Bright Skylark Literary Productions
  • Bright Skylark Literary Productions Sitemap
  • Author Statement
    • Blog: Visionary Vibes >
      • Aberjhani - Author Biography
      • Bright Skylark News Notes
      • Blog: Cultural Arts Reviews and Remembrances
      • 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) >
        • Author-Poet Aberjhani in the News
      • 7 Ways to Help Replace Legislated Fear with Informed Compassion
    • Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind >
      • Tribute to Savannah Author Robert T.S. Mickles Sr.
    • 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
  • AI Literary Chat Salon
  • Carousel of Sustainable Compassion
  • Working Scribe Carousel Number 2
    • Awards & Honors
    • My LinkedIn Portfolio Sampler
    • Pop Icon Michael Jackson in Life & Legend
    • Creative Thinkers International
  • Art and Poster Store
    • Blog: Silk-Featherbrush Art and Style
    • Postered Poetics
    • Your Introduction to Original Silk-Featherbrush Art & Style
  • Choose a Cultural Arts Heritage Project to Support
  • Working Scribe Image Carousel 2
  • About Bright Skylark Literary Productions
    • Bright Skylark Values and Motto
  • Famous Quotes of Note
    • Pinterest Page of Quotations
  • Charter for a More Compassionate World
  • As a Poet Thinketh: Poetry by Aberjhani
    • 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
  • Working Scribe Image Carousel 2
  • Working Scribe Image Carousel 2
  • Bright Skylark LP Storefront

Literary & Cultural arts Persuasions: 
Reviews & Remembrances by Aberjhani

Exploring the stylistic texts, images, and provocative meanings
of contemporary & classic cultural arts.

Main Page

Remembering Earth-Angel Christia Cummings-Slack

12/15/2022

3 Comments

 
Picture
Pictured from far right to left are: “Christie” Cummings, Aberjhani, John Beary, Zoe Randall, Javier Matos, and Susan Patrice. (April 6, 1996 Creative Loafing photo by Marcus Kenney from Bright Skylark LP Archives. Originally published with story titled “Commune Strives to Blend Art and Life Into One Big Picture” by Bob Ruggiero)

Some like-minded, and like-spirited, friends once told me that because we had spent so much time “meditating in the light together” we would always be connected on certain levels. That is how I feel about my now departed multi-talented friend Christia Cummings-Slack (?-2022): artist, spiritual coach, women’s empowerment advocate, angelologist, and courageous compassionate human being.

We met in the mid-1990s during the hey-day of the former Blue House, described in Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah as a place were: “…artists, poets, musicians, soldiers, and social theorists had gathered to share their talents and talk about possibilities for Savannah’s future. There were black, white, Latino, male, female…” She was then a recent graduate of SCAD and I a bookstore manager also recognized as a columnist and poet. 
​Christia, known then as Christine Cummings, was also a principal supporter of the now legendary Blue House and a member of the production team for its “’zine” journal publication: OUT OF THE BLUE. The theme for its fall 1996 issue was “A Celebration of Home.” Among the contributors were: now well-known artists like Marcus Kenney and James Russell May; plus, an excerpt from work by poet Audre Lorde (1934-1992) and poems by Blue House founder Susan Patrice, Kathleen Thompson, Don Newman, Louisa Abbot, and Zoe Randall (among others).
Picture

Christine and I also contributed to that special historic issue. My contributions to the journal were the poem “Calligraphy of Intimacy” from I Made My Boy of Poetry, and a review of a mini-concert by a beloved acid-jazz rock group called the Hunab Ku Quartet.   

Christine may have been the most prolific contributor of us all to that second issue of Out of Blue. In addition to drawings and ads about workshops she was conducting, included was an untitled prose piece in which she reflected on the emotional pros and cons of going home for Thanksgiving. Within her words are clear signs of an evolving spiritual seeker as she notes observations like:

“I have been learning lately that if you really need to do something or want something that is ultimately good for you, the energy will be there to make it so.” In response to an aunt’s interpretation of the sudden appearance of certain caterpillars, she later states: “…I feel as though I am in my cocoon already emerged in the darkness and beginning to transform into a soul that can fly free…” 

Christina also contributed to the Out of the Blue journal something which took me completely by surprise. It was a poem: 

Autumn by Christine Cummings 

           She tires easy now
          The wind blows cooler
          Her color changes
          The wind blows faster
          Her color fades
          She misses the warmth of the sun
          and children playing around her.

