Self-Portrait, poem by Afaa Michael Weaver

SELF-PORTRAIT
by Afaa Michael Weaver

I see myself in the shadows of a leaf
compressed to the green blades growing
to a point like the shards of miles of mirrors
falling and cracking to perfect gardens.

I never inspect the withered assumption
of my face’s petty dialogue in raindrops,
the deceptive spreading of the words
oozing from the skin to the edges of water
etched on the ground by gravity and wishing.

Passing for the seriousness of my eye,
platitudes of my white collar or
the perfect posture of my lips, it skirts
from the leaves of the plant hiding me
and sits stoic like stone in my pupil,
mute and unassuming, like Rashi.

To gather myself I will swim naked
in the wind, bending my blind elbows
in circles, stopping now to dance
like the cherubic gold on the ark,
and gather myself from the particles
of this excitement another structure,
one closely resembling the beginning.

SOURCE: “Self Portrait” appears in Afaa Michael Weaver’s collection Multitudes: Poems Selected & New (Sarabande Books, 2000), available at Amazon.com.

IMAGE: “Self-Portrait by Sun and Grass” by Chuck Taylor. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Afaa Michael Weaver was born Michael S. Weaver to working class parents in 1951. Weaver entered the University of Maryland at age 16, studying for two years before leaving to marry and take a job in a Baltimore factory owned by Bethlehem Steel. After military service, in 1971, Weaver was hired as a semi-skilled worker at Procter & Gamble in Baltimore. In 1985, and still a factory worker, he received a fellowship from the NEA — and his first book of poetry, Water Song, was published that year. That falll, Weaver entered the Brown University graduate writing program and finished his BA at the University of the State of New York. After graduation, he taught at several colleges before landing an appointment at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey, where he received tenure with distinction as an early candidate. Weaver is the author of over a dozen poetry collections and has  had two plays produced professionally. His awards include a Pew Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, a May Sarton Award, and the PDI Award in playwriting from the eta Creative Arts Theatre in Chicago. Visit him at afaaweaver.net.

Thank you for following the Silver Birch Press blog!

On June 24, 2014, we’ll celebrate the 2nd anniversary of the Silver Birch Press blog. Thank you for your visits during the past years! This week, we passed a new milestone: 1,000 followers!

Our 1,000th follower is hesterglockpress, an independent publisher in the United Kingdom run by author Paul Hawkins, whose work appeared in the Silver Birch Press Noir Erasure Poetry Anthology (December 2013). We are pleased to report that we are now following hesterglockpress. Great site, Paul!

To commemorate our latest milestone, we asked our 1,000th follower Paul Hawkins to pick any book from the offerings featured at silverbirchpress.com — and he selected our May 2013 release BULL: The Journey of a Freedom Icon, poems by Salinas, California, poet laureate James Golden. The book is on its way, Paul. Thank you for following the Silver Birch Press blog and for contributing your poetry to our collections.

If you’d like to follow the Silver Birch Press blog, see the middle left-hand portion of our site — under the button that reads “older posts.” Thanks in advance for your follow!

James B. Golden interviewed at Forth Magazine

James B. Golden, author of the poetry collection BULL: The Journey of a Freedom Icon (Silver Birch Press, 2014) was recently featured in an interview at Forth Magazine. 

Find BULL by James B. Golden at Amazon.com.

Butter, poem by Elizabeth Alexander

BUTTER
by Elizabeth Alexander

My mother loves butter more than I do,
more than anyone. She pulls chunks off
the stick and eats it plain, explaining
cream spun around into butter! Growing up
we ate turkey cutlets sauteed in lemon
and butter, butter and cheese on green noodles,
butter melting in small pools in the hearts
of Yorkshire puddings, butter better
than gravy staining white rice yellow,
butter glazing corn in slipping squares,
butter the lava in white volcanoes
of hominy grits, butter softening
in a white bowl to be creamed with white
sugar, butter disappearing into
whipped sweet potatoes, with pineapple,
butter melted and curdy to pour
over pancakes, butter licked off the plate
with warm Alaga syrup. When I picture
the good old days I am grinning greasy
with my brother, having watched the tiger
chase his tail and turn to butter. We are
Mumbo and Jumbo’s children despite
historical revision, despite
our parent’s efforts, glowing from the inside
out, one hundred megawatts of butter.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth Alexander was born in Harlem, New York, but grew up in Washington, DC, the daughter of former United States Secretary of the Army and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission chairman, Clifford Alexander Jr. She holds degrees from Yale, Boston University, and the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned her PhD. Currently the chair of African American Studies at Yale, Alexander is a founding member of Cave Canem, an organization dedicated to promoting African American poets and poetry. Her accomplishments within academia include a Quantrelle Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from the University of Chicago and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard and the Alphonse Fletcher Foundation. Alexander’s books include American Sublime (2005), shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, and recipient of the 2005 Jackson Poetry Prize. When Barack Obama asked her to compose and read a poem for his Presidential inauguration, her poem, “Praise Song for the Day,” became a bestseller after Graywolf Press published it as a chapbook.

