The Associated Press asked famous poets to write poems inspired by Barack Obama’s election. Here’s one by Gary Soto, of Berkeley, Calif.

James Edwin Campbell (1867-1896), a little-known poet and educator who once taught at West Virginia State, was the first black writer to come out with a book of dialect poems. Chidi Ikonné calls his book, “Echoes from the Cabin and Elsewhere,” “an honest attempt to capture the Negro folk spirit” as it seemed to be giving way to Anglo-Saxon culture. Even as the poems are witty — some of them seem to present minstrel stereotypes — Campbell tried to paint a spirit that was disappearing. He also wrote in literary English:

Compensation

by James Edwin Campbell

O, RICH young lord, thou ridest by
With looks of high disdain;
It chafes me not thy title high,
Thy blood of oldest strain.
The lady riding at thy side
Is but in name thy promised bride,
    Ride on, young lord, ride on!

Her father wills and she obeys,
The custom of her class;
’Tis Land not Love the trothing sways—
For Land he sells his lass.
Her fair white hand, young lord, is thine,
Her soul, proud fool, her soul is mine,
    Ride on, young lord, ride on!

No title high my father bore;
The tenant of thy farm,
He left me what I value more:
Clean heart, clear brain, strong arm
And love for bird and beast and bee
And song of lark and hymn of sea,
    Ride on, young lord, ride on!

The boundless sky to me belongs,
The paltry acres thine;
The painted beauty sings thy songs,
The lavrock lilts me mine;
The hot-housed orchid blooms for thee,
The gorse and heather bloom for me,
    Ride on, young lord, ride on!

_________________

Here’s one of his dialect poems, from “The Book of American Negro Poetry,” edited by James Weldon Johnson, published in 1922:

Negro Serenade

by James Edwin Campbell

O, DE LIGHT-BUGS glimmer down de lane,
    Merlindy! Merlindy!
O, de whip’-will callin’ notes ur pain—
    Merlindy, O, Merlindy!
O, honey lub, my turkle dub,
    Doan’ you hyuh my bawnjer ringin’,
While de night-dew falls an’ de ho’n owl calls
    By de of ba’n gate Ise singin’.

O, Miss ’Lindy, doan’ you hyuh me, chil’,
    Merlindy! Merlindy!
My lub fur you des dribe me wil’—
    Merlindy, O, Merlindy!
I’ll sing dis night twel broad day-light,
    Ur bu’s’ my froat wid tryin’,
’Less you come down, Miss ’Lindy Brown,
    An’ stops dis ha’t f’um sighin’!

Transcript (without knowing the line breaks) of the inaugural poem by Elizabeth Alexander:

Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp — praise song for walking forward in that light.

Each one of us holds a piece of the puzzle, and it sometimes seems these days maybe we’re starting to put it together.

Three people who plan to be in the inaugural crowd Tuesday — a high school senior, a wounded veteran of the war in Iraq, and a Charleston lawyer — reflect on “the change in the air” as the inauguration of Barack Obama draws near. Check out Doug Imbrogno’s story Friday morning on the front page of The Charleston Gazette.

Charleston attorney Kitty Dooley focuses her mind most poetically by quoting Langston Hughes’ “I, Too, Sing America.”

“I, too, sing America/I am the darker brother/They send me to eat in the kitchen/When company comes,/But I laugh,/And eat well,/And grow strong./Tomorrow,/I’ll be at the table/When company comes./Nobody’ll dare/Say to me,/”Eat in the kitchen,”/Then./Besides, /They’ll see how beautiful I am/And be ashamed–/I, too, am America.”

Langston Hughes, by the way, has been for some time the most searched-for poet by West Virginians at the Academy of American Poets’ Web site, poets.org.

AP asked famous poets to write about Obama’s inauguration. The first comes from David Lehman.

WASHINGTON (AP) — “Ill-fated and mysterious man! Bewildered in the brilliancy of thine own imagination,'’ wrote Edgar Alan Poe in “The Assignation.'’ The melancholy poet, master of merriment and terror, could have been writing about himself.

Best known for his haunting short stories and ringing poems, the familiar yet enigmatic writer is being honored Friday on a new commemorative postage stamp.

“While we may continue to take pleasure in Poe’s poetry and prose, he might be most pleased if we would take inspiration from his application of imagination to the problems of our own time as we encourage the young people of our nation and the world to build the future,'’ Harry Lee Poe, a distant cousin of the poet and a professor at Union University in Jackson, Tenn., suggested in remarks prepared for ceremonies in Richmond, Va.

Ceremonies marking issuance of the 42-cent stamp were scheduled at the Library of Virginia in Richmond, the city where the poet was raised following the death of his parents.

He was born 200 years ago.

“It is ironic that a man who faced loneliness, poverty and despair throughout much of his life, should be so richly loved by so many so long after his death,'’ Katherine C. Tobin, a member of the post office’s board of governors, said in prepared remarks. “He invented the detective story and elevated literary criticism to an art form. Poetry, however, was his self-declared passion.'’

In addition to his fame as a writer, Poe also may have pioneered the idea of the Big Bang theory for the birth of the universe.

In an 1848 essay titled Eureka, he proposed the idea that time and space are a single unity and that the universe expanded from a tiny primordial spec, Harry Lee Poe noted.

On the Net:
U.S. Postal Service: http://www/usps.com

Tonight, W. gives his primetime farewell address to the nation. Let us not forget:

“One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.”— George W. Bush

Poets, take heart that soon we’ll be headed in a new direction.

 
clipart.com

… you can arrive by paper mail, e-mail, mp3 or YouTube, by comments here at the blog or what you will.

One way to make MountainWord more fun is for us publish more of your writing, both in the posts and the comments. Make a comment, and send your poem or your recording of a poem — yours or even a favorite — to Vic Burkhammer at MountainWord.

Otherwise… well, here. I’ll get us started, in the spirit of John Berryman in his “366th Dream Song”:

“These Songs are not meant to be understood, you understand. / They are only meant to terrify & comfort.”

January 13, 2009

sometimes these days when poets die
their web sites stay up awhile
never even noting the passing

you look for news
and you wonder how long this will last
but everything just stays

the same and you bookmark them
wishing you could do
something to help but you too

are on the way
toward heaven’s light
paradoxically hidden

deep in the earth

_________________________________

Surely you could do better.
I’m mainly interested in short poems of less than 15 lines.

_________________________________

From NewsHour: Reflections of Obama’s inaugural poet: Click it!

Very much worth a visit:
Norman Jordan to present 2009 African American Arts and Heritage Academy Showcase

A reading by Michael Martone, author of “Racing in Place: Collages, Fragments, Postcards, Ruins” and many other books, will be presented 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2009, Gold Ballroom, WVU Mountainlair, Morgantown, W.Va.  Hosted by The Department of English, Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, the event is free and open to the public. Reception and book signing to follow.

For more information, click here.