          Soon she will be barren
          She will get sleepy
          and draw within herself
          and dream while
          her roots draw
          nourishment from the
          Great Source, the Great
          Mother, feeding her
          dreams of belonging
          and of coming HOME.
The Blue House had to close its doors after a few years and our life paths led us in different directions determined by personal obligations. Via occasional in-person visits and a new thing called email, we managed to lose touch with each other reconnect many times over the years. We shared a passion for angel lore, which in her works manifested as inspiring art and channeled insights. In mine, it took the form of poems that gave birth to the book The River of Winged Dreams. We also both greatly appreciated and drew encouragement from the poetry of Rumi. 
All of this meant we were able to encourage each during uncertain times in our lives. She thought I got it wrong when I said a popular journalist friend of mine would likely become a friend of hers as well because I felt the essence of their natures to be very similar. She later decided I got it right. When we discussed the “possibility” of her becoming engaged to Richard Slacks Jr., something in her voice told me it was already a beautiful done deal, and one that would bless both their lives for a long time.

It was an honor to watch, from a short distance, as she evolved in the manner which she sensed was to come when writing in Out of the Blue and became: Christia. I smiled to read the different testimonies of people who said she touched their lives in healing and sometimes life-changing ways. Almost like an Earth-Angel they had never dreamed of encountering. 

"BE LOVE"

For her part, she knew her approach to spirituality would be viewed as “radical” by some and did not apologize for it. Just the opposite in fact: “I AM A Certified Angelic Life Coach, an Ordained Minister, Usui Reiki Master/Teacher, and hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts  and a Master of Fine Arts in painting.” Such radicalism, if it really can be called such, seemed an essential antidote to the extremes of violence and hatred which flooded the world throughout her lifetime. 

This remembrance tribute to my friend could have ended with her poem. At this particular time in history, however, I feel it more important to end with the following words from her 2005 op ed letter published in CONNECT Savannah: “Now is the time to be Peace, Love, and Understanding in the face of conflict, pain, and suffering. Now is the time to BE LOVE.”

Think of how much the world could gain at this very moment if humanity chose to take to its collective heart those extremely simple and profoundly wise words.

Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
Creator of Silk-Featherbrush Artstyle

    Contact Author-Artist Aberjhani at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Submit
3 Comments

‘Talks Between My Pen and Muse’ an Inspired Literary Debut from Poet Aurie Cole

4/10/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
(“Blessed Be the Poets” artwork by Aberjhani ©2021)
The title of Aurie Cole’s debut collection of poetry, Talks Between My Pen and Muse, caught my attention and held it from the moment I first saw it. That a contemporary young poet acknowledged such a thing as a “Muse” was captivating in itself because it meant the poet was willing to let something other than ego-driven rage, lust, envy, or self-righteousness control completely the contents of her lines. It also meant she was attempting a partnership between classic notions of how poetry functions in the world and her own modern vision of it. My curiosity was stirred enough to place the title on my list of poetry books to read during National Poetry Month 2021 and I am glad I did.
​
This is a slim volume of 75 pages divided into 8 parts. Obviously, the sections themselves would have to be brief but the emotional intensity and aesthetic intentions come through with impressive power and precision. Unless there should be any confusion, the title of each section includes its definition. For the purposes of this review, I will leave readers to discover for themselves Cole’s preferred definitions but these are the headings (caps per original text): 1) MUSE; 2) RELATIONSHIP; 3) PITY PARTY; 4) SABOTAGE; 5) MISCONSTRUE; 6) FORGIVE/FORGIVENESS; 7) REBOOT; and SELF LOVE. 


​“Loving, Happy, Untamed, Passionate"

What I thought I might encounter with the first poem was either a dialogue between the poet’s pen and her muse and or a monologue from one pouring out grievances to the universe. Instead, the very first poem is titled “Stolen Muse.” There is no doubting the seriousness of this theft as Cole screams at the beginning:

Somebody call the cops!
My muse has been stolen
I repeat my muse has been stolen…


The pain of this crime is felt in each stanza as she dramatically describes the sleep deprivation and loss of creativity it has caused. Yet there is also gentle self-deprecating humor while observing:

I feel too normal
I need my abnormality back…


The depth of her need is amplified with the following simultaneously pleading and demanding  lines:

I want it back the way it was taken
Opinionated, LOUD, wild, confused
Loving, happy, untamed, passionate
Smart enough, encouraging, kinda shy
Uncorrupted by the norms of society
Unpierced by the actions of my peers
AND ALL MINE


In the poems which flow immediately afterwards, titled “Nicking,” “Lost Scared Afraid,” and “My Muse,” the poet’s attachment to what most inspires her can be understood at different times in different ways. In one moment, it is an addiction of a healthy variety rather than a destructive one. In the next, it reads and feels a lot like a love affair brutally interrupted by the kind of heinous disregard which too often in our current over-technologized world leads to tragic consequences. 


