Call Me Out My Name: Inventing Affrilachia
1.
I am grateful for, and humbled by, the opportunity to participate in this symposium on Affrilachia,1 for reasons both personal and professional. The personal reasons derive from facts like these: I was born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee; I spent two years teaching in Lexington, Kentucky, learning from the Affrilachian Poets that my roots in and routes through Appalachia might mean something worth reflecting on; and I come to you now from Centre County, Pennsylvania, in the upper reaches of the region. Like many of the other symposium participants, I am a living testament to the remarkable diversity, racial and otherwise, of Appalachia. Realizing this has been one of the important developments in my life, and I am glad to be in a position to say this publicly.
The professional reasons for my gratitude derive from facts like these: I am working on a book on Black Aesthetics, which means that I get paid to think about things like Affrilachian Poets, and about the conditions that call them into being, and about what they mean and do once they come into being. It is one thing, though, to think about black aesthetics, and another thing entirely to think about the concept at the heart of a particular venture in black aesthetics, while in the presence of the people who inaugurated and sustained the venture. My aim here is to do the second thing, albeit briefly: to think through the meaning of Affrilachia from the perspective of black aesthetics, and to do so in the home and in the presence of the Affrilachian Poets. Perhaps specifying the context in this way will clarify my feelings of gratitude and humility.
We have Frank X Walker to thank for the word ‘Affrilachia’, and for his tireless work in support of the ideas and commitments that the word carries in its train. Walker’s journal, pluck!, declares the most central of these commitments quite clearly in its mission statement. The journal aims, it says, at “making the invisible visible,” which is to say, at showing that Appalachia is more than the lily-white, seamlessly rural home of Lil’ Abner and Jed Clampett.
This common picture of Appalachia is already too simple, even before we reach the question of blackness. It obscures, among other things, the complexities that attend the various modes of racialization into whiteness. (I don’t have space here to explore this thought any further, so I’ll just point to the remarkable television series “Justified,” currently running on FX, and move on.) But the standard image of Appalachia probably works hardest at obscuring the presence, plurality, and perspectives of black folks in the region. This is what pluck! aims most assiduously to contest.
Putting the concern that animates pluck! in terms of invisibility will put most people immediately in mind of Ralph Ellison, whose Invisible Man established the problematic of black invisibility in the forms that most of us know best. To be invisible in this sense is a matter not of physics or physiology, of bent light waves or of impaired optical faculties. It is a matter of psychology and morals: it is a matter of what philosophers call recognition, of being regarded as a person, as someone with a moral status and a point of view: someone whose presence makes a difference worth attending to.
The rhetoric of invisibility has served well in this capacity for a long time, appearing before Ellison in the work of Du Bois and others, and well afterwards in, for example, the work of Michele Wallace. (There may, in fact, be no better précis of the dialectic of recognition than Du Bois’s discussion of ‘seeing oneself through the eyes of others’ in his account of double-consciousness.) But focusing on the philosophical problematic behind the ocular metaphors points beyond the metaphor, and invites us to consider other sensory and experiential registers.
When Ellison’s narrator bumps into the uncomprehending—the vehemently uncomprehending—white man, he says that the man called him ‘an insulting name.’ It’s not hard to imagine what that name was, especially if one has read Fanon. (“Look, a Negro! Or, more simply: Dirty nigger!”) And once we imagine this, it is easy to see that the depersonalization and sub-personalization that constitute invisibility go hand in hand with denying the individuality that we signify with names and titles. (Not ‘Excuse me, sir,’ but ‘Dirty nigger!’)
This link between invisibility, recognition, and naming is what makes Sidney Poitier say, ‘Call me ‘Mr. Tibbs.’ It helped motivate the famous signs from the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike, the ones that, as the great contemporary artist Glenn Ligon reminds us, read, ‘I AM A MAN.’ It drove my mother to insist, in the early seventies (back when they still talked this way), that white salesclerks call her ‘Mrs. Taylor’ rather than ‘honey’ or ‘dear.’ To insist in these ways on just these modes of address is to say that there is a name for what I am, for the kind of thing, the kind of creature, the kind of being, that I am. It is to say further that I will insist on this name, and demand that you resist your impulse to call me otherwise. I am not a boy, or a beast of burden, or a piece of property, or the object of your condescendingly feigned and double-edged familiarity. I have a name that accurately and appropriately identifies me, and insisting on it is my prerogative and duty in a properly arranged scheme of social relationships.
The invention of the term ‘Affrilachia’ must, it seems to me, be seen in this context. Invisibility, with its links to naming and recognition, is one of the central tropes in the black aesthetic tradition, as I understand it. It is just one of the central tropes, of course, alongside reflections on beauty and the black body (think of Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, or of there being no Black Miss Americas until—forgive the expression—high-yellow Vanessa Williams), on authenticity (think of Jean Toomer, or of Dave Chappelle making fun of Wayne Brady, and of Wayne Brady joining him), on the role of politics in art (think of Du Bois and Locke arguing about propaganda, and of Maulana Karenga wondering what in the world there was to argue about), and on the meaning of style (think of flashy white basketball players nicknamed ‘white chocolate,’ and of what people once called ‘blue eyed soul’ but now call ‘Robin Thicke’). Nevertheless, invisibility may be the most prominent trope, not least because Ellison’s novel quickly became and, as far as I know, remains required reading for US high schoolers.
3.
To conjure up a term like ‘Affrilachia’ is to build on and advance this campaign for visibility. Names and contests over naming are part of the ethical and existential machinery of intersubjective recognition. And black expressive culture has from its very beginnings taken on the task of manipulating this machinery. The standard image of Appalachia results in what one writer refers to, in another context, as metaphysical genocide: it notionally erases Black folks from a sprawling region of 200,000 square miles of land, covering parts of twelve states and all of a thirteenth. Insisting on the black presence in Appalachia, on the existence and vitality of Affrilachia, is a way of showing that we are here, of showing ourselves as much as anyone else. It is a way of saying what Larry Neal wrote in his review of Invisible Man: we are not invisible—at least, not to each other.
