Wednesday Duologues: John McGrew

So we're playing this show on Thursday at TT the Bear's Place.  I don't know if you heard about it maybe, but anyways, it's yet another incredible line-up put together by yours truly.  And by yours truly, I mean I told Aaron who I wanted on the bill and he did all the work.  (Thanks, KP!!!)

Now, if you're from Boston, you darn well oughtta already know Apple Betty, the rockingest trio of rocker chicks to ever rock this town.  And The Backup Factor (with members of The Motion Sick & Naked On Roller Skates, to name a few!) have made quite a sensation this year!  And then there's some Blue Heaven band. ;)

And then there's Apollo Run.  Actually, they're on at 9pm so don't be late.  But my point is, I love these guys.  They're New Yorkers who love Boston, I'm told, and I know you are gonna love them back.  Which is why I had to interview their lead singer, John McGrew, for this week's duologue.

At the outset of our conversation, I knew nothing about John but the voice.  By the end, I was making some rather serious plans with him - and the rest of the band, too!  Read on.

Photo by Andrew Harnik

me: aha! aim on gchat :)

John McGrew: woo!

verrrry niiice

i like to stack up my i.m.s

can't miss a drop

me: excellent.

sorry about the delay!

John McGrew: no worries t'all

me: i also have to apologize because i'll probably be interrupted a bit during the conversation.

John McGrew: thats fine. me

too

yeah, i have put out about 4 fires so far this morning in the apollo run world

so, more may arise

me: good for you! anything exciting enough to share with the world? tour business?

John McGrew: Ooo! yeah. We are putting together our fall tour right now to support our debut EP, Here Be Dragons, Vol. I. We are looking to hit spots in the NE, SE, MW and hopefully a trip back over to LA.

Booking a tour without an agency is tough stuff. But we are determined.

(side note - this interview will be full of (sic)s)

;)

me: (that's how i like 'em)

John McGrew: The tour is happening at the end of Oct and beginning of Nov.

me: so, serious excitement, then! back to LA? have you toured there before?

John McGrew: yeah, we've played Hotel Cafe a couple of times an The Mint a couple of times. It's kinda nice. LA is really supportive of what we are doing. We love LA, and in return, they love us back. Its a very healthy relationship.

We LOVE Hotel Cafe (side note)

me: lovely!

let's go back a sec, since i've gotten ahead of myself.

John McGrew: worrrd

me: and since this is the first conversation between john mcgrew and mackenzie outlund ever, in the history of conversations...

John McGrew: fun!

me: hi, nice to meet you, thanks for agreeing to subject yourself to this nonsense!

John McGrew: wuddddup! pleasure is all mine!

me: i don't know if you're aware of how this all came together, since we arranged the gig with jeff...

John McGrew: looking forward to catching a drink in person at TTs

me: me too!

John McGrew: Yeah, I have no idear.

me: so i actually found out about Apollo Run first through http://www.thatcupoftea.com/

(is that your sister?)

John McGrew: no way

!

ha!

yes!

my sister is a crazy-good writer, and she has always been so supportive of us

me: she's an amazing writer. incredibly inspiring. i've been reading her blog for years now, i guess.

John McGrew: oh, that's just awesome

me: right? :)

John McGrew: i am so happy for her!

she's carved out a nice little piece o the internet wih her blog

me: so i downloaded Stars and Love Song

John McGrew: well deserved

oh, nice

 :)

me: Stars is absolutely the most beautiful song...

and i think i even posted it on my blog and FB for friends to check you guys out and thought... maybe someday we could play with them.... but then that thought got filed behind a million other To Do's.

John McGrew: oh jeez. many thanks! when we wrote it, we got really excited that we were the ones who get to sing it!

ha!

me: i know that feeling.

that is a great feeling.

John McGrew: we are filming a video for it right now, with the awesome Alex Fishcher ( http://www.alexfischerphoto.com

me: oh amazing. what's the shooting been like?

