WILLIE JAMES KING

Willie James King

I became an admirer of Willie James King a few years ago while I was still NC Poet Laureate.  Preparing a feature for the NC Arts Council on Pembroke Magazine's African American writers  issue, I knew that  I liked his poetry right away.  Since then I've come to like  him, his straightforward presentation of his life and his work, his obvious delight in the written word, and his sense of place and region.    Reared in Orrville, Alabama,  he is the author of three books of which only one is still in print, The House in the Heart.  (Such a great title, isn't it?)  It has a foreword by Cathy Smith-Bowers, our current NC Poet Laureate.  His poems appear widely in literary print journals and online as well, among them Alehouse, Appalachian Heritage,  Confrontation, Cutthroat, The Caribbean Writer, Pembroke Magazine, Obsidian, The Lullwater Review, and The Southern Poetry Review. ( Over a hundred-plus poems, or so.  Wow!) He resides in Montgomery, AL. His manuscript, Autumn's Only Blood is scheduled for publication in 2012.

I will be posting more about this book when it appears, but for now my readers will have to be satisfied with the following three poems from the collection and this testimonial that I wrote after reading Willie James's manuscript.




How a poet comes to his voice remains a mystery and so it should remain, for poetic lyricism and passion rise up in the darkest of times, as well as in the most beautiful. It sings those moments when the words in one's mouth taste of blood, as well as those when they taste of ripe plum, sweet, sweet, sweet, as Willie James King reminds us, closing out his powerful new book of poems. Dedicated to Troy Davis, executed by my native state of Georgia after denying an appeal that might have exonerated him, these poems speak honestly of the injustice inflicted by racism, the strength of resistance, and the sheer pleasure, inextricable from the pain, that being alive can bring, and doing so with what I call pure, unadulterated "wordlove." This poet has learned to trust his language, let it lead him where the poem needs to go. His poems sing, mourn, rage, celebrate, their language always remaining true to its source. 








It Will Not Slip

To pull away from it all, you know, quit!

without an effort to begin again

is as if you've done enough now to sit,

look, as if there’s so little left to gain.

You are allowed to feel the way you feel.

It’s a given; most journeys do get rough

as oil-slick hands trying to hold a wet eel,

whose struggle makes the slightest grasp too tough.

You just don’t give it only half your heart,

in doing so, expect to reach your goal.

Know that giving up is the hardest part

(a bud must strain before its flower shows).

Take a handful of grit to gird your grip;

then, let the eel struggle! it will not slip.

That Fear

Ah, winter blew-in hard, with it came snow,

and those who said they wanted it grew tired

too soon, in just a few drab days or so.

On T.V., a white world seems gentrified

but none of us had seen snow this far south;

and most would rather not since those who tried

found out how hard it is to get about.

Some want it if it would remain soft-ice,

think it might be better and fun no doubt.

But ice outside, in any form’s not nice

to me. Drivers just don’t know how to steer.

Taking on roads here is mere sacrifice.

Once out there one feels like a lane-locked deer

craving the safety of the woods, that fear.

It's True

More than once, I dreamt the world was on-fire

A blond, thick blaze sloping down the mountain,

unstoppable in its famished desire,

weaving a dark, monochromatic plain,

pitch darkness that contradicted its flame,

moving like lava-milk 'cross the landscape.

Waves from another planet was to blame.

And so it seemed there would be no escape.

Spew and soot like snow was all about us,

sedulous mainly, making good its threat;

but soon it dawned, I was dreaming; and thus

I woke in fits, starts, and all wet with sweat.

If you think something is out to get you,

don’t be surprised only to find it's true.

My thanks to Willie James for letting me showcase these poems on my blog!

POET OF THE DAY: doris davenport

Doris Davenport has been a friend for many years. We've shared our stories and poems, as well as photos of cabbages, clouds, vistas, trees, and each other. Doris never fails to delight with her poems. Here are some new ones from her 8th book of poetry, sometimes i wonder, to wake you up on a Monday morning.

some mornings

these feet have to learn

how to walk

all over again

(i have to learn how

to walk again.)

the feet teach each

other the basic step

step move up to

the ankles, the

legs & knees then to

these recalcitrant thighs

thick lazy things supple in

supinity & slow they learn:

move. now. like. this.

and then some mornings

poems walk

all over me

i agree with the Universe

3-4000 years ago what

did Native Inhabitants

of this place do on

a wet rainy Friday

mountain morning with

no cars in which

to rush off to

jobs, errands and

urgent must-do’s

in tepees, tents,

caves did they

slowly wake and

stretch, thank a

Higher Power, feed

children, themselves

then - sleep more? Meditate

the world into being? Allow

the world to be?

poems outside the window

already across the

street trees

gone from

bud to leaf

from whitish

yellow to glistening bright

new green the air

softly drifts yellow

i long,

now, to read

classic Chinese women

poets in the original.

Copyright 2010 by doris davenport

POET OF THE DAY: Evie Shockley

I still consider Evie Shockley a North Carolina poet, even though she was born in Tennessee and now teaches at Rutgers. She has strong ties to our state, having taught at Wake Forest University for a number of years and being involved in the Carolina African-American Writers Collective. I came to know her and her work during my stint as Poet Laureate, and she has been one of my favorites ever since.

Evie is the author of four collections of poetry: the new black (Wesleyan, 2011), a half-red sea (Carolina Wren Press, 2006), and two chapbooks. Her study Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry will be published by the University of Iowa Press in 2011. She co-edits the poetry journal jubilat and is an assistant professor of English at Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where she teaches African American literature and creative writing. The following poem is from her new collection, just out from Wesleyan University Press.

my last modernist poem, #4

(or, re-re-birth of a nation)

a clean-cut man brings a brown blackness

to a dream-carved, unprecedented

place. some see in this the end of race,

like the end of a race that begins

with a gun: a finish(ed) line we might

finally limp across. for others,

this miracle marks an end like year’s

end, the kind that whips around again

and again: an end that is chilling,

with a lethal spring coiled in the snow.

___________________________________________

ask lazarus about miracles:

the hard part comes afterwards. he stepped

into the reconstruction of his

life, knowing what would come, but not how.

POET OF THE DAY: Evie Shockley

I still consider Evie Shockley a North Carolina poet, even though she was born in Tennessee and now teaches at Rutgers. She has strong ties to our state, having taught at Wake Forest University for a number of years and being involved in the Carolina African-American Writers Collective. I came to know her and her work during my stint as Poet Laureate, and she has been one of my favorites ever since.

Evie is the author of four collections of poetry: the new black (Wesleyan, 2011), a half-red sea (Carolina Wren Press, 2006), and two chapbooks. Her study Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry will be published by the University of Iowa Press in 2011. She co-edits the poetry journal jubilat and is an assistant professor of English at Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where she teaches African American literature and creative writing. The following poem is from her new collection, just out from Wesleyan University Press.

my last modernist poem, #4

(or, re-re-birth of a nation)

a clean-cut man brings a brown blackness

to a dream-carved, unprecedented

place. some see in this the end of race,

like the end of a race that begins

with a gun: a finish(ed) line we might

finally limp across. for others,

this miracle marks an end like year’s

end, the kind that whips around again

and again: an end that is chilling,

with a lethal spring coiled in the snow.

___________________________________________

ask lazarus about miracles:

the hard part comes afterwards. he stepped

into the reconstruction of his

life, knowing what would come, but not how.