The Bridge of Silver Wings at Poetry Life and Times

From The American Poet Who Went Home Again In my life as a poet, change meant employing my pen to acknowledge the deaths and lives of people I had loved for as long as I could remember but who suddenly were gone. I noticed for the first time how closely the word “elegy” resembles the word “eulogy” when I wrote my first one in 1996 to commemorate the life of Sylvester Griffin, known and loved by family members as “Uncle Buster.” I could have written Uncle Buster’s “Elegy for a Winged Lion” without having returned home but it is not likely I would have traveled to Jacksonville, Florida, to recite it at his funeral had I not been in Savannah. What I had no way of knowing at the time was that his was only the first of many. In the years to follow would compose elegies for friends, cousins, sisters, a mother, and a father. Most of them I would share, some I would not. At one point, I realized I was experiencing the vocation of the poet as prophet or griot or shaman, bearing witness through verse to the sanctity of a given life. The revelation was a deeply humbling one because I did not know how to accept myself in such a role. Then others pointed out that may have been the primary reason I found myself playing it. Whereas I started often writing poetry that chronicled the lives of others, I made the surprising discovery one day that others were writing poetry that chronicled mine. Sometimes, upon reading these works, I had to touch my face and take deep breaths to make sure I was not some spirit reading about his own death. For some reason, recognizing myself as a son, a brother, a warrior, a lover, an African American, a journalist, historian, or fiction writer had been easy. Believing I had earned the right to call myself a poet was not. Through the words of others, it turned out each time I read them that I was learning about my life, or, put more accurately, about my life as seen through the pens of poets across the country and across the ocean. I called it a baptism in flaming ink that forced me to shed my shyness about recognizing myself as a poet and to accept the fact that life had never given me any choice in the matter. And then I had to discover exactly what that meant. To be an American poet is to be a poet not only of the self but of the people, in both the smaller communal sense of the word ‘people’ as well as the larger sense of that word, whether one wishes to be both or not. The American identity has never been a singular one and the voices of poets invariably sing, in addition to their own, the voices of those around them. Consequently, in the pages of The American Poet Who Went Home Again, readers experience the stories, meetings, and events that unfolded upon my own journey back home and that expanded my awareness of both me and the city where I was born. These are stories of what it means to leave home as a youth seeking one’s individual fortune only to return as an adult suddenly responsible for the well-being of a parent, stories of what it means to strive to live the life of an artist while fully embracing one’s reality as an ordinary human being, of pressing forward in the face of tragedy and shakily standing one’s ground on legs of faith when it seems there is no safe or solid ground left on which one can stand. by Aberjhani Author of ELEMENTAL The Power of Illuminated Love

From The American Poet Who Went Home Again Why did I automatically agree with the American author Thomas Wolfe, who was from North Carolina, when I read the title of his classic book, You Can’t Go Home Again? Being African-American and having grown up in Savannah, Georgia, it might have made more sense to take my biographical and literary clues from Zora Neale Hurston’s memoir, Dust Tracks On A Road, or Langston Hughes’ I Wonder As I Wander. What would have been even more understandable is if I had known something about the life of fellow Savannah native James Alan McPherson, who in 1978 became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction when he got it for a collection of short stories entitled Elbow Room. But as far as I could tell, once McPherson’s talent and career placed him on the road leading out of his hometown, he was not often inclined to take public paths leading back to it. Therefore, it was Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again that stuck, and that made me wonder why this might be true, why one could not go home again. Then I became aware of another title by the same author, Look Homeward Angel, not realizing at the time that it had been written before You Can’t Go Home Again. What I did understand was that the notion of “Home” for Wolfe as an author and individual was simultaneously painful, healing, damning, and inspiring. How could I not, after learning the first book had actually been published eleven years before the second, how could I not wonder what had happened between the bright promise of Look Homeward Angel, and Wolfe’s later dim realization that You Can’t Go Home Again? The thought was a scary one because it forced me to consider what might happen if you reached the conclusion that you could not go home again while also discovering that you had no choice except to go home again. Aside from those that we bring with us while squeezing and squealing our way into the world, the traits and experiences that shape our basic character develop in those places we call home. Those who leave that environment to travel all about the global village and sample its various offerings––whether to their great joy or to their endless regret––often grow into personalities that no longer reflect with detailed precision the place from which they came. Such an individual need not be considered superior or inferior, only evolved to such a point that he or she takes on the uniqueness of their own being––apart from their native community’s. Sometimes, the price of that uniqueness is unexpectedly high and can cause you to sacrifice many things in order to pay it. That sacrifice may, as Wolfe discovered, take the form of estrangement from what once was home. It might take the form of a marriage, a family, a career, your sanity, or even your life. (continues with part 2) by Aberjhani ELEMENTAL The Power of Illuminated Love

