OUT OF THIS NUGHINGNESS

I WILL REVEAL MYSELF

STRETCH EXPANSE FROM EAST TO WEST

I SAID FROM NOTHING NEST

IF REST THERE A KERN OF TRUTH

IF THERE A MITE CAN LIVE

IF AGE EXIST IN YOUTH

THIS YOU I’LL GIVE

GIVE YOU RAIN IN BURNING SAND

GREEN GRASS FOR DESERT LAND

OCEANS WHERE ICE BERGS STOOD

TRANSPOSE YOUR EVIL MAKE IT GOOD

REST ASSURED IF I SAID IT

I SPOKE IT I CALLED IT

SURELY IT WILL STAND AS NOTHING COULD

SURELY IT WILL AS NUTHING WOULD

FOR I AM THAT AND MORE

FOR THOSE WHO KNOW ME KNOW

I AM HOLY HOLY AS BEFORE

A BEFORE NUTHING MORE NO NO

I SAID IT NOTHING IS FROM NUHINGNEST

FROM THIS I WILL REVEAL MYSELF

FROM THIS I WILL REVEAL MYSELF

OH YES HO YES YES YES YES

DO YOU BELIEVE

HIS NAME IS HOLY HOLY

HIS NAME IS GLORY GLORY

THEN LIFT IT UP HOLY HOLY

SPREAD IT WIDE, GLORY GLORY

GLORY HALLAL HOLY HOLY

HIS NAME IS HOLY GLORY

IF YOU BELIEVE LES NOT

          DECIEVE

YOUR BROTHER BETHROL

LAYING IN HIS BETRHOL

STEALING HIS SON ROBING HIS FISAL

COVETING HIS WIFE

BARTERING HIS MUSIC

PLAGARIZING HIS GOD

STRIPING HIS CORDS

WHAT IS DIS MEAT

YOU SPREAD YOUR TREATS

YOU SAY NOW FEAST

SANPRIEL WALKING DEAD tau

COME GET THESE MEMORIES

MY GOD I AINT

NONE

WEAK AH DE EE A SE

ING DED

YOU CHANG YORE BED

YOU WASH YOU SHEETS

WHAT ABOUT YOUR HANDS

YOUR DIRTY HEART

WHEN YOUR DEVIL

DEMAND A SACRIFICE

WILL YO TRY TO STEAL

MY EYE/ROLL THE DICE

NO YULL TRU OUT SING ME

DID MUH LORD DO IT

YES HE DID DIDN’T HE

WASN’T MUCH TO DO IT

YULL TRY TO OUT SHINE ME

O HAPPY DAY YULL SAY

WHEN JESUS WASH MUH SINS AWAY

OH MY COME SEE WHAT’LL DAY

OH WHAT AH DAY FOR BED SHEETS

SOILED AND STAINED WID GREESE

WHO’LL TAKE THE STAIN OUTA THESE

WHO’LL WASH AWAY CONCEAL THESE MEMORIES

ALL THOSE TEARS SHE CRIED ASLEEP

ALL THOSE LIES SHE HAS TO KEEP

ALL THOSE WATERS THAT RUN DEEP

SONGS OF THE WICKED NOT MEEK

AH HA HA AH AH

http://dictionary.infoplease.com/harlem+renaissance

The Harlem renaissance followed the pattern of the earlier Negritude movement and served as a catharsis for the previous racism which the black intellectual had experienced.  The earlier movement had noted that black people had suffered from slavery and the resulting racism led to self hatred.  Many of the writers were of the French dominated Caribbean and the American writer [many congregated in Harlem, NY] followed the same suit.  They created expressions which did not cater to the earlier forms and spoke with voices of their own.  In the simple example the word catharsis become “having a fit” and it was said openly.

We celebrate those who dare to be themself in their expressions:

Harlem Renaissance

 

Originally called the New Negro Movement, the Harlem Renaissance was a literary and intellectual flowering that fostered a new black cultural identity in the 1920s and 1930s. Critic and teacher Alain Locke described it as a “spiritual coming of age” in which the black community was able to seize upon its “first chances for group expression and self determination.”

With racism still rampant and economic opportunities scarce, creative expression was one of the few avenues available to African Americans in the early twentieth century. Chiefly literary—the birth of jazz is generally considered a separate movement—the Harlem Renaissance, according to Locke, transformed “social disillusionment to race pride.”

 

 

Perfect Timing

RELATED LINKS Black History Month Black History Timeline Crossword: African-American Writers Black Literary Figures African-American Literature African Literature

The timing of this coming-of-age was perfect. The years between World War I and the Great Depression were boom times for the United States, and jobs were plentiful in cities, especially in the North. Between 1920 and 1930, almost 750,000 African Americans left the South, and many of them migrated to urban areas in the North to take advantage of the prosperity—and the more racially tolerant environment. The Harlem section of Manhattan, which covers just 3 sq mi, drew nearly 175,000 African Americans, turning the neighborhood into the largest concentration of black people in the world.