​In the Tradition of Baring One’s Soul

​The poems in the RELATIONSHIP section are as introspective and soulfully analytical as a reader might expect. But they also demonstrate Cole’s passion for language with titles like “Imbroglio” and “The Rage of Words.”  The latter is particularly powerful for its depiction of language as a weapon in a battle between intimates. The quality of intimacy, in fact, is one of the stronger aspects of poetry throughout Talks Between My Pen and Muse. In poem after poem, it weaves back and forth between elements of trust and distrust, strength and fragility, condemnation and forgiveness, and love and risk. 
Picture
The poems “Caged Bird” and “Caged Bird Freed” reinforce the perception of Cole as a writer with classic leanings. The titles’ obvious references to Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Paul Laurence Dunbar’s  poem, “Sympathy,” which provided Angelou with the title of her famous autobiography, place Cole within the tradition of soul-baring African-American literature without restricting her to it.   
​
Instead of offering strategies for navigating the painful uncertainties of her personal journey, the Savannah, Georgia-born poet simply presents her own efforts at balancing them. In this way, she self-identifies with humanity as a whole rather than with a single segment of it. Near the end of the volume, she notes the following in a letter to herself:

I know you
From your favorite color
To your deepest secrets
From your untold feelings
To your wildest dreams

I care about
Your every word
Simplest request
Smallest dreams…


There is a tremendous amount to appreciate in this first edition of Aurie Cole’s debut volume as her pen makes its free-styling way through shock and despair toward hope and self-determination. However, it has to be said as well that serious readers of poetry are likely to find a number of typographical errors distracting. These are understandable enough because talented young poets rarely receive the kind of publishing support which ensures the absence of such mistakes. (How many, after all, such as the celebrated Amanda Gorman are likely to receive an invitation to recite their poetry at a presidential inauguration and subsequently get Oprah Winfrey to write a foreword for their book, basically guaranteeing its status as a number 1 bestseller?)

Other critically-minded readers may question the absence of poems dealing with such timely issues as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, or Black Lives Matter. In a way, it may be argued that the more deeply personal writings inspired by the poet’s muse are a kind of response to these very concerns as they illustrate the power of sheltering within the integrity of one’s own sanity in a world knocked off balance by myriad forms of chaos. The important thing may be the knowledge that Talks Between My Pen and Muse is only a first important literary step for Aurie Cole and readers hopefully can look forward to many more writings from her pen and muse in the future. 

Aberjhani
Author of Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind
Creator of Authentic Silk-Fe
atherbrush Artstyle

    Contact Author at Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Submit
0 Comments

Exploring the Wonder and Enigma of Flannery O'Connor (part 3 of 3)

12/18/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
Postered Chomatic Poetics "Wonder & Enigma of Flannery O'connor" title art graphic by Aberjhani.
Impaired as she was by lupus, O’Connor may not have been able to barrel ahead with the same level of prolific productivity as some of her contemporaries—such as James Baldwin for example-- but neither did she let it bring her career to a screeching halt between the time of her diagnosis and her death on August 3, 1964. 

She followed the novel Wise Blood with a collection of short stories, A Good Man is Hard to Find, in 1955; the novel The Violent Bear it Away in 1960; and the short story collection Everything That Rises Must Converge ––a book on which she worked virtually right up until her death–– published posthumously in 1965. In between the writing and the publishing, she marshaled her strength to travel (aided by crutches) and lecture, write articles for popular magazines (for which she was generally well paid), and write numerous letters to friends, supporters, and critics. 

(To read part 1 of this story please click here. For part 2 click this link.)
​
The O’Connor readers and scholars now know would not have been possible without a tightly woven network of friends and family members who supported her work through belief in, and out of love for, her. After illness derailed her plans to live the life of a postmodern New York author, she famously surrounded herself with peacocks at Andalusia, her family’s farm, and allowed the world to come to her just as much as she continued to embrace it on the page and through speaking engagements. Fellow authors, theologians, aspiring writers, general admirers, and would-be lovers in the form of men as well as women often made their way to her front door.  
Picture
Flannery O'Connor quotation art graphic by AZ Quotes.
​Her editor, Robert Giroux, believed enough in the corpus of her work that in 1971 he published The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor. A compilation of all her short fiction, The Complete Stories went on to win the National Book Award for Fiction in 1972, and in 2009—shortly after Brad Gooch’s biography was published–– was voted “The Best of the National Book Awards Fiction.” 


​Mother and Daughter Together

Of all those who shared their life’s energies to help endow Flannery O’Connor’s with enduring meaning possibly none were more crucial than her mother, Regina Cline O’Connor. The relationship between mother and daughter could alternate between a sensitive symbiosis and a barely-restrained combativeness. But: the fact is that despite her great intellectual prowess Flannery O’Connor was made an invalid by her disease and it could not have been any easier for her mother to watch her daughter’s slow agonizing physical decline any more than it had been to watch her husband’s. She nevertheless bore the “cross” of the affliction which defined so much of her own life’s story.

As such, she did the kinds of things caregivers tend to do when committed to ensuring as high a quality of life as they can for someone they love: setting aside a thermos of hot coffee at night to share with Flannery in the morning, running a farm to secure an income, tolerating the droppings and cries of beautiful but annoying peacocks, traveling abroad with her daughter even when she herself was ill, and standing guard at her hospital room door to ensure a chance at rest and possible recovery. 
Regina Cline is very much present in the pages of Flannery but a section or two presented within the context of her struggles to assist her daughter might have made this powerful biography even more compelling. She outlived the writer by almost thirty-one years, dying on May 8, 1995, at the age of ninety-nine. 


