Visionary Vibes: A Blog by Aberjhani

Celebrating National Poetry Month 2025

4/6/2025

(2025 National Poetry Month poster featuring a quote by poet Naomi Shihab Nye and artwork by Christy Mandin)

A recent article on the poetry of Marc Thomas, the author of Talking to the Machines and Oher Poems, made me think about why, and how much, I have always enjoyed celebrating National Poetry Month. As with Thomas’s work, which I first became aware of during a Local Author Day event in Savannah, Georgia (USA), it has largely been about the discovery of what different poets bring to their individual applications of literary craftsmanship.

A lot of people cheered and applauded when the news broke in 1996 that the Academy of American Poets was launching observations of the inaugural National Poetry Month (NPM) annual celebrations. The Academy encouraged individual writers and organizations everywhere to participate in ways that suited them best. Creatives in my hometown responded to the call by putting on events where many would expect to find them: like libraries, schools, bookstores, and coffee shops. Others hosted happenings at unexpected locations: like nightclubs, churches, bars, parks, and river-front walkways.

As one of the organizers of such events, I was happy to help make spoken-word presentations by both local and national talents, as well as literary panel discussions, accessible to members of diverse communities. In addition, my position as an editor for the Savannah Literary Journal allowed me to publish works by such future city and state poet laureates as: Darryl Lorenzo Wellington of Sante Fe, New Mexico; and, Anis Mojgani in Oregon. Possibly more thrilling than anything else was occasionally witnessing an audience member “catch fire” for the first time and begin composing their own lines at one event, then reciting them at the next.

An Alignment of Voices

It is well known that poetry, as many understand it today, had its beginnings long before written expressions of it. Common belief proposes it developed during prehistoric times as an extension of, or variation on, storytelling. My own theory is that poetry initially evolved out of instinctive spontaneous prayers uttered as appeals to nature or to unknown, but suspected, higher powers. Viewed through such an intuitive transcendent lens, it was amazing to observe how different neophytes, centuries later, made their personal connections to this ancient practice.

There came, year after year, scholars who adapted their long-restrained literary passions to such academic formulations as sonnets, odes, and villanelles (a favorite among friends at the Poetry Society of Georgia) with respectful nods to Japanese haiku (with which I’ve experimented for a series of angel poems published in The River of Winged Dreams). Numerous cultural heritage enthusiasts aligned their voices with the French surrealists, Spanish ballads or romancero, traditional African praise poems, or the jazz- and blues-influenced writings published during the Harlem Renaissance and Black Arts Movement.

(Aberjhani quote graphic from “Beyond Literacy Link A dedicated space to ponder, reflect, and converse about life, literacy, and learning.”)

Particularly notable was the fact that members of an entire generation––during those late 1990s days as annual observations NPM expanded––took their poetic cues from slamfests, spoken word open mics, and the fluidity of Hip-Hop lyrics often composed in a heated flow of spontaneity. For a lot of such poets, that meant generally foregoing textbooks and, instead, memorizing recordings and recitals. At the time, I was a bookseller, and was as amazed as I was amused when dictionaries of rhymes began to outsell sonnets by Shakespeare or collected poems by Maya Angelou.

The AD Community Experience

Just as I took immense pleasure in participating in different forms of NPM during its earliest days, I experience a similar kind of joy upon joining the AuthorsDen community years later (just after completing Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance with Sandra L. West in 2003). The AD members with whom I connected were so faithful to their relationships with poetry and so generous when it came to mutual supportiveness that they often inspired both the poet and the essayist in me to write about them. These are a few examples:

• VISIONS OF THE POETS, Part 1: Andre Emmanuel Bendavi ben-YEHU
• Visions of the Poets, Part 2: The Hanging Man Dreams.
• Visions of the Poets, 3-A: Journey Through Universes Beyond the Visible

My background as a journalist and encyclopedist made writing the above somewhat automatic, but I became speechless when various members presented their assessments of my work in poetry or essays by them.

