Literary New Orleans Poems and Prose

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Literary New Orleans

Poems, Essays, Reports, etc.

About, from those outside or those in the Big Easy

Overview

At his funeral, one of the officiating pastors said, "The Chief of Chiefs is being sent to see the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords." . . . All the Indians wearing masks — called masking — crowded the street between the church and the hearse and bowed down on the ground as pallbearers in black suits with bright white gloves marched slowly, carrying the casket of the Chief of Chiefs to the horse-drawn hearse. Then another voice yelled "Maudi kudi fiyo!" and the entire crowd answered with the slow-paced, traditional chant, "Indian Red." Before long, Indian Red gave way to a faster paced "Tuway Packiway," the horseman snapped the reins, the horse started walking and the parade began to move.

Traditionally in New Orleans, jazz funerals maintain a slow, sorrowful pace until the point of "cutting the body loose," but the burial of a man of Montana's stature proved difficult to pace. The thousands of second-liners seemed to be busting at the seams, celebrating all the way to the cemetery, doing the samba-like second-line strut to the rhythm of the brass bands, twirling umbrellas, chanting old songs and shaking tambourines. Dozens of Mardi Gras Indian tribes, from Montana's Yellow Pocahontas, to the Golden Star Hunters to the Spirit of Fi YiYi, met each other in the streets enacting ritual war dances, stand-offs, and peace treaties.

Even for New Orleans, it was a rare occasion to witness. On Mardi Gras Day, St. Joseph's Day and Super Sunday the Indians usually come out in large numbers. But on this day, even old Indians who hadn't masked in years came out in full regalia complete with new feathers and plumes on old suits for the funeral of funerals for the Chief of Chiefs. Big Chief Allison Tootie Montana

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Between thirty and forty percent of New Orleanians have not returned to the city since the levees failed in 2005. Some have found better lives elsewhere, but many yearn to come back. Living on Earth’s Ingrid Lobet has a portrait of one family’s struggle to return to their beloved city. . . . When you talk with some folks from New Orleans, whether recently returned or living far away, you can't help but be struck by a deep current of pain just below the surface. Two years after the floods caused by the failed levees, the webs of human relationships that bring life joy, or make a neighborhood a neighborhood, are still in shreds. There are those Katrina exiles who have found better circumstances elsewhere and settled down. But many city natives say they want badly to return, but can't. As part of our continuing coverage of the aftermath of the Gulf Coast disaster, Living on Earth's Ingrid Lobet gathered these impressions. Longing for New Orleans

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Poems

Ahmose Zu-Bolton

Beachhead Preachment

Candelight Vigil

Neo-Folklore

ZuBolton Channels Ancestors

Amin Sharif

Amin Sharif

Big Easy Blues

The Day the Devil Has Won

Caroline Maun

Clair Carew

Claire Carew

It Ain't About Race

Sitting ducks at the superdome

Denay Fields

A Survivor's Poem

Eleanor Early

Lives and Times of the Quadroons

Jerry Ward

After the Hurricanes

NOLA SPEAKS

Portrait of a Suicide/Death in Yellow Flooding

Joe Williams

I'm in the Eye of Katrina

Jose Torres Tama

Kalamu ya Salaam

Kalamu ya Salaam

my father is dead, again Tom Dent Bio

WE ARE ACHIEVERS

There's no big accomplishment

Have You Ever Been a Saxophone

Latorial Faison

After Katrina . . .

Lee M. Grue

At the French Market

Booker: Black Night Keep on Falling

Ellis Marsalis on Wednesday at Snug Harbor

Miss Marva Wright

Turbinton: The African Cowboy at Charlie B's

Walter Washington

Young Men in Wheel Chairs

Legendary KO

George Bush Doesn't Care

Mackie Blanton

After Katrina Chapter I (Neighbors and Invaders) Chapter 2 ( Earthquakes and Baklava) Chapter 3 (The Lens in Plato’s Eye)

Neighbors and Invaders

Marcus Bruce Christian

Marcus Bruce Christian

Marvin X

Where's Fats Domino?

Mimi Read

Germaine Bazzle

Mona Lisa Saloy, ; Winner of the the 2005 T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry

For Frank Fitch For Daddy V

Mother with Me on Canal Street, New Orleans

Winner of the PEN Oakland National Literary Award

Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, author of Monrovia Women

There's Another New Orleans

P r o f e s s o r A R T U R O

My Name is New Orleans

Poem for Our Fathers

Shine & the Titanic

Robert Borsodi

Remembering Borsodi

Rudolph Lewis Mosquitoes Fly Out My Head

Address on the Battle for New Orleans

Can You Quilt a Life, Now Dead?