1. http://www.as.uky.edu/academics/departments_programs/IDP/IDP/Africana/Conference/Pages/default.aspx
‘Going Up’ with the Affrilachian Poets: Birthing (Folk)lore in the MLK Elevator
The Ground Floor:
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a group of young writers at the University of Kentucky (UK) birthed a collective known as the Affrilachian Poets in the back room of Martin Luther King Cultural Center of the UK. Their story is told by several writers (see Spriggs; Norman; and Newberry) and in the documentary Coal Black Voices. The group formed from a bond of friendship and a love of writing, and got their name largely from the creative power of Frank X Walker who imagined the word “Affrilachia” (now defined in the Encyclopedia of Appalachia and the New Oxford American Dictionary) into being in those early years. To date, the group is composed of around forty members; founding members include (and here the sources vary; my source coming from a website for the Affrilachian Poets): Frank X Walker, Gerald Coleman, Kelly Norman Ellis, Ricardo Nazario y Colón, Nikky Finney, Mitchell L.H. Douglas, Daundra La’Trice Logan, Crystal Wilkinson, Bernard Clay, and Thomas Aaron.
This essay is interested in focusing on one moment (or set of moments) during the early days of the Affrilachian Poets, what many founding members often refer to as “the elevator days.” It is a work to document those moments, those elevator days, in much more detail than they have yet been written about. It also looks to folklore scholarship and views the elevator days and their celebration in various publications and my interviews as a piece of (folk)lore about this writing collective. Before conducting interviews for this essay, my understanding of the elevator days was simple: people went into an elevator, hit the stop button, and share freshly minted original poetry. I’m not sure whether I first heard about these moments in Coal Black Voices or in interviews I conducted with Crystal Wilkinson and Gerald Coleman in 2013, but I know that my interest was elevated when I did hear about this intimate poetry space.
I am in contact with many of the Affrilachian Poets. I gained this connection through a relationship with Frank X Walker, which began in 2009 when Dr. Bruce Dick of the English Department at Appalachian State University (ASU) invited me to join him to interview Walker for the Appalachian Journal; the interview was published in Volume 38 Number 4, Summer 2011, titled “’Still Chasing These Words’: A Conversation with Frank X Walker.” Having this connection, I could reach out to members who I knew had taken part in the elevator days: Frank X Walker, Ricardo Nazario y Colón, and Gerald Coleman.
I sent messages on Facebook to each and asked if I could interview them through Skype, a phone call, or email. In less than a day they all agreed to talk with me. We set up times to talk: a Skype conversation with Ricardo Nazario y Colón, a phone call with Coleman, and an email with Walker. I knew going into these interviews that I would be using a snowball method of collecting the names of people I needed to talk to. I also had a list of prepared questions, so that each interview would follow a fairly standard model of a semi-structured interview, allowing room to deviate from my questions if needed. From my interviews, I was told to reach out to Kelly Norman Ellis, Miysan Crosswhite, Jude McPherson, Paul C. Taylor, Mitchell L.H. Douglas, Shana Smith, and Daundra La’Trice Logan; I did so, but was only able to interview Crosswhite on the phone, and McPherson through email, who replied that he had come into the group after the elevator days.
Out of this group I conducted four interviews. Walker’s was documented through his response to my email, and the other three were recorded on an audio recorder. Nazario-Colòn’s lasted about thirty minutes, Coleman’s closer to an hour, and Crosswhite’s under thirty minutes. I transcribed all of Ricardo Nazario y Colón, and portions of Coleman’s and Crosswhite’s.
3rd Floor, Lit Review:
To focus a bit more in the realm of folklore, we will look to the elevator days as an example of folklore customs, described in Jan Harold Brunvand’s The Study of American Folklore as “a traditional practice—a mode of individual behavior or a habit of social life—transmitted by word of mouth or imitation, then ingrained by social pressure, common usage, and parental or other authority” (406). In relation the interviews, it becomes apparent how the elevator days can be seen as a folklore custom.
Turning to the first page of Jan Harold Brunvand’s The Study of American Folklore, we read: first the question “WHAT IS FOLKLORE,” and then the answer that “[F]olklore comprises the unrecorded traditions of a people” (3). Taken at that basic level, this project is ninety-nine percent folklore; ninety-nine percent, because in documenting the writers’ own stories about their elevator days, their largely “unrecorded traditions” have become recorded. To my knowledge, this subject has not yet been thoroughly documented and is but briefly mentioned in a few places, as we will see later in this essay.
Brunvand continues, “[T]he study of folklore…records and attempts to analyze these traditions…so as to reveal the common life of the human mind apart from what is contained in the formal records of culture that compose the heritage of a people” (3). Again, this project is documenting a largely un-recorded set of moments in the earliest days of the Affrilachian Poets, in a piece of their heritage/lore. Brunvand also quotes Archer Taylor—“[O]ne of the greatest folklorists of his generation” (Goldberg 704)—who says, “[F]olklore is the material that is handed on by tradition, either by word of mouth or custom and practice” (5). The “material” is the stories of the elevator days, and while it has sparsely been “handed on by tradition,” there exist interesting ways in which some of the Affrilachian Poets, and others, keep these moments alive by talking about them.
Brunvand gives this essay more room in folklore circles where he writes, “[F]olklore is traditional in two senses in that it is passed on repeatedly in a relatively fixed or standard form, and it circulates among members of a particular group” (12). No, the elevator days don’t seem to be getting “passed on repeatedly,” but the ways they are talked about do come “in a relatively fixed or standard form”; and there is no argument that the only people talking about the elevator days are either members of the Affrilachian Poets or friends, fans, and scholars of the Affrilachian Poets. Brunvand’s next sentence becomes critical to this research. He explains that
Traditional form or structures allows us to recognize corresponding bits of folklore in different guises. The characters in a story, the setting, the length, the style, even the language may vary, but we can still call it the “same” story if it maintains a basic underlying form. (12)
While my interviews revealed details to my original understanding of the elevator days, they still maintained “a basic underlying form” of poets reading poems in an elevator.
