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Books by Marvin X
Love and War: Poems /
In the Crazy House Called America /
Woman: Man's Best Friend /
Beyond Religion Toward Spirituality
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Land of
My Daughters
Poems 1995-2005
by
Marvin X
Reviewed by
Rudolph Lewis
Marvin X (El Muhajir) is a marvelous
writer in a black skin situated in America, and proudly a Muslim
in these days and times when it ain't safe to be nowhere near or
associated with Arabs and Muslims. He knows that White Supremacy
is strutting mightily on the global stage, with no military and
economic peer. Worst, the FBI got their bloodhounds out,
kicking-in doors to save America from Muslim terrorists. So
Marvin plays the odds, when the poor and weak need a voice, but
mostly because like all artists he can stand momentarily outside
the turmoil, challenged to take chances, just for the experiential
hell of being near the fire.
For three years, in me, he has had a
sympathetic observer. He is one of the most intellectually
engaged black men in America making use of cyberspace to
communicate nationally and internationally a unique, vital, and
provocative African American perspective. His writings are at
once political and personal, religious and secular, academic and
street. And this integration is all done so seamlessly. As one of the proponents of the
Black Arts Movement (60s
and 70s), one might expect Marvin X to be rigidly ideological.
Marvin X is rather a chameleon. Most of all Marvin is
Marvin. But to become one's self is no small achievement. And that's the wonder of him as a contemporary poet.
Marvin uses the past rather than
glorifying it as some romantic poets tend to do. He confronts
what is now happening straight up, straight on. That is what is
so delightful about Marvin, who is much freer than many of us
could ever be. His was no freedom given, like Abe in '63.
Marvin's run the gauntlet, the gamut, and came through it all
like High John the Conqueror. He freed the Sisyphus, lodged in
all our souls. And the rest is gravy.
He has come out the other side whole, far
beyond his youthful work as a proponent of the Black Arts. He
deals now with subjects other than race and race pride and race
oppression. He deals with the ethics of the actual life we live
moment by moment, the daily agents that confront you daily for
food clothing shelter and a bit of joy. He has lived the horrors
of America and filters all through the harshness and victory of
that world he has lived as both a man and a Muslim. .
There's no sugar coating deception in
Marvin's writings. Expect to get it the way it happens, get it
like you would from an Uncle or an Aunt. The real deal, the low
down, the mamma-jamma. His vision is as diamond hard as the
gunpowder night streets he frequents and the street people he
saves from a life of drugs, prostitution, and criminality. He
sympathizes with the outsider, the down and out, because he's
been there, and knows everybody needs a chance and a little love
and understanding.
Marvin's last decade can be experienced
vividly in the recent collection of poems, Land of My
Daughters (2005). Often dated, these poems are strong responses to
some event, some feeling, some word that required nurturing
introspection and report. And Marvin was there ready to put his
contribution on the table for consideration. Many of the poems
in this volume are already familiar; Marvin shares his poems and
his essays with those on his email list and those on Kalamu's e-drum.
Because Marvin be writing because he be on the case every day
dealing with local, national, and international events trying to
make sense out of a world being reshaped disastrously by
Democrats and Republicans.
In any event, there ain't no poem that ain't
special in Land of My Daughters. Because that's how
Marvin loves his people, every individual as if she the One. A
poem unfamiliar "Why I Love Lesbians" is a
controversial poem of such simplicity and honesty -- it is
disarming. Marvin says, "I love them cause they hate me /
In their hatred is drama / . . . / They step backward / At my
manly aggression."
Marvin bees the man ("arrogant
masculinity") he been trained to be. But the times have
changed; Cleaver the Id (Super Gun) is dead. And Marvin is Man
Plus: "But I wouldn't take the pussy / Have become wiser /
In old age." Marvin, sixty years old, is still adapting to
his environment (like a Green Beret) yet retaining his own
integrity and worth. Violence solves nothing. He now believes in
the power of the word, to transform the thinking, change
the training not only of others but himself (the poet) as
well.
This gender reorientation and realistic
appraisal of women is also mirrored in the popular
How to Love a Thinking Woman.
