Author: mcdowell

The Dark Collective Final

What was often mistaken for a small Sunday afternoon book club at the Victorian house on 31 Inman Street in Massachusetts, actually turned into a major cultural movement. Who would’ve thought that from this a boom in African-American poetry known as the Dark Room Collective would come about.

This boom did not focus on the negative aspects of African-American history, but more on the up-lifting side. The group didn’t whine, they didn’t so much want to argue, or to focus on the hard times in their heritage, but they wanted to show the world the imagination that can be gained from their history.

Picture this: every Sunday the house of Thomas Sayers Ellis and Sharan Strange was transformed into a studio, or a type of  performance. Many say that no one even knew who lived there and who didn’t at times as the crowds grew more and more each week. As time went on, the series began to extend to musical performances, art shows and even workshops for writers of color in the community. The reading series was started with a simple purpose, for black writers to embrace their heritage and to be proud of it. The overarching mission of the Collective was to form a community of established and emerging African-American writers

Soon enough word got out, and the series blew up! From thrown together to an organized group, the Dark Room Collective was now composed of a melting pot of races, ethnicities and ages. Eventually, the group had to find a new home that would fit the entire family. The group relocated to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston when it outgrew the living room in Cambridge. In 1994, the group packed up and moved again to relocate to the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre at Boston University.

The Dark Room Collective stopped after a decade or so, however, some of its members in their 40s, had gone on to become famous literary figures winning major prizes. One example is Natasha Trethewey, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her book in 2006, “Native Guard,” and is the nation’s poet laureate. Other famous poets from dark room collective: Tracy K. Smith won the Pulitzer for “Life on Mars” in 2012, writers Kevin Young, Carl Phillips and Major Jackson have all been recognized as prolific and influential voices in American poetry.

In a way, the Dark Room Collective was a collaborative way for writers to say, “Let’s celebrate saying, ‘Hell yeah! This is our heritage, and this is how we can tell the world!’” In a New York Times article by Jeff Gordinier he quoted Mr. Adrian Matejka, who is part of a poetic organization that came out of the Dark Room Collective. Matejka described the Dark Room Collective as a “shift out of the ‘I’m a black man in America and it’s hard’ mode” into “the idea of ‘you are who you are, so that’s always going to be part of the poem,’ ” with “a lot more room for the sublime experience of language.”

 

Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes?

BY TRACY K. SMITH

1.

After dark, stars glisten like ice, and the distance they span
Hides something elemental. Not God, exactly. More like
Some thin-hipped glittering Bowie-being—a Starman
Or cosmic ace hovering, swaying, aching to make us see.
And what would we do, you and I, if we could know for sure
That someone was there squinting through the dust,
Saying nothing is lost, that everything lives on waiting only
To be wanted back badly enough? Would you go then,
Even for a few nights, into that other life where you
And that first she loved, blind to the future once, and happy?
Would I put on my coat and return to the kitchen where my
Mother and father sit waiting, dinner keeping warm on the stove?
Bowie will never die. Nothing will come for him in his sleep
Or charging through his veins. And he’ll never grow old,
Just like the woman you lost, who will always be dark-haired
And flush-faced, running toward an electronic screen
That clocks the minutes, the miles left to go. Just like the life
In which I’m forever a child looking out my window at the night sky
Thinking one day I’ll touch the world with bare hands
Even if it burns.
          2.
He leaves no tracks. Slips past, quick as a cat. That’s Bowie
For you: the Pope of Pop, coy as Christ. Like a play
Within a play, he’s trademarked twice. The hours
Plink past like water from a window A/C. We sweat it out,
Teach ourselves to wait. Silently, lazily, collapse happens.
But not for Bowie. He cocks his head, grins that wicked grin.
Time never stops, but does it end? And how many lives
Before take-off, before we find ourselves
Beyond ourselves, all glam-glow, all twinkle and gold?
The future isn’t what it used to be. Even Bowie thirsts
For something good and cold. Jets blink across the sky
Like migratory souls.
          3.
Bowie is among us. Right here
In New York City. In a baseball cap
And expensive jeans. Ducking into
A deli. Flashing all those teeth
At the doorman on his way back up.
Or he’s hailing a taxi on Lafayette
As the sky clouds over at dusk.
He’s in no rush. Doesn’t feel
The way you’d think he feels.
Doesn’t strut or gloat. Tells jokes.
I’ve lived here all these years
And never seen him. Like not knowing
A comet from a shooting star.
But I’ll bet he burns bright,
Dragging a tail of white-hot matter
The way some of us track tissue
Back from the toilet stall. He’s got
The whole world under his foot,
And we are small alongside,
Though there are occasions
When a man his size can meet
Your eyes for just a blip of time
And send a thought like SHINE
SHINE SHINE SHINE SHINE
Straight to your mind. Bowie,
I want to believe you. Want to feel
Your will like the wind before rain.
The kind everything simply obeys,
Swept up in that hypnotic dance
As if something with the power to do so
Had looked its way and said:
                                                     Go ahead.

