Visionary Vibes: A Blog by Aberjhani

Surrealistic Poetics of Jazz and the Confederate Monument

9/26/2023

Surrealistic is, undoubtedly, one of the better words to describe a crowd of people gathered near the Confederate Monument in Savannah’s Forsyth Park with their attention focused on something which the figure portrayed atop the structure likely would never have imagined possible. The crowd’s collective passion on Saturday, September 23, 2023, was surging to the sounds of jazz flooding the air as the week-long Savannah Jazz Festival began its weekend wind-down.

Up on his memorial perch, if the battle-weary Confederate soldier’s bronze eyes were able to take in the scene, he likely would have gasped at the throngs of Black, White, Brown, Yellow, and in-between shades of humanity spread across the park on the grass, on blankets, beneath tents, around the Forsyth Fountain, on benches, and lined up at multi-ethnic-flavored food trucks. Back during his 1800s Civil War time, he would have been staring at a very different scene. Filling the area then would have been wounded comrades, captured Union soldiers, and scrambling slaves. The noise of moans, grunts, groans, and impatient orders would have sounded from every direction.

On this warm early-fall sunny day in 2023, what might have amazed him more than anything else were the musicians taking to the stage, some yards away, with intentional brilliance and purpose: The Demetrius Doctor Trio and The Wives, the Martin Lesch Band, the Savannah Jazz Hall of Fame, and Buckwheat Zydeco, Jr. and Ils Sont Partis Band. (And this was just the line-up while I was there, not the performers from the night before or those who would be playing until long after my departure.) What possibly may have astonished him above all else was the musicians’ polyphonic often racially-diversified artistry, and the way pockets of people danced so uninhibitedly to their blood-stirring beats.

He might have been exceptionally moved, toward any given emotional expression, while listening to the Demetrius Doctor Trio’s closing medley. Imagine his heart and mind struggling to process the sight and sound of the Trio’s talented White bass player accompanying his fellow Black musicians on their closing jazz-infused medley of these songs: Burt Bacharach’s “What the World Needs Now Is Love,” easing into Stevie Wonder’s “Love’s In Need of Love Today,” and blending that with the third verse of brothers James and Rosamond Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” commonly referred to as the Black National Anthem. Interestingly enough, with its absence of any actual reference to race, in another twist of historical surrealism the soldier could have assumed the words applied to his own struggles:

… God of our weary years
God of our silent tears
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light
Keep us forever in the path, we pray
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee
Shadowed beneath Thy hand
May we forever stand
True to our God
True to our native land
--(James Weldon Johnson)

Could it be those words, and all the people gathered before him on the campground, were in honor of him? Were all those laughing, chatting, strangely-dressed souls there to celebrate the sincerity of his dedicated, although failed, efforts to keep sons and daughters of African descent in chains? To maintain a power structure more beneficial to his wealthier kinfolks than to himself? What a magnificent thing that would be! Except something in the silent language of numerous faces made it clear it was more unlikely than likely.

Pathways to Recognition

Good poetry, of which James Weldon Johnson wrote a lot, has a way of drilling through rigid biases and opening pathways to recognition of our common humanity. Along with giving myself a break from hurricane recovery repairs, poetry was another reason I chose to arrive at the jazz concert when I did. According to the festival’s program, saxophonist Jody Espina was scheduled to become the 47th inductee into the Savannah Jazz Hall of Fame. As it happened, I had first met Espina some 14 years prior and wrote about that encounter in The River of Winged Dreams:

“...'Sounds Scribbled Mixed-Media Platinum’ was written during a sound painting performance, featuring Savannah’s Creative Force Artists Collective and jazzman saxophonist Jody Espina, at the Jepson Center for the Arts. My purpose for attending the event was to write a news article about it but as the painters and sculptors created their extraordinary works, while Espina and his ensemble exploded jazz throughout the atrium of the Jepson Center, my pen insisted on dancing to their creative beat and the poem wrote itself in the space intended for my notes….”’

