Wishing for More Good News from the Supreme Court

In recent years, it's been difficult to find anything heartening about news coming from the Supreme Court. But for as long as I've been involved in gay rights and queer liberation movements, one of the holy grails that seemed almost within reach but just unattainable for now was a national prohibition on discrimination in the workplace.
ENDA -- the Employment Nondiscrimination Act -- floated around Congress for decades. Each time Democrats controlled both the House and Senate, it seemed close to getting a fair hearing and maybe passing. Then "religious exemptions" would be inserted in the bill that created such wide scapegoat loopholes that even LGTBA+ leaders felt compelled to abandon it. And then, as has been the case most of the time in recent decades, Republicans would reclaim one or both houses of Congress and the lid was slammed shut on any talk of protecting queer people from discrimination.
So now the Supreme Court has ruled that Civil Rights legislation passed decades ago does in fact protect us from workplace discrimination. I'm not an attorney but I'd love to read about the legal reasoning that led to this ruling, with the support of two conservative justices. Hats off to the attorneys who brought and prevailed in this case. And if let's hope the two conservatives who sided with the majority, Roberts and Gorsuch, might show more affinity for progressive legal arguments. The conservative Supreme Court has been a thorn in the side of progressive governance for too long.
On unrelated news, a few weeks ago Jericho Brown won the Pulitzer Prize for his latest poetry collection, "The Tradition." He's the seventh African American to win the Pulitzer for poetry (and the first openly gay one). He's amazing, and he's created a new form, the duplex, which is spreading in popularity among contemporary poets. His poem, "After Essex Hemphill," might be inspired by a park in D.C., that was always known as Malcom X Park when I lived nearby in the early '90s. (It's official name was Meridian Hill Park). I find Brown's work brave and seductive, righteous and adventurous. From the aforementioned poem:

"...As we kneel illegal and
Illegal like Malcom X.
This is his park, this part
Of the capital where we
Say please with our mouths
Full of each other, no one
Hungry as me against this
Tree. This tree, if we push
Too hard, will fall. But if
I don't push at all, call me
A sissy...."

And it ends:
                     "The night
is my right. Shouldn't I
East? Shouldn't I repeat,
it was good, like God?"

If the poem is set in D.C., that's the closest tie-in to the Supreme Court decision that I can think of. At any rate, buy "The Tradition", go hear Jericho Brown read, and rejoice that people can no longer be fired for being queer or transgender.

Zoom in on Me (or on Other Poets, Preferably)

Well, Zoom has allowed me to hear a number of writers who I probably would not have seen reading together at a traditional bookstore, academic auditorium or arts venue reading. Five famous poets! All together on one night. And you get a vicarious, voyeuristic glimpse into their living quarters.
Still, I'm longing for the real thing. One or a handful of poets in the same place at the same time, their voices or the voices of people reading their work unamplified and undistorted by electronics and technology. How about a reading sitting around a fire pit in a public garden in New York City's East Village (social distancing style, of course). Ah, those were the days.
Still, I appreciate the online alternative. The Quarantine Reading series organized by Aurielle Marie (and featuring headliners Phillip B. Williams and Justin Phillip Reed on successive nights) was perhaps my favorite Zoom reading room lately. And I'm grateful. Two nights of wonderful poetry by some of today's most vital voices -- who could ask for anything more?
But I'm longing for the olden days, as they say. I was walking through Boom Island Park in Minneapolis a little over a week ago, before the city fell into grief and outrage, and I ran across a man  sitting on a park bench playing the saxophone. I told him what a relief it was to hear live music (he demurred, insisting that what he was doing was practicing, not playing music) but to me it was music. Coming from a real musician with a real instrument within my hearing distance. Those were the days.
So, I'm looking forward to hearing all the poets I've been listening to read again soon -- hopefully as a member of a live audience.