Black-owned magazines and newspapers flourished, freeing African Americans from the constricting influences of mainstream white society. Charles S. Johnson’s Opportunity magazine became the leading voice of black culture, and W.E.B. DuBois’s journal, The Crisis, with Jessie Redmon Fauset as its literary editor, launched the literary careers of such writers as Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen.

Other luminaries of the period included writers Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, Rudolf Fisher, Wallace Thurman, and Nella Larsen. The movement was in part given definition by two anthologies: James Weldon Johnson’s The Book of American Negro Poetry and Alain Locke’s The New Negro.

 

 

“Our Individual Dark-Skinned Selves”

 

The white literary establishment soon became fascinated with the writers of the Harlem Renaissance and began publishing them in larger numbers. But for the writers themselves, acceptance by the white world was less important, as Langston Hughes put it, than the “expression of our individual dark-skinned selves.”

 

 

 

 

sea creatures…

he him…be

 

Hee Hee Hee

we see the tall ships

He…He…sails

let her rip!!!

The problem not forgotten. 

We see them robber barons

 

with the long ships

full but no body

going nowhere

Hee Hee Hee

Nobody going no where!

 

Across the old

Solitary Grey

Down to Montague Bay

Into the ports o Monitque

We come as cargo

We is the W/M loot

Thrown in with the ivory tusks

And old shark’s tooth relics

 

Down the straits

to Dominica to the ancient ports

of call

the foul smelling

the foul willed

slavers crept like the specter of death

 

The stream of tears

Like the wake

It left cutting a path

To a land bereft with tortured cries

Where men confess their sins to men

In a land where God live

On a Golden Chain

About men neck—-

 

MAH & FAMILY VALUES

Black negritude movement

Harlem renaissance

Claude Mckay  http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1902934040/ref=dp_olp_2

 

Conte cullen

Amie cesare

Jomo kenyata

W.E.B. DuBois’s

Langston Hughes http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/83

 

Arna Bontemps

Countee Cullen.

Zora Neale Hurston  http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0060199490/sr=/qid=/ref=olp_pg_new?ie=UTF8&coliid=&startIndex=0&me=&qid=&sr=&seller=&colid=&condition=new

 

Claude McKay,

Jean Toomer,

Rudolf Fisher,

Wallace Thurman,

Nella Larsen.

James Weldon Johnson’s

Alain Locke’s

Martin Delany

William Blyden

Leopold Sedar Senghor  http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/cm/africana/senghor.htm

 

Frantz Fanon  http://www.newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=cn0036

 

Anglophone Wole Soyinka  http://everything2.com/e2node/Wole%2520Soyinka

 

 Leon Gontran-Damas  http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=+Leon+Gontran-Damas&btnG=Google+Search

 

Aime Cesaire        http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1098666.Return_to_My_Native_Land_

http://aalbc.com/authors/claude.htm

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1555530249/ref=dp_olp_2

 

 

Festus Claudius McKay was born in Clarendon in 1890 to Thomas and Hannah McKay, farmers. The youngest of eleven children he would go on to become one of the leading figures of the 1920s American cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance.

 

Home to Harlem
Click to order via Amazon

ISBN: 1555530249
Format: Textbook Paperback, 340pp
Publisher: Northeastern University Press

From the Publisher
“Jake is on the run. After serving overseas with the U.S. Army, he goes AWOL and makes his own way back home to Harlem. Back to the life he had before. Back to the basement joints, pool rooms and rent parties. Back to brown breasts throbbing with love and brown lips full and pouted for sweet kissing.” No hero’s welcome awaits him. Only the same hard-drinking, hard-living scrabble for love and a home that he left behind. In this world of gamblers, loan sharks, lonely women and rivals in love, Jake seems to have it all. But the women of Harlem aren’t the only ones keen to make this fine-looking soldier their man. Uncle Sam wants him too!From The Critics
Mr. McKay’s book assails the optical, the olfactory, the kinaesthetic antennae whereby the human being takes in the world about him. In less stilted phrases, you can see, smell and feel what he writes. . . . Much of the charm of Home to Harlem is in the easy, unforced conversation of the many characters. — Books of the Century; –John Chamberlain, New York Times review, March 1928

 

 

Like so many of you have been watching this election closely and I’m glad that it’s finally over and that my candidate was victorious.  However, I’d be remiss in my duties as a fellow blogger if I didn’t comment on Senator McCain’s concession speech and now see him as a person of interest and not as that Republican devil.  I can’t imagine the disappointment he must be feeling at the outcome of this election but even as a faithful democrat, I feel empathy for him.  Also, I recognize a fellow fighter and I expect for him to continue in his stride to make America even better;  we are going to need his insight, experience, determination for the daunting task that lays ahead of us, improving the economy, employment, housing, international reputation, strengthening this great nation, etc.  Now is not the time to quit, maybe recuperate to facillitate a change in the right direction.  As a  maverick, I know he believes in the words- yes we can!