​In Praise of Those Who Wait

In the acknowledgments section of his biography on the author, Brad Gooch informs readers that he “first stepped into the world of Flannery O’Connor in the late 1970s.” Thoroughly smitten by what he found in that world, he respectfully wrote her close friend Sally Fitzgerald, editor of The Habit of Being, Letters of Flannery O’Connor, to obtain her blessings for his hope to write a biography. Fitzgerald advised him in 1980 against such an undertaking because she was already in the process of writing a literary biography of her friend. Consequently, Gooch held off and waited, even beyond Fitzgerald’s death in 2000, for a book that never appeared.
​
Then, approached by an editor in 2003 about a biography on O’Connor, it clearly was not an offer he could refuse. A dream which had been deferred for more than two decades finally saw the light of day in 2009 and by most accounts it was very much worth the wait.

Author

Aberjhani is co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance as well as author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah and Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind.

0 Comments

American Dream Meets Black Reality in Johnson's 'From “N Word” to Mr. Mayor'

5/6/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
To fully appreciate reading former Savannah mayor Otis S. Johnson's From 'N Word' to Mr. Mayor, Experiencing the American Dream, you might want to note some important clues he shares at the book's beginning. The first is his identification of himself as a "scholar activist." Take that for exactly what it sounds like: he has long been devoted to the cultivation of knowledge within himself and others, as well as to the reversal of heinous social and political injustices.
​
A second shared hint is his struggle over whether to spell out the word "nigger" in this book's title or employ the more politically-accepted abbreviation. Following his publisher's suggestion, he chose the latter but felt the original more "symbolic of my struggle as a black male in American society." With that in mind, the book in general, he states, "documents my struggle to achieve the American Dream while having to confront the vicissitudes of being black in a racist society" (p. 11) 


​A Timeline of Powerful History

PictureFrom 'N Word' to Mr. Mayor, Experiencing the American Dream autobiography by Dr. Otis S. Johnson.
The above words may sound, to some, like little more than sensationalistic jargon employed to grab attention. It would be more accurate to describe them as precise when considering Johnson was born in 1942 and, from the beginning until the present era, his experience of the American dream has unfolded along a timeline of powerful history-shaping events on personal, national, and international levels.

For its precisely-balanced combination of social history and personal memoir, Johnson's book under any title is one of the most valuable written in recent years by an African-American man, and one of the most important for any time by a native of Savannah, Georgia. Being the former dean of Savannah State University's College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, and current Scholar in Residence and Professor Emeritus that he is, Dr. Johnson's text often reflects the language of his intellectual leanings. That allows him to place his life and his times within an analytical context similar to important works by some of his scholarly heroes, like Harlem Renaissance strategist W.E.B. Du Bois and political scientist Hanes Walton Jr. 
​
Yet, at the same time, he is a very down-to-earth writer who engages readers with stories of his family's Gullah culture heritage, what it meant to lose his father at an early age, learning about racism for the first time, falling in love and getting his heart broken, discovering the world as a young sailor, and confronting the challenges of leadership within a demographically-evolving community. 


​Anti-racism Activism

The city of Savannah and the state of Georgia as Johnson experienced them while growing into maturity during the 1960s were much like America at that time as a whole.  African Americans with many White Americans alongside them were calling for an end to Jim Crow apartheid and battling against the system by staging public sit-ins, conducting protest marches, and targeting racial barriers ripe for breaking.
​
Of his position in this history, Johnson writes, "My life has been full of being in places where I shocked non-blacks with my presence" (p. 88). One such place was on the campus of Armstrong State College (now Atlantic University) where in 1963 he famously became the first African American to enroll in the school. Another was the campus of the University of Georgia, Athens, where he was the first Black from Savannah to attend that institution. At UGA, he walked out of one class after a white professor discussing the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision proclaimed the only reason African-Americans wanted to integrate schools in Georgia was to marry white women. 
Art Prints

​Most of the kind of anti-racism activism Johnson chronicles is to be expected given the time-frame. In his chronicling, however, he provides important snapshots of black leaders in Savannah, like Wesley Wallace "W.W." Law and Hosea Williams, in political action. But his reportage goes beyond the dynamics of blackness clashing with whiteness.
​
Through his account of how segregation laws prevented Whites from attending the historically black Savannah State College, founded some 45 years prior to the establishment of Armstrong (as a junior college) in 1935, he demonstrates how racism has caused grievous injury on both sides of the color line. It has also been extremely absurd when considering that in order for him to become the first African-American to integrate Armstrong in 1963 for sake of racial progress in the name of democracy, he had to switch from Savannah State's senior college program curriculum to Armstrong's junior college curriculum.  