John McGrew: pretty incredible. he is using a bunch of stop motion / slow motion techniques. the whole process takes a long time and requires  lot of patience. but when you are shooting with people like Alex and his girlfriend Camille (and Jeff and Graham from A) it's fun as hell and time flies.

(from AR)

me: slow motion - does that mean you get to lip sync at high speed? (i had to do this recently for our Slow Dance Slow video.)

John McGrew: thats exactly right

imagine those "oom bah diddy oh wah yay"s in high speed. its hilarious. and takes all of my concentration not to laugh

me: right?? i had to do that while staring wistfully out a car window driving around salem, mass at night with a bunch of lights stuck to the interior of the car.

that is absolutely the strangest thing i've ever done. i think.

so far.

John McGrew: so good. i love our jobs.

me: me three.

what do you love the very most about it?

Summer into Autumn

What do school children reap at harvest time?  Summer's end, back to school.  The last letters you don't mean to be the last are addressed to camp friends, stamped and stuck in the mailbox.  The red flag raised, the apples dangling in the trees, the lunch bag packed.  The ruler.  The Elmer's glue.  The nametags on the desks clean, not yet doodled on or peeling off.  Remember the creak of opening your desk?  Remember placing everything just so?  Remember the girls who had more crayons, the right kind of jeans?  Remember the ones who coveted your headband, your panda bear eraser?  Did you smile at the new kid?  Did you glare at the mean kid?  Was your best friend in the wrong class?  Was the boy with cancer back yet?  Did you know you loved the scent of pencil sharpener shavings and the grinding sound of the crank?  Were you aware of the keen rush of relief at recess time?  Were you smack in the middle of the red foursquare ball, the pinching chains of the swings, the freshly painted yellow lines?  Did you stop at lunchtime to be thankful for the peanut butter sandwich in its ziplock bag?  Were you happy or humiliated when you found the heart your mother drew on your napkin?  When did you start counting the days till Friday?  When did you start staring down the clock?  What did you look forward to?  What were you ashamed of?  What instructions did you miss?  On the hot walk home, your new shirt dampens under your crisp backpack bearing rustling forms, notes to parents.  Maybe you're lucky and get picked up and driven to the Dairy Queen for a special dipped cone.  Maybe the city pool is still open for one more week.  Maybe you go down alone to the cool basement with a juice box and plop down in front of Full House.  Maybe you envy your young siblings too little for school yet.  Maybe you wish you had siblings.  Maybe dinner was served on the porch, grilled.  Did you tell your parents about your day?  Did you like your new teacher?  Were you put in the advanced reading group?  Did you remember eight times four?  Did the new gym teacher seem nicer than the old one?  What would you wear tomorrow?  Did you lay out your clothes?  Did you brush your teeth?  Did you pray for something? Was it the thing you really wanted?  When did you start wishing to be a grown up?  When did you stop?  Was there a line you stepped over?  A bell that rang?  Did the wind even rustle the leaves?

i am

i am reading :: quite a bit.

I don't know anyone else besides my father who buys books on vacation like I do.  Of course, I generally go on vacation to visit my father and together we have to patronize all the local bookstores on Whidbey Island and beyond.  Yes, HAVE to.  It's only ethical.

About Mt. Rainier, John Muir is quoted as saying, "Did not mean to climb it, but got excited and soon was on top."  It's like that.  I did not mean to buy 10 books on vacation...though I did pack an empty backpack in my suitcase, just in case.

Here's what I got:

My father once read aloud the first chapter of Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler to me.  We laughed through the whole thing....

In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which are frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you...And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too. 

A Serious Mistake: Part One (A bedtime story)

In case the video isn't, oh... coherent enough:

Outside Over There, by Maurice Sendak

(who will hopefully not sue me.)

When Papa was away at sea,

and Mama in the arbor,

Ida played her wonder horn 

to rock the baby still -

but never watched.

