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"Thelonious Monk, first of the
many standout piano stylists of the era, is generally
recognized as belonging with [Dizzy] Gillespie and
[Charlie] Parker in a Big Three of bop innovators. Like
Dizzy, 'T' is famous for real or fanciful
eccentricities. He is also noted as the composer of
original (and quite lyrical) melodies, in contrast to
the more unusual practice of building from the chord
structure of standard popular songs. Monk, like Bud
Powell and many others, first gained prominence through
recordings on the Blue Note label--now one of the few
survivors among several independent companies who first
dared promote this strange new music" (A Pictorial
History of Jazz, 1955).
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Conversations with Yusef Komunyakaa
Edited by
Shirley A. James Hanshaw
Conversations with Yusef Komunyakaa
brings together over two decades of
interviews and profiles with one of
America's most prolific and acclaimed
contemporary poets. Yusef Komunyakaa (b.
1947) describes his work alternately as
"word paintings" and as "music," and his
affinity with the visual and aural arts is
amply displayed in these conversations. The
volume also addresses the diversity and
magnitude of Komunyakaa's literary output.
His collaborations with artists in a variety
of genres, including music, dance, drama,
opera, and painting have produced
groundbreaking performance pieces.
Throughout the collection, Komunyakaa's
interest in finding and creating poetry
across the artistic spectrum is made
manifest. |
For his collection
Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems,
1977-1989, Komunyakaa became the first African American
male to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Through his
work he provides keen insight into life's mysteries from
seemingly inconsequential and insignificant life forms
("Ode to the Maggot") to some of the most compelling
historical and life-altering events of our time, such as
the Vietnam War ("Facing It"). Influenced strongly by
jazz, blues, and folklore, as well as the classical
poetic tradition, his poetry comprises a riveting
chronicle of the African American experience.
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.— WashingtonPost
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Hopes and Prospects
By Noam Chomsky
In this urgent new book, Noam Chomsky
surveys the dangers and prospects of our
early twenty-first century. Exploring
challenges such as the growing gap
between North and South, American
exceptionalism (including under
President Barack Obama), the fiascos of
Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S.-Israeli
assault on Gaza, and the recent
financial bailouts, he also sees hope
for the future and a way to move
forward—in the democratic wave in Latin
America and in the global solidarity
movements that suggest "real progress
toward freedom and justice." Hopes and
Prospects is essential reading for
anyone who is concerned about the
primary challenges still facing the
human race. "This is a classic Chomsky
work: a bonfire of myths and lies,
sophistries and delusions. Noam Chomsky
is an enduring inspiration all over the
world—to millions, I suspect—for the
simple reason that he is a truth-teller
on an epic scale. I salute him." —John
Pilger
In dissecting the rhetoric and logic of
American empire and class domination, at
home and abroad, Chomsky continues a
longstanding and crucial work of
elucidation and activism . . .the
writing remains unswervingly rational
and principled throughout, and lends
bracing impetus to the real alternatives
before us.—Publisher's
Weekly
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
update 11
January 2011
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