No. 31 - A ripe hunting season

What is your artistic lineage? Who has influenced you, your work? What pieces, artists are models for you?

October 31, 2024

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedS’tory & Arlemby Nzingha HazeltonS’tory lived with Arlem,a white nun, in Elle E.S., a region of Recording, NY.Tomcats yowled and squawkedat night. Packs of terrierssniffed the streets for rats. Originally from Louisa, N.O., S’tory had come to Elle E.S. to learn to shootthe shit outta the raccoonswhose numbers grew daily, frightening the native population of Sparrows. Each morning, S’tory crawledout of bed, stuffed a sheetof music in her bookbag, along with a new set of traps. Before she left, she knocked on Arlem’s bedroom door to remind her to lock up behind her and S’tory usuallyended up recounting a wild dream (or making something up): "Arlem, you were a raccoon this time. I could not figure out whether to shoot,bring you home as a pet, or let you roam the streets once more.” Arlem shot back at S’tory from behind her bedroom door, “Instead of dreaming of me all night, why not focus on your studies. Remember, P.S. Won sends your reportsto me and I send them to Louisa. From the looks of that room of yoursyou are plagued by dysfunction.”S’tory felt some truth in Arlem’s words but also knew her dreams had a funny way of coming true. She knew that though the room she letted from Arlem reflected a messy mind,her aim remained razor sharp. S’tory chose to study in Recording at Arlem’s place for peculiar reasons.The terriers indicated a ripe hunting season,good for trappers like herself. And, because Arlem’s face peeking out her habit, popped up when S’tory searched: house converted to home recording studio

The poem above, S’tory & Arlem, was a piece I wrote in 2016. It came to my mind last Thursday while listening to a lecture by poet Terrance Hayes, at the Smith St. storefront location of the Poetry Society of America located in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. 

Hayes guided us through the poetry of black beat poet Bob Kaufman. Seeing or visualizing a poem as a kind of dwelling, Hayes uses the structure of a house, its foyer, parlor, living room and kitchen to walk us through a 1967 collection of Kaufman’s poetry, titled Golden Sardine.

Kaufman’s brilliance, his being himselfness, and his challenges posited him in Hayes’ eyes in a kind of trickster poetic. Naming poets Tongo Eisen, Donika Kelly, Wanda Coleman, and Will Alexander, Hayes recognizes a Californian ‘angular’ beat to the poet’s work.

Kaufman himself wrote lines like "the whole of me is an unfurnished room" (from "WOULD YOU WEAR MY EYES") and "On love divided corners of die now pay later mortuaries" (from "ON"). Yusef Komunyakaa's "Letter to Bob Kaufman" captures Kaufman's influence: "you don't know me but your flesh-/ &-blood language lingers in my head / like treason & raw honey.

 Questions for me that came up were:

  • Where might Bob Kaufman be placed in his own poetic lineage?

  • (What are YOUR artistic lineages? Who has influenced you, your work? What pieces, artists are models for you? What elders, and ancestors stay in veneration for you?

  • Was he a member of the Umbra Poets? (the collective of young black writers based in Manhattan's Lower East Side that was founded in 1962)

More on Kaufman below from the Poetry Society:

Beat poet Bob Kaufman (1925–1986) was born in New Orleans and lived in San Francisco. There, he associated with the bohemian North Beach scene and edited the magazine Beatitude. A writer whose work is infused with the countercultural vernacular of his time, Kaufman performed his jazz-inflected, lyrical, surrealistic poems in San Francisco's coffee shops and city streets. His first poetry collection, Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness, was published in 1965. In 2019, City Lights published The Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman, edited by Neeli Cherkovski, Raymond Foye, and Tate Swindell.