Navigating Major Changes

Early in From 'N Word' to Mr. Mayor (2016, Donning Company Publishers) Johnson discusses three types of black leadership attributed to sociologist Daniel C. Thompson (author of Sociology of the Black Experience) and with which many readers of African-American literature are familiar: "...the Uncle Tom...racial diplomat...and race advocate" (p. 48). He places himself closer to the third category but more as a "human rights advocate" who believes the following: "'We are all God's children,' but I live in an institutional and structural racist society. 'Self-preservation is the first law of nature'" (p. 49).
​
By the time Dr. Johnson took office in 2004 as the sixty-fourth mayor of Savannah, and its second consecutive black mayor (after the late Floyd Adams), the city was well on its way to navigating major changes in its multicultural and economic make-up. His determination to meet that challenge at every level resulted in 2006 in a major heart attack experienced while attending the National Conference of Black Mayors in Memphis, Tennessee. Consequently, he writes, "How I approached the job of being mayor during the period before and the period after my heart attack were two very different periods" (p. 291).
As it pertained to his labors as mayor, Johnson's professed sense of racial "self-preservation" took a back seat to his role as a servant leader committed to advocating "for improving conditions that impact people of all races and classes" (p. 261). In the wake of the Great Recession that would create chaos in American cities during his second term, he worked with city council members to help Savannah avoid the kind of disastrous lay-offs and cancellation of services which occurred in cities like Atlanta and Camden. As he points out:

"In 2011, we were still in the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression. We had to find a way to continue providing all of the services to citizens with about $8 million less than we had in 2010...while the 2011 budget was extremely difficult, it was balanced with minimal impact to our citizens and without an increase in property taxes. That was due to strong leadership, clear priorities, and tough resolve by this council, which chose not to spend wildly when times were good" (p. 325).

Candidates lining up for the 2020 presidential race in America could take a few helpful lessons from this former mayor's playbook. One might be committing to running a campaign based on proven abilities and a strategic comprehensive vision rather than one based on negative personal attacks. In fact, though he won his first election to mayor before former U.S. President Barack H. Obama won his first election to the White House, their campaign styles bore striking similarities. (The president and mayor met when Mr. Obama visited Savannah in 2010.)   

Conclusion

At times, From 'N Word' to Mr. Mayor reads a bit too much like a college paper, or lecture, as Johnson parenthetically informs readers where he will continue the thread of a particular subject or on which page he has already discussed it. This is easy enough to overlook, and even smile about, when remembering these pages are coming to us from a master scholar at whose literary feet we are fortunate indeed to sit and learn as much as possible. 
​
Aberjhani
Author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah
0 Comments

Morneweg's Penthe & Alphonse an Impressive Collage of Linguistic Versatility

3/4/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
Literary style and form play important supporting roles almost as captivatingly heroic as those of the title characters in Mark Morneweg's highly-innovative novel: Penthe & Alphonse. A reader casually thumbing through the book's pages might do a double-take over the word "novel" on the front cover and wonder if it should be poems instead. Yet a second quick run through the book's 99 pages would reveal it is in fact comprised of 135 brief chapters anywhere from two single lines to three or four pages long.

Having explored fusions of poetry and prose in works of my own with varying levels of success, I wondered how well Morneweg had met this challenge he issued to himself. Once I began reading in earnest, the chapters seemed to alternate like sequences in a film. They moved back and forth between flickering flashes of moments and extended scenes from the characters' private lives and America's public tragedy, also known as the Civil War. It soon became apparent the author has struck a masterful balance of historical detail, lyrical rhythm, and finely-nuanced emotional intensity.

The book begins with Alphonse's older sisters looking from a window down on him and Penthe, two former childhood playmates now entering adulthood, in a New Orleans courtyard reading poetry by Francois Villon. The delicate intimacy between them is apparent and alluring. But because he is categorized racially as white and she, in the language of 1800s American south, as a biracial "octoroon" (meaning "three quarters French and one black") their intense intimacy is also dangerous. In addition, despite racial categorizations, they are second cousins.

The kind of relationship Penthe and Alphonse had during childhood was not uncommon for the time, but most children were expected to "grow out of it" as they matured and retreat to their respective black and white demographic niches. Alphonse's and Pense's relationship, however, continues to develop through a series of circumstances along a more sensuous, humane, and uncompromising trajectory.      


​Distance Making Hearts Grow Fonder

When Penthe is sent off to a girl's school in Paris, we witness through an exchange of letters how their attachment to each other intensifies rather than diminishes. Most are from Penthe to Alphonse and a couple give us some of the longer passages in the entire book. This is an excerpt from one of Penthe's:
Alphonse,

Penthe in Paris--A letter from a sweet girl to her
beloved friend back home in New Orleans.
You know I am not sweet.
Ha!

They want us to practice writing in a foreign language, so
I am writing this in English. We are trilingual, you and
I, -- our native Creole, French, and English.
That makes us complex...


