>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. >> Pamela Jackson: Good afternoon and greetings. I'm Pam Jackson and I am the newly appointed Director for the Center of the Book here at the Library of Congress and I welcome you. We're continuing on our day-long symposium from the Black Arts Movement to Cave Canem and we welcome you to this afternoon's panel. I'm going to mention first that the symposium today is sponsored by the Library of Congress Poetry and Literature Center. It's a very important component of the Center for the Book with a mission to foster and enhance the public's appreciation of poetry and literature. To read about the Poetry and Literature Center, home of the U.S. Poet Laureate and to learn about our many programs, please feel free to visit us on the website at loc.gov/poetry. We have a -- many sponsors -- cosponsors for today's event, including the Folger Shakespeare Library's O. B. Hardison Poetry Series, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, and the Cave Canem Foundation. Thank you to each of you for your collaboration and your partnership for today's event. So this morning, we presented a fabulous master class in children's literature, and we want to thank the cosponsor responsible for this class, which was the organization We Need Diverse Books, and we also offer a special thanks to Kwame Alexander for working with the Poetry and Literature Center to develop the symposium. So this afternoon, let's get ready for this conversation. It's an amazing and exciting two panels that we'll have, Writing Across Genre and Organizing Founders. You can read more about our panelists and moderators in your print program. And there are two print programs that -- that should be your seat and if you need one, perhaps you can just wave your hand and we can have somebody bring it over to you if you didn't get them there. One for our two o'clock that's beginning now and one for the 3:30 panel. We're honored to feature such prominent poets and writers, as well as founders and leaders from across the country. All are here to help us better understand the enduring influence of black -- of the Black Arts Movement started half a century ago. Each panel will include brief introductions by the participants followed by a moderated discussion. We'll leave time at the end of each panel for questions and there will be a short break in between the panels. Before we begin, though, I do have a few logistics. We would like to encourage all of us to be undistracted. So if you could check that your phones are on vibrate and any other electronic devices that may chime while we're here. Also, please note, this event is being video-taped for future webcast by the Library. And by participating in the Q and A session, you give the Library permission to include you in future audio and webcasts. And to conclude, we will have a book signing after the panel talks and we'll direct you to that location at the end of the talks. So please join me in welcoming the participants of the first panel, Writing Across Genre. We'll -- we'll have moderator, Marita Golden, Marilyn Nelson, Tony Medina, Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Please give us a warm hand for our panel. [ Applause ] >> Marita Golden: Thank you Pam. I'm Marita Golden. I am the Cofounder and President Emeritus of the Hurston/Wright Foundation and I was -- I feel a wonderful connection with this program today and with these panelists because I am old enough and young enough to remember having been there at the birth of Black Arts Movement, to have had Mickey Giovanni choose one of my poems when I was a student at American University to be published in an anthology, to have had Audrey Lord and June Jordan when I was young, gifted, and black in the early '70s in New York City look at my poetry and say that I should keep writing. And the only reason I'm not a poet today is because I felt that poetry was not big enough for the stories I wanted to tell which means, the problem was not poetry, the problem was me. Because for poets, there's no such thing as the structure or the form of poetry being too small so that in my case, fiction and non-fiction called me. I'm also glad to be here today because, at the Hurston/Wright Foundation, we've been very honored that we have recognized and honored so many of the fantastic poets that Cave Canem has nurtured, produced, and created. Toi Derricotte has received our North Star and Cornelius Eady has been a member of our summer workshop faculty, so I feel a real connection to today's topic, today's people, and to the panel. So I will introduce everyone and then they will make their presentations and we'll have a wonderful discussion. To my left is my new buddy, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, who's a poet and visual artist. Her most recent collection of poetry, "Lighting the Shadow," was published by Four Way Books in 2015. A Kimbilio and Cave Canem fellow, her visual and literary work has appeared widely, including the New York Times, Poets and Writers, Guernica and Lib Hub, and many others. She teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts and Sarah Lawrence College, and she lives in Brooklyn. Next to Rachel is Tony Medina who's a two-time winner of the Patterson Prize for Books for Young People for "DeShawn Days" and "I and I Bob Marley." The author of a number of books for adults and young people, his works include, "An Onion of Wars" and "Baroque," finalist for the Julie Suk Book Award. His latest anthology is "Resisting Arrest," poems to stretch the sky. Tony is a professor of creating writing -- creative writing at Howard University. And Marilyn Nelson is the author or translator of 17 poetry books and the memoire, "How I Discovered Poetry." She's also the author of "The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems," which won the 1998 poet's price; "Carver:" -- I love that book, Marilyn -- "A Life in Poems," which won the 2001 Boston Globe Horn Book and the Flora Stieglitz Straus Award. Her honors include two NEA Creative Writing Fellowships, and she was the Poet Laureate of the State of Connecticut from 2001 to 2006. Let's give everyone a hand. [ Applause ] So I think we're going to start the presentations with Eliza. >> Rachel Eliza Griffiths: Good afternoon. It's a very large gift to be here with all of you today. Thank you so much for this dialogue and this conversation. And to sit