So I lie, who find no
peace/Night or day, no slight release, Major Jackson recited in the midst
of channeling Countee Cullen through one of Cullen’s most recognizable poems,
“Heritage.” The tribute to the late poet, buried within earshot, had just begun
and already Cullen’s anxious words seemed to give everyone seated in the
pastel-walled building inside the Woodlawn Cemetery a sense of calm.
Yet Do I
Marvel: A Tribute to Countee Cullen was co-sponsored by the Woodlawn
Conservatory and the Poetry Society of America. The setting, a sprawling green
vestige of old New York surrounded by downtrodden asphalt and concrete, was a
pleasant surprise on a sweltering Saturday afternoon. Woodlawn is a veiled NYC
jewel open to anyone who takes the uptown 4 train to the last stop. It’s also
the final resting place of Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Herman Melville, Irving
Berlin, Celia Cruz, Joseph Pulitzer and many other NYC-based artists, in
addition to Countee Cullen.
Cullen, introduced to the crowd by poet and University of
Vermont professor Jackson (who edited Countee Cullen: Collected Poems), was an integral yet not universally renowned figure during the Harlem Renaissance
because of his complex views on how to reconcile racial injustice and artistic and
cultural integration. Celebrated contemporary poets Robin Coste Lewis and Rowan
Ricardo Phillips joined Jackson in reciting and interpreting some of their
favorite Cullen selections.
The Dewitt Clinton High School educated poet’s equally complicated
sexuality, that left much room for interpretation, came to light as Lewis read
“For One Who Gayly Sowed His Oates” through a crooked smile: My days were a thing for me to live,/For
others to deplore;/I took of life all it could give:/Rind, inner fruit, and
core.
Perhaps the most poignant moment of the afternoon came when
Phillips, without looking down at his book once, almost daring the audience to
lose his gaze and blink, recited “Incident” with a stinging inflection and
painfully timed pauses: I saw the whole …
of Baltimore/… From May until December,/Of all the things … that happened
there/That’s all … that I … remember.
The event successfully alternated between readings and
powerful musical interludes. The spine-tingling harmonies came courtesy of mezzo-soprano
Alicia Hall Moran, of Broadway's 2012 Tony-award-winning The Gershwins' Porgy
& Bess, and guitarist/composer Brandon Ross. (Moran also performed at the
Poetry Society’s tribute to Lucille Clifton at CUNY in February.) Hall’s
entrancing and deliberate gait across the pulpit as she serenaded the crowd made
the event feel like a proper homecoming for Cullen and a fitting tribute to a rhyme
that death did not end.
Kimberly
Reyes received her MA from the Columbia University
Graduate School of Journalism in May and is heading to Chicago as the recipient
of the Poetry Foundation’s exclusive Columbia University Fellowship. Her work
has appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Time.com, The New York Post, The Village Voice,
Alternative Press, ESPN the Magazine, Honey Magazine, Jane Magazine and for the
Associated Press.