Bright Skylark Literary Productions
  • Author Statement
    • Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
    • Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah >
      • Podcast Prospects 504
      • More Books by Aberjhani >
        • Readers & Reviewers on the Writings of Aberjhani
        • Checking in at Goodreads
        • Editing Credits
        • ELEMENTAL: The Power of Illuminated Love (Art and Poetry Gift Book)
        • The River of Winged Dreams
        • The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois
        • Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player: A Novel by Aberjhani
        • I Made My Boy Out of Poetry
        • Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry
        • Buy Books by Aberjhani on Amazon
        • 10th Anniversary of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
  • Working Scribe Image Carousel
    • Aberjhani - Author Biography
    • Awards & Honors
    • Aberjhani Portfolio Sampler
    • Michael Jackson in Life & Legend
    • Creative Thinkers International
  • Blog: Visionary Vibes
    • Twitter Tweets & News Notes >
      • Author-Poet Aberjhani in the News
    • Blog: Silk-Featherbrush Art and Style >
      • Postered Poetics
    • Blog: Literary Persuasion Book Reviews
    • Blog: Sonic Delight Music Reviews >
      • Summer-Song Rhapsody for Michael Jackson: Editorial with Poem
    • Shifting Points of View and the Massacre in Charleston, South Carolina (USA)
    • 7 Ways to Help Replace Legislated Fear with Informed Compassion
  • Art and Poster Store
    • Your Introduction to Original Silk-Featherbrush Art & Style
  • About Bright Skylark Literary Productions
    • Bright Skylark Values and Motto
  • Quotations
    • Pinterest Page of Quotations
  • Charter for a More Compassionate World
  • As a Poet Thinketh
    • The Bridge of Silver Wings
    • Rainbow-Song for the Angel of Tao by Aberjhani
    • Ode to the Good Black Boots that Served My Soul So Well (poem by Aberjhani)
    • Angel of Remembrance: Candles for September 11, 2001
    • Rainbow-Song for the Angel of Tao: Verse 1
  • Articles and Essays
    • Abbreviated Minds in the News for Wreaking Havoc Worldwide editorial by Aberjhani
    • Iconic Authors Toni Morrison's and Harper Lee's New Works Likely to Influence Dialogues on Race
    • Red Summer: Text and Meaning in Claude McKay’s poem ‘If We Must Die’” part 1 of special 4-part series by Aberjhani
    • A Writer's Journey to Selma, Alabama
    • Justice Remains Elusive in Case of Newly-freed Louis C. Taylor (Part 1 of 2)
    • Sensualized Transcendence: Editorial and Poem on the Art of Jaanika Talts (Part 1)
    • Realms of Emerging Light (Sensualized Transcendence Editorial and Poem on the Art of Jaanika Talts Part 2)
    • Notes on the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation
    • Why Race Mattered in Barack Obama's Re-Election: Editorial and Poem
    • Posted Perspectives on America's 2012 Presidential Election
    • 47 Percenters and Guerrilla Decontextualization: Dreamers and Nightmares
    • Considering Michael Clarke Duncan: Big Black Man Within A Nonsociopoliticohistorical Context (Editorial with Poem)
  • Video Pen & Ink
  • Links and Connections
    • Aberjhani's Guerrilla Decontextualization
  • Contact the Author

Literary Persuasions: 
book Reviews by Aberjhani

Exploring the stylistic texts and provocative meanings
of contemporary & classic literature.

Main Page

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

11/26/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
(Postered Chromatic Poetics title art graphic by Aberjhani)

If you missed part 1 of this post and want to check it out please click here. Part 2 begins now: 

McNaughton's nods to the late "Imaginary Man of Las Cruces," poet Nicanor Parra, in the poems "¿ENTONCES QUÉ?" and "(COLIN CHRISTOPHER" (open parentheses per original) should not surprise anyone. Given the company his pen has kept over the decades, it would be too much of a stretch to say he and Parra share the same antipoetic approach to their craft. There nevertheless are similarities which reveal a kinship between their aesthetic instincts. The humor employed by both poets at times oscillates between comic hilarity and nightmare darkness. It can assume the form of thinly-disguised self-deprecation or more overtly-poised social and political satire.