Sleeping with the Dictionary, poem by Harryette Mullen

SLEEPING WITH THE DICTIONARY

by Harryette Mullen

I beg to dicker with my silver-tongued companion, whose lips are ready to read my shining gloss. A versatile partner, conversant and well-versed in the verbal art, the dictionary is not averse to the solitary habits of the curiously wide-awake reader. In the dark night’s insomnia, the book is a stimulating sedative, awakening my tired imagination to the hypnagogic trance of language. Retiring to the canopy of the bedroom, turning on the bedside light, taking the big dictionary to bed, clutching the unabridged bulk, heavy with the weight of all the meanings between these covers, smoothing the thin sheets, thick with accented syllables—all are exercises in the conscious regimen of dreamers, who toss words on their tongues while turning illuminated pages. To go through all these motions and procedures, groping in the dark for an alluring word, is the poet’s nocturnal mission. Aroused by myriad possibilities, we try out the most perverse positions in the practice of our nightly act, the penetration of the denotative body of the work. Any exit from the logic of language might be an entry in a symptomatic dictionary. The alphabetical order of this ample block of knowledge might render a dense lexicon of lucid hallucinations. Beside the bed, a pad lies open to record the meandering of migratory words. In the rapid eye movement of the poet’s night vision, this dictum can be decoded, like the secret acrostic of a lover’s name.

SOURCE: “Sleeping with the Dictionary” appears in Harryette Mullen‘s collection Sleeping with the Dictionary (University of California Press, 2002), available at Amazon.com.

IMAGE: “Flaming June Dictionary Antique Art print by Reimaginationprints, available at etsy.com. (The print is composed of an antique dictionary page and “Flaming June,” a painting by Sir Frederic Leighton (1895).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Harryette Mullen is a poet and a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she teaches creative writing and African-American literature. Mullen was born in Alabama, but spent most of her childhood in Texas. After receiving her undergraduate degree from the University of Texas, she attended the University of California at Santa Cruz, where she wrote her dissertation on slave narratives. Mullen’s poetry collections include Tree Tall Woman, Blues Baby: Early Poems. Trimmings, Muse and Drudge, and Sleeping with the Dictionary, which was nominated for a National Book Award.

Poet James B. Golden featured in Cultural Weekly

Four poems by James B. Golden, author of BULL: The Journey of a Freedom Icon (Silver Birch Press, 2014), are featured in the current edition of Cultural Weekly. Find the article at this link. Thank you to Cultural Weekly poetry editor Alexis Rhone Fancher for selecting the poems and for her stunning photograph of the author.

James B. Golden was born and raised in Salinas, California, and received his M.P.A. and B.A. in English and Pan-African Studies Arts & Literature from California State University, Northridge. He has edited Kapu-Sens Literary Journal and the Hip Hop Think Tank Journal, and is the author of The Inside of an Orange, Sweet Potato Pie Underneath The Sun’s Broiler, and 2012 NAACP Image Award Winner Afro Clouds & Nappy Rain. He currently lives in Los Angeles and works as freelance music journalist. His articles have appeared in such periodicals as Vibe, The Root, Clutch Magazine, Jazz Times, and Los Angeles Our Weekly. Golden is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Salinas, California.

 “A power-poetry here — a liberation heart-fire collection by our Salinas Poet Laureate, James P. Golden — no other like it.” JUAN FELIPE HERRERA, Poet Laureate of California

Find BULL, poems by James B. Golden at Amazon.com.

Praise Song for the Day, poem by Elizabeth Alexander

PRAISE SONG FOR THE DAY
by Elizabeth Alexander

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what’s on the other side.

I know there’s something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

SOURCE: “Praise Song for the Day” by Elizabeth Alexander was written for Barack Obama’s 2009 Presidential Inaguration. The poem is available as a chapbook and a children’s book at Amazon.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth Alexander was born in Harlem, New York, but grew up in Washington, DC, the daughter of former United States Secretary of the Army and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission chairman, Clifford Alexander Jr. She holds degrees from Yale, Boston University, and the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned her PhD. Currently the chair of African American Studies at Yale, Alexander is a founding member of Cave Canem, an organization dedicated to promoting African American poets and poetry. Her accomplishments within academia include a Quantrelle Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from the University of Chicago and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard and the Alphonse Fletcher Foundation. Alexander’s books include American Sublime (2005), shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, and recipient of the 2005 Jackson Poetry Prize. When Barack Obama asked her to compose and read a poem for his Presidential inauguration, her poem, “Praise Song for the Day,” became a bestseller after Graywolf Press published it as a chapbook.

won’t you celebrate with me, poem by Lucille Clifton

won’t you celebrate with me
by Lucille Clifton

won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

SOURCE: “won’t you celebrate with me” appears in Lucille Clifton‘s collection Book of Light (Copper Canyon Press, 1993), available at Amazon.com.

