Another Letter to Sterling A. Brown Following Black History Month

 

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