So the goblins came.

They pushed their way in

and pulled baby out,

leaving another all made of ice.

Poor Ida, never knowing, hugged the changeling

and she murmured:  "How I love you."

The ice thing only dripped and stared,

and Ida mad new goblins had been there.

"They stole my sister away!" she cried

"To be a nasty goblin's bride!"

Now Ida in a hurry

snatched her Mama's yellow rain cloak,

tucked her horn safe in a pocket,

and made a serious mistake.

She climbed backwards out her window into outside over there.

Foolish Ida never looking

whirling by the robber caves

heard at last from off the sea

her Sailor Papa's song:

"If Ida backwards in the rain

would only turn around again

and catch those goblins with a tune

she'd spoil their kidnap honeymoon!"

So Ida tumbled right side round and found herself 

smack in the middle of a wedding.

Oh, how those goblins hollered and kicked,

just babies like her sister!

"What a hubbub," said Ida sly,

and she charmed them with a captivating tune.

The goblins, all against their will, danced slowly at first,

then faster until they couldn't breathe.

"Terrible Ida," the goblins said,

"we're dancing sick and must to bed."

But Ida played a frenzied jig, a hornpipe

that makes sailors wild beneath the ocean moon.

Those goblins pranced so fierce, so fast, they quick churned into a dancing stream.

Except for one who lay cozy in an eggshell,

crooning and clapping as a baby should.

And that was Ida's sister.

Now Ida glad hugged baby tight 

and she followed the stream that curled like a path along the broad meadow

and up the ringed-round hill to her Mama in the arbor with a letter from Papa, saying:

"I'll be home one day,

and my brave, bright little Ida

must watch the baby and her Mama

for her Papa, who loves her always."

Which is just what Ida did. 

The good things

So I've become a little bit obsessed with the new series of Doctor Who.  I won't go into why it is amazing, I'll just say that you should watch it and point you in that direction.  (It's also airing on BBC America and available on iTunes, but note that though the British-run website has the entire season, the last few episodes haven't aired over here yet.)

The menace that persists over the arc of this season's narrative is a series of cracks in the fabric of the universe.  The cracks are present in every era and locale, and anyone who goes through a crack (you can get sucked in if you go too close and yes I am going to ignore the Freudian implications, thank you) ceases to exist anymore in their rightful universe.  To those remaining, it's as if that person had never been born.  No memory of them remains, though the more sensitive characters experience an inexplicable grief.

Don't you think it would be fantastic if we could attribute all the losses in our lives to something as simple as cracks in the fabric of space and time?!

I mean, okay.  One of the reasons this show resonates for me is that I identify with the character who walks around with significant people missing from her life, trying to get on with whatever task or adventure is at hand, and intermittently finding that she's crying and doesn't know why.

After loss, after time passes, that's what it's like, right?  When you think you're over it.  When you've found a way to conceive of your universe without the one you've lost?  And then one morning you wake from a dream you can't quite remember and find yourself adrift on a wave of grief?

When those waves come for me, I don't feel what I feel because of the loss alone.  I also rail against the reasons for the loss:

Heroin addiction and depression fueled by childhood abuse and terrors, which led to suicide.

Complex and dishonest circumstances that made secrecy the condition of friendship, which inevitably destroyed it.

Ancient insecurities and missing skills from dysfunctional upbringings that eroded trust, without which even an unconditional love could not function.

Distance and misunderstandings exacerbated by jealous, insecure or controlling partners.

Unwillingness or inability to meet the demands of an exceptionally rare kindredness.

Alcoholism.

See? Wouldn't cracks in the universe be awesome?  Wouldn't it be tremendous if being human were so easy, so simple, that the worst thing that could happen to us came from something utterly beyond ourselves?  Something wholly beyond our individual or collective control?  (With the exception of the Doctor, of course.)