In addition to looking at Brunvand’s definitions of folklore, I turn to the personal-experience story/narrative (PEN), which ebbs in and out of traditional folklore studies in much the same way I’ve said the elevator days do. Sandra Dolby writes in American Folklore: An Encyclopedia that a PEN is
usually told in the first person, and [contains] nontraditional content. Unlike most folklore, a personal-experience story is not passed down through time and space and kept alive through variation from one teller to another. Instead, the content of a personal-experience story is based on an actual event in the life of a storyteller. (556–557)
In looking at my interviews, we will see how the elevator days flow in and out of a PEN just as they do in traditional folklore. The interviews are told in first person, and in some regards they do contain “nontraditional content,” but the story has been “passed down through time and space,” and is “[being] kept alive through variation from one teller to another”; as well as through non-Affrilachian Poets writing about the elevator days (including myself).
Dolby also makes the claim that “such stories do not enter tradition” (557). But as alluded to, mention of the elevator days has cropped up in several places. Kelly Norman Ellis, Frank X Walker, and Ricardo Nazario y Colón all talk about the elevator days in Coal Black Voices. Ellis starts off discussing her introduction to the Affrilachian Poets, and then mentions, “I didn’t know at the time about Frank and Ricardo meeting in the elevators.” Her saying “I didn’t know at the time,” at least to me, creates a tradition, a (folk)lore, out of these experiences. Something happened important enough for her to need to know about, and to talk about after she learned.
After Ellis mentions “Frank and Ricardo meeting in the elevators,” the film shifts to an animated Ricardo Nazario y Colón. He speaks to the elevator days, explaining, “[T]he elevator seemed like the right place. Maybe fifty feet from the cultural center. Close enough to make us feel safe and be able to share what we wanted to share, and feel good about. And then just come out [of the elevator] like nothing happened.” The film moves to Walker who, with a grin on his face, says, “We’d actually go into the elevator, close it, and then cut the power off, and have these real quiet poetry sharings in private, in the elevator.”
As mentioned earlier in this essay, both Gerald Coleman and Crystal Wilkinson talked to me briefly about the elevator days in personal interviews conducted in the fall of 2013. What is perhaps more interesting, though, is Gurney Norman’s commentary in an issue of Iron Mountain Review on Frank X Walker. Norman, a previous Poet Laureate of Kentucky, recipient of a National Book Award for his novel Divine Right’s Trip (1972), long-time English professor at the University of Kentucky, and mentor and publisher of Walker’s since 1981 (Norman 26–27), has a connection and history with the Affrilachian Poets (Garrison 1078–1079). Perhaps this connection gave him the insight to mention the elevator days in his piece, “Affrilachian Genesis.” He writes of first being presented with the word “Affrilachia” through Walker’s poem, “Affrialchia,” and then says,
In the following months, I became aware of a new literary group in Lexington called the Affrilachian Poets. Frank’s word had called into being a dynamic group of young African American writers, most of them from Kentucky but not all. Some of their antics included crowding into an elevator in our tallest building on campus and writing quick poems as the elevator rose to the eighteenth floor. (26)
A good deal of what Norman writes is slightly off from the stories I have heard, of discussions about who and how the Affrilachian Poets formed, and how the word “Affrilachia” played into “[calling] into being” the Affrilachian Poets. Mainly, the issue being that at least Walker, Coleman, Ricardo Nazario y Colón, and Ellis were friends and writing together before Walker invented the word “Affrilachia.” In talking about the earliest days of the Affrilachian Poets, Coleman told me, “even before we put a name on it, it was just a group of poets. You’re only talking about five, six, seven people.” It seems Frank is perhaps becoming a Jack figure in his larger than life (or best-son/poet) status.
More importantly for this essay, Norman gets a bit creative in his description of the “antics” of the Affrilachian Poets. From my interviews, I got more details about the space the elevator days took place in. The building the elevator days took place in (the Student Center at UK) was only three stories high. So, when I reread this piece after my interviews, I questioned whether Norman was taking what he had heard from the group and adding his own details (as writers are wont to do), or if he was telling his readers about another (unheard of) example of the elevator days. Curious about this story, I first contacted Ricardo Nazario y Colón and Coleman who both told me to ask Walker and Ellis. I sent Walker an email, asking “Did this happen, or is [Norman] telling Wilgus stories” (Wilgus being a fictional character in Norman’s Kinfolks: The Wilgus Stories and Ancient Creek). Walker’s response was quick, and reads, “Gurney told a Wilgus story.”
There is much to say about Norman’s “Wilgus story” here, like how it shows variation in a tradition, a piece of the Affrilachian Poet’s lore being circulated by a friend of the Affrilachian Poets (and who I know I read somewhere, I just can’t remember where, was made an honorary Affrilachian Poet by Walker—or perhaps I’m creating my own folklore about the group and Gurney Norman here…). The most important thing to say here, though, is that Gurney Norman has just told a tale on the Affrilachian Poets. In telling this tale, he adds, significantly, to the (folk)lore of the Affrilachian Poets.
4th Floor, Interviews:
Here I will look to certain responses from my four interviewees: Gerald Coleman, Miysan Crosswhite, Ricardo Nazario y Colón, and Frank X Walker. I won’t go into every question I asked, nor every answer I received, but instead will try and focus on the more important aspects of their recollections of the elevator days. My main goal is to detail what happened, how it started, why the elevator, and then to look to some intriguing responses from my interviewees. Going into these interviews, and especially my first one with Nazario-Colòn, I was expecting to find deviations from each of my participants, which I did.
I’ll begin with how they started reading poetry in an elevator. Both Nazario y Colón and Crosswhite talk about how people would show up at the Martin Luther King Cultural/Student Center—Crosswhite says with a “smile on their face…that look [that they have new poetry to share]”—and that they would go into the elevator and have a “poetry moment” (Coleman; Nazario y Colón). Coleman, however, remembers these moments in greater detail, and adds to the story of how they first thought to get in the elevator (see his interview in Appendix B for some of the detail of the physical space in the MLK Cultural Center at the UK). He states, “[S]o the first stop was always the back office in the cultural center. That’s really where we would go. And you would go back there and close the door.” Crosswhite mentions how “the MLK Center was always so busy,” and then says, “[W] hen you had the office doors maybe closed, where the back office was, people would still come in and they might interrupt the flow of what you were trying to bring across, or read at that time. So, the elevator was, it was quiet.” Unlike Coleman, however, Crosswhite doesn’t explicitly state that poems were first read in this room and that the elevator became a secondary spot.