If Parra's is a poetry of anguished laughter and mournful tears as some have suggested, then it may be McNaughton's is an equally intense but more restrained verse of amused hopeful smiles and astonished frowns.  Both employ a minimum of embellishments to achieve maximum provocation. Both balance ironic incongruities with subtle personal resolve in a manner similar to the way jazz musicians utilize highly-charged counter-rhythms to produce captivating performances. Both, as Parra put it, incorporate "the hideousness and the beauty of the world" (Marie-Lise Gazarian Gautier, Interviews with Latin American Writers, 1989). Therefore, naked pain and uncertain joy play crucial roles in rendering disturbing truths aimed at disrupting, or reclaiming, different kinds of power.
​
The narrator of "CHILDHOOD + YOUTH" laments, via "figures of speech," wars of different kinds which have never ended, and, numerous bridges burned while waging them. He finds his understanding of these interior and exterior traumas challenged by doubt, but then reaffirmed by an authoritative witness who knows what it means to survive unnerving cycles of destruction and rebirth. Taking a trip "to David Highsmith's furniture store," he buys a copy of Hector France's Musk, Hashish and Blood:
          "...Then I went to my place
          to read the story and smoke hashish and
          drink whisky and set another bridge ablaze.
          Standing on it I met Virgil. You know, I said
          I thought all those figures of speech you used
          were real figures of speech. They are, he said.
          Pay no attention to fools. Here, come with me.
          I have a bridge to see to, and I wouldn't
          mind some company. Bring your strike anywheres."


​Such healing, empowering, and time-bending solidarity can only come with dedicated practices of remembrance and recognition, among the hallmarks of McNaughton's extensive oeuvre. As the late writer Benjamin Hollander put it in "The Pants of Time," his definitive review of TINY WINDOWS, "McNaughton’s work achieves a testament of personal observation embedded in a trans-historical tendance of the imagination." Moreover: "He discovers history for himself anew..." (Boston Review, June 5, 2015).

He also increases its capacity for simultaneously preserving autobiographical identity and expanding notions of community to accommodate kindred spirits occupying physical and non-physical forms. Thus the poem "AS EFFECT AN ECHO" is less an elegy in which McNaughton bids farewell to Hollander than it is the written continuation of a relationship:
          "The back door hammer clubbed my friend, the Jew,
          Ben Hollander. I can't part from Ben. They
          say one must part who don't understand the heart
          of the friend, it knows something else, something
          about containment, about the stars at night,
          about the heart that contains them..."

​The stars in the heart comprise the sweet substance of enduring friendships, or alliances, and even less-binding associations, which take on a kind of sacredness for the way they inform and sustain each other’s' personalities. They reject the insanity proposed by stars as symbols of genocide sewn onto the clothes of Hollander's ancestors in Nazi concentration camps as they do all restrictions placed on basic human freedoms and civility.   

Duncan McNaughton - Poetry Center from Documentary Film Institute on Vimeo.


​'The World's Suppositions of Poetry'

Nowhere in the pages of SOMEWHERE IN THE STREAM is the consecrated nature of authentic friendships, especially as forged by shared dedications to poetry, more intensely realized than in "(COLIN CHRISTOPHER [Stuart]" and "OLD SOCKS." Within the former he describes the synthesization of a poet's work and person as "twins.' McNaughton then offers this observation: "...Whatever The World's suppositions of/ poetry and of what a poet ought to be, whenever those/ 'twins' descend and ascend, below and above, to the/ disturbance of truth on behalf of trust, then we are in the/ dimension of 'The Imaginary Man,'..."

In "OLD SOCKS" our narrator confronts the reality of mortality and what it has meant within the context of life lived up to this point. While wrestling with "my very own tangle/ of being," the poet reflects on successions of wars which have threatened the innate integrity of that being. In contrast, friendship has helped guard against the threat by reinforcing the front lines of self:
          "...So I have Bill's
          back-up for my opinion of Hobbyhook,
          Bill's authority, his knowing smile, his
          eye twinkle. Queer, how this poem has turned
          into Bill's hats. Bill's ears. Tells you something
          about how little truth matters when it
          comes to trust. Oceans come, oceans go, they
          used to say, fishing for flounder, floundering
          they called it, they still do, obviously..."


