much of the evening, U2 performed in front of a giant video screen filled with Corbijn's evocative new imagery, and later filmed tributes to women's rights and the plight of Syrian refugees. As Bono says to Andy Greene in Rolling Stone:
"Let's meet one such immigrant who he wants to turn away from the shore. I commissioned french artist J.R. He didn't have much time to do it. Where are we going to find this girl? He finds her in Zaatari in a camp in Jordan, which I visited with my daughter and [my wife] Ali a year ago. He finds this incredible spirit, Omaima. She talks about America as a dreamland. She closes her eyes and J.R. asks her in another segment of the film we don't broadcast, 'What do you see when you think of America?' She goes, 'Oh, it is a civilized country and they are a good people.' It was just heartbreaking."
A giant banner bearing a photo of Omaima, the young Syrian refugee featured on the large screen, was carried through the crowd during Miss Sarajevo. An almost punkishly exuberant version of U2's first hit I Will Follow brought the house to their feet and the night to a close.
Note: The boorish Trump backers behind us, spitting and slurring drunken epithets towards Bono and the band whenever U2 ventured towards thoughts of social justice or civil rights provided proof that the world and the United States in particular needs this album and this band right now. Fortunately, the boors left early, leaving us more room to dream new dreams that night.
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Below I have posted many of the poems scrolled by U2 before the Joshua Tree 2017 concert at the Rose Bowl on May 20, 2017. I have also added poems shown on the massive video screens at earlier performances in Vancouver and Seattle. Please click on the identifying links to find the poem sources. And please follow up to purchase some of these amazing poets' powerful work. Links to the author's works for sale are provided below before each poem.
Many thanks to the Poetry Foundation for their amazing archive of poetry. And much thanks to Aaron J. Sams who was the first to compile a list of screened poems on the U2songs.com site.
Sticky inside their winter suits the Sunday children stare at pools in pavement and black ice where roots of sky in moodier sky dissolve. An empty coach train runs along the thin and sooty river flats and stick and straw and random stones steam faintly when its steam departs. Lime-water and licorice light wander the tumbled streets. A few sparrows gather. A dog barks out under the dogless pale pale blue. Move your tongue along a slat of a raspberry box from last year's crate. Smell a saucepantilt of water on the coal-ash in your grate. Think how the Black Death made men dance, and from the silt of centuries the proof is now scraped bare that once Troy fell and Pompeii scorched and froze. A boy alone out in the court whacks with his hockey stick, and whacks in the wet, and the pigeons flutter, and rise, and settle back.
George Elliott Clarke – “Ain’t You Scared of the Sacred?: A Spiritual”
Ain’t You Scared of the Sacred?: A Spiritual
Ain’t you scared of the Sacred?
Ain’t you scared of the Sacred?
Divinity spies you naked.
Tremble or your heart breaketh.
Yes, I’s scared of the Sacred.
Yes, I’s scared of the Sacred.
So, I don’t fear anyone.
Love shakes me to the bone.
Adam and Eve weren’t angels—
Just apes with an alphabet.
Tremble before the Sacred!
Shake when you aim the bullet!
Best be scared of the Sacred!
Best be scared of the Sacred!
Divinity knows you naked.
Tremble or your house breaketh.
Believers can’t live forever;
And evil-doers gonna die.
Folks with religious Fever,
Burn hot with Hypocrisy.
Ain’t you scared of the Sacred?
Ain’t you scared of the Sacred?
I tremble like an angel
Fallen down, lone and naked.
Sinner, shout against the mosque?
Sinner, shout gainst the synagogue?
Sinner, your church is a kiosk,
And you’re struttin in a bog.
Best be scared of the Sacred!
Best tremble like an angel.
Better know you’re all naked:
Divinity sees every angle.
Best humble down and tremble.
Best humble down and tremble.
Shout proverbs at a mirror.
Condemn yourself for Error.
Best pray Mercy for your sins.
Your Pride is sham Innocence.
Best humble down, tremble well:
Only Love busts your jail cell.
Ain’t you scared of the Sacred?
Ain’t you scared of the Sacred?
Put down that gun and that bomb:
Make your heart a saintly home.
Mercy, Mercy, everyone:
Defuse that bomb! Drop that gun!
Ain’t you scared of the Sacred?
Ain’t you scared of the Sacred?