Coleman leads us through the MLK Cultural Center from an occupied back office, to the second and third floors of the center, and, he explains, “eventually, it was like, ‘okay, where do we go?’ And…a couple of us were on the elevator one day… And one of us, just, when the doors were closed, pulled the elevator stop button.” From these three responses we find variation: Ricardo Nazario y Colón goes right into the elevator, as does Crosswhite in a way while hinting at a crowded back office in the MLK Center as the reason for getting the elevator, and Coleman laying it all out, from the earliest moments in the back office to a need for a quiet space, found in the elevator. Walker’s answer is probably the shortest of all (and granted, all of his were short due to the difference in his interview through email, and the others by phone and Skype). He writes, “Prior to the moment, someone would covertly signal those in the know that a moment was imminent and available individuals would casually leave a crowded King Center and reassemble in or near the elevator.”
Something important to discuss that we see each of my participants mention is the phrase, “poetry moment.” Going into these interviews, I was unsure exactly what happened when they got in the elevator and hit the stop button. I knew poetry was read, but I wasn’t sure if this was a workshop moment or something else. Here all my participants talked about how the main use of this elevators was to have a “poetry moment.” Coleman defined these moments saying,
I think the important part to remember is why we called it a poetry moment, because I can see how that would seem off to people looking at it from the outside. That, okay, you have somebody read a poem and then they kind of look at each other and walk off. Nobody really said anything…For us, it was a moment. A moment in time that we filled with poetry, and you didn’t sully that moment by trying to turn it into a mini-workshop.
Walker and Nazario y Colón second Coleman, affirming that these moments were just that, moments and not workshops. Crosswhite, however, remembers differently, telling me, “it became that moment, kind of a workshop moment.” I would question his recollection if it weren’t for something Coleman told me: “I know there were times when people had moments and I wasn’t on the elevator.” So it’s possible that Crosswhite was on the elevator a time, or many times, with people other than Coleman, Walker, and Nazario y Colón, and where Crosswhite and others did workshop poetry.
I also tried to find out who may have been the first person to stop the elevator. As with most of my questions, I received a range of answers. However, with this particular question, the answers ranged from people to people, and in rather amusing ways. Both Nazario y Colón and Walker told me it was likely Coleman. And then Nazario y Colón also says, “Usually things like these, probably [it] is like the least [likely] person, the person that you think would not have come up with it. So I’m going to say Thomas Aaron came up with the idea.” And then we get Crosswhite and Coleman’s responses, which add humor and depth to the elevator lore.
At first Coleman says, “[E] ither me and Ricardo, or me and Frank.” But then he adds,
probably not Frank, because he was directing the culture center…So it was either me, or it was Ricardo, and Ricardo just doesn’t remember it was him, or doesn’t want to fess up to the fact that it was him. We may both have decided in the back of our minds back then that we didn’t want to be blamed for being the ones who did. So, it was very likely Ricardo and I.
Crosswhite had a similar response, only shorter: “I would say it was more than likely Ricardo, because he was the one who was the craziest one out of us.”
Something else I received varying responses on was whether anyone ever got caught, or got in trouble, from hitting the stop button on the elevator. None of my interviewees mentioned being disciplined, but some said there was an alarm and others said there was no alarm. Both Coleman and Crosswhite said that they were never caught, and never “reprimanded” (Crosswhite). Coleman elaborates, saying,
And one of us, just when the doors were closed, pulled the elevator stop button. And it just so happened, for whatever reason, they either hadn’t installed an alarm…or it just wasn’t’ working. Whatever the case was, whenever you pulled that little stop button, the elevator would stop between floors but no alarm would sound. It would just sit there. And the other thing that kind of made us think it was alright to get away with that, no one ever used that elevator. That was the least used elevator I have ever seen in my life, because it was right next to the stairwell that was just kind of a, it was a three-flight stairwell. But most people were either going to the first floor, where we already were, or the second floor.
However, Nazario y Colón told me that when they hit the stop button an alarm would sound. He added,
The times I went in, the custodians knew. We knew them. And we would come out the elevator, they’d be looking at us. We’d be like, “oh, we’re good now.” They would laugh, and you know, that kind of thing. They only responded because the building manager wanted to make sure that someone wasn’t really trapped in there. Nobody’s rushing to the elevator to rescue anybody.
Again, Walker’s responses were brief, but still informative. He told me about getting caught: “Occasionally, we’d get caught. Never in trouble.” This tells me that he too remembers an alarm sounding, or at least getting caught for being on the elevator in a three-floor building for such a long time.
One question I asked that provided surprising responses (a bit more than others) was whether they wanted to stop elevators when they get in them today. I expected everyone to say, “of course,” because, personally, I think the elevator days are such a special thing they all experienced—experienced, in the past tense, as it doesn’t seem the elevator days are (as) alive as they were. Nazario y Colón laughed at first, then told me, “No,” laughed some more, and continued, “No. You know, that’s a good idea. I have not done that. Maybe I just sat in the elevator without having to pull the switch.” Walker says, “Actually, no.” Coleman’s response was shorter than most of his answers, and like Nazario-Colòn, he laughed at first: “I don’t get on elevators that much. So, you know. But I wouldn’t be surprised if some of us have a moment every now and then when we have that little flashback.” Crosswhite, amused along with Nazario y Colón and Coleman, said, “Oh, man, that would be awesome…There’s moments.” And then he told me about getting trapped on an elevator a few years ago, saying of the moment, “I was like, wow, this would be a great Affrilachian moment.”
To go back to Coleman’s response—“I wouldn’t be surprised if some of us have a moment every now and then”—Nazario y Colón first said no, and then had an aha! moment about the Affrilachian Poets’ fifteenth anniversary. He remembers that a group “went to UK because I worked at UK, so I had keys. And we went, and we got in the elevator. And Amanda Johnston was in the elevator. Parneshia Jones. Frank. Myself. And we had a quick moment. And Gerald. And Gerald, yeah.”