The shape of something uncaring and perversely cold stands up inside a man and he finds himself completely deceived. Believing this world’s anguish is something different from the love he keeps holding back. There Is a story about a wealthy man who gathered beggars from throughout the city and took them all home. Thinking he would feed them, they smiled and shined like newly opened daisies praising the sun. But the wealthy man did not feed them. He grouped them closely together then recorded the sound of their stomachs’ loud rumbling. He needed this sound he said to add a dramatic touch to a waltz, a masterpiece, he was composing for a special ceremony. Afterwards, he paid each of the grumbling stomachs ten cents each then took them back to where their sadness and hunger lived. Later that night, the wealthy man was dreaming about angels when he felt someone cut off both his feet. He woke up screaming just as a huge woman with a huge knife grabbed his hands and chopped those too. The woman cried and apologized but said she needed his limbs to add realism to a special sculpture she was creating for a special event. She gave him a silver dollar for each hand and foot then squeezed her bulk back out the window. The shape of something uncaring and perversely cold stands up inside a man and he finds himself completely deceived. This world’s anguish is no different from the love we insist on holding back. The image titled “The Homeless, Psalm 85:10,” featured on the cover of ELEMENTAL can evoke multiple levels of response. They may include the spiritual in the form of a studied meditation upon the multidimensional qualities of the painting itself; or an extended contemplation of the scripture in the title, which in the King James Bible reads as follows: “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” The painting can also inspire a physical response in the form of tears as it calls to mind its more earth-bound aspects; namely, the very serious plight of those who truly are homeless in this world, whether born into such a condition, or forced into it by poverty or war. It was the rich embodiment of these layers of physical, emotional, and spiritual representation that enabled me initially as a writer to transcribe my experience of Luther’s images into a corresponding form of poetry. Rather than attempting to force my own literary voice upon any interpretation of the works, I sought to hear and understand the voice already speaking through them. In that way, the poems seemed to reveal themselves to me in much the way that Luther sometimes described paintings revealing themselves to him. I considered the activity of transcribing Luther’s visual art into poetry during the early 1990s as a unique experience of grace that was somehow profoundly sacred. What I had no way of anticipating at the time was that a day would come when our rolls would reverse to some degree and the painter would produce images inspired by the poet. After the passing of my mother, Mrs. WillieMae Griffin Lloyd, in February 2006, I found myself for the rest of that year writing a series of poems called Songs of the Angelic Gaze. I had not made any conscious plans to write such a series and the poems often seemed to arrive like actual angelic visitations. I shared these with Luther as well as the rest of the world through my various websites. At the same time that one angel poem after another entered my life, I finished writing the novel Christmas When Music Almost Killed the World. I also collected the angel poems into a book called The Bridge of Silver Wings. When the time came to publish both the novel and the poetry, I realized that I would need exceptional cover art for both. I was extremely reluctant to ask Luther if he just happened to have an image or two that I might employ as cover art because I knew he was preparing for major exhibits of his own work at the Jepson Center for the Arts and other museums. Therefore, it came as a big surprise when he said he had already started working on visual expressions of the angel poems. It came as an even greater surprise when he first presented me, without having actually read it, with the exact art needed for the novel; then a little later with the perfect image complement for the poetry collection. We recognized that our partnership in creativity had, as the saying goes, come full circle. It had started almost two decades before with Luther’s show at the Beach Institute when the paintings I encountered there inspired me to compose a body of poetry specific to their colors, forms, and subtle philosophical statements. Now it continued with the visual artist’s interpretation of the poet’s angelic visions. Moreover, it became clear that positive creativity begets positive creativity because after producing the cover images for my books, Luther presented me with one angel image for which I had not already written a poem but did so specifically for ELEMENTAL just as we were preparing to go to press. The image is a vertical one called “Angel of Better Days to Come.” The different perspectives from which this painting can be viewed offer intriguing interpretative possibilities. One set of meanings is revealed when viewed vertically while another may be considered when viewed horizontally. With the closing of the first