Photo: Marcus Jackson Co-Founder of CAAPP Dawn Lundy Martin The Center for African American Poetry and Poetics has released its spring lineup of online events, continuing the University of Pittsburgh group s mission of highlighting, promoting, and sharing the poetry and poetic work of African American and African diasporic writers. The events kicked off on March 3 with a conversation on time with Ladan Osman, Demian DinéYazhi´, Aldrin Valdez, and Divya Victor. This collection of poets and visual artists sat in conversation on Wednesday, leading the season of events in a strong way. CAAPP launched in 2016 and has continuously brought unique programming to Pittsburgh since its inception. With events going online, the audience has expanded to a national and even global stage.
I can’t hit the page without hearing Hendrix, his psychedelically bluesed guitar journeys I bathed in for at least an hour every day for four or five years of my early twenties until I’d memorized every solo, him fingering feedback and folding wah wah into sonic ambulances of soul. I can’t hit the page without the echo of Muddy Waters’s Mississippi guitar that found its way to an electrified Chicago, without hearing the “I’m a Man” foundational blocks with his legendary harmonica men Little Walter, Carey Bell, James Cotton, Junior Wells, Big Walter Horton, George Smith. I hear their tremolo and bravado, the shuffles, train tracks and galactic howls seeping from their mouths through reeds and between their fingers, and I ache to bring it to the page I bleed to breathe it into stanzas. I can’t hit the page without Yusef Lateef and John Lee Hooker and Curtis Mayfield blazing across the chorus. I can’t hit the page without Prince on stage at the Super Bowl strutting
Poet. Novelist. Playwright. Activist. There wasn’t much that Langston Hughes couldn t do. Born in Joplin, Missouri on February 1, 1902, Hughes an innovator of the jazz poetry art form eventually made his way to New York City, where he became one of the most recognized leaders of the Harlem Renaissance. But even amongst his peers, Hughes’s work stood out as unique.
In 1973’s
Modern Black Poets: A Collection of Critical Essays, critic Donald B. Gibson wrote that Hughes “differed from most of his predecessors among black poets … in that he addressed his poetry to the people, specifically to black people. During the twenties when most American poets were turning inward, writing obscure and esoteric poetry to an ever decreasing audience of readers, Hughes was turning outward, using language and themes, attitudes and ideas familiar to anyone who had the ability simply to read.”
Good morning, and welcome to the L.A. Times Book Club newsletter.
With all that’s happened in 2020, I’m so grateful for this one-of-a-kind community book club that’s brought us together in such unexpected ways.
This year, on the page and in our live and virtual gatherings, we dived into a pandemic classic as the real-world pandemic hit, rode with the Compton Cowboys as protests filled our streets, swam from Southern California to Iceland and the South China Sea, cooked at home with two California chefs, celebrated a visionary L.A. sci-fi legend, and listened to the inspiring, heartbreaking verse of eight Black poets reeling from injustice and uncertainty.