in the presence of these celebrated poets and dear friends and family really to me is -- is so much. I'd like to start with a piece of writing as I'm thinking about family and thinking of my brothers and sisters in Orlando, I'd like to read this piece of an excerpt from Toni Morrison's, "Beloved," and I -- I'm interested when I think about the Black Arts Movement, thinking of Morrison and her role as an editor. And then I'll read a poem by Henry Dumas. And Morrison was very influential in making sure that Henry Dumas's work reached the world in a way -- he was killed very young, murdered by the police, and so I'll read a poem of his and I'll read a poem of mine. And then I will share a video that I created as part of the conversation of Black Poets Speak Out in terms of activism, and that poem is by -- a visual poem that I made about Amiri Baraka's poem, "Incident." But first Morrison. In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don't love your eyes; they'd just as soon pick 'em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder, they flay it. And oh my people, they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off, and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them. Pat them together. Stroke them on your face 'cause they don't love that either. You got to love it. You! And no, they ain't in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it, they will not heed. What you scream from it, they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body, they will snatch away and give you leavin's instead. No, they don't love your mouth. You got to love it. This is flesh I'm talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms -- strong arms I'm telling you. And oh my people out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it, and hold it up and all your inside parts that they'd just as soon slop for hogs. You got to love them. The dark, the dark liver -- love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that, too. More than eyes or feet, more than lungs that have yet to draw free air, more than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize. For Orlando. This poem is by Henry Dumas, "The Coming of Eagles." Let us have eagles. Let us have eagles among my people. The hot wind has melted ice and the ice has fallen. The cold wind has chiseled mountains and they have fallen. The dry wind has gnawed away stone and stone is sand. The cruel winds have cut feathers, skin, and bones and the sparrows have died. Let us have new wings among my people. Let us have bones among my people. Let us have visions among my people. Let us ride the wind into the high country. Let us have eagles. And this is a -- a poem of mine from a chat book that I had this poem and some other poems included in recently thinking about Langston Hughes and kind of The Negro Speaks of Rivers, which I think is interesting to -- to think about Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance as -- as pre-kind of forefathers and mothers of Black Arts Movement. Aubade to Langston. When the light wakes and finds again the music of brooms in Mississippi, Africa, Mexico; when daylight pulls our hands from grief, and hearts cleaned raw with sawdust and saltwater flood their dazzling vessels; when the catfish towards -- when the catfish in the river raise their eyelids towards your face; when sweetgrass bends in waves across battlefields where sweat and sugar marry; when we hear our people wearing tongues fine with plain greeting, how you doing, good morning; when I pour coffee and remember my mother's love of buttered grits; when the trains far away in memory begin to turn their engines toward a deep past of knowing; when all I want to do is burn my masks; when I see a woman walking down the street holding her mind like a leather belt; when I pluck a blues note for my lazy shadow and cast its soul from my page; when I see God's eyes looking up at black folks flying between moonlight & museum; when I see a good-looking people who are my truest poetry; when I pick up this pencil like a flute and blow myself away from my death, I listen to you again beneath the mercy of a blue morning's grammar. [ Applause ] And then, the last poem of mine that I'll read is just one part of a -- a two -- a two-part poem called, "Elegy," and there's an "Anti-Elegy," and I imagine these two parts of the poem being, as a visual artist, a dip tick, and so there's one panel and then there's another panel, and together, they make a vision. And so the part that I'm going to read from is an ancestral voice and so there is an element, too, of call and response which is the anti-elegy. But I'm just going to read the first part. Elegy. I remember the black boys and their open hands. High fives of farewell. I remember that the birches waved, too, the white jagged limbs turning away from incessant wildfires. The future wavered, unlike a question, unlike a hand or headstone. The future moved and the fields already knew it. I remember the war of the alphabet, its ears sliced from its face. I know that language asks for blood. The children of kudzu, lilac, the spit of unknown rivers. I remember the jury and the judge of the people, the buckshot that blew the morning's torso into smoke. That last morning, I begged the grandmothers to leave their rage next to red candles. I scattered the stones the trees bore. Great vultures came for my children and black boys were pouring, wanted and unwanted, and missing, yet from the long mouth where their voices were forced to say they were nothing. But they were men, invisible, and native and guilty beyond their glottal doubt. I remember calling out to the savage fields where more black boys knelt and swung through the air. I remember how their eyes rolled back in blood, milk, and gasoline. They gave me their last words. They gave me smiles for their fathers. They slept in my arms, dead and bruised, long as the brambles, the bullets in their heads and groins quieting like a day. I held their million heads in my lap when their black bodies were taken away. I don't know if what's left will dance or burn. I washed their eyelids with mint. Let God beg pardon to them and their mothers, and I don't know if the body is a pendulum of where love cannot go when the tongue is swollen with the milk of black boys. I pulled their lives from the trees and lawns and schools, the unlit houses, and the river, their forewings wet with clouds and