Coming Full Circle

All of this brings me back, full circle if you will, to Marc Thomas’s Talking to the Machines and what the first section of the book says about humanity’s current uneasy relationship with generative artificial intelligence. The satisfaction which some take in being able to prompt generative AI to construct lines of text which mimic human composition is easily understood. Like current rapid-fire AI developments in general, it is innovative, exciting (even mesmerizing), and provides a kind of service useful for supporting different endeavors. Despite its documented threat to the relevance of human-generated works. That such poems impressively duplicate academic formulations well enough cannot be denied because, ironically enough, the formulaic nature of some poetry makes doing so, arguably, easy for digital programs.

The experience, nevertheless, of prompting software to produce a composition is very different from the experience of deeply contemplating a love affair, wrestling with the world’s injustices, appreciating the wonders of nature, or intentionally confronting painful truths, and transcribing those meditations into written or spoken verse. The soulful depths of the stories behind how certain poems emerge out of lived realities is a part of that mysterious essence which has defied scientific explanations for centuries and continues, even now, to confirm what it means to be an authentically creative artist.

Celebrating National Poetry Month. Quote by Aberjhani.

None of this is meant to take anything away from AI’s ability to enhance productivity in a variety of professional situations—or for that matter to improve the quality of human life overall. In my own flesh-blood-and-spirit-generated human life, AI (along with human coaches) has helped me create objective literary criticisms, which I have edited for accuracy and clarity, to post in my AI Literary Chat Salon. I have also used it as a tool in the production, or editing, of some original concept art creations. And yes, the increased efficiency is appreciated.

What it cannot do for me is replace the psychic and spiritual infrastructures that give meaning to words like community, personal growth, and intimacy. What none of us should prompt AI to do, I would propose, is delete the connections and practices that go beyond providing meanings to endowing what we call existence itself with soul-infused value, and enriching it with an innate kind of poetry worth celebrating in small or big ways every day of the year. That includes this one.

Aberjhani
National Poetry Month 2025

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Poetry and the Pain of Elijah McClain’s Unjust Killing

7/6/2020

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Visions of a Skylark Dressed in Black poetry collection by Aberjhani .

Geographically, the killing of Ahmaud Arbery was closer than that of Elijah McClain because it occurred only an hour’s drive from where I grew up and where people who mean a great deal to me have family members. But for some reason McClain’s death, although it occurred all of 1,600 miles away in Aurora, Colorado, felt closer. I did not understand why until recalling two poems written more than a decade ago. The memory of both forced me to sit down and wonder how it was something written so far in the past was having such a powerful impact on my life in 2020.

The first composition is a song lyric titled “ELI-JAH” originally published in the first edition of the novel Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player (sung by a character named Ruzahn), and later in the poetry collection titled Visions of a Skylark Dressed in Black. It is about a man who refuses to accept reports his brother has been killed so he keeps singing his name, Eli-Jah, to let him know he’s committed to finding him. The complete lyric is too lengthy for the purposes of this post but these are the last 2 verses:

Eli-jah!
My handsome, my twin
I long to see you again.
Is your heart
safe in love?
Did your war
ever end?
There’s a storm
in the mountains.
Here’s a cross
painted blue.
Lots of holes
in my shoes
but I’m still looking
boy for you,
yes I’m looking
brother for you.

Did I tell you
your son
keeps calling me dad?
Anything less
spins his mind
cold and sad.
In his eyes
shine pictures
of a long-ago you.
In my head
this cruel
unspeakable truth:
that we battled
and we cursed
and we spilled
each other’s blood,
we relished
our taste of hell
and strangled
heaven’s love.
People said all the time
we were strange that way.
Gave our smiles
to the moon
and our tears
to the day.
(Aberjhani ©2006)

The second text which surprised me with an unexpected emotional connection to McClain is 2 lines at the end of the poem “Vampire Song: The Last Bloodfeast,” also from Visions of a Skylark Dressed in Black. I recalled when writing the lines that they sounded strange and I changed them several times but always switched back because somehow they felt honest. Reading them, now, I’m stunned at how close they come to an image combination frequently associated with Elijah McClain: the violin and kittens, for his compassionate practice of playing for them on his lunch breaks. This is the quote from “Vampire Song”:

“Soft upon my right thigh, an oddly-colored kitten
meowed the melodies of angels playing violins.”