This brings me to the last part of my interviews, which is asking why the elevator days stopped. Crosswhite told me that as the group grew it became too big, had too many members, to have these elevator moments. Nazario y Colón, however, said it was likely because people were graduating and leaving the UK: “you know, kind of the energy, that core group, was just beginning to go in other different directions.” Coleman had a similar answer, though in different words and an interesting metaphor. He told me, “It’s hard to pinpoint. It’s kind of like a festival. If you have a three day festival, some people get there on Friday and leave on Saturday. Some people come Saturday and stay till Sunday. Some come Friday night, leave Saturday morning. You know what I mean? People were coming in and going out.”
A core belief here, regardless of the different responses, is an end to the elevator days. Walker gave me a much different answer, though. He writes, “Not sure that is has stopped.” It comes to mind as I sit here at my desk writing that Walker is the only one of my four interviewees who still works at the UK. Crosswhite lives in Mobile, Alabama; Coleman in Atlanta, Georgia; and Nazario y Colón not far from Walker near Morehead, Kentucky. Maybe Walker knows something the others don’t know. Or maybe he just has more hope. Or maybe he’s telling Wilgus stories, unwilling to divulge all of the elevator’s secrets. Whatever it is, if we go back to Crosswhite’s moment and Nazario y Colón remembering about the Affrilachian Poets’ fifteenth anniversary, and add Walker’s statement, “[N]ot sure that it has stopped,” we’ve got folklore. We’ve got a continuation of a customary practice of the Affrilachian Poets, and a way of seeing these past moments as not over, as possible in the future.
To close, let us first go back, back to Brunvand on folkore:
Traditional form or structures allows us to recognize corresponding bits of folklore in different guises. The characters in a story, the setting, the length, the style, even the language may vary, but we can still call it the “same” story if it maintains a basic underlying form. (12)
Here the elevator days, these poetry moments, seen in a different guise than a Jack Tale, for instance, can be looked at as folklore of the Affrilachian Poets. More specifically, in this brief analysis using aspects of folklore and PENs, we can say firmly that the elevator days are a piece of folklore about the earliest days of the Affrilachian Poets. Certain aspects can be applied to the PEN, but I see more of a relationship to folklore, especially when we consider the continuation of the elevator days if not in practice, then at least in stories told about them, and how the stories/interviews I have discussed here have a “basic underlying form.” In random occurrences, such as getting stuck on elevators, anniversary moments, and that day I find an elevator with a stop button I can push, and a poem I can read, the elevator days have entered into the folklore of the Affrilachian Poets.
Works Cited
Brunvand, Jon Harold. “”The Field Of Folklore.” The Study of American Folklore: An Introduction (Fourth Edition). New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998: 3–21.
Coleman, Gerald. Personal Interview. 19 Mar. 2015. Audio File.
Crosswhite, Miysan. Personal Interview. 9 Apr. 2015. Audio file.
Dolby, Sandra. “Personal-Experience Story.” American Folklore: An Encyclopedia. Ed. Jan Harold Brunvand. New York: Garland, 1998: 556–558.
Donohue, Jean, Fred Johnson, Gurney Norman, and C D. Dawson. Coal Black Voices. Covington, KY: Media Working Group, 2006.
Garrison, Andrew. “Norman, Gurney.” Encyclopedia of Appalachia. Eds. Rudy Abramson and Jean Haskell. Knoxville: The U of Tennessee P, 2006: 1078–1079.
Goldberg, Christine. “Taylor, Archer (1890–1973).” American Folklore: An Encyclopedia. Ed. Jan Harold Brunvand. New York: Garland, 1998: 704–705.
Nazario y Colón, Ricardo. Personal Interview. 16 Mar. 2015. Typed transcript.
Newberry, Elizabeth R. “Affrilachians.” Encyclopedia of Appalachia. Eds. Rudy Abramson and Jean Haskell. Knoxville: The U of Tennessee P, 2006. 246.
Norman, Gurney. “Affrilachian Genesis.” Iron Mountain Review 25 (Spring 2009): 26–27.
Spriggs, Bianca. “Frank X Walker: Exemplar of Affrilachia.” Appalachian Heritage 39.4 (Fall 2011): 21–25.
Walker, Frank X. Personal Interview. 24 Mar. 2015. Email.
Affrilachia
for Gurney and Anne
thoroughbred racing
and hee haw
are burdensome images
for Kentucky sons
venturing beyond the mason-dixon
anywhere in Appalachia
is about as far
as you could get
from our house
in the projects
yet
a mutual appreciation
for fresh greens
and cornbread
an almost heroic notion
of family
and porches
makes us kinfolk
somehow
but having never ridden
bareback
or sidesaddle
at cutting
hanging
or chewing tobacco
yet still feeling
complete and proud to say
that some of the bluegrass
is black
enough to know
that being ‘colored’ and all
is generally lost
somewhere between
the dukes of hazard
and the beverly hillbillies
but
if you think
makin,‘shine from corn
is as hard as Kentucky coal
imagine being
an Affrilachian
poet
Affrilachian MixTape I: Turntablism
Did you get born to John Henry’s
body breaking
on flat beds and rifle racks?
Is your blues Stamp Paid’s
row
to the free side
or the funk of pig feet or the tighten up
from Deweese Street
to
De
troit?
Did you get down on the Cumberland’s
birthwater
or grits with sugar not
pepper
or the steel mills of Homewood?
Does you Affrilachian mix
scratch Curtis Mayfield
on vinyl
to do-ragged men who hate
the bony spine of mountain holding
them prisoner?
Holla if
Holla if you hear
the black banjo
And what of a Wheeling beat box
of genuine negro jigs
and maybe
Dixie is a black
song?
And what if
a doe see doe
Virginia reel
and Tennessee waltz
was born from black juba?
Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone
Keep time people.
Keep
time.