​Whether writing autobiographically or assuming the voice of another seems less important than the invitation to celebrate shared histories, friendships, lives, knowledge, acts of compassion, or acts of remembrance. These endow life with a quality of being which--despite media glamorizations of artificial presences in a world where such creations too often diminish capacities for actual thinking or organic human interaction--seem to lose more value by the day. Likewise, different literary strategies may have their irrefutable uses and powers, but in the end they too are floating along with everything else Somewhere in the Stream of discoveries and encounters as we navigate shifting currents, or dodge the increasing fury of hurricanes, and hold on for the sake of poetry and each other. 

Aberjhani
author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
November 2019

​

Contact the Author

Submit
0 Comments

Biography Presents Compelling Portrait of Life, Times, and Mind of Jean-Paul Sartre (part 2 of 2)

7/11/2017

0 Comments

 
What was at the center of Sartre’s sometimes mercurial passions and obsessions? Perhaps it was less a rejection of personalities and movements that it was a devotion to something which likely was not always apparent: the facilitation of an organic dialogue on how best to steer humanity toward acknowledgement of the ways it engineered unspeakable tragedies and why it is imperative we accept collective responsibility for correcting them. 

To read part 1 of this article please click here.

In this, he was much more a world citizen, or internationalist, than a nationalist. Cohen-Solal demonstrates as much through accounts of his physical and psychic immersion into different cultural and political environments as a traveler, and through applied adjustments of his literary focus as an engaged philosopher. Referring to the aftermath of a 1945 trip to the United States: 
​“What Is Literature?, Anti-Semite and Jew, The Respectful Prostitute, these are some of Sartre’s works that in the months to come, deal with the reality he has discovered in America. His recent awareness of the black problem [Jim Crow racism] is enhanced by his friendship with the American writer Richard Wright, whose autobiographical novel, Black Boy, was published in March 1945” (Cohen-Solal, p. 242).  

​ And, as philosopher and social justice advocate Cornel West points out in his introduction to the biography, despite any criticisms of the man: 
“Sartre will always be remembered as the most visible and influential European intellectual who put a limelight on the struggles against U.S. and French imperialism in Africa and Asia and against white supremacy in the United Sates. This is no small matter and it took great courage to do so. His support of freedom struggles in Morocco, Algeria, Vietnam, Cuba, South Africa, and the United States—regardless of the outcomes that resulted—was heroic” (West, p. xviii).
Picture
French edition of Sartre: A Biography, by Annie Cohen-Solal, now considered the definitive biography of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
​The book publishing industry being what it is in 2017, marketplace titles are often the result of sensational headlines or celebrity personalities rather than the value represented by the quality of a manuscript’s substance. As such, in addition to Cohen-Solal and Cornel West, readers of the American trade paperback centennial edition of Sartre: A Life can thank The New Press for its proven dedication to principles and practices that support the publication of books based on their intrinsic merit. Doing so is not about worshipping someone like-Paul Sartre––whose closest contemporary counterpart may be the African-American Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison—as a cultural icon. It is about maintaining access to the kind of literature on which humanity depends to help preserve whatever hard-won rights and freedoms still exist.

In Closing

​Among the most beguiling of Sartre’s diagnostic tools of philosophical inquiry was how he chose to employ the biographies of others, such as Jean Genet’s and Gustave Flaubert’s, as mirrors. Rather than emulating their approaches to literary form, metaphysical paradoxes, or political conundrums, he used them to “think against himself,” as if his intellect were a knife, or sword, and theirs whetstones upon which he sharpened concepts and strategies. It is possible Cohen-Solal, though she indicates otherwise, has done the same in regard to Sartre with her masterful examination of one of the 20th century’s most engaged, courageous, and influential creative thinkers.

Author-Artist

​Aberjhani is an American poet, historian, essayist, editor, journalist, social critic, and cautious artist. His many honors include the Choice Academic Title of the Year Award, the Notable Book of the Year Award, Outstanding Journalist Award, and Poet of the Year Award. He is currently completing final edits on a work of creative nonfiction about the cultural arts, race relations, immigration, and human trafficking in his hometown of Savannah, Georgia.