We are so frail.  So twisted up in fear.  Missing from my universe are extraordinary relationships with extraordinary human beings.  These are among the best people I have known and I feel that's saying something because I have always sought friends and lovers with humongous hearts, ravenous curiosity,  boundless capacity to experience beauty and joy, true compassion, creative fire, and more than a light dusting of magic.

The best of humanity.  And look at us.

So how?  How can I walk through my universe with all these magnificent, significant people missing, sucked through cracks of our own tragic terrible design, and still claim "this blue heaven?"  How can I in good faith put on bright colors and sing about light in the darkness?

The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things.  The good things don't always soften the bad things; but vice-versa the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant.*

We have to work to add to the pile of good things.  That's it.  We have to work to see them, to let them have our full attention even for a moment.  We have to fight for that because our frailty is so great and our power to destroy so very compelling.  I don't deny the darkness.  It is because I am aware of it, because I know how easily and inevitably the pile of bad things grows, that I insist on writing and singing about light.

Pain is easy to portray, but to use your passion and pain to portray the ecstasy and joy and magnificence of our world... that is -- until we evolve to the point that the worst threat we face is a bunch of pesky cracks in the universe -- the very best we can do.*  So we must.  I must.  That's it.

*Quotations from Vincent and the Doctor

Why I'm not a philosophy professor

Once upon a time, I was going to be the next generation of Simone de Beauvoir scholar.  I double majored in philosophy and women's studies.  Early in my second year of college, I started studying de Beauvoir's philosophical writings in an independent research project that led to a conference presentation and the determination that I wanted to go on and get my PhD.

Then in the spring of my junior year, I went to Penn State for a conference marking the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Second Sex, which turned out to revolve mostly around one quarrel and one consensus among the big guns (okay no one outside certain small circles of continental philosophers either knows or cares who these people are, but in those circles, they may as well be Madonna, Pat, Cyndi, and Tori).

The quarrel was over the extent and relevance of de Beauvoir's influence on the more widely read and respected philosophical work of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty.

I'll never forget overhearing an apology of sorts in the ladies room from one scholar to another, assuring no personal offense was intended in the heated discussion they'd just had in the conference room.  Ahhhh women.  The reply:  "Oh no, it's an honor to argue with you."  Ahhhh philosophers.  It was awesome.

The turning point came on day three of the conference.  The keynote speaker was a French woman, related (in some way I don't remember) to the Ecole Normale Superieure where Beauvoir and Sartre met as students.  The woman had a thick accent and bifocals worn all the way at the end of her nose, and she was so short that resting her hands on the podium put her elbows up by her ears.

She started to read her paper and I couldn't understand a word of it and the whole scene was just so hilarious to me that I could barely contain myself, so I distracted myself and doodled instead of taking notes, and the minutes ticked by.  When the words "so in conclusion" jutted out of the harsh jumble of sounds, I breathed a sigh of relief.

But then she kept going.  Fifteen, twenty more minutes and there it was again, "so in conclusion."  I held my breath.

But still she kept on.  Half an hour, forty-five minutes more.  After the third "so in conclusion," I started to get the giggles.  Quaking, uncontrollable giggles.  I glanced around, sure that I would at least catch someone's knowing eye roll, but every last one of those academics was sitting upright, straight faced, at attention.

I had to leave before I lost it.  I hustled  down the aisle and out into the lobby, released the laughter, and decided then and there that I could never, ever take philosophy - or myself - that seriously.

Furthermore, I scribbled in the margins of the doodle page, what GOOD did it do for all these people to sit in a conference room arguing amongst themselves about things that only actually matter to the extent that they affect or improve actual lives?

I wanted to find a way for the ideas I believed in to reach people.  And not just people in colleges.

So I sabotaged my philosophy applications.  Turned them all in way past the deadlines, much to the dismay of my college advisor, and thus began my winding journey into far reaches of the real world.  And here we are.  Heh.