There is a possibility I’m making more of these parallels than I should and some might even argue I am forcing them where there are none. They would have a right to that belief.

Before identifying the subconscious links stirring within me such a strong response to the shooting death of McClain, I considered writing a blog titled Music for a Black Skylark in Mourning to express the lingering grief. So I looked for a music video with the words “Black Skylark” in the title and found two. Either one, I felt, could serve as a worthy tribute to McClain and believe he would have appreciated either. The one with which I’ve chosen to close is from volume 5 of the China Meditation Ethno Music Project and titled “A Black Skylark.”

Aberjhani

Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah and co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance.

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Lessons from Nina Simone on Love, Music, and Commitment (part 2)

6/4/2020

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This is a continuation of the classic 2010 article excerpted from "5 Notable Women of the Past and Present" first published by AXS Entertainment:

Simone’s composition, "To Be Young, Gifted and Black," written for her friend Lorraine Hansberry, became one of the major anthems of the civil rights struggle and the title of Hansberry’s autobiography. Her “Four Women” is a marvel of minimalist art in which she deftly dramatizes the impact of racism upon the lives of four different women. In all, Nina Simone composed more than 500 songs and recorded more than fifty albums throughout her prolific career.

[If you missed part 1 of this classic article you can click here to check it out.]

The singer’s achievements were celebrated with, among others, awards like the 1966 Jazz at Home Club’s “Woman of the Year,” and the 1967 “Female Jazz Singer of the Year.” As if to help make up for the anguish in her tortured genius soul, the committee for Human Kindness Day in Washington, D.C., selected her as the day’s honoree in 1974.

None of these, however, proved sufficient enough to compensate for the wounds inflicted by racism or the grief experienced over the death of peers who understood her best. Like Josephine Baker, Abbey Lincoln and others before her, she left the United States in 1978 in search of greater artistic and political freedom. Her journey over the next seven years took her to Barbados, Liberia, England, Switzerland, and France, where she eventually settled. Relocation, however, did not solve all of her problems and she sometimes engaged in widely-reported public battles with stress and depression.

She returned to her homeland in 1985 to perform and record for six years before going to the Netherlands, then moving back to South of France.

The great performer revealed in her 1991 autobiography that she once attempted suicide. Since the publication of I Put a Spell on You, at least two biographers have explored the theory that she suffered from a bipolar disorder and depression. Some have taken this as the reason she sometimes appeared combative towards unruly audiences or certain critics and described it as the cause of her “downward spiral.” Others have interpreted the possibility as one of the sources of her phenomenal talent. Moreover, that fact that she evidently won battle after battle against the illness to produce the triumphant award-winning works that she did, make her in the eyes of many that much more heroic.

"Ode to the Genius and Good Intentions of Nina Simone No. 2" art tribute by Aberjhani available at Fine Art America. Please click image for more details or to order.

Before her death in Carry-le-Rouet , France, on April 21, 2003, Nina Simone enjoyed the satisfaction of receiving honorary degrees from the Julliard School and The Curtis Institute (the very school that had previously denied her application) and honorary doctorates from the University of Massachusetts and Malcolm X University. Consequently, she is often referred to as Dr. Simone.

The Legacy from 2010–2020

One of the greatest confirmations of the value of a musician’s work is the passion with which peers and following generations embrace it. From 2010–2020, Nina Simone has become one of the most covered, remixed, frequently rediscovered, reinterpreted, and generally honored musicians in music history. The sheer diversity of artists––ranging from hip hop and rock stars to Broadway and jazz divas–– who have either “sampled” her work or recorded versions of it, prove her contention that she was an accomplished artist of multiple genres. Among those who have linked their creative visions to that of Simone’s are: hip hop artists Common, Lil Wayne, Timbaland, and Kanye West; the groups Faithless , Walkabouts, and the Animals; and European cabaret singer Barb Jungr as well as American jazz diva Randy Crawford, in addition to many more.