0 Comments

    Archives

    December 2019
    November 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    October 2017
    July 2017
    August 2012

    Categories

    All
    1950s
    1960s
    20th Century Authors
    21st Century Authors
    Aberjhani
    Aberjhani On Brad Gooch
    Aberjhani On Chinese Famine
    Aberjhani On Dick Gregory
    Aberjhani On Duncan McNaughton
    Aberjhani On Eugene Talmadge
    Aberjhani On Flannery O'Connor
    Aberjhani On Jean-Paul Sartre
    Aberjhani On Mao Zedong
    Aberjhani On Mark Morneweg
    Aberjhani On Otis S. Johnson
    Aberjhani On PT Armstrong
    Aberjhani On Savannah Georgia
    Aberjhani On Savannah-Georgia
    Aberjhani On Yang Jisheng
    African American Authors
    African-American Authors
    African-American Comics
    African American Men
    African-American Men
    American Authors
    American Civil War
    Andrew Davidson
    Annie Cohen-Solal
    Antiracism
    Art By Aberjhani
    Asian Authors
    Audio Podcast
    Author Mark Morneweg
    Author Poet Aberjhani Official Site
    Author-Poet Aberjhani - Official Site
    Authors
    Authors From Savannah Georgia
    Benjamin Hollander
    Bill Berkson
    Biography
    Biracial Relationships
    Biracial Women
    Black Men Who Write
    Blogs By Aberjhani
    Book Industry
    Book Publishing
    Book Reviews
    Book Reviews By Aberjhani
    Books
    Books And Authors
    Books By Flannery O'Connor
    Books By PT Armstrong
    Books On Flannery O'Connor
    Brad Gooch
    Brad Gooch Audio Podcast
    Carlos Ruiz Zafon
    Celebrity Authors
    Chinese Authors
    Chinese History
    Classic Authors
    Contemporary Authors
    Contemporary Literature
    Contemporary Southern Literature
    Cornel West
    Creative Nonfiction
    Creative Thinkers
    Dick Gregory Videos
    Digital Publishing
    Dreams Of The Immortal City Savannah Book By Aberjhani
    Duncan McNaughton
    Ebooks
    Education
    El Portal Press
    Essays By Aberjhani
    Essays On Duncan McNaughton
    Essays On Flannery O'Connor
    Eugene Talmadge
    Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge
    Existentialism
    Fiction
    Flannery O'Connor
    French Authors
    French Literature
    Genre-bending Literature
    Greeting Flannery O'Connor At The Back Door Of Mind Book By Aberjhani
    Gustave Flaubert
    Hector France
    Historical Fiction
    Historical Poetry
    History
    History Of Civil Rights Movement
    History Of Famines
    History Of Literature
    History Of Racism
    Human Cannibalism
    Iconic Authors
    Influential Authors
    International Authors
    International Poets
    Interracial Relationships
    Interview
    Jean Genet
    Jean-Paul Sartre
    Jim Crow Racism
    Lady Gaga
    Latino Ficiton
    Leadership Philosophy
    Leadership Theory
    Life And Legacy Of Dick Gregory
    Life And Legacy Of Flannery O'Connor
    Lillian Gregory
    Literary Biographies
    Literary Criticism
    Literary Essays
    Literary Friendships
    Literary History
    Literary Influencers
    Literary Influences
    Literary Traditions
    Memoir
    National Poetry Month
    New Orleans
    Nicanor Parra
    Nigger By Dick Gregory
    Nobel Laureates
    Nonfiction
    Novels
    Official Site For Author Poet Aberjhani
    Official Site For Author-Poet Aberjhani
    Official Website Of Author Poet Aberjhani
    Official Website Of Author-Poet Aberjhani
    Philosophy
    Podcast On Literature
    Poetry
    Poetry By Duncan McNaughton
    Poets From Boston
    Political Activism
    Political Biographies
    Political Strategies
    Political Theories
    Postered Poetics Art By Aberjhani
    Prose And Poetry
    Prose Poem
    Public Intellectuals
    Publishing
    Quotations
    Quotes By Dick Gregory
    Quotes By Flannery O'Connor
    Quotes By Mark Morneweg
    Race In America
    Racism In Georgia
    Racism In The United States
    Richard Wright
    San Francisco Poets
    Savannah-Georgia
    Savannah River
    Singer Sade
    Social Activism
    Somewhere In The Stream By Duncan McNaughton
    Southern Legacies
    Starvation
    Text And Meaning Series By Aberjhani
    The American Poet Who Went Home Again
    The Angel's Game
    The Gargoyle By Andrew Davidson
    The Word "Nigger"
    Toni Morrison
    Tribute To Dick Gregory
    Video
    Video Podcast
    Video Poem
    William Anderson
    Women Authors
    World History
    World Poetry Day
    Writers And Writing
    Xenophobia
    Yang Jisheng
    Yoko Ono
    YouTube Videos