            Adieu,
            Penthe

​​One letter comes from Alphonse after Penthe writes him to confess she may allow herself to be seduced by a "knucklehead...strapling youth" with a reputation for introducing willing young women to sex. It is not the response either Pense or the reader might have expected:
Penthe,

I will not come to Paris to save you.
Are you just trying to be funny with all of your ha-ha's?
Justine is barely a passing fancy. I cannot see you
with a knucklehead.

I will want you any way you are--
​

            Je t'aime,
            Alphonse


​Exchanging letters becomes a practice on which they depend during several trials of separation. It is to the author's credit that he fashions this technique as deftly as he does into an already impressive collage of linguistic versatility.

Complications of Love, War, and Race

If Morneweg had relied on nothing more than Penthe & Alphonse's ever-increasing passion for each other to give shape and substance to his story he likely would have ended up with just a cleverly-styled romance novel (a noble enough genre in its own right). But like certain masters of epic works before him--consider Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in The Time of Cholera, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, or Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God--he establishes a series of contexts which threaten love's chances of survival.

Racism directed against Penthe is something Alphonse makes clear he will not tolerate. When another man calls her "a part-nigger whore," he challenges him to a dual and manages to shoot him without killing him. At the same time, he suffers through moral ambivalence when it comes to fighting in the Civil War, demonstrating how complex the issues behind it truly were: "If the Yankees invade, I will fight them. I will fight, but I am not too thrilled. I will not be morbid in front of Penthe Anne." Such reasoning brings to mind the song by Sade: Love Is Stronger Than Pride.

From one minimalist chapter to the next, they love their way through war, two epidemics of Yellow Fever, race riots, the demands of grandchildren, and old age. Looking at a printed copy of Penthe & Alphonse, or even just the cover on a screen after reading the book, gives the feeling of staring at an optical illusion because Morneweg has managed, somehow, to deliver much more than what appearance promises. The range of time covered, scope and depth of emotions engaged, and intricacy of styles employed seem too much for the pages containing them. 


​What Geek Bookaholics Often Do

Morneweg, who died almost three years ago, was apparently of the class of authors whose relationship with literature was so unabashedly personal and organic that whether he dressed his text in hard blocks of layered prose or shimmering veils of poetry, it revealed meanings both hauntingly familiar and astonishingly new. What came burning through more clearly than anything else was an authentic original vision of literary possibilities and human values.

In the course of reading Penthe & Alphonse, I began to do what geek bookaholics often do when sensing that within their hands is not just a good book but a rare and beautiful kind of priceless mind. I began attempting to discern who the author's strongest literary influences had been. I could hear William Faulkner's spirit wandering between lines while meditating on the nature and traumas comprising the identity (or should we now say identities?) of the American south. But who were the others?
​
The answer came one day when I was discussing the title with a friend and she loaned me a copy of a booklet about one Mark Louis Morneweg published by El Portal Press. In it, he noted his passion for "Miss Emily [Dickinson]"along with deep appreciation for others who had also helped stir to action my own pen. Among them: Federico Garcia Lorca, Pablo Neruda, James Joyce, Shakespeare, Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, and Albert Camus. 
Picture
Mark Louis Morneweg: December27, 1951 -July 9, 2016. (Image courtesy of El Portal Press @ http://www.elportalpress.com)

​He shared these words in regard to his approach to writing fiction: "Unplanned adventures in literature. An idea pops into your head and you go from there. Nothing structured or laid out beforehand. Just one word comes and you have an entire chapter to write and that is great..." (The only time I had ever allowed myself that kind of compositional freedom was while writing Christmas When Music Saved the World, later titled Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player.)

Maybe even more importantly for the purposes of this essay, he told us this: "...I am a prose stylist with some amazingly short chapters. Some chapters that are poems. Prose poems." And added: "Penthe is about taking risks. Artistic risks. Passion..." The risk was one that paid off extremely well because ultimately Penthe & Alphonse succeeds as both an epic poem and an amazing novel.
​
Moreover, in addition to taking risks, it is also about what Lady Gaga refers to as the right to curate one's life as one sees fit. Along those same lines, Morneweg chose not to douse the flames of his startling creative literary inventiveness. He chose instead to feed the fire with boldness sufficient enough to increase its light and heat so others could gather around and savor the prize of unexpected beauty.