Anyway.  The consensus among all those scholars was that a new English translation of The Second Sex was urgent.  The original translator was a zoologist, for eff's sake - an okay writer with absolutely no grasp of the philosophical definitions, contexts or implications of de Beauvoir's work.  Anything complicated that he didn't understand, he simply cut from the text (which turned out to be around 15% of the 900+ page book).  Everyone was on the rampage, but the book was still selling fine so the publishers saw no need for a new translation.

Well, apparently Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevalier were also in attendance at that conference.  And as of this spring, sixty years later, they have finally published an accurate (if much more difficult) translation of the text!  It's on its way to me in the mail now, and I might just have to start a spin-off blog as I make my way through that crazy book again.

'Cause, y'know.  Everyone else is as excited about this as I am, right?!


p.s. That talk I walked out of went on for three hours, all told.

To see and by seeing create majesty

I admit it.  I talk to trees.  Don't knock it - today's a great day to try it.

There's a perfect wind for the amplification of treespeak.

Happy lovely day.

My fire

The most important thing

So I can't remember if I've blogged about this before or not, but if I have, I'm doing it again.  No one reads this consistently enough to mind, I'm sure.  (Except you, KP.  But your memory, well...)

In July of 2005, I made a road trip from Lexington, KY to Whidbey Island near Seattle, WA.  I took a video camera and I approached and interviewed complete strangers along the way (mostly at gas stations because my ex was opposed to stopping for any other reason... no really, after stopping to visit my family in Iowa, we made the whole trip in 36 hours straight).  I asked them all one question:  What do you think is the most important thing in life?  Now, my evil ex took and kept that tape and won't send it to me, even though it contains footage of the last semi-coherent moments I spent with my Grandma Ruth, who suffered from dementia for many years and has since passed away. (Everyone boo & hiss my evil ex now.  Thank you.)  Anyway, the result is that I have to rely on my memory of that trip.

Here's what I recall of the answers:

My Iowan grandmother said, "Well, for me it's always been home sweet home!"

Her husband, my grandpa, raised a very bushy eyebrow at me and said, "Did you hear what they did over in England?" (Referring to the London bombings.)  I nodded and he nearly growled, "I think we need to get back to Christianity."

My other grandpa said "Getting down to see my grandchildren once in awhile."  I think my other grandma made a joke about getting down to the casino along the way.

A gang of Harley riders near Omaha agreed the most important thing was friends and family.  "And Aflac," one said.  The rest laughed.

A middle-aged couple on a ferry boat on the way to the island said the most important thing was to care for the earth.

A lot of people said family.

Some said God.

A few said happiness or being true to yourself.

And one.  One very nervous young man from Mexico who was meeting his girlfriend's family for the first time that day and had joined them on their visit to the Badlands in South Dakota -- one person answered love.

Today I've been thinking again about my purpose in life, which led me to think about why we're all here at all, which led me to ask myself this question, again.  What's the most important thing in life?  To me it's still undeniably love.  So...where does that leave me?  I'm not really sure, but at the moment I'm wondering why I don't do stuff like this anymore.

Birthday List (a work in progress)

(for my Leonard Cohen NY show poster)

(or maybe just:)

(to visit my beloveds)

The Body, Parts Four & Five

Morningtime.  I walked up the sidewalk, lilting probably, falling in love with the world and beginnings as I tend do whenever I can.  Soon I had to slow my pace behind an ambling older man.  He wore overalls, neat white hair, strong creases across the back of his neck.  In one hand, he held a strap that pulled a tiny tricycle.  In the other, he carried a very small bike helmet.  

With no children in sight, I thought it looked like perhaps only a moment ago he'd been a little overalled boy pedaling up the sidewalk until he had suddenly found himself an old man, no longer able to sit on the shiny green seat, to fit the little helmet on his head.  I thought maybe now he was dragging his trike home to keep in the garage until some other little boy came along who could use them.  I wondered if he was worried about how his mother would take it.

