Montage of African Americans and Abraham Lincoln illustrating significance of the Emancipation Proclamation . ( Image courtesy of Library of Congress Public Domain ) Welcome to the first of this special 3-part article series presented in honor of the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation : The fact that an African American sits in the White House at the helm of government in the United States of America on this 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation represents both phenomenal political symbolism and a victory of faith in democracy that should not be lost on any American. Thoughts of the Emancipation Proclamation or the text of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S.  Constitution generally evoke images of American Blacks departing fields and kitchens to lend their own interpretation to the country’s great experiment in western democracy. But the end of legalized slavery did more than provide liberation for the bodie...

( Feathers of Gold, Feathers of Silver art graphic courtesy of Bright Skylark Literary Productions ) In July 2006, I sat down to write a short simple thank you note to fellow @poets and +writers who had graciously wished me well on my birthday. To my surprise, the intended short simple note came out of my pen in the form of the following poem: ANGEL OF GRATITUDE Each, shaped from a heart divine—such is the nature of your humble wings. Love, Mercy, and Grace, sisters all, attend your wounds of silence and hope. You are the good twin and the bad. Not arrogant, but jubilant…sweet… With grief or without, your flight commands awareness of joy beyond pain.     Holy starbright of infinite heavens, for these tears––I do thank you.     Just the fact that it was a poem was the first big surprise. The second was the style in which it was written, a variation on the haiku that I had never used before. Had my muse taken...

                           American troops maintaining their holiday spirit in the face of war .                                                           (Reuters photo by Saad Shalash) Why do you think certain creative works make such a powerful and lasting impact on a wide range of people? By way of example, consider the very edgy TV drama series Homeland , the current hit movie Lincoln , and Clint Eastwood’s modern film classic Letters from Iwo Jima ; or books such as The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, and The Diary of Anne Frank . Their sustained impact likely endures because they achieve what the best of the cultural arts generally do–– they step beyond blinders of national restrictions to shine a transcendent light on the universality of the human experienc...

"You were born a child of light's wonderful secret-- you return to the beauty you have always been." Quotation from the poem Holiday Letter for a Poet Gone to War from the book VISIONS OF A SKYLARK DRESSED IN BLACK by Aberjhani. One of the greater joys of my endeavors as an author and poet has been an occasional opportunity to compose poems, essays, and articles to supplement the vibrant works of visual artists with my own literary constructions. That was the case in 2011 when providing panel text for paintings featured in the extremely gifted artist Michele Wood’s I See the Rhythm of Gospel exhibition. Previously, I had been blessed with a similar honor when composing ekphrastic poems for the art of Luther E. Vann in ELEMENTAL The Power of Illuminated Love . And I’ve written any number of essays reviewing the works or chronicling the lives of other contemporary artists such as Allen Fireall (who currently, heartbreakingly, is challenged by the need for a hear...

                                President Barack Obama on the cover of TIME Magazine . “Beneath the armor of skin/and/bone/and/mind most of our colors are amazingly the same.” --from ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love (Aberjhani) Despite the Associated Press’s recent gloomy poll on racial attitudes in the United States, most Americans would probably agree that race should not have played as powerful a role as it did in the 2012 presidential election campaign resulting in the ultimate re-election of Barack Obama . But there are at least two good reasons that it did. First, consider the approximately one million African-American men and women currently either imprisoned, on parole, or rushing blindly down a path likely to lead to prison. Too many of them grew up, during any given decade of the last half century, believing they were either destined to go to prison as some form of rite...

President Barack Obama standing with the Red Cross and the nation in the face of Hurricane Sandy's historic devastation . (Reuters photo by Larry Downing) As much as many of us prefer to believe we now live in a “post-racial America,” fairly staggering evidence continues to accumulate to the contrary. Former President Bill Clinton, Reverend Al Sharpton, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Huffington Post bloggers, and other public figures have spent  much of their time during the 2012 presidential election campaign sounding alarms against voter suppression targeting African Americans and Latinos. These proposed types of suppression have taken the form of newly-required photo IDs, the cancellation of early voting on the Sunday before the election , the requirement of a long-term address over a given period of time, and other recently-invented criteria. Moving beyond the immediate political implications of these attempts, Clinton has asked th...

President Barack Obama and NJ Governor Chris Christie survey damage caused by Hurricane Sandy and comfort victims . (Reuters photo by Larry Downing) Was it a matter of political irony or plain old-fashioned racism that prompted the lack of definitive media headlines proclaiming President Barack Obama ––currently immersed in managing the United States’ recovery from the impact of Hurricane Sandy––the overwhelming winner of the third 2012 presidential debate? Instead of headlines such as “Barack Obama Triumphs with Second Consecutive Debate,” or “Obama Slams Romney in Debate Showdown,” readers were treated to the likes of these from FOX News: “Third debate sets tough tone for campaign’s final stretch” and “ Obama scores hollow victory against Romney (if that's what it was).” Among the few bolder as well as more accurate announcements was: “Sargent: A pummeling for Mitt Romney in the final debate.” In addition, although the New York Times did not put it in the headlin...

Reuters poll indicating viewer responses to the second 2012 presidential debate . “I really think that one of the profound decisions the American people have to make now is whether they want to be governed by a president, or a boss. And I mean a boss!”   ––Bravo Television’s James Lipton in conversation with Chis Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball Show. Halloween is close enough to the date of the 2012 American presidential election that the idea of the country waking up to either a trick or a treat on November 7 serves as an appropriate metaphor for the intense anxiety that has characterized much of the current campaign for the White House’s Oval Office. Critics of Democrats have accused them of guerrilla decontextualization trickery in the form of a presidential administration that has delivered less that they believe it should have over the past four years. Likewise: critics of Republicans have charged them with attempting to force upon the country a potential l...