By Aberjhani
Harlem Renaissance Centennial
Co-author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance  
​
Author of Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind


    Contact the Author

Submit
0 Comments
<<Previous

    Archives

    November 2023
    June 2023
    February 2023
    December 2022
    June 2022
    February 2022
    November 2021
    September 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    December 2019
    November 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    October 2017
    July 2017
    August 2012

    Categories

    All
    1950s
    1960s
    2022 Russia Ukraine War
    20th Century Authors
    21st Century Artists
    21st Century Authors
    21st Century Poets
    Aberjhani
    Aberjhani Observance Of National Poetry Month
    Aberjhani On Aurie Cole
    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 Immigration
    Aberjhani On Jean-Paul Sartre
    Aberjhani On Mao Zedong
    Aberjhani On Mark Morneweg
    Aberjhani On Maya Angelou
    Aberjhani On Otis S. Johnson
    Aberjhani On Paul Laurence Dunbar
    Aberjhani On PT Armstrong
    Aberjhani On Russia Ukraine Was
    Aberjhani On Savannah Georgia
    Aberjhani On Savannah-Georgia
    Aberjhani On Yang Jisheng
    Adapting Books For Film
    Africa
    African American Authors
    African-American Authors
    African-American Comics
    African American History Month
    African American Men
    African-American Men
    African Americans
    African Americans Abroad
    African Americans In Japan
    African Americans Living Outside America
    African American Writers In Savannah GA
    African Diaspora
    African Engineers
    African Writers
    AI Literary Chat Salon
    Alice Walker
    Amanda Gorman
    American Artists
    American Authors
    American Civil War
    American PEN Video
    Andrew Davidson
    Angel Art
    Angel Lore
    Angel Meme
    Angel Of War And The Year 2022
    Angelology
    Annie Cohen-Solal
    Antiracism
    Archangel Michael
    Art By Aberjhani
    Art By Christia Cummings-Slack
    Artist-Author Aberjhani
    Artist James Russell May
    Artist Marcus Kenney
    Asian Authors
    Audio Podcast
    Aurie Cole
    Author Brad Gooch
    Author Connie Zweig
    Author Franklin D. Lewis
    Author Interview
    Author Mark Morneweg
    Author Poet Aberjhani Official Site
    Author-Poet Aberjhani - Official Site
    Authors
    Authors From Savannah Georgia
    Ava DuVernay
    Benjamin Hollander
    Benjamin Van Clark Neighborhood
    Ben Okri
    Ben Okri Videos
    Best Interviews Of 2023
    Bill Berkson
    Biography
    Biracial Relationships
    Biracial Women
    Black History Month
    Black Men Who Write
    Black Movie Directors
    Black Women Authors
    Blogs By Aberjhani
    Booker Prize For Literature
    Booker Prize Winners
    Book Industry
    Book Publishing
    Book Reviews
    Book Reviews By Aberjhani
    Books
    Books About Rumi
    Books About Savannah-Georgia
    Books About Sufism
    Books And Authors
    Books By Aurie Cole
    Books By Darrell Gartrell
    Books By Flannery O'Connor
    Books By Patricia Ann West
    Books By PT Armstrong
    Books By Robert T.S. Mickles Sr.
    Books By Rotimi Ogunjobi
    Books On Flannery O'Connor
    Brad Gooch
    Brad Gooch Audio Podcast
    Brunswick Georgia
    Canadian Authors
    Canadian Novelists
    Carlos Ruiz Zafon
    Caste The Origins Of Our Discontents
    Celebrity Authors
    Children's Literature
    Chinese Authors
    Chinese History
    Christia Cummings-Slack
    Christina Cummings-Slack
    Christine Cummings
    Classic Authors
    Connie Zweig
    Contemporary African Literature
    Contemporary African Writers
    Contemporary Artists
    Contemporary Authors
    Contemporary Canadian Authors
    Contemporary Literature
    Contemporary Southern Literature
    Cormac Mccarthy
    Cornel West
    Creative Nonfiction
    Creative Thinkers
    Cultural Demographics
    Cultural Heritage
    David Gordon Green
    Dick Gregory Videos
    Digital Publishing
    Director Regina King
    Director Steve McQueen
    Doctorate In Literature
    Dreams Of The Immortal City Savannah Book By Aberjhani
    Duncan McNaughton
    Ebooks
    Education
    El Portal Press
    English As A Second Language
    English Learning Students
    Essay On 21 Years Of Wisdom
    Essays By Aberjhani
    Essays On Ben Okri
    Essays On Duncan McNaughton
    Essays On Flannery O'Connor
    Essays On Immigration
    Eugene Talmadge
    Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge
    Evolving Cultures
    Existential Creativity
    Existentialism
    Fall Of The Rebel Angels
    Famous Women Artists
    Fiction
    Filming Movies In Savannah-Georgia
    Flannery O'Connor
    French Authors
    French Literature
    Genre Bending Literature
    Genre-bending Literature
    Global Community
    Grandmothers
    Great Sufi Poets
    Greeting Flannery O'Connor At The Back Door Of Mind Book By Aberjhani
    Gullah Geechee Culture
    Gustave Flaubert
    Halloween's End
    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
    Immigrant Experience
    Immigration Policies
    Influential Authors
    International Authors
    International Poets
    Interracial Relationships
    Interview
    Isabel Wilkerson
    Jalal Al-Din Mohammad Balkhi
    Jalal Al Din Mohammad Rumi
    Jalal Al-Din Mohammad Rumi
    James Joyce
    Jean Genet
    Jean-Paul Sartre
    Jelaluddin Rumi
    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 Community
    Literary Criticism
    Literary Essays
    Literary Friendships
    Literary History
    Literary Honors
    Literary Influencers
    Literary Influences
    Literary Legacies Of The South
    Literary Prizes
    Literary Traditions
    Literary Translations
    Literature Of Immigration
    Luca Giordano
    Memoir
    Memoir By Darrell Gartrell
    Michal Majernik
    Movie Sets
    Mythology
    National Poetry Month
    Naturalism Fiction
    New Orleans
    Nicanor Parra
    Nigerian Authors
    Nigerian Literature
    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
    Oklahoma City
    Oprah Winfrey
    Patricia Ann West
    PEN America
    PEN International
    Philosophy
    Podcast On Literature
    Poems About Savannah-Georgia
    Poems By Patricia Ann West
    Poetry
    Poetry By Aurie Cole
    Poetry By Duncan McNaughton
    Poets Against War
    Poets From
    Poets From Afghanistan
    Poets From Boston
    Poets From Savannah Georgia
    Poets From Savannah-Georgia
    Poets On War
    Political Activism
    Political Biographies
    Political Strategies
    Political Theories
    Postered Poetics Art By Aberjhani
    Predatory Gentrification
    Preventing Erasures Of History
    Prose And Poetry
    Prose Poem
    Public Intellectuals
    Public School System
    Publishers
    Publishing
    Publishing Options
    Putin Attacks Ukraine
    Q&A With Author
    QOTD Quote Of The Day
    Quentin Tarantino
    Quotations
    Quotes By Dick Gregory
    Quotes By Flannery O'Connor
    Quotes By Mark Morneweg
    Race In America
    Race In Japan
    Racism In Georgia
    Racism In Savannah
    Racism In The United States
    Reiki Master
    Richard Wright
    Rotimi Ogunjobi
    Rumi Day
    Rumi's Birthday
    Russian Invasion Of Ukraine
    Russia Ukraine Conflict 2022
    Russia Ukraine Video
    Russia Ukraine War
    Salman Rushdie
    Sandfly In Savannah Georgia
    San Francisco Poets
    Savannah College Of Art And Design Graduates
    Savannah Georgia
    Savannah-Georgia
    Savannah River
    Savannah State University
    SCAD Graduates
    Shams Of Tabriz
    Singer Sade
    Social Activism
    Social Realism
    Somewhere In The Stream By Duncan McNaughton
    South Carolina
    Southern Legacies
    Spike Lee
    Spiritual Counseling
    Spirituality
    Starvation
    Still Water Words
    Sufi Literature
    Talks Between My Pen And Muse
    Teachable Take-Aways
    Text And Meaning Series By Aberjhani
    The American Poet Who Went Home Again
    The Angel's Game
    The Famished Road
    The Gargoyle By Andrew Davidson
    The River Of Winged Dreams
    The Word "Nigger"
    Toni Morrison
    Transgression Fiction
    Transgression Literature
    Transgressive Literature
    Tribute To Dick Gregory
    Ukraine Russia Crisis 2022
    Video
    Video Podcast
    Video Poem
    Videos About Rumi
    Videos On Literature
    Wakanda Forever
    War And Peace
    William Anderson
    Wisdom21
    Women Artists
    Women Authors
    Women Poets
    Women's Voices
    World Community
    World History
    World Poetry Day
    Writers And Writing
    Xenophobia
    Yang Jisheng
    Year 2022 In Review
    Yoko Ono
    YouTube Videos