 

More poems by Tracy K. Smith: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/55520

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/56376

 

Aunties

BY KEVIN YOUNG

There’s a way a woman
            will not
relinquish
her pocketbook
            even pulled
onstage, or called up
to the pulpit—
            there’s a way only
your Auntie can make it
taste right—
             rice & gravy
is a meal
if my late Great Aunt
            Toota makes it—
Aunts cook like
there’s no tomorrow
             & they’re right.
Too hot
is how my Aunt Tuddie
            peppers everything,
her name given
by my father, four, seeing
            her smiling in her crib.
There’s a barrel
full of rainwater
            beside the house
that my infant father will fall
into, trying to see
           himself—the bottom—
& there’s his sister
Margie yanking him out
           by his hair grown long
as superstition. Never mind
the flyswatter they chase you
            round the house
& into the yard with
ready to whup the daylights
            out of you—
that’s only a threat—
Aunties will fix you
           potato salad
& save
you some. Godmothers,
           godsends,
Aunts smoke like
it’s going out of style—
             & it is—
make even gold
teeth look right, shining.
             saying I’ll be
John, with a sigh. Make way
out of no way—
            keep they key
to the scale that weighed
the cotton, the cane
            we raised more
than our share of—
If not them, then who
           will win heaven?
holding tight
to their pocketbooks
            at the pearly gates
just in case.

More poems by Kevin Young: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/58069

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/49763

 

Resources:

“A Brief Guide to the Dark Room Collective.” Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, 9 May 2004, www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/brief-guide-dark-room-collective.

Gordinier, Jeff. “The Dark Room Collective: Where Black Poetry Took Wing.” New York Times, 27 May 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/arts/the-dark-room-collective-where-black-poetry-took-wing.html?_r=0.

“The Dark Room Collective, Then and Now.” Poets and Writers, www.pw.org/content/the_dark_room_collective_then_and_now.

The Dark Room Collective

-founded in Boston in 1988 by a group of African American poets led by Thomas Sayers Ellis and Sharan Strange. According to the New York Times article ‘Where Black Poetry Took Wing’, in 1987 the two young poets attended the funeral of James Baldwin. They were deeply moved by the funeral ceremony, but also distressed that they had never met an African-American literary lion like Mr. Baldwin. Ellis and Strange then came up with the plan to bring young black writers and artists together to read their work aloud, bond with mentors and to foster the sort of relationships that had nurtured many a cultural movement.
-the mission of the Collective was to form a community of established and emerging African American writers
-Strange and Ellis began the Dark Room Collective at their house at 31 Inman Street in Cambridge, where they hosted the reading series on Sunday afternoons. A crowd showed up, some furniture got moved, some chairs unfolded and their living room turned into a salon.
-it soon expanded to include musical performances, art shows, and workshops and became known as a much needed home for writers of color in the mostly white-dominated literary community

-people of varying ethnicities, ages, classes, and communities attended the series, which later relocated to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston when it outgrew the living room in Cambridge

-scholars say the Dark Room Collective is less about strife or racial identity but it’s more about the imagination taking over and leading the poets to borrow from, and burrow into, history, pop culture, even quantum physics in new and surprising ways although some do use their work to to fight against various forms of oppression

-the Dark Room Collective stopped after a decade or so, however, some of its members now in their 40s, have gone on to become famous literary figures, winning major prizes. One example is Natasha Trethewey, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her book in 2006, “Native Guard,” and is the nation’s poet laureate

-other famous poets from dark room collective:  Tracy K. Smith won the Pulitzer for “Life on Mars” in 2012, writers Kevin Young, Carl Phillips and Major Jackson have all been recognized as prolific and influential voices in American poetry.

-in the New York Times article by Jeff Gordinier he has a quote by Mr. Adrian Matejka, who is a part of a poetic organization that has come out of the Dark Room Collective. He described Dark Room Collective as a “shift out of the ‘I’m a black man in America and it’s hard’ mode” into “the idea of ‘you are who you are, so that’s always going to be part of the poem,’ ” with “a lot more room for the sublime experience of language.”

Poems by Tracy K. Smith: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/55520

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/56376

Poems by Kevin Young: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/58069

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/49763
“A Brief Guide to the Dark Room Collective.” Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, 9 May 2004, www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/brief-guide-dark-room-collective.

Gordinier, Jeff. “The Dark Room Collective: Where Black Poetry Took Wing.” New York Times, 27 May 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/arts/the-dark-room-collective-where-black-poetry-took-wing.html?_r=0.

“The Dark Room Collective, Then and Now.” Poets and Writers, www.pw.org/content/the_dark_room_collective_then_and_now.