Divinity spies you naked.
Tremble or your heart breaketh.
Best be scared of the Sacred!
Best be scared of the Sacred!
Elegy for Leonard Cohen (à la manière d'Allen Ginsberg) George Elliott Clarke
This terrible, irritable dawn--
This morning of Mourning--
His obituary crowbars apart
Prophecy and Nostalgia....
Always native to Heaven,
Minting gleaming melodies,
Freeing a nailed-down Christ,
Obeying the mating-calls
Of mandolins and guitars, he
Never abstained from Liberty,
Never lost the Intelligence
Of Dylan-dark sunglasses
And light making masterpieces
Of shambles, or lighting up
Cages where lovers loll,
Lousy with tears and sighs....
Poet of Everything,
He transcended conclaves
Of critics, the murders
Of poets, all those copycats--
Sordid franchisees of blues--
Every presidency serving up
Immaculate Corruption, the stale,
white bread circulated with grease....
His insatiable suitcase,
Portaging Gog and Magog
(In eastern Quebec), Hydra,
Rue Main, Manhattan, Havana,
Pursued the ghosts of Glory--
Parliaments of movie screens--
Fiestas of butterflies, and secret
Eros, Eros, everywhere....
After auditing the News,
I suffered the insomnia
Of steel nails, heads battered
Until drowsy, woozy in wood.
Eternity expires as eyes close--
Or we succumb to sobbing....
But the honest poet voids
The dirty mind of Grief,
Knows the poet's grave
Is his deathless poems--
Dark, remorseless Beauty--
Light that scalpels eyes open.
These words I speak have been given
me by angels. Moon-faced, they fall
into sight at night and spread wings
of pine needles through my skin.
Stories appear down my arms, across
my legs, they wind my waist in red haloes.
I have been chosen by Tyee
to tell of the beginning. My flesh
is a series of writhing tablets.
Let me show it to you.
I will dance without veils.
My body is a voice.
Listen.
My feet tell the story of the lost tribes
who wandered in their own darkness.
When they reached the Promised Land
they did not know it, but fell
down its wet, green gullet,
emerged as ravens, whales, eagles.
You may see their names written across my toes
for just one dollar.
But wait!
There is more. Here, along
my thighs are the virgin births.
Sand coloured maidens bathed
in mountain streams, were filled with salmon roe.
Smolts swam in their bellies.
Move closer, hear
the swell of secret waters.
The women married totem pole carvers
and bore fishers who pulled in full nets.
Each night the mothers reconstructed
the bones, threw them back to the sea,
and the salmon lived again.
Stay,
I will let you touch their fins.
Here, on my breast, see this rusty wound?
A cross marks the time the stories
dulled and Tyee took a new name
and began to live somewhere else—
across the sea in a garden where the plants
grow at the feet of men and women
and not through the trunks of their bodies.
Yes, you may kiss it.
Our garden was cleared,
and spirits shrank, hid in glass cages,
their moon faces darting through golden
liquid to burn hotly behind stupid tongues.
They will speak to you from my mouth
if you will just buy me a drink.
No, don’t go yet!
You haven’t seen it all.
For ten bucks I will show you
every scar on my body.
Another ten, you can make your own.
I will dance for you in a veil
of red waterfalls.
Stay, I am a prophet.
Angels visit me at night with pen knives.
I WAS born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women, gave me a song and a slogan.
Here the water went down, the icebergs slid with gravel, the gaps and the valleys hissed, and the black loam came, and the yellow sandy loam.
Here between the sheds of the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, here now a morning star fixes a fire sign over the timber claims and cow pastures, the corn belt, the cotton belt, the cattle ranches.
Here the gray geese go five hundred miles and back with a wind under their wings honking the cry for a new home.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water.
Of sons and daughters, I take peace or war, I say nothing and wait.
Have you seen a red sunset drip over one of my cornfields, the shore of night stars, the wave lines of dawn up a wheat valley?
Have you heard my threshing crews yelling in the chaff of a strawpile and the running wheat of the wagonboards, my cornhuskers, my harvest hands hauling crops, singing dreams of women, worlds, horizons?
Omaha and Kansas City, Minneapolis and St. Paul, sisters in a house together, throwing slang, growing up.
Towns in the Ozarks, Dakota wheat towns, Wichita, Peoria, Buffalo, sisters throwing slang, growing up.