Things like that, whether I want them to or not, sometimes happen in my world when it comes to poetry. I’m not going to include the entire 40-line poem with this blog post but here are two stanzas from it:

Such a human being, one observes,
takes to the air on his saxophone
as though it were Pegasus
even as his legacy-blessed hands
channel light through the golden womb
of an artist’s lexicon
conducting pantomimes of creative bliss,
signaling xylophonic spectrums of possibility unlimited.

He ripples like Low Country marsh grass––
and painters smear genius
upon canvases of parallel motion.
His heart pounds his fists with fire––
and keyboards rendezvous naked with strings
and percussions that amplify passion’s brilliant voice.
His eyes explode poems––
and sculptors mold lightning into tangible vision.
--(from The River of Winged Dreams)

My plan at the festival was to place an autographed copy of River in Espina’s hands if I got an opportunity to do so. It did not work out quite that way but one of the festival volunteers was kind enough to act on my behalf and deliver the book to him backstage. The book in my hand was yet another image which might have caused the Confederate statue’s eyebrow to creak upward an inch or so. Not to mention the sight of a black mayor on stage long enough to put in some valuable face time with the jubilant crowd during this election year.

What might that exhausted soldier have thought about the broad-ranging scope of the music itself? Every variation of it tended to put a smile on the face of programmer Theron “Ike” Carter, a friend and another Hall of Fame inductee who prefers the term "African-American classical music" to the word jazz? Would that dedicated soldier have been able to appreciate the way it is celebrated around the world for how it embraces diverse cultural traditions and, by its nature, advocates on behalf of international unity? Would he realize its value as an effective instrument for promoting and even implementing democratic principles? Maybe yes or maybe no.

For the moment at hand, it was enough for those who had not been wiped out by the pandemic, annihilated by climate change, or erased from the world by 21st century gun violence, to be in the park occupying their own niche in history with a sense of something very close to an exhilarating sense of anticipated liberation.

Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

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AI Flips the Interview Script with 5 More Questions for 1 Author

9/4/2023

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To read the first seven questions of this AI interview conducted by AILC Contributor 444 with author-poet-artist Aberjhani, please visit LinkedIn.com at: AI Flips the Interview Script with 7 Questions for 1 Author. The final five begin now with number:

8.

ILC CONTRIBUTOR 444: Your collaboration with Luther E. Vann on ELEMENTAL, the Power of Illuminated Love (2008) was a unique fusion of poetry and art. How did this collaboration influence your creative process and approach to your subsequent works?

Aberjhani: Working with Luther on ELEMENTAL was like nothing I’d ever done before because I wanted the writing to be genuinely ekphrastic. That meant it should reflect the impulses and ideas first expressed in his visual art rather than my own independent concepts. To do that, I had to study the ways Luther developed his style and then utilize what I learned to express his understanding of things like community and certain spiritual beliefs. But part of what attracted me to the project in the first place was recognizing how much his metaphysical paintings already mirrored certain spiritual philosophies expressed in some of my poetry.

We later reversed that dynamic when he graciously provided covers for my novel, Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player, and poetry collection titled The Bridge of Silver Wings. That kind of partnership across mediums is rare, so his death in 2016 left me feeling unanchored, if you will, for quite some time. Eventually it forced me to tap back into instincts of my own for experimenting with visual artistry. That, over the past five years or so, has led to the creation of fine art photography and digital paintings which have been exhibited offline and also sold in my online art store.

9.

AILC 444: Speaking of which, your distinctive "Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle" is a testament to your versatility as a contemporary creative. How does your visual art complement your written works, and what unique aspects of creativity do you find in each medium?

ABERJHANI: Thank you. I like to say that my visual art intensifies the physical expressiveness of my literary endeavors, and the literary expands and makes more accessible different contemplative dimensions of the visual. I believe that’s most apparent when visitors to the art product pages on my Pixels.com and Fine Art America profiles read the descriptions posted with artwork. But for me, both are forms of communication with the world, so some of the art descriptions are more like stories and have been repurposed as blogs.