screaming, but I won't leave them. I won't leave them huddled like bulls inside the stalls of our words. I am the shriek, the suture, the rose petal shook loose from their silence. And then my [applause] thank you. [ Applause ] And I just have one -- the video, which someone is going to press a magical button and -- I will say there is -- it is graphic, but I was -- I made this for Black Poets Speak Out and because I -- I felt I could not speak, I felt so silenced, and I feel silenced today, in a way, but I am going to speak. And so this video is a way for me, as a poet, to also speak visually about what is happening in this country and how we're really failing each other and our future. Thank you. [ Inaudible Video Content ] >> Tony Medina: I'm really -- I'm grateful to be here today, especially about what happened over the weekend, particularly yesterday, feeling so disoriented and numb and depressed all day. To be here with family and great artists in this community to celebrate life. I woke to the horrifying news of another mass shooting and by the time I basically responded to this stuff that I was seeing on television, the -- the dead rose from 20 to 50. So I just wrote this. America, you have too many guns and too much anger and too many TV shows and movies glorifying violence. America, you're too abundant with wealth, resources, and cultural byproducts to constantly celebrate death over valuing life. It's summer in America, we should be worshipping sunlight and sea rather than burying young people celebrating their youth in a nightclub on a Saturday night leaning into Sunday morning. [Inaudible] for Trayvon Martin. Skittles back, pock mocked holy bleeds in rain puddle. Hoody hides no blood, tears or eyes shut by wet grass. Screams pierce night sky, a father's stomach pits, my boy, my boy, shot through sky. Skittles like roman candle bursts blood from open chest. Stars squint and stare, rain drops glare in moonlight witnessing bloodletting. Morning grass like wet face of boy screaming bloody murder. Gunpowder blinds the eye of justice reckless as a dumb vigilante. Silence of blood clouds night drizzle where wind whistles through hole in can. Empty bag of Skittles, crushed can of iced tea, last game with father. Rain choose night air, nor is the brown boy flesh grinning teeth of bullets. Rain stains brown boy's back as blood pours from chest turning the green grass red. How blues is born. Rain falls steady on dead end street strewn with black body. Momma's cries hang on rain hooks ornamenting night wind's grin. Blood petals pock grim face of grass like lotus on rain-slick back of black boy. Not enough lifetimes to take back powder burn cries to piece my boy back. When Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Missouri, the next day in St. Louis, this other brother was gunned down by the police. His name was Kajieme Powell. He took two energy drinks and some donuts from a corner store, placed them along the curb waiting for the cops to come. He paced back and forth, anger and frustration stalking his undaunted thoughts. He wasn't going to take it anymore. The cops climbed the curb with their patrol car, drawing their semiautomatic guns, right hand in his jacket pocket clutching a steak knife. He ordered them to kill me, kill me, kill me now. They lit him up with nine rounds till blood and smoke seeped from his flesh. They rolled him over like a log, his body's pock marked skin pouting like lips. It took all 23 seconds for his 25 years to leak out his bleeding lungs. When the coroner got him, he asked the officers to take the handcuffs off. From the crushed voice box of Freddy Gray. I am 'de magic negro, the black Houdini who done it, done it to himself. I handcuffed my own damn self, I threw myself in the back of the patrol car, my hands shackled behind my back, slave ship cargo ago. I am the magic negro, the black Houdini who done it, do's it to himself, him black self, see ma' no hands. I snatched a pistol from the white man's mind from the back of the patrol car, suck on this Houdini. I grabbed the gun and shoot myself in the chest neocolonial style. The autopsy report says, damn, would have been easier to walk on water. I bet you a quarter, he done shot himself. I am the magic negro, spineless, I brokes my own spine after hog-tying myself into a pretzel, even Houdini, who done it would envy, only to turn myself into a human pinball rattling around the steel gullet of a negro pickup truck once reserved for newly arrived potato famine New York Irish drunks down on their luck. Me, moi, it is I who was a fellow. Oh, hell no. Yes, me, the magic negro, the black Houdini who done it do's it all the time to himself, his own damned self. One of my heroes is the late, great Jayne Cortez. Her passing just threw me for a loop. I just could not believe that she passed so soon. Of course, I devoured all of her work and I was just fortunate to meet her and befriend her and she supported my work. And she was just a beautiful, incredible poet. This is called, "Give me the Red on the Black of the Bullet for Claude Reece, Jr." Bring back the life of Claude Reece, Jr. I want the bullet from his head to make a Benin bronze, to make an explosion of thunder, to make a cyclone. I want the 14 years of Claude Reece, Jr., shot on the 15th day of September, shot in the back of his head, shot by a police officer, shot for being black. Give me the black on the red of the bullet, I want to make a tornado, to make an earthquake, to make a fleet of stilts for the blackness of Claude Reece, Jr., the blackness called dangerous weapon, called resisting an arrest, called nigger threat. I want the life of the blackness of Claude Reece, Jr. I want the bullet from his head to make a protective staff for startled children, to make hooks and studs for warrior masks. Give me the bullet with the odor and the smoke and the skin and the hair of Claude Reece, Jr. I want to make power, to make power for the blackness of Claude Reece, Jr., the blackness called pent-up frustration, called unidentified negro, called nigger revolutionary. I want the life of the blackness of Claude Reece, Jr. I want the bullet from his head to make a protective staff for startled children, to make a Benin bronze, to make an explosion of thunder, to make a cyclone. I want the bullet to bring back the blood of Claude Reece, Jr. I want to make justice. I want to make justice for the blackness of