All Online All the Time

Well, this social distancing stay at home environment is getting old, but there are some fringe benefits. Hardly a day goes by when I don't find myself "invited" to a poetry reading or talk online. The Academy of American Poet's online marathon the other night was just one example.
And what do I find myself doing during these "virtual" readings, whereby readers and writers (and musicians and actors in some cases) convene via the Internet from the privacy of our homes? I find myself looking for glimpses of the participants' home lives.
The furniture, the decor, the art, and of course the libraries -- the most common backdrop people choose to show when they put their home on display via virtual meeting technology is the well stocked bookshop. Rarely, on my primitive laptop technology at any rate, is the image large enough that I can read many of the titles, but the books are on display. A few participants choose a blank wall backdrop or even drop some fabric behind them, but fortunately most authors and speakers are willing to give us a glimpse into their homes. I did find myself having pangs of apartment envy during the Academy's virtual event. (If memory serves, Naomi Shihab Nye had the apartment I think artists and writers should have -- cluttered, book and art strewn, and enviably cozy.)
On balance, despite the occasional technical glimpse, I've found these virtual readings to be refreshing and consoling. But I do long for the days when we can all reconvene in an actual room, even one with uncomfortable plastic folding chairs, to hear and face the presence of live authors addressing a live audience.

Long Time No Chat

Here's a post from last fall that I abandoned as a draft without posting, and I can't recall why. So I'll post it now.

I practically forgot about this blog of mine -- time to start making a record of my poetic or literary musings and adventures again.
Recent outings included another excellent poetry performance produced by Emotive Fruition that featured a variety of actors reading a staged presentation of poetry highlighting women's voices. Like all Emotive Fruition productions, this one really highlighted the dramatic element of poetry and the power invoked by layering multiple voices together.
Also, out at the music venue National Sawdust in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Paul Muldoon convened another combination of music and literature, this time uniting a classical trio (flute, violin, cello) with a Ukranian novelist and the American poet, and memoirist and human rights activist Carolyn Forche.
And, most importantly of all, I partook in a four week master class poetry workshop at the 92Y in New York City. The class was led by the inspiring and amazing poet Rowan Ricardo Phillips, and I'd encourage any poet who has a chance to do a workshop or class with him to take advantage of the opportunity. The class brought together one of my favorite groups of writers I've shared a workshop with, and I think many of us were sad that the workshop only lasted for four weeks.
Also, in addition to Rowan's poetry (Heaven is his most recent volume, and he has another highly anticipated collection coming out next year), he's also written a very entertaining and compelling nonfiction book about teens, The Circuit. The book follows the professional tennis tournament during the 2017 season, with many digressions about the nature of the sport and its followers (the piece about the origins of clay court tennis is worth the price of the book).

Danez and Friends at the NYPL

For a long time, I tended to write poetry in isolation, which had its benefits but also more drawbacks than I realized. I'd participated in several writing groups over the years, but to a large extent I plugged away at writing poetry and fiction on my own, viewing it as a solitary avocation.
As I've aged, I've come to recognize the fellowship and community in poetry. Nowhere was that sense of poetry as fellowship on display more than at Danez Smith's reading, along with two of his poet-friends, at the New York Public Library last week. Smith was celebrating the publication of Homie, his latest poetry collection which is a tribute to friendships that have helped shape him.
His fellow poets, Shira Erlichman and Angel Nafis, read before Danez and both are now on my gotta have their books list. But what struck me most about the reading was the sense of comradeship and camaraderie among the three writers. (Danez shared a story about sneaking into open mic readings at an Ethiopian restaurant in Minneapolis -- they were underage at the time and had to arrive when the restaurant was still open to avoid getting carded -- and then stay until the open mic started after restaurant hours). So often group or multiple reader poetry events evoke an undercurrent of friction, or perhaps a sense of competition between readers. Not so with Danez and his homies -- love was all around at this wonderful event.
If you have a chance to hear any of these three writers share their work, just go. You won't regret it.