The “unique aspects of each medium” come into play when creating the works as well as when engaging them. My art and photography are often the results of attempts to document natural or historical phenomena. Examples of that are The Savannah River Bridge the Morning After Hurricane Matthew and different abstract digital paintings I’ve done on gun violence, racism, and the pandemic in America. In fact, I recently completed a book of art and texts, called Black and Blue Letters from the Red Zone, dealing with these issues and hope to see it published in the not-too-distant future. It’s basically the illustrated edition of These Black and Blue Red Zone Days with additional texts by guest authors.

10.

AILC 444: Your skills as a storyteller are showcased in the essay collection The American Poet Who Went Again as well as the novel Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player. Could you discuss how your narrative style has evolved over the years?

ABERJHANI: American Poet was written from 1997 to 2008 and is a collection of essays which combine memoir with literary journalism. Within that same decade-long time-frame, I wrote poetry that I performed for spoken word open mics, a lot of journalism pieces, and completed work on Encyclopedia of the HR as well as Wisdom. I’m going to say that insofar as the writing in American Poet goes, the style developed from a fusion of everything else I was doing and resulted in an individual form of literary journalism and documentation. As personal as some of the essays are, my goals was to share them as reports on our evolving times.

In observations of Suicide Prevention Week The Kindle eBook Edition of Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player will be available as a FREE DOWNLOAD from September 9 to 12, 2023.

When it came to Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player, which was first published in 2006 as Christmas When Music Almost Killed the World, I gave myself permission to write without the sculpted restrictions required by the essay form. I wanted the novel to be a dance with language while also confronting serious social issues like suicide, recovery from childhood trauma, climate change, and creative license balanced with individual responsibility and accountability. I wanted the book to literally sing, so made song lyrics an integral part of the narrative. The experience of writing the novel was the exact opposite of what I had done previously when writing nonfiction. Working on it helped relieve the stress that came with living in the past to recover the stories of Harlem Renaissance heroes and sheroes, and from confronting the social tensions that followed September 11 in this century.

11.

AILC 444: Your collection of memoir essays, Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah, provides insights into personal experiences blended with journalistic observations of environmental and racial issues. How do autobiographical elements influence your creative process, and do they contribute to a deeper connection with your audience?

ABERJHANI: Coming from a #BIPOC community in Savannah, Georgia, which is also the oldest Black community in the state, autobiographical elements tend to infuse my creative process with depths of emotion and intentional commitment which otherwise might not exist. I believe they do strengthen connections with audiences because a lot of readers can relate to many of those factors. For starters, Savannah itself is a city which has played some keys roles in the history of the United States, such as being one of the original 13 colonies, and it continues to be strategic in the present as the location of a major seaport and a major hub of the modern film industry. It is also home to the historic HBCU Savannah State University, which I attended for a time years ago as an Upward Bound student. On a more personal level, I grew up in a family steeped in the same kind of cultural values and customs which have influenced different forms of cooking, music, spirituality, and social trends all over the world, and which makes it easier for many to feel a strong connection to much of what I write.

12.

AILC 444: As we conclude, could you share a glimpse into your upcoming projects and how they align with your overarching artistic and advocacy goals?

ABERJHANI: Earlier this year, I participated in a video project in support of preserving Georgia’s 100 miles of coastline along the Atlantic. My contributions to the project involved urging all Georgians to remain mindful of the need for corrective action regarding renaming the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge. Additional footage dealt with the erasure of homes and entire neighborhoods, along with the stories that go with them, where historically influential BIPOC Savannahians were born or grew up.

Something I’m holding myself accountable for in regard to preventing such erasure is a music heritage book and documentary project I started during the pandemic with legendary radio programmer Ike Carter of WHCJ Radio at Savannah State University. Carter is something of a cultural arts historian who has some exceptional insights into what it meant to grow up in Savannah during some very interesting Jim Crow times and then moving beyond that to become a champion of what he prefers to call African-American Classical Music. Working with him to compose just the narrative of his life, legacy, and the times that shaped them could become the most impactful work I’ve done since Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. More important than anything else is the potential the musical heritage project holds for helping all of us adapt to the many changes we’re having such hard times with right now, especially in the areas of evolving cultural demographics and efforts to refine practices of democracy in countries around the world.