The music icon was also a favored subject of photographers while she lived and is a treasured focus of fine artists now. Sculptor Zenos Frudakis worked with the Eunice Waymon-Nina Simone Memorial Project to create a life-sized bronze statue of the singer. A dedication ceremony was held for it February 21, 2010, in Simone’s hometown of Tryon.

This Mother’s Daughter

Nina Simone was married to her manager and business partner Andy Stroud when she gave birth to her daughter and only child, Lisa Celeste Stroud in 1962. Like her mother, Stroud also developed into an exceptional entertainer. Known simply as Simone, she has starred in such major Broadway productions as Rent and Aida. She made her recording debut in 2008 with Simone on Simone, a CD of covers of her mother’s music. A second album reportedly is set for release in spring 2010.

Following Nina Simone’s death, Simone the Second (more recently listed under credits as Lisa Simone Kelly) established the Nina Simone Foundation (NSF) as s a non-profit organization dedicated both to preserving the performer/composer’s legacy and to spearheading initiatives to establish various education opportunities and cultural resources. From April 16-25 in Atlanta, Georgia, the Foundation will present The Nina Simone Experience. In addition to performances and a fashion show, the event will feature a fine arts exhibition of works depicting images of Nina Simone and visual interpretations of her music.

In an interview with Jet Magazine in 2008, Simone pointed out, “I am keeping my mother’s name out there in a positive light, which she deserves because she sacrificed a lot and she stood for a lot. She deserves to be recognized and honored for that.” She accomplished that mission to critical acclaim as executive producer of the 2015 Netflix biopic on her mother titled: What Happened, Miss Simone?

Aberjhani
author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Harlem Renaissance Centennial 1919-2029

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Floating along: A Review Essay on Duncan McNaughton’s Somewhere in the Stream (part 1 of 2)

11/26/2019

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(Postered Chromatic Poetics title art graphic by Aberjhani)

Just before I took off running from Hurricane Matthew as it slammed the southeastern United States in 2016, presumably courtesy of the still-raging global climate crisis, I wrote the following notes on Duncan McNaughton's contemporary poetry classic, Valparaiso (Listening Chamber publishing, 1995):

As seen through the lens of this reader's experience of his work, McNaughton is a hunter and gatherer of significant meanings, and names, obscured by time and human negligence. Both a dissector and a sculptor of forms (as well as formlessness), a skillful translator of elusive moments crammed as much with pointless absurdity as with essential insights.....

Three years later, following a very narrow miss from Hurricane Dorian, I opened a copy of his SOMEWHERE IN THE STREAM (Blue Press Books, 2019). With this latest addition to the impressive and too often overlooked corpus of McNaughton's titles--now in fact time is the time for publication of a volume of his collected works--for some reason I felt a little less threatened by upheavals of physical-world conditions. Hurricanes seemingly indicative of negligent environmental stewardship, flaming tempests of political corruption, and suicidal addictions to war and hate fueling suicidal addictions to drugs and violence all took less of a toll on my personalized corner of the world. Maybe there was a reason for that.

A reader contemplating the title of this most recent volume of grace, wit, wisdom, and genius from someone often dubbed a poet's poet might suddenly ask: "Somewhere in the Stream" of what exactly? Potential answers--at least for those unfamiliar with McNaughton’s earlier works or unaware of his connections to genre-influencing poets like Ezra Pound, Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, and Diane di Prima--could turn out to be as ambiguous or obscure as they might precise and informative.

Since the poet is McNaughton, stream of individual consciousness gives us one good possibility. So does stream of collective memory, or of human comedies, absurdities, tragedies, antipoetic ironies, and language. It makes sense also to consider the stream of life, or existence, in general. How it manifests, flows, diverges, halts, dims, or glows to the rhythms of its own self-determining frequencies with seemingly little, if any, regard for human intentions constitutes a recurring observance, if not an actual theme, in many of the 51 poems contained in this collection.

