The Split This Rock Poetry Festival started yesterday. I missed the opening ceremony and the featured readings with Andrea Gibson, Wang Ping, Cornelius Eady, Holly Bass, Beny Blaq and Derrick Weston Brown. I was over at American University teaching a class of D.C. teachers who had been reading my memoir Fathering Words.
I did run over to Busboys and Poets in the afternoon and grab the program guide listing the events that will take place the next few days.Thursday morning I have to go listen to Nancy Morejon. I guess one could call her the First Lady of Poetry for Cuba. I haven't seen Nancy in several years. It will be nice to give her a poetry hug. The title of her last book is With Eyes and Soul: Images of Cuba. This is a book of poetry and photographs.The pictures were taken by Milton Rogovin.
Here is Nancy Morejon's "Hour of Truth (IX)" from her collection of poems:
And I sing in Cuba.
Sing in my native tongue forever.
Young people pass by with their tufts of red hair
floating in the wind of Revolution,
its prow turned to the sun of our New World.
And I swim above the city.
And above the blue of the city,
and above the sudden change in the city.
And above its latest generation.
And we're building and building, higher than our isolation,
higher than their profiteering.
Here's where I want to be.
Crossing bridges, rivers, centrifuges.
I dip myself in nickel:
- I unearth the bird's tongue.
How lovely is my land.
Morejon's work captures that political spirit we associate with poets who witness social change. It's similar to the poem by Langston Hughes that is used as the umbrella for the D.C. poetry festival:
Big Buddy, Big Buddy.
Ain't you gonna stand by me?
Big Buddy, Big Buddy,
Ain't you gonna stand by me?
If I got to fight,
I'll fight like a man.
But say, Big Buddy
Won't you lend a hand?
Ain't you gonna stand by me?
So when should poets mix their poetry with politics? This is an endless debate. Do we view Morejon's work in a different light because she lives in Cuba? When we hear Langston's "Big Buddy" recited do we want to throw our hands in the air like we just don't care? Oh, and why should one fight like a man and not fight like a woman? Is it that language thing again?
The Split This Rock Poetry Festival is important because the focus is on poems of provocation and witness. Would every poet in America be happy attending the various panels that have been organized? Of course not, but I think the events being held this week should remind all poets that there are earthquakes happening beneath our feet. The world is moving. Do your words move the world?