Claude Reece, Jr. Bring back the bullet with the blood of the blackness of Claude Reece, Jr. I want to make justice. I want to make justice for the blackness of Claude Reece, Jr. And last, I want to read this poem -- another one by Jayne Cortez. If the drum is a woman, why are you pounding your drum into an insane babble? Why are you pistol whipping your drum at dawn? Why are you shooting through the head of your drum and making a drum tragedy of drums? If the drum is a woman, don't abuse your drum, don't abuse your drum, don't abuse your drum. I know the night is full of displaced persons. I see skins striped with flames. I know the ugly disposition of underpaid clerks, they constantly menstruate through the eyes. I know bitterness embedded in flesh, the itching alone can drive you crazy. I know that this is America and chickens are coming home to roost on -- on the MX missile. But if the drum is a woman, why are you choking your drum? Why are you raping your drum? Why are you saying disrespectful things to your mother drum, your sister drum, your wife drum, and your infant daughter drum? If the drum is a woman, then understand your drum. Your drum is not docile. Your drum is not invisible. Your drum is not inferior to you. Your drum is a woman. So don't reject your drum, don't try to dominate your drum, don't become weak and cold and desert your drum, don't be forced into the position as an oppressor of drums and make a drum tragedy of drums. If the drum is a woman, don't abuse your drum, don't abuse your drum, don't abuse your drum, drum, drum, drum, drum. [ Applause ] >> Marilyn Nelson: I was just telling Tony that I can't follow him at all. [Laughter]. I'm -- I'm really pleased to be here. I don't have anything really to add to what Rachel and Tony have said about what's happening in this country right now. It's -- it's -- well, as the Chinese curses, my you live in interesting times. These are truly terrifyingly interesting times. I'm going to read two poems by Amiri Baraka. I'm the oldest person on the panel, so I'm the only one here who can say that Amiri Baraka, his book, "Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note," was the first book of poems I bought for myself. I was a freshman in college, 1964, and I was blown away. So I'm going to read a -- a couple of early Baraka poems written basically during the time he was still LeRoi Jones. He was struggling with the question of how to apply this gift he knew he had, how to apply it to fight the interestingness of the period he was living in. And I'm going to read "I Substitute for the Dead Lecturer" as an epigraph. What is most precious because it is lost. What is lost because it is most precious. They have turned, and say that I am dying, that I have thrown my life away. They have left me alone where there is no one, nothing save who I am. Not a note nor a word. Cold air batters the poor, and their minds turn open like sores. What kindness, what wealth can I offer? Except what is, for me, ugliest. What is for me, shadows, shrieking phantoms. Except they have need of life. Flesh at least, should be theirs. The Lord has saved me to do this. The Lord has made me strong. I am as I must have myself. Against all thought, all music, all my soft loves. For all these wan roads I am pushed to follow, are my own conceit. A simple muttering elegance, slipped in my head pressed on my soul, is my heart's worth. And I am frightened that the flame of my sickness will burn off my face, and leave the bones, my stewed black skull, an empty cage of failure. I was so moved by the sense of fear in that poem taking the risk of standing up against injustice. This is another early Baraka poem. It's called, "Jitterbugs." The imperfection of the world is a burden if you know it, think about it, at all. Look up in the sky wishing you were free, placed so terribly in time, mind out among new stars, working propositions, and not this planet where you can't go anywhere without an awareness of the hurt the white man has put on the people. Any people. You can't escape, there's nowhere to go. They have made this star unsafe, and this age, primitive. Though your mind is somewhere else, your ass ain't. [ Soft Laughter and Talking ] I read a -- a couple of mine. It seemed to me reading the "I Substitute for the Dead Lecturer," that what Baraka had done was to create a persona for himself. He created this persona, the dead lecturer, and then he killed it. And then he emerged, his truer self. And the freedom to create a persona like that instead of speaking in his own voice has stayed with me as -- as an idea of what we can do as writers. So I -- I read a couple of poems written in different personas. This poem is -- it's based on a slave narrative that was published in 1798. It's the narrative of the life of Venture Smith who was born in Guinea in 1729 and was captured as a child, brought to North America, served for about 30 years in slavery in Connecticut, New York, and Rhode Island. And -- so what I -- what I did is write a book based on Venture's narrative, so it's a -- it's a slave narrative in verse. This is called "Keeper of the Keys." It's dated 1740. What makes a man a man is his good name. The rest of it is beyond our control. Trustworthiness and honor are riches no one can steal. Let men have faith in you, hold true to your promise. My father's values were my sum and substance during that cocoon year. From freedom to a new world was one year of grief, shock, sorrow, and learning my new name and master's language, but not master's values. Here, at least, was something I could control. Here, there was a true essential eye which only I could own. Here were my riches. In Barbados, the surviving unpurchased riches were barbered, washed, and oiled. After a year of misery and homeward yearning, they were marched to market, sold, and given new names, their present strength and their futures under white control, their traditional beliefs toppled under Christian values. I was nine years old and filled with my father's values when we reached Rhode Island. From there, my master's riches sailed to his home, his keys under my control, while he disembarked for business. For a year, I had practiced, become true virtue, bring honor to your name. Now, I promised my master his keys would be safe with me. At master's home, his father ordered me to give him the keys as there were some things of value among master's thing which