Like a rustle of ankle chains
and conga,
mariachi is the new
jam
This is Affrilachian turn
tablism
Holla if you hear
Holla if you
here.
bless your heart
i don’t remember
where i heard it
first
it was just
in the air
like please, thank you
and ma’am
it’s that tart
piece of lemon
floating on a
white frosty layer
of glaze
in the sweet ice tea
it’s that extra inch
of meringue
on the brown
sugar pie
it was the big smile
wrapped around
a cruel lie
you see, down here
where the ale eight is cold
and the a la mode is warm
and baked beans
on the side
of fried catfish
is the law
we don’t scream
kiss my ass
we like to pour molasses
on our consternation
lap it up
with a biscuit
nobody does it better
than a saccharine
sanguine sara
a how do you do
sally mae, anna bell
patricia faye or abbie gail
with her gum poppin
and her hips rockin
to the side
with a manicured hand
perched
just so
on a hip
curved like a
granny smith apple
you see, down this way
where the grass
is blue
and the corn puddin
with homemade rolls
and collard greens
chased down with
five
berry
pie
we don’t holla
dumb motherfucker or
take the lord’s name
in vain
we like to spread butter
all over our dissatisfaction
eat it toasted
maybe with a little
jam
so listen close
or you might
mistake the smile
for a grin
or the curse
for a blessing
because
down here
where the whisky
is bourbon
and the koolaid
is diabetes sweet
fuck you
we like to smother it
and cover it
with gravy
until it’s running
over the sides
down here
we smile
we wave
and say
bless your heart
Brown Country
Why certainly I loves country
am partial to a sad sappy love song
and head back howling for a lost love
I live to the tune of hoping hopelessly
I am country
and drawn to the music of the land
not the red on the white in the blue
but the green and the amber
and the ochre-orange country
Natively black foot
with land earth ocean
where fathers and their mothers smoldered
in the name of the Union
how come ain’t no sad country songs
about Indians being holocausted
or Africans jumping the broom on Sundays
for to never see their Sweety again
When it’s only me
I turn the car radio to it
the spot where God-Family-Country live
polygamously
through the silence a voice laughs asking
“You ain’t really gonna listen to that are you?”
Yeah Good Buddy I’m listening
so let the chips fall where they may
Because I do
do so love the brown and the black
of the red on the white in the blue
Does loving country and craving a song
that brings my own black-balled eyes
up to the depth of my haunted-hunted heart
does that make me a country music fan
a natural for sorrow
a Charlene Pride of poetry
a black country singer
with acoustic and eraser
plucking a nappy live wire
I who sing along with the twanging
of the car radio
with country songs
when nobody is listening
how do you explain being African
and loving country
not the red or the white in the blue
but the green and the amber and the ochre-orange
You never explain
just let the good times roll
Carolina born
so I seen it all
from sea to shining sea island
I play it back to you
with a pencil sharp guitar
and hambone hard with the other
I come backed by fiddle and calypso
And on certain notes
my gullah starts to drawl
Mercy Me
I’ll throw my head back in a minute
even close my eyes tight when I sing
it’s always something about losing my head
or making up with
Or just plain wallowing in the pain of love
Awww come on now
You know how it goes
I’m no Dolly or Billy Ray
But I sho am country
And when I’m gone
Please somebody feed my cat
and in return I’ll make my voice
low country quiver real good
then roll for you
you laughing but
this really ain’t nothing “shakey bakey”
cause I know folks born in a Holler
who scream all their life
and nobody ever writes a song about them
shouldn’t that be a country’s song too
or is that only poverty
and the private property of Bluesmen
and Plumbleached women
another jurisdiction
another country
it’s always so Grand Old Oprey hot
that my mascara’s usually running
and by then the Breck hairspray
has wilted my locks
back to lion size normal
and I’m ready to unhitch my silver buckle
drop my jean skirt to the floor
and find me some indigo
to wrap back around my waist
WellShootGoodBuddy
what more do I have to do to prove it
I tell you it’s true I am a black country singer
Cause what there is for me to sing about
Should make you push your beer to the side
and take a walk through some
Black family farm land some
Black burial grounds
now sold and desecrated
by golf ball signs that say ‘Private Drive’
should make you want to know
this singing southerner’s truth
it’s my job living in this brown country
to take you inside of real live heartache
and make you tap your foot long enough
and make you smile at yourself
until you recognize your Daddy’s face floating
in what I’m saying
Until you ask yourself
as you walk away
does she really listen to Country music
or was that just a poem
Oh why am I fooling myself
They won’t never say
I ever sang a good country song
I’m the wrong shade of country
They’ll just be mad
that I never let you forget for one minute
that country, the land, is color coded
and that country, the music, is pretty shady too
Country
the twanging one you always hear
is sometimes sad
but always sweet
steeped in honor and family
and cheating checkered skirts
and the backside of some poor slithering creature
pummeled and stretched
into a pair of roach killing boots
they dance to the sizzling notes that
I just lean and listen to
the long and lazy stretched out lines
about life
but whose life
and whose country
This is not about happy endings
this music ain’t concerning Cinderellas
but stepsisters and sons and pumpkins
and shoes that never fit some feet
and how dance it back away
so why does
this Black girl’s iambic feet
always have to doe-see-doe in your face about it
why does she have to sing country music
to herself
along in her car to not be afraid
why can’t she buy a front row seat
and wave to Naomi Judd
singing those too close to Aretha like lines
“I love you so stinking much that
if you ever try and leave me I’m with you”
I love country
for the tender story
for the blazing heart
for the ache and sorrow sweetness
that is always there
for the green in the amber of the ochre-orange
in the red on the white of the blue
that I always feel
Oh what the hell
I am country I like
listening to its sweet tang
linger like a sour apple
baked to the pipes of my roasted mouth
As I drive this back road
I take taste of it
as I pull into this honkey tonk gas station
I sing along until
I hear my radio’s same song even louder now
and look around for the twin source
rolling out a hiked up summertime window
there in the diner next to the station
I know the words but my daddy’s lips freeze
I end my harmless sing-a-long and look up
I fall into dozens of crawling all over me eyes
that accompany the Kentucky Headhunter tune
they are full of catfish and budweiser and quickly
turn into razors swinging in the August air
I feel the blood gushing
cutting the music into
the red then the white the blue of my brown
This place where the cowboy under the hat
spits the color of my mother’s skin out his window
I was taught never to step inside
he knows all this an follows my every move
guzzling down his yahoo drink
he brings his buddies to the looking glass
they zip their pants
up and down like a fiddle
as one of them begins to step away from the rest
I need to pay for my gas and go
but my swinging feet are stitched frozen to my lips
I look away to the woods all around
My grandfather is untying himself from all the trees
He pops and stretches his many necks back into place
He says I should consider history
the payment in full
Country music is historical
This is the music we were lynched by
These are the hangman’s songs
Tujcalusa
In the west side of Tujcalusa,
country boys still say howdy and ma’am
and they tip their cowboy hats
to salute a lady.
