Today’s Thoughtful Thursday celebrates the poet Kevin Young, who is now the Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City. The Schomburg, located on 135th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard in Harlem, is a leading research institution focusing exclusively on African-American, African Diaspora, and African experiences. Its collection includes letters, papers and other archival material of many notable African Americans, including Booker T. Washington, Paul Robeson, Ralph Bunche, Lorraine Hansberry, Malcolm X and Nat King Cole, Langston Hughes, and James Baldwin, whose letters were acquired by the research library earlier this week.
The collection of Baldwin’s work includes correspondence from Nina Simone, a handwritten screenplay about Malcolm X and notes on his first novel, “Go Tell It On The Mountain.” You can read more about this acquisition in the New York Times article found here. Congrats to Kevin Young and the Schomburg; what an amazing addition this is to the already impressive collection.
GCP has focused on the poetry of Kevin Young in previous Thoughtful Thursdays; below are a few of our favorites. We start things off with a poem written by James Baldwin–a tribute to Lena Horne.
Enjoy.
Le sporting-club de Monte Carlo (for Lena Horne)
The lady is a tramp
a camp
a lamp
The lady is a sight
a might
a light
the lady devastated
an alley or two
reverberated through the valley
which leads to me, and you
the lady is the apple
of God’s eye:
He’s cool enough about it
but He tends to strut a little
when she passes by
the lady is a wonder
daughter of the thunder
smashing cages
legistlating rages
with the voice of ages
singing us through.
James Baldwin
Lime Light Blues
I have been known
to wear white shoes
beyond Labor Day.
I can see through
doors & walls
made of glass.
I’m in an anger
encouragement class.
When I walk
over the water
of parking lots
car doors lock–
When I wander
or enter the elevator
women snap
their pocketbooks
shut, clutch
their handbags close.
Plainclothes
cops follow me in stores
asking me to holler
if I need any help.
I can get a rise–
am able to cause
patrolmen to stop
& second look–
Any drugs in the trunk?
Civilian teens
beg me for green,
where to score
around here.
When I dance,
which is often,
the moon above me
wheels its disco lights–
until there’s a fight.
Crowds gather
& wonder how
the spotlight sounds–
like a body
being born, like the blare
of car horns
as I cross
the street unlocking,
slow. I know all
a movie needs
is me
shouting at the screen
from the balcony. From such
heights I watch
the darkness gather.
What pressure
my blood is under.
Kevin Young
Eddie Priest’s Barbershop & Notary
Closed Mondays
is music is men
off early from work is waiting
for the chance at the chair
while the eagle claws holes
in your pockets keeping
time by the turning
of rusty fans steel flowers with
cold breezes is having nothing
better to do than guess at the years
of hair matted beneath the soiled caps
of drunks the pain of running
a fisted comb through stubborn
knots is the dark dirty low
down blues the tender heads
of sons fresh from cornrows all
wonder at losing half their height
is a mother gathering hair for good
luck for a soft wig is the round
difficulty of ears the peach
faced boys asking Eddie
to cut in parts and arrows
wanting to have their names read
for just a few days and among thin
jazz is the quick brush of a done
head the black flood around
your feet grandfathers
stopping their games of ivory
dominoes just before they reach the bone
yard is winking widowers announcing
cut it clean off I’m through courting
and hair only gets in the way is the final
spin of the chair a reflection of
a reflection that sting of wintergreen
tonic on the neck of a sleeping snow
haired man when you realize it is
your turn you are next
Kevin Young
Aunties
There’s a way a woman
will not
relinquish
her pocketbook
even pulled
onstage, or called up
to the pulpit—
there’s a way only
your Auntie can make it
taste right—
rice & gravy
is a meal
if my late Great Aunt
Toota makes it—
Aunts cook like
there’s no tomorrow
& they’re right.
Too hot
is how my Aunt Tuddie
peppers everything,
her name given
by my father, four, seeing
her smiling in her crib.
There’s a barrel
full of rainwater
beside the house
that my infant father will fall
into, trying to see
himself—the bottom—
& there’s his sister
Margie yanking him out
by his hair grown long
as superstition. Never mind
the flyswatter they chase you
round the house
& into the yard with
ready to whup the daylights
out of you—
that’s only a threat—
Aunties will fix you
potato salad
& save
you some. Godmothers,
godsends,
Aunts smoke like
it’s going out of style—
& it is—
make even gold
teeth look right, shining.
saying I’ll be
John, with a sigh. Make way
out of no way—
keep they key
to the scale that weighed
the cotton, the cane
we raised more
than our share of—
If not them, then who
will win heaven?
holding tight
to their pocketbooks
at the pearly gates
just in case.
Kevin Young