. . .
Out of prairie-brown grass crossed with a streamer of wigwam smoke—out of a smoke pillar, a blue promise—out of wild ducks woven in greens and purples—
Here I saw a city rise and say to the peoples round world: Listen, I am strong, I know what I want.
Out of log houses and stumps—canoes stripped from tree-sides—flatboats coaxed with an ax from the timber claims—in the years when the red and the white men met—the houses and streets rose.
A thousand red men cried and went away to new places for corn and women: a million white men came and put up skyscrapers, threw out rails and wires, feelers to the salt sea: now the smokestacks bite the skyline with stub teeth.
In an early year the call of a wild duck woven in greens and purples: now the riveter’s chatter, the police patrol, the song-whistle of the steamboat.
To a man across a thousand years I offer a handshake.
I say to him: Brother, make the story short, for the stretch of a thousand years is short.
They are mine, the threshing crews eating beefsteak, the farmboys driving steers to the railroad cattle pens.
They are mine, the crowds of people at a Fourth of July basket picnic, listening to a lawyer read the Declaration of Independence, watching the pinwheels and Roman candles at night, the young men and women two by two hunting the bypaths and kissing bridges.
They are mine, the horses looking over a fence in the frost of late October saying good-morning to the horses hauling wagons of rutabaga to market.
They are mine, the old zigzag rail fences, the new barb wire.
Falltime and winter apples take on the smolder of the five-o’clock November sunset: falltime, leaves, bonfires, stubble, the old things go, and the earth is grizzled.
The land and the people hold memories, even among the anthills and the angleworms, among the toads and woodroaches—among gravestone writings rubbed out by the rain—they keep old things that never grow old.
The phantom of a yellow rooster flaunting a scarlet comb, on top of a dung pile crying hallelujah to the streaks of daylight,
The phantom of an old hunting dog nosing in the underbrush for muskrats, barking at a coon in a treetop at midnight, chewing a bone, chasing his tail round a corncrib,
The phantom of an old workhorse taking the steel point of a plow across a forty-acre field in spring, hitched to a harrow in summer, hitched to a wagon among cornshocks in fall,
These phantoms come into the talk and wonder of people on the front porch of a farmhouse late summer nights.
When the morning sun is on the trumpet-vine blossoms, sing at the kitchen pans: Shout All Over God’s Heaven.
When the rain slants on the potato hills and the sun plays a silver shaft on the last shower, sing to the bush at the backyard fence: Mighty Lak a Rose.
When the icy sleet pounds on the storm windows and the house lifts to a great breath, sing for the outside hills: The Ole Sheep Done Know the Road, the Young Lambs Must Find the Way.
. . .
Spring slips back with a girl face calling always: “Any new songs for me? Any new songs?”
O prairie girl, be lonely, singing, dreaming, waiting—your lover comes—your child comes—the years creep with toes of April rain on new-turned sod.
O prairie girl, whoever leaves you only crimson poppies to talk with, whoever puts a good-by kiss on your lips and never comes back—
There is a song deep as the falltime redhaws, long as the layer of black loam we go to, the shine of the morning star over the corn belt, the wave line of dawn up a wheat valley.
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
When sleepless, it’s helpful to meditate on mottoes of the states.
South Carolina, “While I breathe I hope.” Perhaps this could be
the new flag on the empty flagpole.
Or “I Direct” from Maine—why?
Because Maine gets the first sunrise? How bossy, Maine!
Kansas, “To the Stars through Difficulties”—
clackety wagon wheels, long, long land
and the droning press of heat—cool stars, relief.
In Arkansas, “The People Rule”—lucky you.
Idaho, “Let It Be Perpetual”—now this is strange.
Idaho, what is your “it”?
Who chose these lines?
How many contenders?
What would my motto be tonight, in tangled sheets?
Texas—“Friendship”—now boasts the Open Carry law.
Wisconsin, where my mother’s parents are buried,
chose “Forward.”
New Mexico, “It Grows As It Goes”—now this is scary.
Two dangling its. This does not represent that glorious place.
West Virginia, “Mountaineers Are Always Free”—really?
Washington, you’re wise.
What could be better than “By and By”?
Oklahoma must be tired—“Labor Conquers all Things.”
Oklahoma, get together with Nevada, who chose only
“Industry” as motto. I think of Nevada as a playground
or mostly empty. How wrong we are about one another.