Get me right, Marvin ain't gone soft or nothing, just
"wiser." And it's good advice to listen to those who
have gotten their ass whipped over foolishness, those who
have traveled the trail we now trying to traverse. So a
"Thinking Woman" is about more than women: it is about
how to be a man in contemporary times:
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Make her laugh til she comes in
panties
With serious jokes to get her mind off the world
Never let her figure you out
Be always a mystery
When she figures you out you're through
Don't be that dumb |
Giving the Other what she wants or thinks she
wants is not enough. There is more to man than just repressive
patriarchy and violence. A manly identity is not all that needs
or solicits hatred. Viva la difference. There's a sacred place
man and woman can meet beyond yesterday's crimes.
Marvin has a few dedicated poems of those who
have come and stood on the world stage and made their notable
contributions to the struggle: for the Barakas on the loss
of their daughter (When
Parents Bury Children and "Remembering Shani Barka");
Eldridge Cleaver ("Soul Gone Home"); Stokely
Carmichael ("For Kwame Touré"); Lil Joe
("Revolutionary Rain"); Dudley Randall
("Black Man Listen"); and Sherley A. Williams
("Two Poets in the Park").
Sherley was the girl that got
away, the girl his Mama told him he "ought / to marry"
and didn't -- "a bad relationship was better than no
relationship." So there they were "sitting in the park
after 17 years of silence . . . now there is only one." It
is a poem of love without sentimentality.
Marvin, I believe, has
integrated Islam into his sensibility and thinking and it has
provided him a certain mental discipline which in turn is
reflected in his poems. "I Am" is such a philosophical
poem, and Marvin concludes "If you are the best / pass and
go." "The Devil Stole My Children," a poem of
loss, might draw on some Islamic folktale. I'm uncertain what
Jerusalem and Damascus symbolize in this landscape. I suspect
Christianity, or, at least, a certain form of commercial
Christianity. It's not unusual for Marvin to take swipes at
Christianity in the Malcolm tradition, which is done very openly
in the poem "Jesus and Liquor Stores": "JESUS /
CAN'T HELP YOU / COULDN'T HELP HIMSELF."
This rough kind of humor,
primarily mockery and sarcasm, this putting to shame approach
can be found in "The Negro Knows Everything." But I
like Marvin's humor. He's persuaded me that we should take
ourselves so less seriously in that stiff ass way of being
unable to learn to laugh at ourselves again: "On her dying
bed, my Mama said, / 'Marvin, leave then nigguhs alone. . .'
" And, of course, one cannot leave one's self alone
"And Mama died and I love dem nigguhs." Here's a poet
committed to his people despite their weaknesses and evils or
rather, in a way, because they have them.
Doubtless, Marvin X is a
revolutionary poet. In these days and times of the Repression of
the Poor, the era in which every dime is contested, and
corporations have the executive key to our lives, how can one be
anything else but? "Yesterday, more than 20,000 people
perished of extreme poverty." And we
suspect the same to happen tomorrow as far as we can see. That
kind of action will make even the dullest think there is
something amiss. That we are not getting "all of the
news."
And here is where we
need the most skillful of poets, to fill in the gaps, to show us
what really has value, in a world in which human life is being
steadily eroded to objects (resources) for profit, and endless
money making. In his "Poetics 2000," an update of
Amiri Baraka's
Black Art,
poems don't kill. "Poetry will raise the dead / Make
Lazarus stand." The poet must struggle against
opportunist rhetoric and "Speak straight and plain about
the world / Like Clay in Dutchman."
"Joy" and "You Are
Spirit" are just delightful. For Marvin the spirit or soul
of man is reflected in how he uses and to what purpose he
delivers his body to man or woman. He believes that right love
can transform lust into love, into meaning, and purpose. But
there is lots more to sink your teeth into like
"Terrorist" and "Poem for 9/11/03." If you
want serious artistic writing, a bit of comfort in the evening
by the fireplace, Land of My Daughters will make you feel
alive and whole again.
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Land of My Daughters is
available from Black Bird Press, 11132 Nelson Bar Road, Cherokee
CA 95965, 19.95. Or email Marvin --
mrvnx@yahoo.com |