_  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _

I collect old copies of National Geographic magazine from the 60's - 80's; I use the photographs for collages/multi-media art stuff.  A few years ago I came across a photo that has possibly, in the absence of any one model I want to emulate, most defined the emotional core of my vision of Family.

The photo was from an article on some ancient city that had been demolished one morning in an earthquake.  From the bones and other remains they found, archaeologists were allowed a glimpse of the city on its final day.  Illustrations imagined a bustling marketplace, women doing the wash, men mingling in the square.

Among the homes, one set of skeletons was found particularly well-preserved - all three pressed into the ground in the same positions in which they were crushed:

A female skeleton in fetal position held a baby skeleton up to her chest.

The tiny cracked skull lay right next to her ribs.
The bones of her left arm still bent around it.

A larger male skeleton spooned her, their leg bones still perfectly aligned in the dirt.

One set of his arm bones seemed to be crushed beneath them.

His other lay across them, alongside her right arm.

Their finger bones were all mixed up in a pile with the baby's teeny ribs.

They died like that:  surely in fear, but all curled up together, trying against hope to protect each other.  Their last thoughts - whatever else had been going on before the quake hit - must have been filled with the knowing of their love for each other, their unity in that moment.  Or maybe they were all just sleeping in together that morning so soundly that the quake covered them before they could wake.  Either way....

The first time I turned to that page I stared for full minutes, just in quiet awe.  That's all I want in a family; that's all it comes down to, isn't it?

A break from the regularly scheduled blogging for some conversation snippets

Today.  Office.  9am.

Me:  (Stomps into office with grouchy face, collapses dramatically against file cabinet.)
Nico:  I know.
Me:  Can we please just start a business?  It can be anything.  I'll work my butt off for something with a little juice.  This is a dry chicken kind of a job.
Nico:  (Laughs hysterically, throwing his arms up in the air and slamming them back down on the desk.)  That should be the first line of a story you write when you get out of here.


Today. IM.  11am.

Me:  "Asked to volunteer what they don't like about Mr. Obama, the top answer, offered by 19 percent of Tea Party supporters, was that they just don't like him."
Me:  might as well just have a racist checkbox.
GP:  makes sense, y'know?
        there's just something about him that makes me racist.
Me:  omg
        that's witty
        did you make that up?
GP:  yep

The Body, Part Two

Dear Diary, I woke up at 6:30 this morning from a dream that ended in a hug.  It was a specific hug, one that I haven't felt in eight or nine years, but in my dream, it was exactly right, that hug.  Its shape and texture, its solidity and scent.  My body remembered precisely.  It was a shock of both relief and recall, which means that my mind has mercifully allowed those sensations to fade from my conscious memory over time.  Last night before bed I had been reading and was struck by a line about the soul whispering to the mind in dreams.  I say it was merciful of my mind to forget the sensation of the hug, but sparking that memory in my body was also a mercy - perhaps given by my soul?  How long will my body remember that hug?  Will it keep reminding me once in awhile?

Dear Diary, Saturday I spent hours and hours at the mall just trying to find a pair of jeans that fit me right.  I am tall and I have hips built to hold a cradle - but I am still stylish, by god.  I searched and searched and fought to keep from seeing myself the way all those ill-fitting jeans wanted me to:  not right!  As if the problem was that I didn't fit the jeans, and not the other way around.  As if it is form and not function that makes a body right.

Emerging: Change

Dudes.  Can you believe that change ever ever happens?

No, seriously.  Some ancient Greek folks spent a lot of time arguing about whether or how change is even possible.  I won't dust off my (extremely dusty) explanations of those arguments here, but in the end (that's a joke for Aristotelians), the deal is basically like this:  The only way for A to become B is if B is already in A.

The only way for a thing to change is if the potential for the outcome is always already there in the first place.

