Lucille Clifton, award-winning poet, dies at 73

BALTIMORE (AP) — Lucille Clifton, a National Book Award-winning poet and Pulitzer finalist, has died. She was 73.
Clifton’s sister, Elaine Philip of Buffalo, N.Y., said the former poet laureate of Maryland passed away Saturday morning at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore.
Philip said the cause of death was unclear but Clifton was hospitalized for an infection last week at a hospital in Columbia, Md., before being transferred to Baltimore.
The native of Depew, N.Y., won the National Book Award in 2000 for “Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000.” She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1988.
Survivors include three daughters, a son and three grandchildren. Funeral arrangements are pending.

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Frank X Walker — Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

By Vic Burkhammer
Gazette news editor
Notable African-American writer Frank X Walker returns to Charleston this weekend.
The West Virginia Center for the Book and the West Virginia Division of Culture and History will celebrate Black History Month with an appearance at 7 p.m. Friday at the Culture Center Theater by Walker, who also will be featured at other weekend events.
He will present his lecture “Some of Appalachia is Black” and address the definition of Affrilachian, a word he coined that is now in the Oxford American Dictionary. He also will read poems.
Some of his books, including “Affrilachia: Poems,” “When Winter Come: The Ascension of York” and “Black Box,” will be available for sale during a reception in the Great Hall following the lecture.
Walker also will be an instructor Saturday morning at the annual Writers’ Toolkit, an intensive creative writing workshop that encompasses poetry and fiction. Also on the program was W.Va. Poet Laureate Irene McKinney, but she cancelled her appearance. Doug Van Gundy will take her place, along with Anthony Viola, Rob Whetsell and Kaite Hillenbrand. The program runs 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Culture Center.
Both events are open to the public.
Finishing out the weekend, Walker will read at Bluegrass Kitchen, 1600 Washington St., on Sunday as part of “Love Jones Poetry,” hosted by Crystal Goodwoman with a Sade listening party at 7 p.m.

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Frank X Walker — Photo from video by Vic Burkhammer and M.K. McFarland

FRANK X WALKER’S COMING TO TOWN. Next Friday, Feb. 12, at 7 p.m., Frank X Walker will be a guest lecturer at the Culture Center in the Capitol Complex, Charleston. He is hosted by the West Virginia Center for the Book as it celebrates Black History Month. More on that on the next few days here at MountainWord and in Thursday’s Gazz, the Gazette’s entertainment section.

He will present his lecture, “Some of Appalachia is Black.”

Walker also will be a faculty member at the annual Writers’ Toolkit, Saturday, February 13, from 9 a.m. to noon in the Culture Center. Both events are open to the public.

The Celebration of Black History Month and the Writers’ Toolkit are co-sponsored by the West Virginia Center for the Book, a program of the West Virginia Library Commission, and the West Virginia Division of Culture and History, under the supervision West Virginia of Education and the Arts.

For biography and/or photographs of Walker, please click here.

Click here to read about the West Virginia Center for the Book.

And here’s a link to the Web page Susan Hayden is developing for WVLC.

Crystal Good says Walker will be at Bluegrass Kitchen on Feb. 14…details to follow….

DEATH OF A HERO POET. Here’s a report from IFF Network Blog about the death of Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever.

On Jan. 23, Joseph Berger of The New York Times wrote:
“Abraham Sutzkever, one of the great Yiddish poets of his generation who evoked the nightmare of the Holocaust with images of a wagonload of worn shoes and the haunting silence of a sky of white stars, died Wednesday in Tel Aviv. He was 96.”

CIVILITY DISCUSSION. My wife Nancy Miller Burkhammer tells me the Rev. Jim Lewis, author of the blog “Notes from Under the Fig Tree,” participated in a civility discussion put together by Washington and Lee University, his alma mater. The comments were summarized in W&L: The Magazine for Washington and Lee University Alumni/Fall-Winter 2009. It’s the cover story and it begins on Page 20.

W&L is also the alma mater of Joe Wilson, the congressman who screamed “You lie!” at Obama during the president’s health-care speech to Congress last fall.

WHAT ABOUT WEST VIRGINIA’S 14 HATE GROUPS? Most poets are gentle souls who see hate as alien to poetry.

Oddly, more often these days, I hear on talk radio and elsewhere — it’s ubiquitous — people shaking their rhetorical fists at the powers that be, President Obama particularly, over issues they would’ve praised W for.