Published by Blue Press based in Santa Cruz, California, Somewhere in the Stream (2019) is the latest poetry collection by renowned poet and educator Duncan McNaughton.

So why does any of this matter? Because McNaughton's sensibility is one which surfs brilliantly through history, layered philosophical concepts, and rhythms of multiple languages with startling ease to collect observations well worth the attention of Gen-Z, Millennials, Baby Boomers, and Traditionals alike. Tagging along gives the feeling at times of accompanying an interdimensional space explorer seeking confirmations of intelligence and civilizations outside boundaries of known planetary systems. Or popular literary conventions. As such, his poemized captain's log (if you will) documents the many strange contradictions of what it means to be human.

Read the short title poem at the volume's beginning and you are immersed instantly in a sense of intimate familiarity:

Always an empty space out
front for my Rocket 88

The Blue Chrysanthemum, Rue Parallèle,
Joanne's boîte,
corner Rue de la Vieille Lanterne
I'm usually here, at the bar, about
this time of night, left foot on The Stone

Aznavour at the piano

Everyone who matters to me drops in

Arthur! Ça va?

Here, space in the physical (on the page) sense appears to underscore prominence in the emotional sense. A thorough embrace of human intimacy, romantic and otherwise, unimpeded by space or time, is one of the great gifts of McNaughton's poetry--and also one of its respectable challenges. On a planet home to billions where so many still find themselves condemned to a strangling sense of alienation, the poem lets readers share in the luxurious comfort of knowing a place exists where one is always expected and always welcome. It allows the narrator to become anchored in affirmations of community tinted with soul-sustaining beauty.

This sense of community as represented in McNaughton's poetry has never been restricted to zip codes, national boundaries, or even a single period of history. It has always welcomed the voices of different poets and thinkers grappling with the frequently-cruel and yet often-humorous demands of existence itself. With that in mind, his poems may read as engaged conversations, private letters, public editorials, or notes to a singular self taking inventory of a singular life. Many of those "who matter" the most do indeed "drop in" for cameo appearances in the pages of SOMEWHERE. Among them are both historic and more contemporary poets and authors such as: Bill Berkson, Emily Dickinson, James Baldwin, Jack Collom, Robert Grenier, Sunnylyn Thibodeaux, Jack Kerouac, Jack Spicer, Osip Mandelstam, Colin Christopher Stuart, Walt Whitman, and D.H. Lawrence--just to give a quick sense of the wide range of literary territory this astonishing title covers.

How a given society judges or misjudges some of the most powerful, if not necessarily most influential, voices humanity has produced is not always encouraging. In "AT THE HOUSE OF COMMONS,"(caps McNaughton's) for example, the narrator observes:

The small man alone in the corner is
William Blake. Interesting smile.
Fewer and fewer care.

With Blake, one of the original titans of Romanticism, sitting ignored in a corner, the elephant in the room is the huge unasked question about our modern times. When an over-dependence on technology methodically shortens attention spans and ruling oligarchs pass demagoguery off as democracy: how wise it not to care about the sustained life-example of a poet-artist such as Blake?

NEXT: Floating along: A Review Essay on Duncan McNaughton’s Somewhere in the Stream Part 2

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Proven Practices Yield Gratifying 2019 Results, Increase Potential for 2020

11/23/2019

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(Postered Chromatics title art graphic by Aberjhani C2019)

In my exchanges with the Dalai Lama on Twitter, we sometimes address the importance of cultivating such practices as exercising compassion and expressing gratitude. My stance regarding compassion has long known per numerous blogs on the subject at Charter for Compassion and elsewhere. I hope my belief in the value of acknowledging thankfulness is also evident not just because Thanksgiving is upon us but because it has long been a fundamental component of my basic approach to daily living.