Like, a chicken can't come from an egg unless the egg already in some sense has the chicken in it - the ingredients and ability to make the chicken.

A magnolia tree can't come from a seed unless the seed already contains the ingredients and ability to grow into a magnolia tree.

Optimus Prime can't transform into a truck unless he already has the right parts that bend the right ways.  (Random TBH trivia:  one band name we threw around was Artemis Prime.)

And a person cannot change unless they already have within them the tools and capacity to make those changes.

All of these things require the right conditions, of course.

And you gotta have some patience, because the emerging takes time.

Today I came across an instant message conversation from over two years ago.  As I read it, I remembered during that time how I felt a sort of desperation to change.  To become someone more steady, more rooted.  Looking back on that conversation I can see how, as recently as this week, I am realizing things that only someone more steady and more rooted could embrace.  I am just now becoming that person I was desperate to be.

It's such a relief.  Really, it rules.

Maybe those moments of "Aaah I want to change!" came from a new awareness of that potential for change already inside.  Maybe that tangly mess of a conversation was one of the first steps toward choosing the conditions that would allow that potential to make its way out into the actual light of day.

It makes me awfully grateful for the patient people in my life.

Kentucky Poets Week: Frank X Walker

I love Frank X Walker. I'm a little sad I didn't get to know him better while I was in Kentucky, but I did hear him read and I did run into him on the street one evening and I did shake his hand to congratulate him on winning the Lannan Literary Fellowship. He was the judge for a MUCH smaller writing award I won the same year, so I felt special shaking his hand in the middle of the road like that.


Frank X Walker has the best eyes. You probably think there are more important things about him than that, but if you ask me, it all starts with and comes from the eyes.


But okay, there is also the fact that he co-founded the revolutionary Affrilachian Poets and, in fact, coined the term "Affrilachian" in response to a dictionary entry that defined Appalachians as "white residents of the region of Appalachia." In his words here, "I believe it is my responsibility to say as loudly and often as possible that people and artists of color are part of the past and present of the multi-state Appalachian region extending from northern Mississippi to southern New York." The Affrilachian Poets collective now includes 25+ poets of color writing and living in Appalachia.


Frank X Walker also wrote my absolute favorite collection of persona poems: Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, written in the voice of York, the slave from Virginia who accompanied Lewis and Clark on their famous expedition to the Pacific and back; the poems follow the narrative arch of the journey through York's eyes. I cannot say enough about how profound and beautiful and sensual and thought-provoking and moving that book is. Nor, sadly, can I share any of its poems with you because - as with all of my most treasured books - I have lent it out to a good friend and, two years later, have yet to get it back.  But I will be buying it again today, along with its sequel, When Winter Come: The Ascension of York.  And so should you.


So instead (as a bonus nod to Obama's visit to my hometown of Iowa City today!) I'm snatching a poem from The Charleston Gazette, posted on Election Day 2008 and in turn snatched from Jeff Biggers' blog on The Huffington Post the day before.

OBAMA SHUFFLE

by Frank X. Walker

To the seasoned black women in line behind me when I went to early vote

we move as if chained together, we move like we are
pacing out the complex steps to the new line dance

thank you for taking off work today, for standing
outside in the cold on sore feet for so long
bundled in winter scarves, long skirts, leather coats,
faux fur, bandanas, fatigues, sweats and jeans
clutching designer purses, book bags and paper sacks

to the right, to the right, to the right, to the right

thank you for clearing your throat
when anybody forgot to move the line

thank you for leaning on your canes
for looking over your reading glasses

to the left, to the left, to the left, to the left

for casting a watchful eye at the poll workers
and at me and at everybody within squinting distance

for wearing my mother's nose on your faces, for wearing
her shoes, for standing with your hands on your hips too

now kick, now kick, now kick, now kick

now move as if chained together, now move like we are
pacing out the complex steps to the new line dance

now walk it by yourself, now walk it by yourself