were purchased in his name. I told him, my master had trusted me with his riches. I had promised to keep them safe. After a year of becoming, I emerged, I took control. My master's father threatened, but I controlled the keys concealed in my shirt or under me while I slept, more watchfully than I'd slept all year. When at last my master unpacked his things of value, he told his father he would trust me with all his riches because where I come from, a man is as good as his name. What value has a man beyond his name? Can he control his fate? Know his death year? He is richest whose honor outlives him. [ Applause ] Thank you. I -- I just read one -- one more. The -- another persona I've picked up is George -- George Washington Carver, and I'll just read. No, excuse me. I'm going to read a poem in the voice of Carver. Well -- Well, I'm going to read one that's kind of, maybe, I don't know if it will work today. But Carver was a very deeply religious person. He taught a Bible class once a week at Tuskegee for the entire duration of his teaching at Tuskegee which was almost 50 years. He -- the -- the Bible study class started in a small classroom and within a few years, it was in the largest lecture hall on campus. It lasted about 15 minutes. There are a couple of collections of -- of Carver's teachings remembered by students. And this is one of his -- one of Carver's teachings, which may be relevant to the events in Orlando and to the horrible police murders. This is how Carver taught people to deal with them. The poem is called, "Goliath." And it's -- it's about a period when there were a lot of lynchings in the south. Another lynching. Madness grips the south. A black man's hacked off penis in his mouth, his broken body torched. The terrorized blacks cower and the whites are satanized. His students ask in Carver's Bible class, where is God now? What does he want from us? Professor Carver smiles. God is right here. Don't lose contact with him. Don't yield to fear. Fear is the root of hate and hate destroys the hater. When Saul's army went to war against the Philistines, the Israelites lost contact, fearful of Goliath's might. When we lose contact, we see only hate, only injustice, a giant so great it's shadow blocks our son. But David slew Goliath with the only things he knew, the slingshot of intelligence and one pebble of truth, and the battle was done. We kill Goliath by going about the business of the universal good which our Creator wills, obediently yielding to Him the opportunity to work wonders through us for all of His children. That's all. Read 1 Samuel 17:47. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Marita Golden: I'd like to thank each of you individually and collectively for an extraordinary reading. Let's give them another hand. [ Applause ] And Rachel, you -- you had the wisdom of a 80-year old. I mean, that was some [laughter], you were channeling an enormous amount of wisdom there. And Tony, yeah -- Baraka was smiling. Baraka's smiling. And Marilyn, I think that -- you know, when we have these -- these readings like this and the artists come together, there's a beautiful synchronicity. And there was a beautiful synchronicity to the way we began and to the way we ended, and I thank you Marilyn for ending with that poem. I think it was perfect. So we're going to talk a little bit about the Black Arts Movement and also as writers writing across genres. And I wanted to start the conversation by asking you each to talk a little bit about the Black Arts Movement. And I think it's wonderful that, you know, we have different ages and -- and experiences here. As -- as an inspiration and as an artistic influence, what did the Black Arts Movement mean to you and I think we can also think of the Black Arts Movement as dynamic and vibrant and still living with us here today. I know for me, as someone who was just beginning to think about the possibility of being a writer, it meant to me power because the -- the movement was so connected to the Black Power Movement and the political changes of the time. It meant to me audacity, democracy, that anybody could write a poem, anybody could write a powerful poem, anybody could be a writer. And particularly listening to the poems that we heard, it -- it meant to me that many of the most difficult and taboo and marginalized emotions that we as an oppressed people could actually be the center of our artistic endeavors. Eliza, you want to start for us? What does it mean, you know, that's those are some things it meant to me, but. >> Rachel Eliza Griffiths: Sure. In the moment, I'm thinking of the Black Arts Movement in terms of -- of lineage for me. As -- as an emerging poet, the Black Arts Movement for me kind of collages a lineage of justice, a lineage of power -- that word, I think is very resonant. But also for me a lineage of imagination that resisted and pushed away from the white gaze and turned its look inward on its own, you know, black and brown skin, and what was at stake for black lives, black history, black culture, black music, black art, all of these different spaces of embodiment and disembodiment within this country. And so, as an emerging poet, looking, you know, backwards and also trying to look ahead about what will poetry be like for me or my identity, my experience, I feel very grateful that there was this movement that -- that really changed the energy of what had come before it in very defiant unapologetic terms. And I -- I like the funkiness of it, I like the texture of it, the wildness of it, for me, especially as -- as a poet who does different genres. Like, you can be anything. You don't need permission, you don't need authority, you know, open up the door and get it yourself, you know. And -- and for me, those poets are about getting it for themselves and using that oppressive language in a way that said, no. And, you know, thinking of moments when I have been in a room with -- with Amiri Baraka or am fortunate enough to be in the presence of Sister Sonya and so many other poets from that time and to see them even now, there is a great feeling of legacy and lineage. So I'll -- I'll pause. >> Marita Golden: The great poet, James Brown, said, open up the door, I'll get it myself. [ Laughter ] >> Rachel Eliza Griffiths: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. >> Marita Golden: And, you know, it's like Black Lives Matter could be a poem from that period. >> Rachel