Gratitude makes an excellent kind of aesthetic and spiritual technology because it refines perspective and sharpens focus on everything from relationships and communications to products and operational results. In other words, it increases individual capacity for reflecting on actions and outcomes. That's pretty much what end-of-year assessments are all about. But in this case, as we head into 2020 we are also talking about the end of an entire decade and the beginning of another.

Goals Identified and Achieved

After surviving back-to-back hurricanes and a severe winter freeze, simply living to see the year 2019 was a phenomenal triumph in itself. The challenges, of course, did not end just because a new year got underway but neither did opportunities for continued growth and exploration.

In the new Bright Skylark Google business portal, I pointed out 3 primary professional objectives going into the year 2019. Those were:

To follow through on plans to publish the first international edition of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah (ISBN 978-9388125956), which we accomplished in May with the help of Cyberwit.net. That the title has made some meaningful cultural impact may be confirmed by its recent mention in the New York Times Style Magazine.
The second goal was to push forward on the increase of artworks distributed through Fine Art America and Pixels.com. That happened with the launch of new art galleries which boosted the current number of distinct works available online to 121. (All may be purchased now and throughout December in different formats at 50 percent off mark-up costs using promo code YUPDNM.)
And the third was to honor commitments to support projects hosted by such organizations as the Telfair Museum of Arts in Savannah, Georgia (USA), and the Consortium of Doctors founded by the late humanitarian and civil rights advocate Dr. Abigail Jordan.

The 100 percent success rate in regard to the above goals was the result of long-term planning, unwavering values, and carefully-applied strategies. Additional unexpected success, however, came from sticking to proven effective practices and maintaining strong relationships with different organizations who share similar values.

The additional unexpected successes came in the form of: a) the publication of a new edition of the novel Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player (ISBN 197703747X); b) inclusion of the Suzanne Jackson Five Decades catalog, which features the poem “Suzannian Algorithm Finger-Painted on an Abstract Wall,” in the industry-leading Artbook/DAP catalog; and c) greater than estimated production for the third quarter of 2019.

The above achievements have positioned Bright Skylark Literary Productions for a strong first-quarter showing for the second consecutive year. That means a good launch for the Decade of the Harlem Renaissance Centennial, with which many Bright Skylark catalog materials are already solidly aligned.

Aberjhani

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Celebrating National Poetry Month 2025

An Alignment of Voices

The AD Community Experience

Coming Full Circle

Aberjhani
National Poetry Month 2025

Feel free to use this form to contact Bright Skylark Literary Productions or the section after it to comment on this article.

Poetry and the Pain of Elijah McClain’s Unjust Killing

Aberjhani

Contact the Author

Lessons from Nina Simone on Love, Music, and Commitment (part 2)

The Legacy from 2010–2020

This Mother’s Daughter

Contact the Author-Artist

Floating along: A Review Essay on Duncan McNaughton’s Somewhere in the Stream (part 1 of 2)

Contact the Author-Artist

Proven Practices Yield Gratifying 2019 Results, Increase Potential for 2020

Goals Identified and Achieved

Contact Author-Poet-Artist Aberjhani

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

Celebrating National Poetry Month 2025

An Alignment of Voices

The AD Community Experience

Coming Full Circle

AberjhaniNational Poetry Month 2025

Feel free to use this form to contact Bright Skylark Literary Productions or the section after it to comment on this article.

Poetry and the Pain of Elijah McClain’s Unjust Killing

Aberjhani

Contact the Author

Lessons from Nina Simone on Love, Music, and Commitment (part 2)

The Legacy from 2010–2020

This Mother’s Daughter

Contact the Author-Artist

Floating along: A Review Essay on Duncan McNaughton’s Somewhere in the Stream (part 1 of 2)

Contact the Author-Artist

Proven Practices Yield Gratifying 2019 Results, Increase Potential for 2020

Goals Identified and Achieved

Contact Author-Poet-Artist Aberjhani

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

Aberjhani
National Poetry Month 2025