    RSS Feed

  • Author Statement
    • Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
    • Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah >
      • Podcast Prospects 504
      • More Books by Aberjhani >
        • Readers & Reviewers on the Writings of Aberjhani
        • Checking in at Goodreads
        • Editing Credits
        • ELEMENTAL: The Power of Illuminated Love (Art and Poetry Gift Book)
        • The River of Winged Dreams
        • The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois
        • Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player: A Novel by Aberjhani
        • I Made My Boy Out of Poetry
        • Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry
        • Buy Books by Aberjhani on Amazon
        • 10th Anniversary of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
  • Working Scribe Image Carousel
    • Aberjhani - Author Biography
    • Awards & Honors
    • Aberjhani Portfolio Sampler
    • Michael Jackson in Life & Legend
    • Creative Thinkers International
  • Blog: Visionary Vibes
    • Twitter Tweets & News Notes >
      • Author-Poet Aberjhani in the News
    • Blog: Silk-Featherbrush Art and Style >
      • Postered Poetics
    • Blog: Literary Persuasion Book Reviews
    • Blog: Sonic Delight Music Reviews >
      • Summer-Song Rhapsody for Michael Jackson: Editorial with Poem
    • Shifting Points of View and the Massacre in Charleston, South Carolina (USA)
    • 7 Ways to Help Replace Legislated Fear with Informed Compassion
  • Art and Poster Store
    • Your Introduction to Original Silk-Featherbrush Art & Style
  • About Bright Skylark Literary Productions
    • Bright Skylark Values and Motto
  • Quotations
    • Pinterest Page of Quotations
  • Charter for a More Compassionate World
  • As a Poet Thinketh
    • The Bridge of Silver Wings
    • Rainbow-Song for the Angel of Tao by Aberjhani
    • Ode to the Good Black Boots that Served My Soul So Well (poem by Aberjhani)
    • Angel of Remembrance: Candles for September 11, 2001
    • Rainbow-Song for the Angel of Tao: Verse 1
  • Articles and Essays
    • Abbreviated Minds in the News for Wreaking Havoc Worldwide editorial by Aberjhani
    • Iconic Authors Toni Morrison's and Harper Lee's New Works Likely to Influence Dialogues on Race
    • Red Summer: Text and Meaning in Claude McKay’s poem ‘If We Must Die’” part 1 of special 4-part series by Aberjhani
    • A Writer's Journey to Selma, Alabama
    • Justice Remains Elusive in Case of Newly-freed Louis C. Taylor (Part 1 of 2)
    • Sensualized Transcendence: Editorial and Poem on the Art of Jaanika Talts (Part 1)
    • Realms of Emerging Light (Sensualized Transcendence Editorial and Poem on the Art of Jaanika Talts Part 2)
    • Notes on the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation
    • Why Race Mattered in Barack Obama's Re-Election: Editorial and Poem
    • Posted Perspectives on America's 2012 Presidential Election
    • 47 Percenters and Guerrilla Decontextualization: Dreamers and Nightmares
    • Considering Michael Clarke Duncan: Big Black Man Within A Nonsociopoliticohistorical Context (Editorial with Poem)
  • Video Pen & Ink
  • Links and Connections
    • Aberjhani's Guerrilla Decontextualization
  • Contact the Author