This morning their daily ritual
was interrupted by a subtle nod
from a vaquero with his family.
The Copenhagen smiles disappeared
and memories of the running of the bull
across the deep South decades ago,
brought about a chill at the country store
we call K-Mart.
Alabama sounds Spanish to me
and Tujcalusa reminds me of Yabucoa,
Humacao and other aboriginal names
in Puerto Rico. The familiarity of these names
beckons me.
But this is the Deep South
and no matter how thirsty you are
or how warm it is outside,
it can be a cold place to take a drink of water.
O Tobacco
You are a Kentucky tiller’s livelihood.
You were school clothes in August
the turkey at Thanksgiving
Christmas
with all the trimmings.
I close my eyes
see you tall
stately green
lined up in rows.
See sweat seeping
through Granddaddy’s shirt
as he fathered you first.
You were protected by him
sometimes even more
than any other thing
that rooted in our earth.
Just like family you were
coddled
cuddled
coaxed
into making him proud.
you were the only
pretty thing
he knew.
When I think of you
at the edge of winter,
I see you, brown, wrinkled
just like Granddaddy’s skin.
A ten-year old me
plays in the shadows
of the stripping room
the wood stove burns
calloused hands twist
through the length
of your leaves.
Granddaddy smiles
nods at me when he
thinks I’m not looking.
You are pretty
and braided
lined up in rows
like a room full of
brown girls
with skirts hooped out
for dancing.
Grits
First Published: Duende Magazine: October 2014
For the way they stick to all 24 of my ribs, coat & dramatic hold—my god—
I love grits & their salt when I’m done dressing their simple bodies, harmony
Hominy & song For the hot mill & milk & warm they make me
& Chicago Sunday morning w/ garlic & cheese & frozen coke cola that Kelly makes for
Parneshia, baby Naomi & me—in her adopted city before Parneshia
flies me to sky—all morning we are gratify & sate
& Waffle Houses from Lexington, Kentucky to Gulfport, Mississippi, where they
lay slices of American cheese over like prayers, small hell yeses in our bowls—
fried egg sandwiches w/ pickles & coffee, but lord it’s the grits, always—
& Magnolias uptown in Charleston w/ David—grits w/ spicy shrimp, sausage
& tasso gravy, we are douse & want—in love & its taste is country & cloy—
all shellfish & corn, all ground & earth
& Clover Grill grits & yolk, buttered biscuits w/ gravy & pork chops, while the grill
sizzles sexy like & we all smell of stale Abita & smoke & the Soul Rebels still revolve &
it’s 3am in the Quarter & we all, all of us feel home
& this morning All the silence of a Sunday hot water, ¼ cup meal, cheese, salt,
milk & coffee & this poem & New York can feel South, can make the distance feel
full still & not as bitter as it sometimes—is
THE KENTUCKY–IST
Sammy Davis, Jr., Jr. is the name of my dog.
Yes, this comes from another book. Yes, this is
his officious name because
he reminds me of a spry black Jew. Yes,
this is still racist, even coming from me.
The –ist pulls the best out of all of us.
It is the low-slung onomatopoetic
operatic of the tire swing hung
from my neighbor’s tree, ist, a red
cable fashioned as a noose. The descendants
of southern transcendentalists,
they will use the same knot come Halloween
(the death man cometh) clinging to the effigies
of tissue ghosts and, come spring,
a basketball coach (the ice man taketh away)—
the satirist—garbage bags clad in suits of papier mâche.
The historicist: because everyone needs
something large and black and fearful hanging
from a beech. Ist—The sound wearing wind in its teeth.
Gap-toothed, warden, sneer-sucking tongue—
and that was just the Disney version. Even now, I hear
Cin-cin-NAT-tah, but I see Emmet Till and Sammy
Davis, Jr. [,Sr.] in the golden Cadillac to Kim Novak’s
hiding in the backseat. They file by the Volvo
window parked at the Winn-Dixie
My fat adolescent fingers scanning the white sheet
the conic iconic, a family-of-four, in rain-spit grit.
I say, “Mom, it’s the Klan.” She looks through
the rear view, sucks Maybelline off her teeth before
scrounging her purse for bills,
“Well, you better hurry on in there, then. You
better get on. Those eggs won’t buy themselves.”
In the City
rear-wheel-drive cuttin co’ners rims rubbin through the city
fishtail swingin switchin lanes floatin tub in the city
M-4 extended barrel peeks out from beneath the seat shit
gotta stay above the mud in the city
spit-rolled blunts sit coolin in the swivel of air vent there
for when it starts the tug of the city
palm the finger waves her face hidden in the sex of my lap
this how a king fall in love in the city
family heir at age twelve when pops went to the grave
couldn’t find my heart if they dug up the city
mothers shoot brown sugar into the rupture of vein
i live like this through the blood of the city
stay glued to the rearview in a forever state of flight
a bad omen i am the black dove of the city
not quite a fiend just sprinkle a little out the bag
to do a few bumps just because in the city
redbone rhythm her first time breaths only sound
that ever drowned out the buzz of the city
now the joy of her moan live ringin i waste in La Grange
forever reminiscing how it was in the city
fleur-de-lis
sidney bechet bought an old, beat-up soprano saxophone, when it is difficult enough to play one that’s in tune. he was gallant like that; when he was wont, he planted petite fleur in quiet imaginations. similar to the way he might enter a blossom, wrap himself in the bouquet, buzz his malediction, and retreat to paris, a pilgrim sets out on a journey to find her holy place, an ice cube wanders discursively along an aqueous path till it has fully realized new liquid form; this i am sure of, if only because i am myself a b7 minor, sanctum, and slowly melting. what line is not after another? what note either in a lucent solo? railroad tracks run from east coast to west coast and back, the train takes the tramp wherever she wants to go. at some point she will find herself along the banks of the ohio in a river city looking for lost treasure—a gold medal tossed into a great waterway by an ex-patriot. the lilies in this city have no sweet odor for they are made iron, and rust with time. the meter also changes—it is in the variation of timing and stress that a feel is created that gets the whole storyville jumping. and while the cathouse wholly throbs with vice, poets make the polite music of the middle class. you can make poetry whorish, but you can’t make it unpopular. a breeze stumbles in on this gruesome scene and pets the wilting yellow iris in a vase. she is a flower of basin street, her occupation is to be known, and known often well. why do we try so hard to be beautiful, when we already are? he was rough, and before she knew it was all over, her little flower was gone.