    RSS Feed

  • Bright Skylark Literary Productions Sitemap
  • Author Statement
    • Blog: Visionary Vibes >
      • Aberjhani - Author Biography
      • Bright Skylark News Notes
      • Blog: Cultural Arts Reviews and Remembrances
      • 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) >
        • Author-Poet Aberjhani in the News
      • 7 Ways to Help Replace Legislated Fear with Informed Compassion
    • Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind >
      • Tribute to Savannah Author Robert T.S. Mickles Sr.
    • 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
  • AI Literary Chat Salon
  • Carousel of Sustainable Compassion
  • Working Scribe Carousel Number 2
    • Awards & Honors
    • My LinkedIn Portfolio Sampler
    • Pop Icon Michael Jackson in Life & Legend
    • Creative Thinkers International
  • Art and Poster Store
    • Blog: Silk-Featherbrush Art and Style
    • Postered Poetics
    • Your Introduction to Original Silk-Featherbrush Art & Style
  • Choose a Cultural Arts Heritage Project to Support
  • Working Scribe Image Carousel 2
  • About Bright Skylark Literary Productions
    • Bright Skylark Values and Motto
  • Famous Quotes of Note
    • Pinterest Page of Quotations
  • Charter for a More Compassionate World
  • As a Poet Thinketh: Poetry by Aberjhani
    • 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
  • Working Scribe Image Carousel 2
  • Working Scribe Image Carousel 2
  • Bright Skylark LP Storefront