For Alaska to pick “North to the Future”
seems odd. Where else are they going?
Poets.org writes that "Naomi Shihab Nye gives voice to her experience as an Arab-American through poems about heritage and peace that overflow with a humanitarian spirit."
let there be new flowering in the fields let the fields turn mellow for the men let the men keep tender through the time let the time be wrested from the war let the war be won let love be at the end
On her 36th birthday, Thomas had shown her
her first swimming pool. It had been
his favorite color, exactly—just
so much of it, the swimmers’ white arms jutting
into the chevrons of high society.
She had rolled up her window
and told him to drive on, fast.
Now this act of mercy: four daughters
dragging her to their husbands’ company picnic,
white families on one side and them
on the other, unpacking the same
squeeze bottles of Heinz, the same
waxy beef patties and Salem potato chip bags.
So he was dead for the first time
on Fourth of July—ten years ago
had been harder, waiting for something to happen,
and ten years before that, the girls
like young horses eyeing the track.
Last August she stood alone for hours
in front of the T.V. set
as a crow’s wing moved slowly through
the white streets of government.
That brave swimming
scared her, like Joanna saying
Mother, we’re Afro-Americans now!
What did she know about Africa?
Were there lakes like this one
with a rowboat pushed under the pier?
Or Thomas’ Great Mississippi
with its sullen silks? (There was
the Nile but the Nile belonged
to God.) Where she came from
was the past, 12 miles into town
where nobody had locked their back door,
and Goodyear hadn’t begun to dream of a park
under the company symbol, a white foot
sprouting two small wings.
The border is a line that birds cannot see.
The border is a beautiful piece of paper folded carelessly in half.
The border is where flint first met steel, starting a century of fires.
The border is a belt that is too tight, holding things up but making it hard to breathe.
The border is a rusted hinge that does not bend.
The border is the blood clot in the river’s vein.
The border says stop to the wind, but the wind speaks another language, and keeps going.
The border is a brand, the “Double-X” of barbed wire scarred into the skin of so many.
The border has always been a welcome stopping place but is now a stop sign, always red.
The border is a jump rope still there even after the game is finished.
The border is a real crack in an imaginary dam.
The border used to be an actual place, but now, it is the act of a thousand imaginations.
The border, the word border, sounds like order, but in this place they do not rhyme.
The border is a handshake that becomes a squeezing contest.
The border smells like cars at noon and wood smoke in the evening.
The border is the place between the two pages in a book where the spine is bent too far.
The border is two men in love with the same woman.
The border is an equation in search of an equals sign.
The border is the location of the factory where lightning and thunder are made.
The border is “NoNo” The Clown, who can’t make anyone laugh.
The border is a locked door that has been promoted.
The border is a moat but without a castle on either side.
The border has become Checkpoint Chale.
The border is a place of plans constantly broken and repaired and broken.
The border is mighty, but even the parting of the seas created a path, not a barrier.
The border is a big, neat, clean, clear black line on a map that does not exist.
The border is the line in new bifocals: below, small things get bigger; above, nothing changes.
The border is a skunk with a white line down its back.
“I saw a friend from growing up who’s been
living in L.A. for about twenty years, and I
heard him say, ‘I’m from L.A.,’ and I said,
‘No, man, you from Philly. We don’t give
nobody up.’”
—Khan Jamal
jazz vibraphonist
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don't mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don't sing
all the time
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
all the timeor maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn't half bad
if it isn't you
Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey towith its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen
and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to
Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs
and having inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally'living it up'
Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
mortician
Neither your face, Higera, nor your deeds
Are known to me; and death these many years
Retains you, under grass or forest-mould.
Only a rivulet bears your name: it runs
Deep-hidden in undeciduous redwood shade
And trunks by age made holy, streaming down
A valley of the Santa Lucian hills.
There have I stopped, and though the unclouded sun
Flew high in loftiest heaven, no dapple of light
Flecked the large trunks below the leaves intense,
Nor flickered on your creek: murmuring it sought
The River of the South, which oceanward
Would sweep it down. I drank sweet water there,
And blessed your immortality. Not bronze,
Higera, nor yet marble cool the thirst;
Let bronze and marble of the rich and proud
Secure the names; your monument will last
Longer, of living water forest-pure.