ADDING TO THE LONG STUDY OF STERLING A. BROWN
ANOTHER LETTER
FOLLOWING BLACK HISTORY MONTH
Dear Mr. Brown,
I know you this
morning from your voice
reading at the
Library of Congress in 1974,
and your telling and
explication
of truth and lies in
the upside-down world,
you, being, in your
words, one
of the great liars
of Howard University,
muddying the waters
by including
the president and
board of trustees
among the select.
May I say, Sir,
I love you for the
way you talked
about the young man
who illustrated
“The Ballad of Joe
Meek,” the kindness
in your reprimand,
before
reading the poem.
And for the way
you introduced “Old
Lem”
as you entered
deeper into
Southern Road,
listening
through they come by
tens.
Through violence and
bleedings
as you record how
they come,
not by ones, not by
twos,
but by tens. Mr.
Brown,
Thank you, again.
You come to me, Mr.
Brown,
through Michael
Harper
in your manufactured
dressing
of him in a tuxedo.
Michael Harper,
too, has memorized
the Robert Frost
poem Dave’s
Dive-In.
Michael Harper gives
me the lovely
word, raconteur, in
praising you,
deal me five cards,
you,
Ernest Gaines and
Harper in the same
Hall of Fame room.
Through
Harper I know The
Odyssey
of Big Boy, classic
and epic,
I know you close
with Strong Men,
Strong men comin’
on,
and Mr. Brown, they
are.
They’re coming on,
they are indeed.
But Mr. Brown, I’ve
also known you,
now over half a
century, when I was
21, when Housman's
One and Twenty
lay on my army bunk,
your voice
carrying. I knew you
from Arna Bontemps,
and Richard
Johnson--teacher/friend, and Folkway
research, and the
WPA, the blues,
the records and the
music and the blues,
and the Federal
Writers Project,
and how you immersed
yourself listening,
and I always
tried to get the
listening right.
The practice of the
listening itself.
Pure listening.
Listening again,
digging, in my
mid-70s,
you’re coming
through, strongest
from the beginning,
of the strong men,
coming on. Too
large, yourself,
for subversive,
except when saved
for the greatest of
them, Jesus,
DuBois. James Weldon
Johnson.
Remembered this
morning
in your lines to
Anne Spencer.
Mr. Brown, those in
your footsteps
have done you proud.
In lifting them,
you’ve lifted
the likes of me,
child
of the Dakotas,
growing old
reciting Children’s
Children,
one of so many
grateful
in remembering with
grace,
your faith, how you
responded
for your brother,
your brothers
to the question, Am
I bitter?
Butter beans for
Clara.
Stronger in spring.
Jim Bodeen
9 March 2021
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