AILC 444:Thank you for taking the time to share your insights and experiences with us, Aberjhani.

ABERJHANI: This was fun. I look forward to doing it again sometime.

By AILC Contributor 444 & Aberjhani
Presented in partnership with AI Literary Chat Salon

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Conversations with the World 109: Reading Myself All Year Long

12/29/2021

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"Wonders Quietly on the Way" artwork by Aberjhani)

Between public issues impacting all of our lives and individual events involving my cultural arts labors, a lot occurred which different media commentators might have quoted me about in 2021. Take, for example, so far as public matters go, the now historically infamous January 6 Insurrection. Or consider the potential fate of Jalal al-Din Rumi/Balkhi’s hometown following the fall of Kabul, Afghanistan. Other opportunities included statements in support of environmental justice, social justice, and a world free of the COVID-19 coronavirus.

To see pages and publications featuring quotes by Aberjhani in late 2020 and throughout the year 2021, please check out the above slideshow.

The articles, blogs, essays, books, and institutions in question covered a lot of territory. While I focused on making progress on my pandemic book project of original art and texts (featuring guest authors), I was also involved via the quoted word in a wide range of dialogues. The topics dealt with everything from current governmental practices and putting historic events into more informed contexts, to the popularity of cognac in Kenya and the inspiration drawn from rainbows across the planet.

After a quote from Elemental The Power of Illuminated Love was published in the December 2020 issue of Science of Mind magazine, I found it interesting that another from the book was published on page 15 of the August 2021 issue of Franciscan Media’s St. Anthony Messenger. A favorite, I have to admit, was a post on Spiritual Passages used to help celebrate a meeting between Pope Frances and Spiderman.

In addition, publications as fundamentally different as The Jerusalem Post and Pakistan Today have employed texts to emphasize the need for more democratic and compassionate practices within their governments and societies at large.
What all of this means to me as we leave 2021 behind and move forward into 2022 is that our collective yearning for unity and coexistence is stronger than any hunger for war and division. The primary challenge remains how to best accomplish the former in order to avoid mutual destruction by the latter.

Aberjhani
Happy New Year 2022

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Conversations with the World 108: Ben Okri’s Existential Call to Creative Arms

12/1/2021

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In his November 12, 2021, essay for England’s The Guardian newspaper, Booker Prize-winning author Ben Oki urged creative artists around the globe to dedicate their inspired labors to the production of works addressing the catastrophic crises of the current era. In his words:

“I propose existential creativity, to serve the unavoidable truth of our times, and a visionary existentialism, to serve the future that we must bring about from the brink of our environmental catastrophe.”

It just so happens that many creative artists already advocate not only for environmental justice, but also for economic justice, gender equality, and antiracism. That Okri declined in his op-ed/essay to comment on the last in this year when the verdict for the trial of the death of George Floyd made headlines around the world, and the trial for the killing of Ahmaud Arbery was moving toward a similar outcome, is a little baffling. After all, ending death by racism and xenophobia is no less a global crisis than preventing mass destruction from human-induced climate change. Neither, for that matter, is a coronavirus capable of masking itself and attacking our species in different mutated guises: such as Delta and Omicron.

Deatail from "Finding Shelter in a Circle of Gratitude Number 3: Meanwhile Back on Earth" art by Aberjhani. Full wall art print available for purchase on artist's Fine Art America and Pixels profiles as well as here at Bright Skylark.)

Does any of that mean Okri’s call for more mindful considerations of climate change should be ignored? Not at all. But how any given creative chooses to respond to it is up to them. My own compulsion to address climate change is apparent in the article, “The Art of Reversing Climate Change Denial,” in artwork currently on exhibit in the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport Art Gallery, and in the book, Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah.