on aging
O, for a beaker full of the warm South
—John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale”
a five-story continuous column
still
rises above a muddy runt of a creek.
it is not really snowing,
the sky is peeling
from its psoriasis. skeletons of various deciduous trees
resign themselves to the coming of many cold, gray days.
whiskey
is about the only thing that likes the change
in season,
the passing of time. white oak from fordsville, ky,
dried and stacked
to speed maturity, is cut into staves
to form barrels. hungry flames belch out of
these new vessels;
wood smoke scents the insouciant air. charring,
in good time,
makes a whiskey wise, ambers its tone, and gives it its whiskers.
what does it feel like, you ask.
to be so devoted to darkening i am a sour mash
of bleak and garbled omens?
the devil has to get his cut—if we are honest with ourselves,
we must admit
what unfolds from time cannot be anticipated. the most important thing
is to be open to wonder and surprise—
to the poem. which leads us to georgetown
where the very right reverend elijah craig is supposed
to have distilled the first whiskey using corn and limestone water
(the master distiller’s dream).
there are two contradictory elements that run through
american history like the red
and white stripes across old glory: they are stern piety
and the need to carouse. after just one year of pastoring,
gray hairs
begin to sprout from around the temples. by the time i married
my first couple,
i looked like i could be their father,
when in truth,
i am just a few years older than them. likewise,
the presidency changes a person.
halfway through his first term obama had just a few silvery stragglers,
by the end of his time in office,
it is a snowy evening. the old saying goes,
a little whiskey for the stomach.
but what of the head? the heart? all of those compromises
of your principles
must hasten one’s descent
into the grave? in the early aromas
there are no axes of concern. the nose is intensely fruited,
bears a tantalizing citrus zest.
the body is broad, silky,
almost chewable; the palate is tremendously buttery
with some sherry notes,
a dash of dried fruits, and whisper of creamy vanilla. The finish is long
and elegant. these are words of an aesthete
in a feeble attempt to discover
a way to talk
about the taste of taking away a little grace
and hope from each encounter.
then i checked the label
and found that it was 126 proof: when you buy
a fine bourbon,
you’re also buying time, and it can fool you. but then,
if you need to erase the rough spots
in an evening,
there’s nothing better.
Praisesong for a Mountain
O, mountain,
I am your daughter.
Once, before I knew you,
I mistook you
for a low-hanging thunderhead.
Or thought maybe
you were a blue whale
that had lost its way,
blinded by the sun.
O, mountain,
linger—
be my whole horizon.
Let me never open
my eyes and see a thing
but your hoary grace.
You are the missing
rib of the Earth.
You are the climax
of a god’s birth.
of burnt-out stars.
O, mountain,
I wish one day
to be buried
in your third eye.
Lend me something
of yourself:
your posture,
your grip,
your innermost
jewel-toned seam,
so that I too, may endure.
Black Diamonds
for Mrs. Sweet Genny Lynch
Whatchu know about black diamonds, black diamonds, black diamonds?
Whatchu know about soooul?
Whatcha know about coooal?
Whatchu know about the pressure
of the earth
turning soil to coal
turning coal to diamonds?
They say
they say….one day
millions and millions of years of pressure
of pressure
of pressure
form diamonds
in colors: black, pink, yellow, green.
Today, this pressure forms black diamonds
from blood
from sweat
from love
from slaves buried in unmarked graves.
Black diamonds form on days like April 5th 2010.
That day started just like all the other days
just like all the all the days
the other days
the hundreds of days,
like for hundreds of years
that the earth fell
in
on
miners
trapping them underground with nothing
but their prayers
This time on April 5th 2010
29 men died
in what they call a “mine disaster”
others, “industrial homicide”
homicide
homicide.
DEAD, 29 MINERS
Whatchu know about black diamonds…
You See, When Mrs. Lynch
when sweet Mrs Genny Lynch
heard the news
that her husband would not be coming home
she knew that there would be no more
“I love you’s”
no more three kisses at 4am
no more “coffee on the stove by your bucket, Honey”
Her high school sweetheart
her Rosie,
would not
be coming
home.
When sweet Genny sheds a tear
when every coal wife
sheds a tear
there comes the pressure
compacted
compacted
compacted
and every time Mrs. Lynch, Mrs. sweet Genny cries
and her tears hit the earth
There
There
in the mountains of West Virginia, forms a priceless
black diamond
no coal company can ever sell.
These jewels of Appalachia
women who love their men deep into the earth
this special breed
this diamond
forming diamonds
compacted
compacted
of tears
of love
of human slavery
of the company store
of “we’re sorry for your lost”
of black black lung
this/ our history, is scattered
you have to find it in poems
called Black Diamonds
in pages where black ink fades
until somebody digs
and some brave heart will heart will always hear the call
from deep inside the earth and dig
so that millions and millions of years from now…
they will hold up and marvel at our diamonds,
wonder at their timeless love
formed by pressure
and pressure
and pressure
and the salt
of her tears.
the hills we grew on
when the hills we grew on
disappeared, our parents said:
set down roots near still waters
be grounded. hold on tight
my brother, desperate, consumed
what fauna made him home
until nothing came to roost
my sister sent her tap root deep
busted through limestone & quartz
to reach springs hidden below bedrock
I dreamed the sky is ground & ground sky
sent my roots into the atmosphere