circle, or cycle, another had already started. An appropriate symbolic representation of this adventure in spiritual creativity––or creative spirituality, depending again on the angle from which one chooses to view it––might be that of the symbol for infinity, which looks like the number 8 placed on its side. What could make this symbol appropriate would be two things. One is the endless array of possibilities available to us for artistic expression during whatever amount of time we spend on this planet. The other is what Luther indicated in his statement at the beginning of ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love, and that is “the hearts and minds of those who give this book their attention…” That means for the generations alive at this moment and for those to come, these pages represent an opportunity to discover, explore, and claim as their very own, a small miracle wrapped in the glittering wonders of art and poetry. by Aberjhani from ELEMENTAL The Power of Illuminated Love

(Rock icon Bob Dylan hanging out with poet icon Allen Ginsberg in "I'm Not There") The title of I’M NOT THERE comes from a Bob Dylan song of the same name. In the song, the iconic singer/songwriter/actor/activist seems to lament the ups and downs of his relationship with a woman described as “my prize-forsaken angel,” and “a long-hearted mystic.” Where Todd Haynes’ and co-screenwriter Oren Moverman’s ultra-brilliant movie is concerned, that same title might be applied to two things. The first is the succession of public images––from committed folk artist and “radical” activist to evangelical disciple and reclusive outlaw––that Dylan has famously projected throughout his long phenomenal career, allowing the public access to these personas while battling to safeguard the integrity of his true core identity. The title’s second reference may be to the fact that our hero himself is nowhere to be seen in the film (except in fleeting parting glimpses) but six other gifted performers acting as him, or as parts of him at different points in his life, are. Generally described as a “biopic,” I’m Not There actually trashes and reinvents that film category, whether done so intentionally or not. The various actors who portray Dylan’s creative and spiritual qualities for this movie do more than simply mimic the performer. They embody with consummate skill all the elements that combined to make him the amazing human being that he is: the mesmerizing myths of American folk music, the turbulent political and social events of the 1960s, and the sometimes uneasy tension of the relationship between celebrated performers and their audience. The tricky part of this movie for some viewers is the fact that the six actors portraying Bob Dylan are all called by different character names as opposed to being called just Dylan or Bob. Australian actress Cate Blanchett, for example, earned an Oscar nomination for her performance as the mercurial Jude Quinn. Hypersensitive, androgynous and almost alien-like in appearance, Quinn represents Dylan just as he was skyrocketing to world fame in the mid 1960s. He delivers some of the best lines in the film, such as when he freaks out after learning he’s been booked to perform eighty plus shows to make him a millionaire, and then yells, “Who the f**k said I wanted to be a millionaire?!” In addition to its other amazing attributes, I’m Not There will remain memorable for Heath Ledger’s performance as Robbie Clark, the proposed romantic side of Dylan, and for the fact that this was one of Ledger’s last films. It’s also a treat to watch veteran actor Richard Gere as the matured but reclusive Outlaw Billy the Kid who gets drawn out of his self-imposed exile when developers threaten to build a road through the valley where he’s hiding out. And Ben Whishaw (the gifted star of Perfume) provides a crucial anchor as the poet-philosopher Arthur Rimbaud who calmly endures interrogations about the motives and inspiration behind his art. While all these actors give outstanding performances in their own right, Christian Bale struck this reviewer as exceptionally convincing in his double turn as the young Jack Rollins and later as the converted Christian called Pastor John. Yet possibly the most astounding performance of all came from the then 13-year-old Marcus Carl Franklin, a black youth named Woody (as in folk singer Guthrie) who in the film behaved and spoke like some seasoned bluesman four times older than he was. Unlike his co-stars, Franklin actually sang the songs attributed to his character and one of the best scenes in the film is of him and the legendary Richie Havens, a true-life contemporary of Dylan’s, going at it as they jam “Tombstone Blues” on the porch. Enough classic tunes, performed by a variety of artists, play throughout I’m Not There to satisfy the most hardcore Dylan fans and to provide newcomers with a thorough introduction to his music. The soundtrack not only underscores the onscreen action, but filled as it is with all of the singer’s emotional intensities, social observations and philosophical inquiries, places the viewer in the very creative heart of it. In fact, it is through the songs, which Rimbaud/Dylan describes as “something that walks by itself,” that the man himself is most present in the movie. Director Haynes remains true to the psychedelic film style of the 60s complete with swirling background screens and cameo appearances by powerhouse figures like beat poet Allen Ginsberg, the Beatles, and the political activist group the Black Panthers. At the same time, he delivers a flawlessly entertaining New Millennium epic unlike anything ever seen before and probably unlike anything we’ll see again for quite some time. by Author-Poet Aberjhani co-author of ELEMENTAL The Power of Illuminated Love