Eliza Griffiths: Exactly. >> Marita Golden: You know. It could just be a poem. It could be a stanza. It could be a title. Yeah. So that, you know, the movement is still articulate and inspiring people. Tony. >> Tony Medina: I see it in two different ways. I see it personally on one hand. I also see it in the more philosophical way. The Black Arts Movement to me, it begins on the continent of Africa, you know, as people are getting abducted and kidnapped and being placed, you know, in -- in chains, on the slave ships, you know. Then it comes onto the land, then you get Phyllis Wheatley and -- and Hammond and all these folks. Then, of course, you have that big tremendous flowering with the Harlem Renaissance Period or the New Negro Movement, as they call it. So that's where the grounding starts to begin, and I don't really see it as a movement unto itself, but a continuum, you know, it's like the struggle continues. The art is always continuing and it's always, you know. Like I tell my students at Howard, if you read -- and this is just poetry. We're not talking about all of the black arts, because it's bigger than just the poetry and -- and the fiction. I tell them, if you read the whole history of black poetry, you will get everything you need to know in terms of history, sociology, you know, people's way of thinking and how people respond to the times. But personally, to me, it begins when I first started reading, seriously. Because I didn't grow up with books, I grew up in the projects. In my household, nobody really read except for my grandmother who read the Bible and some cheap paperback novels. So I didn't have any models as Lucille Clifton would say. There were no models. >> Rachel Eliza Griffiths: I made it up. >> Tony Medina: So it wasn't until I really, you know, the 9th grade, I fell in love with literature. I started reading, and then some years after that, I remember reading, "A Man Called James Baldwin from Harlem." Reading his essays taught me how to write. Literally, I -- I would study his sentences which lasted a whole page. >> Marita Golden: Exactly. >> Tony Medina: And that taught me how to punctuate stuff. Not only did it teach me how to write and how to use punctuation, but the things that he was saying, I said, wow, that's how my family lives. That's how we -- that's where -- where I come from. So it was reading James Baldwin and -- I don't know about you guys, but I used to be one of these kids that was, you know, every time I got depressed, I would end up in a bookstore. That's why, you know, my -- my crib is like a library. So I remember one time going into this bookstore which was on Grand Central Station. It was both -- it had an entranceway inside and outside of the train station, on the street and also in the subway system. And so I would go there and I would just, from A through Z, I would browse the poetry section. And this one time, I'm browsing, and there's this book faced out and it's Langston Hughes, and he's at his typewriter looking this way, and I was like, whoa, that looks my uncle such and such. [ Laughter ] So to see, you know, a brown face on the cover of a book, it reminded of when Amiri was browsing through the streets of the village and he sees in the bookstore one of James Baldwin's books and he sees Baldwin's face on the cover. And, you know, there's a seismic shift that happens in your whole psychology. So it always begins with those guys. And then , I went into the military to make money for college, I get out, I go to Baruch College. And just as, you know, the stars align and destiny and all this stuff, I happen to take a black literature course by Addison Gayle, Jr., the chief proponent of The Black Aesthetic. I didn't know that at the time, of course, but he used to -- he used to hold court in the classroom and he would just name drop like crazy. He's like, you know, Jimmy and I -- [ Laughter ] Jimmy and I -- and I'm like, holy shit, he know Jimmy Baldwin. So I would run to the library to find all of Addison's books and take them out and read them and stuff. And I would -- after class, I would go to him and he, you know, just ask him a thousand questions, like, you know, students do to me now. And I was trying to start this magazine once called writers -- Voices of Color, and he said, Tony, just tell me anybody you want. I know everybody. I'll get you anybody. And I just asked him, who are your favorite poets. He said, well I like Quincy, but he's kind of cute sometimes. And I'm like -- this poetry's kind of cute sometimes. Whoa. So I was getting all the -- the -- the dirt. [ Laughter ] So, but in -- in -- in Gayle's class, he assigned "The Black Poets" by Dudley Randall, and that became the bible and that blew the brains out. And then that led to me shifting to also, you know, include the Nuyorican poets, and then the -- the Central American poets, and the African poets, and the Caribbean poets, and on and on and on. So it's a very personal thing. I think that the Black Arts is very foundational. It's probably the most revolutionary, outside of the Harlem Renaissance, the most revolutionary literary movement in our country. I talk a lot. >> Marita Golden: And the great think of course about reading Baldwin is not just that he teaches you how to write, but he teaches you how to think. >> Rachel Eliza Griffiths: Yes. >> Marita Golden: He really teaches you how to think. >> Tony Medina: Analyze. >> Marita Golden: Yeah. Yeah. And when you mentioned the -- the book, "The Black Poets," Dwayne Betts, wonderful memoirist and poet, talks about -- writes about being in prison and becoming a poet because one day they were shifting books, you know, just on -- on the floor just between cells, and one day he got -- he was sent "The Black Poets" -- that collection. And from that point on, prison was just, you know, school. >> Tony Medina: But -- but like you said, James Baldwin, Langston, the black arts poets and writers, they did to me, you know, they gave me a voice for what I was thinking and feeling, which I didn't have at the time. And they gave me the permission to say, you could do this on the page and on the stage. >> Marita Golden: Marilyn. >> Marilyn Nelson: I grew up with Gwendolyn Brooks who won the Pulitzer in about, when was it -- 1950 -- 50-something. I -- I remember, I was about -- pardon? [ Inaudible Audience Response ] >> Marilyn Nelson: '54. Thank you. So I -- I was about 10 at that