Touch me/You know how to touch me/Kiss me/You know just where to kiss me
Ichiro had two hits last night. I put down the sports page and open the CAVE CANEM XI. 2007 Anthology. I need to know what the black writers are doing these days. Cave Canem is the literary NAACP. Give Cornelius Eady a pocketwatch and someone might call him DuBois. Toi Derricotte becomes Jesse Fauset? History is often nothing but a dress rehersal for the future.
Cave Canem has quickly become the compass for African American poetry. In the introduction to the new Cave Canem anthology Derricotte raises a very important point about the need to look back at the anthologies produced over the years. What might this reveal? The "color" of black poetry? Trends? A school of black writing? The missing lyrics of our tongues?
I know more about Ichiro’s batting average than the titles of new books by black poets. Why? There is so much to read these days. There are so many wonderful new voices emerging and creating their own storm of blackness. Cave Canem poets are changing the landscape of America. Wake Up Everybody!
Pay attention to Myronn Hardy, Alan King, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Randall Horton, Carleasa Coates, and Ashaki Jackson. Ashaki reminds me what the E is for:
E is for conversion between living and stillness.
Between living and stillness is where I will look for the new black poetry. A poetry that must be visionary. We are also the children of Whitman.
Wake Up Everybody!
No more backward thinkin’, time for thinkin’ ahead.
www.cavecanempoets.org. Access the site and visit the new world.