June Jordan: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

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The Reception

 

Doretha wore the short blue lace last night

and William watched her drinking so she fight

with him in flying collar slim-jim orange

tie and alligator belt below the navel pants uptight

 

“I flirt. You hear me? Yes I flirt.

Been on my pretty knees all week

to clean the rich white downtown dirt

the greedy garbage money reek.

 

I flirt. Damned right. You look at me.”

But William watched her carefully

his mustache shaky she could see

him jealous, “which is how he always be

 

at parties.” Clementine and Wilhelmina

looked at trouble in the light blue lace

and held to George while Roosevelt Senior

circled by the yella high and bitterly light blue face

 

he liked because she worked

the crowded room like clay like molding men

from dust to muscle jerked

and arms and shoulders moving when

 

she moved. The Lord Almighty Seagrams bless

Doretha in her short blue dress

and Roosevelt waiting for his chance:

a true gut-funky blues to make her really dance.

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June Jordan was born in Harlem in 1936 and was the author of ten books of poetry, seven collections of essays, two plays, a libretto, a novel, a memoir, five children’s books, and June Jordan’s Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint. As a professor at UC Berkeley, Jordan established Poetry for the People, a program to train student teachers to teach the power of poetry from a multicultural worldview. She was a regular columnist for The Progressive, and her articles appeared in The Village Voice, The New York Times, Ms., Essence, and The Nation. After her death from breast cancer in 2002, a school in the San Francisco School District was renamed in her honor. [From the forthcoming volume, The Essential June Jordan (May 2021, Copper Canyon Press]. See also this link.

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June Jordan on being a poet (and to hear her wonderful laugh)---

 

 

Comments

[Anne Harding Woodworth]

I remember when she died, and I felt as if I hadn't known about her early enough, and then she was gone. But her spirit remains, and we see it in this poem. I love the language and the rhyme, which may appear simple but isn't. The video is really good. But 3 minutes with June Jordan isn't long enough.

[Clarinda harriss]

Omg this is so fine

[Chris Mason]

Great poem and wonderful to hear how she wrote poems for her friends!

[Terence Winch]

Thanks for the comment, Chris.

[Dr. Earle Hitchner]

This stands alone, as all exceptional poems do, but it can also serve as an inspired choice of entryway into the overall brilliance of June Jordan’s verse. “The Reception” made me think of “Calling on All Silent Minorities,” a nine-line poem revealing Jordan’s ability to be brief without falling short, and “Poem about My Rights,” in which her 114 lines move insistently and lithely without any punctuation. It is a tour de force, a feat of precise lineation in rhythmic service to stunning content. I can’t shake free of it, nor would I want to.

“The Reception” set all this in motion for me. Kudos to June for writing it and to Terence for selecting it.

[Eamon Grennan]

Lovely imaginative passion at work in the poem, and all the qualities of a lovely serious humorous alert human being and poet in that interview.

[Terence Winch]

Eamon: Thanks for the comment.

[Phyllis Rosenzweig]

Really wonderful. Thanks, Terence

[Terence Winch]

Glad you liked it, Phyllis.