time and my -- my father was in the Airforce and we moved around a lot. And at that point, we were stationed in -- he was stationed in New Hampshire and we were living in a village in Maine and all of our neighbors said, Marilyn, Gwendolyn Brooks just won -- you're a poet, too. Everybody thought -- I -- I was writing poetry then, but everybody sort of pushing me to read Gwendolyn Brooks so I had this model early. My -- and -- and I was encouraged by my family, the -- my -- my father was interested in poetry and wrote. And then, in our -- although there were no collections of -- then it as negro -- poetry in the school libraries or public libraries wherever we were, I remember we had James Weldon Johnson's Book of American Negro Poetry which I must have read -- I probably had a lot of it memorized as a child. And then -- and then I went off to college. That's where LeRoi Jones happened to me. And he really happened to me. It was -- it was like riding a horse and being struck by lightning and falling off the horse because he was doing something I had never imagined a negro poet doing before. I was just blown away. And then, after that, the Black Arts Movement gave me other models, like Heike [phonetic] and the last poets and -- and what -- what they did with poetry, for me, it was not -- not so much what they were saying as it was how they were saying it. They were -- they were -- a lot of those -- especially, Heike, I must have heard him three times during my four undergraduate years. And his readings were unlike anything I had ever heard before. They were performative in ways that I had never heard before. So that was a very important direction to be pushed in. I wanted to say one thing. My mother was always telling people that I was a poet from the time I was 12 or 13. And when I was in high school, Eugene Redmond was teaching at, I think Sacks State University, and Maya Angelo taught there also, and my mother invited Eugene to the house -- [ Laughter ] so I could meet a black poet. You know, I was -- I was a little kid, really. I'm sure he didn't what it was. But it was a really indelible moment to have a poet in the house. It was kind of like being blessed by him. And then, the -- the last thing I would like to say is that, when I first started writing really seriously in my -- in my mid- and late twenties, I started really writing seriously and for several of those years, I was living in Minneapolis and teaching at St. Olaf College which is a Norwegian Lutheran College. And -- but in the twin cities, Etheridge Knight somehow had landed in Minneapolis. I've never quite understood why. And he and Robert Bly offered a poetry workshop which was called The Free People's Poetry Workshop. And I was in this workshop for maybe two or possibly even three years. And we met in people's homes and then at -- at -- at an arts center in Minneapolis. We met as a workshopping group and workshopped our poems, and Etheridge was a really great workshop leader. He was a very insightful reader of our poems. And then we he thought we had been workshopping long enough, he decided we should go out of the workshop and take our poems to the people. And he would say, okay, we -- we're going to meet at the such-and-such hamburger stand next Wednesday night at 7:30, show up there. And he -- he had a little PA system with little speakers like this, and a little microphone, and we would -- he -- we would go into this place unannounced. People were there for dinner eating hamburgers, and Etheridge would say, okay, "Yo, we gonna read ya some poems." [ Laughter ] People would put their hamburgers down and listen to our poems. Nobody ever walked out on us. It was -- it was an -- it was an -- this was a period of my life that was so important to me. Baraka said that you know a poem is good when you can tap a workman on the street on the shoulder, you know, with a, you know, some kind of a -- yeah -- tap him on the shoulder, and say, would you mind listening to my poem? And if he listens to your poem and then doesn't hit you in the mouth, you know it's a good poem. [ Laughter ] And that's -- that's what that workshop was for me with Etheridge, but it wasn't specifically a black arts workshop. The people, I think -- Etheridge and I were probably the only black people in the workshop. But the people who came up -- Mary Karr was in that workshop. David Wojahn was in that workshop. Etheridge taught us so much. He gave us his heart and -- and he -- I think he kind of counts as black arts. It kind of came at the -- at the tail end of it. But he initiated all of us into the sense of what is valuable, what are we doing as writers? What are we doing as poets? And his answer to that would be that we are freeing people. We are setting people free. And that I guess is the end of what I have to say about that. [ Applause ] >> Marita Golden: Okay. Go straight to the Q and A. Okay. At this point, let's open it up to the audience. Who has a question? Mics? We have mics in the back. And particularly any questions, though we'll accept all questions, but that deal with, you know, crossing genre. We are running a little tight on time, so any questions? Okay. Well we'll start talking and maybe some questions. The -- the question I wanted to ask next was -- oh, Darlene? >> Yeah. Rachel, I'm really interested in the work that you shared with us. You're a poet and a visual artist. Please talk to me about how you bring those two together. >> Marita Golden: Yeah. >> And that was such a powerful poem that you shared with us. >> Marita Golden: I think that's an entre for everybody to talk about working across genre. Thanks. >> Rachel Eliza Griffiths: Thank you for that question. I -- I -- I would say maybe for a long time, since I was a little girl, I always wrote, I always drew, I always painted, I was always a visual artist. And, you know, in the last maybe 10 or 12 years, those two spaces have become indivisible from my -- my practice of just being in the world and being -- being an artist. And so one of the things to -- to think about Black Arts Movement and then also to think -- I'm going to talk for a moment about Cave Canem is that when I -- when I was accepted in Cave Canem in 2006, I look around, I had just started photographing. I had moved to New York. Left a very well-endowed Ph.D. because I thought, I'm going to try this. I -- I have to fly or I fall. And I have no money, I'm moving to New York