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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