Did you know, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are 14 active hate groups in West Virginia?

What do you make of this? Please, add your comments.

CRAIGSLIST HAIKU. Read about the how and why of haiku that show up on Craigslist.

A POET AND HIS MAC. With all the buzz about the iPad these days, it’s worth noting that poet Gary Snyder has a poem about his Apple computer: “Why I Take Good Care of My Macintosh.”

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Award-winning author Mark DeFoe will be featured with Morgantown Poets at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 18, at Monongalia Arts Center (MAC). The event is free and open to the public. The MAC is at 107 High Street, downtown Morgantown (beside Hotel Morgan).

Read about Mark Defoe »

“Writers and Their Notebooks” ~ Diana M. Raab, editor. Phillip Lopate, foreward. University of South Carolina Press. 2010. Paperback. 203 pages.

Most of us have kept notebooks over the years. In them, we sharpen our outlook, log scraps of the discontinuous stops and starts of our minds. We find ways to say whatever we want to say. Years later we might find a journal item with magic allure. I think of the power of Marcel Proust’s madeleine: “The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it….”

We might be delighted, experience an epiphany we needed, be fired up by our attempts to capture a moment. These miscellaneous reaches for …. something — we’ll know it when we discover it — this freedom is at the heart of “Writers and Their Notebooks.”

I am reminded of my best writing teacher, Winston Fuller, who has had a lot to say about journals. He said telling the story of our lives is a lifelong process. When we are stuck or in pain, we grow, move on, only when we are able to change the story we’re telling ourselves about ourselves.  Writing things down, we somehow hold them still.

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Poet Crystal Good will perform her spoken word artistry at a Haiti relief benefit, 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 24, 2010, at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation, 520 Kanawha Blvd. W.     Also included in the entertainment are musicians including Ron Sowell, Kate Long, The Clementines, The Peruvian Trio, Heidi Muller and Bob Webb.

Donations are $5 to $100, or whatever you are able to give.  I heard CNN’s Dr. Gupta say last night some medicines that are needed cost very little, maybe a nickel, dose by dose, application by application, to stop infections and other suffering.  Doing something is better than doing nothing, so come out and hear these gifted people deliver their expressions of hope and healing.

This just in, word for word, from widely published poet Norman Jordan:

Poetry for Port au Prince

Hey Everyone
 
The Griot Collective of West Tennesse presents:  Poetry for Port au Prince, at 6 pm Saturday, Jan. 30, 2010, at the Green Frog Coffee Company.  Poets both published and unpublished, are asked to read their original poems or works by their favorite poets.  A $10 donation is requested for each poem that is read.  All proceeds will be donated to Unicef for the victims of the Haitian earthquake.  The Griot Collective is a 501 (c) (3) literary arts organization that sponsors a poetry workshop every third Saturday from September through May.  The Green Frog Coffee Company is located at 112 E. Baltimore St in downtown Jackson, Tennessee.
 
Here is a poem that I wrote for the reading.
 
BY CHANCE
 
From out of destruction
A tiny voice cries
Babies with no mothers
Brings tears to my eyes
 
Day after day
Dead Haitian bodies fill trucks
Who lives and who dies
Is determined by luck
 
For the living
No roof over head
No water no food
Sleep is hard on a concrete bed
 
Sitting in comfort
In front of my big screen TV
I text a donation
Because it could be me.
 
 
       Norman Jordan
       1-23-2010
 

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A short poem by Paul Curry Steele, read for MountainWord poetry blog by Vic Burkhammer, 3 pm EST on 01/23/2010, recorded on Sanyo Xacti

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Poets sometimes pass away almost without notice. Paul Curry Steele was a non-conformist with the demeanor of a genius. When he’d quietly walk through town, he stood out as having an air of dignity. Here’s his obituary which ran in the Logan Banner just before Christmas last year:

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Poems by Langston Hughes remain very popular with W.Va. readers. Thus, in making note of MLK Day:

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
(February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967)

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Click here to visit Amazon.com’s Langston Hughes Page.

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An article by Langston Hughes called “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” appeared in the June 23, 1926 edition of The Nation. Click here to read it.

Please write a short, original poem in the comment box.  Just click on the word  comments  below.  Leave your name too. Thanks.