LETTER TO ARNA BONTEMPS FROM YAKIMA

 

LETTER TO ARNA BONTEMPS,

EDITOR, AMERICAN NEGRO POETRY

AFTER 50 YEARS OF LISTENING

   I scattered seed enough to plant the land

   in rows from Canada to Mexico

   --A Black Man Talks of Reaping, Arna Bontemps, 1902-1973


It’s first year, 1963, the year I graduate from high school

in Seattle, in my hands for the first time,

14th printing, January, 1968,

the year I return to school from Vietnam,

the poems with me, into me, cover-worn,

Go to Bontemps, until 15 May 2020,

the day George Floyd is murdered.


Army green cover with poets named

three across in black ink rubbed white,

An Anthology edited by Arna Bontemps

in white, mid-page, surrounded. I give

the book to my granddaughter, 15,

angry at police, white America,

only to ask for it back one week


later. This time, young America

vows to get it right, marching in streets

following Black Lives Matter.

From you then: Johnson, Dunbar, McKay;

Cullen: To make a poet Black and bid him sing!

Helene Johnson: too splendid for this city street.

Mari E. Evans and her emancipated turtle.


Hayden’s souvenir to Mark Van Doren.

New England pews made from father’s bones.

Owen Dodson’s drunken lover; Margaret Walker’s

people, walking blindly, spreading joy; Yerby’s

That part of you is part of me; Samuel Allen’s

Satch grabbing a handful of stars.

Gwendolyn Brooks not answering the phone.


This one breaking the spine, Leroy Jones’

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note,

for Kelley Jones, born 16 May 1959,

where is she 61 years and a day after

George Floyd’s murder? Things have come to that.

The ground,,,envelops me tiptoeing to her room

she’s praying into her own clasped hands.


You mean that much to an army of us,

Mr. Arna Bontemps, Louisiana Creole.

First published poem titled Hope. Life-long

friend of Hughes, DuBois, Hurston, Toomer.

Oxygen of the Renaissance, a collaborator.

The Book of Folklore for the WPA. Black thunder

refusing to burn his books, a children’s writer.


Thanking you sir, from Yakima, Washington,


Jim Bodeen

5 February 2021



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