because I'm -- this is who I am and I have to see what will happen. And so my nice painting easel and natural light all disappeared. I lived in a one-room women's residence with shared bathrooms. And so in the city, I had -- I started taking a camera around because the rhythm of the city needed that kind of machine. And so when I got accepted in Cave Canem, I looked around and thought, where is the visual record, right? So in my room where I write, I have my post cards of Langston Hughes and Toni Morrison and Alice Walker and, you know, all of these writers who I need to see brown faces. I need to see them at their typewriters, their pencils, their papers, and I thought, this movement of Cave Canem, we need to know what we look like in our time and what that means. And so when I -- when I asked, you know, is anyone taking pictures of this? And this was the 2006, 10th anniversary reunion that -- that was being celebrated. I think it was at City College or Cuny -- Cuny Graduate Center. Wow, I'm -- I'm old now and dating myself. I think it was at Cuny Graduate Center. And so I said, well, I'm going to do it. I'm going to start photographing because we need to have a record. We need to have an archive. People in this narrative, this story, need to not be faceless. And so I began a very sustained, and it is continuing. I have photographed may 200 fellows. And now it's expanded where I have photographed quite a few black poets, writers, musicians, across the board, fiction writers as well. And so, for me in that space, as -- as a portrait photographer, I also felt connected to, you know, Gordon Parks and Van Der Zee and saw myself in that tradition of continuing that legacy of making an archive. And in my fine arts photography, which I think is more closely aligned to the actual poetry I write, I focus particularly on narratives of black womanhood and black women's bodies and the narrative of the black figure in this country. And the more outward I look at that history, the more inward it helps me where language is concerned. For a few years, my poems and photographs did not like each other, they didn't want to be around each other, they did not want me double-dipping. But as I -- as I'm getting older and learning so much more as an emerging poet and as a photographer, they have a lot to say to each other and I -- and I feel grateful for that. >> Marita Golden: Tony? And we have about 8 minutes, 5 minutes, so -- >> Tony Medina: I'll try and do it quickly. When -- when I started -- when I fell in love with literature, I was in the 9th grade, I was 15 years old, I was forced to do a book report, or make up a book report that I -- I didn't do it because I was lazy. And so, I had the opportunity to make up the assignment and my favorite teacher was Mr. Del Los Rios [phonetic], our English teacher. He gave us a list of books. On that list was a book whose title intrigued me and I was like, what's an Algernon, "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes. That led me into reading everything on the list of books that Mr. Del Los Rios gave me. And so my first love, of course, was fiction. Then, I don't know, three years later, I just found myself being seized by the muse of poetry and poems came -- came out of me so readily. And it was like, I would read my fiction and hate it, and I would read my poetry and like it. That led me to read poetry and fall in love with -- with poetry on the page and -- and, you know, Dylan Thomas and Hart Crane and Emily Dickinson, and all these people, and then Langston Hughes, you know, changed the game. Also Langston Hughes -- I didn't grow up with children's books. As an adult, I grew to really love the -- the form of, you know, the art and the text merging together, so I started just collecting children's books and reading children's books. And that led me to writing children's books, and of course, one of my models was Langston. I said, you know, I'm sick and tired of dealing with my own generation. I want to talk to younger people. So that allowed me to do that because I saw someone like Langston who was able to what he did for adults politically and socially also do it for young people. So that was like my model. And since I read so -- so voraciously in all the genres, I just always considered myself a writer so I should be able to try to write in every genre. >> Marilyn Nelson: I -- I don't know what to say. Genre crossing for me has been -- as I said, I -- I have written what I think of as a slave narrative in verse. I've -- what else have I done. I -- I -- I've done a biography in verse of Carver. I do a lot of history -- African American History in poetry because it seems -- it seems to be a way of -- of reaching people with little scenes, little gems of scenes from our history. And a lot of my poems, especially the history poems, have been published for young adult audiences that -- that's a marketing decision. But I think it's a good decision because, as Tony said, we're reaching a different audience. You can write for people who are your own age, or you can write for people who are younger. If you write for people who are younger, you're both introducing them to things that they might not be introduced to otherwise, you're preparing them -- giving them eyes to see the world more clearly. And I think you're also pulling them into poetry, making lovers of poetry out of them which I think is -- is a valuable thing to do. And the fact that I do a lot of research for -- for my books and encourage young people to do their own historical research, I've been at schools where, because they had read my book -- books and the work of Karen Hesse, who also writes history based on research. I've seen kids do their own research. I've seen -- I -- I was in a school once where the -- it was a middle school and the children had done research about where -- which homes in their community -- this was in New York -- which homes in their community had held slaves. They had done original research. They had discovered things about their own town that the local PBS station heard about it and did a program about it. These were middle school children who had done original research. And I think that's a worthwhile thing to do, to encourage people to learn about their own history. So I -- I guess that's the most I have to say about it. I don't -- I'm -- I'm not much of a talker. >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.