Didn't He Ramble (Buddy Bolden)

Down by the Riverside

Dropping Shucks on Baudin

Heartbreak Hotel

Home Aint No Cakewalk

I Gave My Heart to That Woman

Mosquitoes Fly Out My Head

My Room Without You

A New Day Is Coming

No Mardi Gras Without Soul

No Woman to Be Rollin

Ode to a Magic City

The Propaganda of History

Raining in This Terrible Land

A Sideshow in Your Mind

There's No Way Out This Sadness?

Waiting for the Great Tragedy

We Be No More Than We

What Does It Mean to Survive N'awlins

What Shall It Be, Stick or Broom?

When They Flooded New Orleans

Wintertime in America

Your Love Ain't Loving My Blues (Satchmo & horn)

Tom Dent

Return to English Turn

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Prose

Jerry Ward

The Art of Tom Dent: Early Evidence Tom Dent Bio

The Katrina Papers

On Richard Wright and Our Contemporary Situation

Trouble the Water (book)

Kalamu ya Salaam Table

Forty-Five Is Not So Old (story)

Could You Wear My Eyes (story)

Murder (story)

Raoul's Silver Song (story)

Tom Dent & Nkombo

What Is Black Poetry (essay)

WORDS: A Neo-Griot Manifesto (essay)

Kam Hei Tsuei

Hurricane Katrina: Did the Chinese Help

Lee M. Grue

French Quarter Poems -- Introduction

Marcus Bruce Christian

Diary Notes

Marcus Bruce Christian

Rachel Breunlin

The Legacy of the Free Southern Theater in New Orleans

Rudolph Lewis Mosquitoes Fly Out My Head

Christian's Bio-Bibliographical Record (literary essay on Christian)

The Conspiracy to Whiten New Orleans (editorial)

Feminism, Black Erotica, & Revolutionary Love (on Kalamu's short stories)

Introduction to I AM NEW ORLEANS (literary essay on Christian)

Jessie Covington Dent (a biographical sketch)

A Life Won with Blood & Tears (book review Red Beans and Ricely Yours, 2005)

Poetic Journey with New Orleans Writers (a biographical essay) Tom Dent Bio

Southern Journey (Review of Tom Dent's book)

A Theory of a Black Aesthetic (literary essay on Christian)

Tom Dent

The Art of Tom Dent (Jerry Ward essay)

Jessie Covington Dent (bio of mother)

Dillard Project (letter by father)

The Legacy of the Free Southern Theater in New Orleans

My Father Is Dead (Kalamu poem)

Southern Journey (book Review)

Tom Dent & Nkombo

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Reports

Ahmose ZuBolton

Ahmos Zu-Bolton HooDoo Poet

Candelight Vigil for Ahmos Zu-Bolton

Chuck Siler

Call for Artists and Photographers

Kalamu ya Salaam

at Clemson in Baltimore at MIT

in houston in Dallas

Kalamu ya Salaam Table

kalamu visits home

Listen to the People Update

Katrina New Orleans Flood Index

Katrina & Kalamu (Rudy, Miriam, Clare, and others)

Magical Negro: The Root (Arthur Flowers)

New Orleans Flood Relief Bulletin Board (lots of people)

(8/ 31- 9/ 1) (9/ 2) 9/ 3 9/ 4 9/ 5/2005

Robert Borsodi

Remembering Borsodi

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Poems on Katrina Flood

After Katrina . . . (Latorial Faison)

After the Hurricanes (Jerry Ward)

Battle for New Orleans ( Rudolph Lewis)

Big Easy Blues (Amin Sharif )

I'm in the Eye of Katrina (Joe Williams)

It Ain't About Race (Claire Carew)

Neighbors and Invaders (Mackie Blanton)

Sitting ducks at the superdome (Claire Carew)

A Survivor's Poem (Denay Fields)

Where's Fats Domino? (Marvin X)

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Related files

17 Poets Reading Series at the GOLD MINE SALOON

Big Chief Allison Tootie Montana

Katrina New Orleans Flood Index

Mosquitoes Fly Out My Head

Saint Augustine Closed

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posted 18 December 2005