PAINTING: “Dance” by Bayo Iribhogbe. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lucille Clifton (1936-2010) won the prestigious Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2007 and was the first author to have two books of poetry chosen as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969-1980 (1987) and Next: New Poems (1987). Her collection Two-Headed Woman (1980) was also a Pulitzer nominee and won the Juniper Prize from the University of Massachusetts. She served as the state of Maryland’s poet laureate from 1974 until 1985, and won the National Book Award for Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000 (2000). Clifton was a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

The Empty Dance Shoes, poem by Cornelius Eady

THE EMPTY DANCE SHOES
by Cornelius Eady

My friends,
As it has been proven in the laboratory,
An empty pair of dance shoes
Will sit on the floor like a wart
Until it is given a reason to move.

Those of us who study inertia
(Those of us covered with wild hair and sleep)
Can state this without fear:
The energy in a pair of shoes at rest
Is about the same as that of a clown

Knocked flat by a sandbag.
This you can tell your friends with certainty:
A clown, flat on his back,
Is a lot like an empty pair of
dancing shoes.

An empty pair of dancing shoes
Is also a lot like a leaf
Pressed in a book.
And now you know a simple truth:
A leaf pressed in, say, The Colossus
by Sylvia Plath,
Is no different from an empty pair of dance shoes

Even if those shoes are in the middle of the Stardust Ballroom
With all the lights on, and hot music shakes the windows
up and down the block.
This is the secret of inertia:
The shoes run on their own sense of the world.
They are in sympathy with the rock the kid skips
over the lake
After it settles to the mud.
Not with the ripples,
But with the rock.

A practical and personal application of inertia
Can be found in the question:
Whose Turn Is It
To Take Out The Garbage?
An empty pair of dance shoes
Is a lot like the answer to this question,
As well as book-length poems
Set in the Midwest.

To sum up:
An empty pair of dance shoes
Is a lot like the sand the 98-pound weakling
brushes from his cheeks
As the bully tows away his girlfriend.
Later,

When he spies the coupon at the back of the comic book,
He is about to act upon a different set of scientific principles.
He is ready to dance.

SOURCE: “The Empty Dance Shoes” appears in Cornelius Eady’s collection Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1997), available at Amazon.com.

IMAGE: “Dance” by John Crothers. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Poet and cofounder of Cave Canem, Cornelius Eady has published more than half a dozen volumes of poetry, among them Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (1985), winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets; The Gathering of My Name (1991), nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; and Brutal Imagination (2001), a National Book Award finalist. Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems appeared in 2008.

American Smooth, poem by Rita Dove

AMERICAN SMOOTH
by Rita Dove

We were dancing—it must have
been a foxtrot or a waltz,
something romantic but
requiring restraint,
rise and fall, precise
execution as we moved
into the next song without
stopping, two chests heaving
above a seven-league
stride—such perfect agony,
one learns to smile through,
ecstatic mimicry
being the sine qua non
of American Smooth.
And because I was distracted
by the effort of
keeping my frame
(the leftward lean, head turned
just enough to gaze out
past your ear and always
smiling, smiling),
I didn’t notice
how still you’d become until
we had done it
(for two measures?
four?)—achieved flight,
that swift and serene
magnificence,
before the earth
remembered who we were
and brought us down.

SOURCE: “American Smooth” appears in Rita Dove’s collection American Smooth (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2004), available at Amazon.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rita Dove made her formal literary debut in 1980 with the poetry collection The Yellow House on the Corner, In works like the verse-novel Thomas and Beulah (1986), which won the Pulitzer Prize, On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Sonata Mulattica (2009), Dove treats historical events with a personal touch. In addition to poetry, Dove has published works of fiction, including the short story collection Fifth Sunday (1990) and the novel Through the Ivory Gate (1992). Her play The Darker Face of the Earth (1996) was produced at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Dove is also an acclaimed lyricist, and has written lyrics for composers ranging from Tania León to John Williams. Dove was named US Poet Laureate in 1993, the youngest poet ever elected to the position. Dove has continued to play an important role in the reception of American poetry through her work as editor of the Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry (2011). She is currently Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.