Taking Notice of Rare Literary Talent

I first became aware of Okri’s commanding literary voice after his novel, The Famished Road, catapulted him to world fame in the 1990s. If I hadn’t been a bookseller at the time, I probably would not have learned about the title. Moreover, I likely would have missed out on the gems which have continued to flow from his pen.

The Famished Road turned out to be one of those rare reads which I never wanted to put down and rushed back to at every opportunity. My review essay on it was published first in the now defunct Georgia Guardian newspaper and, later, in my AXS Entertainment African-American Cultural Arts column. In it, I pointed out something which illustrates well Okri’s current howl of existential angst:

His work poses very serious questions for the twenty-first century. Among them: To what extent will we allow the indefinable dynamics of something called “destiny” to maintain grief and horror in the world? How hard are human beings willing to fight to achieve and sustain justice, equanimity, or joy? And should progress be called such when it devours what is best within the human spirit? (From essay Ben Okri’s Famished Road Leads to Thrilling Reading Pleasure, by Aberjhani)

When considering the above observation made years ago, it becomes easy to see why much of my recent literary and fine visual art has indeed been mindful responses to the turbulent terrors of this historical moment. With climate change denial literally stoking the flames of mass destruction, xenophobia prompting unjust killings, and armed conflicts increasing instead of decreasing, how could they be otherwise? Small wonder that billionaire’s are investing their cash into space-bound rockets.

Supporting the Process

My brand of existential creativity cannot include the assertion that these days are humanity’s last days. I have to hold my creative endeavors and my mindful intentions accountable for something more than standing on street corners screaming the end is near. That is where the “visionary” aspect of Okri’s battle cry comes into play and where our philosophical approaches align best.

It is, without question, imperative we acknowledge the near-apocalyptic conditions forcing dangerous human migrations all over the world and producing toxic circumstances both physical and psychic in nature. It is equally vital we propose and work to secure alternative outcomes. My way of supporting that process has been, and remains, to help provide language, images, and strategies which enable us to steer our way through the raging chaos. How many before us have had to so the same?

The spark of life itself never goes out completely. The stream of existence adapts to new pathways and new challenges while yet flowing steadily toward a horizon of uncertainty and a dawn of renewed hope. This reflection is not intended to suggest the existential perils before us are insignificant. It is intended to affirm the priceless value of all we stand to lose and which yet might be salvaged.

Aberjhani
Creator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle
Author of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind

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Poems Matter: Text and Meaning in Claude McKay’s ‘If We Must Die’ (part 2)

7/22/2021

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In the current era, a highly-publicized disproportionate threat to African Americans due to unnatural causes––specifically, violence inflicted upon unarmed African-American men and women by armed policemen–– has been acknowledged by the Black Lives Matter Movement, the United Nations, and numerous social justice organizations around the world. A similar threat in 1919 existed in the form of lynching, essentially the practice of murder by hanging, then often castrating, and often burning African-American men.

Barely 10 years old at the time, the NAACP stood as almost the sole voice of protest against the socially-accepted and legally-tolerated practice. The simple reason is because in 1919 Jim Crow laws were exactly that: laws which openly supported an apartheid government and society in America.

Whereas the more overt apartheid legislation has been repealed, in 2015 there was much talk of a “New Jim Crow” [now described as Jim Crow 2.0 in 2021]. That Blacks and Whites have made tremendous advances in securing social and political equality for all Americans is something most reasonable thinkers would not deny. The conditions as they existed in 1919 were the kinds that challenge poets of any race to prove the significance of their craft. In the case of Harlem Renaissance author Claude McKay (1889 –1948) they prompted him to pen the classic poem “If We Must Die”:

IF WE MUST DIE

If we must die—let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die—oh, let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the common foe;
Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

--Claude McKay (from Harlem Shadows, Harcourt Brace, 1922)

Poetry has often proven an effective instrument for amplifying the voices of those who believe they have been targeted for unfair social and political discrimination; or, worse, tagged for a campaign of potential genocide. Where McKay’s powerful lines are concerned, the author noted the following in his 1937 autobiography, A Long Way from Home:

“Our Negro newspapers were morbid, full of details of clashes between colored and white, murderous shootings and hangings. Traveling from city to city and unable to gauge the attitude and temper of each one, we Negro railroad men were nervous. We were less light-hearted… It was during those days that the sonnet, ‘If We Must Die,’ exploded out of me…”

Encouraged by the support of friends, editors, and publishers, the Jamaican-born McKay considered “If We Must Die” both a critical and a political triumph. The distinct rhyming scheme and compact 14 lines of the poem make it easily identifiable as a sonnet. Yet it is a very different kind of sonnet from those with which a reader might associate poets such as Countee Cullen, Gwendolyn Brooks, William Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, or Rainer Maria Rilke.

Literary Distinction

What sets McKay’s poem apart from other well-known sonnets is its unrepentant call to militant action. By contrast, the sonnets of Cullen or Shakespeare generally focus on philosophical musings or romantic passion. By fusing his lines with unyielding outrage, McKay’s appropriation of the sonnet form became itself a revolutionary act.

Original July 1919 cover of LIBERATOR Magazine in which Claude McKay's poem "If We Must Die" was first published. Featured on the cover is art by George Bellows.

After its original publication in the July 1919 edition of the Liberator magazine, “If We Must Die” was published in political advocate Cyril Briggs’ (1888-1966) Crusader magazine, labor leader A. Philip Randolph’s Messenger magazine, and dozens more along with a string of anthologies throughout the “roaring twenties.” In 1922, it became part of the poet’s Harlem Shadows collection, one of the first volumes to signal the growing momentum of the Harlem Renaissance.

The poem exploded through the American psyche at a time when African-American leaders were grappling with the same question with which they are wrestling nearly a century later. They do so as Black boys and men are killed under highly questionable circumstances virtually every week, and imprisoned daily for minor provocations that are more often ignored when the transgressors happen to be White boys and men.

By Aberjhani

ALSO CHECK OUT:
Red Summer: Text and Meaning in Claude McKay’s poem ‘If We Must Die’ Part 1
Poems Matter: Text and meaning in Claude McKay’s “If We Must Die” part 2
Fighting Back: Text and Meaning in Claude McKay’s “If We Must Die” part 3
Timelines: Text and Meaning in Claude McKay’s “If We Must Die” part 4

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Surrealistic Poetics of Jazz and the Confederate Monument

Pathways to Recognition

Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact Author-Poet-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

AI Flips the Interview Script with 5 More Questions for 1 Author

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9.

10.

11.

12.

By AILC Contributor 444 & Aberjhani
Presented in partnership with AI Literary Chat Salon

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Conversations with the World 109: Reading Myself All Year Long

ENJOY MORE CONVERSATIONS WITH THE WORLD

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Conversations with the World 108: Ben Okri’s Existential Call to Creative Arms

Taking Notice of Rare Literary Talent

Supporting the Process

Contact the Author-Artist at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Poems Matter: Text and Meaning in Claude McKay’s ‘If We Must Die’ (part 2)

Literary Distinction

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Aberjhani

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Surrealistic Poetics of Jazz and the Confederate Monument

Pathways to Recognition

AberjhaniAuthor of Dreams of the Immortal City SavannahCo-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem RenaissanceCreator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

Contact Author-Poet-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

AI Flips the Interview Script with 5 More Questions for 1 Author

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

By AILC Contributor 444 & Aberjhani Presented in partnership with AI Literary Chat Salon

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Conversations with the World 109: Reading Myself All Year Long

ENJOY MORE CONVERSATIONS WITH THE WORLD

Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Conversations with the World 108: Ben Okri’s Existential Call to Creative Arms

Taking Notice of Rare Literary Talent

Supporting the Process

Contact the Author-Artist at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Poems Matter: Text and Meaning in Claude McKay’s ‘If We Must Die’ (part 2)

​Literary Distinction

Contact Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Creator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

By AILC Contributor 444 & Aberjhani
Presented in partnership with AI Literary Chat Salon

Literary Distinction