Cover of first edition of I MADE MY BOY OUT OF POETRY featuring original art by celebrated New Orleans and New York artist Gustave Blache III . Recently I found myself on the verge of crossing over from ambivalence into guilt due to the amount of time and creative energy devoted this year to online journalism and other forms of prose-writing as opposed to a more luxurious immersion into the rich flow of poem-making. There were actually at least two instances in 2012 when I managed to combine the genres: the first came in February when writing about the death of WhitneyHouston and the second came, ironically enough, in August when writing about the life of one Michael Joseph Jackson. Although the poems included with the stories can stand well enough on their own, the fact that they were generated by journalistic concerns instead of employed as an initial means to a necessary end in themselves made me feel somewhat negligent. After all, where journalism was concerned I had ...

                        Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney . (Reuters photo by Jim Young) Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney at this point can claim with some justification that the media’s treatment of his “47 percent” comments, made at a private fundraiser in May in Florida, fall solidly in the category of guerrilla decontextualization. Yet, of all those powerful men and women who might have flocked to Mr. Romney’s defense in the wake of the PR nightmare that followed, only his running mate Paul Ryan did so with any kind of half-way convincing persuasive immediacy. Many former allies of Mr. Romney are now in fact performing that odd horizontal shuffle called “distancing” that politicians sometimes do so well when the word “stigma” threatens to attach itself to a colleague.  Such tends to be the case whether said colleague is wealthy, powerful, handsome, ugly, or none of the...

Visitors to Creative Thinkers International in many ways are as much a part of the community as our members because they help validate the value of our purpose for being here. We have not kept track over the past five years of where all of them are but our friends at Google Analytics have provided a simple snapshot of the 70 neighborhoods where last month’s visitors were when they dropped in.   For the full list and blog please click the link : Love and Gratitude from Creative Thinkers International - Welcome to Creative Thinkers International

Web surfers who have written about Aberjhani, translated works by him, or shared links to various posts of his work began to experience something unprecedented in early September 2012. It happened while performing an advance Google search on the term “author-poet.” In addition to the expected search return of well-known classic authors and poets who fall into this category, the query unexpectedly generated the above image of various historical and contemporary authors described as: “Authors frequently mentioned on the web.” There between William Butler Yeats and Edgar Allen Poe was the famous photograph of Aberjhani taken by celebrated photographer John Zeuli. Others included William Shakespeare, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, James Joyce, and Charles Bukowski. Please click below to view image and read the full post : Authors Frequently Mentioned on the Web - Bright Skylark Literary Productions

Poster commemorating 1st anniversary of execution of Troy Anthony Davis . (courtesy of NAACP) From the time he was first placed on trial for the murder of Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail in 1989 until his death by execution one year ago, September 21, 2011, more questions than answers have tended to accumulate where the case of Troy Anthony Davis was and is concerned. As far as any observers––including such trained onlooker as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Amnesty International, and Color of Change–– have been able to tell, Davis was not executed because he was proven guilty.  He was executed because technicalities of applied legal practice and questionable choices in regard to his defense failed to confirm his innocence. For the average person, such a distinction is murky at best. For Troy Anthony Davis––and for an as yet undetermined number of individuals––it literally meant the difference between life and death. ...

                                  Author Philip Roth in New York City . (Reuters file photograph) In his September 7, 2012, “Open Letter to Wikipedia,” acclaimed author Philip Roth made an appeal to the editors of Wikipedia. Posted in his blog for The New Yorker , he asked them to correct a statement he identified as misleading in the site’s article on his novel, The Human Stain . Roth––whose literary honors include a Pulitzer Prize, American Book Award, and Man Booker International Prize––stated the following: “ The entry contains a serious misstatement that I would like to ask to have removed. This item entered Wikipedia not from the world of truthfulness but from the babble of literary gossip—there is no truth in it at all.” He noted further that he had attempted through an official interlocutor to address the issue but was informed that site administrators required “secondary source...

President Barack Obama with 1 st Lady Michelle Obama and other U.S. political leaders at 1 WTC in New York (photo by Jewel Samad and AFP Getty Images) “Democracy does not have to be a blood sport . It can be an honorable enterprise that advances the public interest.”      ––f ormer U.S. President Bill Clinton When former U.S. President Bill Clinton made the above statement at the 2012 Democratic National Convention on September 5 in Charlotte, N.C., he was referring to the intensely negative elements that have made their way into the current presidential election campaign. He could, however, have been discussing almost any kind of attempt to resolve major differences where individuals choose to rely on brutality or guerrilla decontextualization as opposed to civility and communication. Imagine the many possibilities of what life might, could, or would be like for so many today if Osama bin Laden had developed a different perspective on how best ...

                               ( Photo of late actor Michael Clarke Duncan by Ethan Miller for WireImage ) Since his emergence during the 1980s and 1990s as a master of horror and suspense, author Stephen King has enjoyed popularity among a racially diverse reading audience. His popularity among African Africans likely ticked up a notch when his novel The Green Mile was made into a movie in 1999 and the late Michael Clarke Duncan brilliantly brought King’s character, John Coffey, to awe-inspiring life. Duncan, who died September 3, 2012, at the age of 54 from complications following a heart attack suffered in July, received an Academy Award nomination for the role. Moreover, he actually won the Saturn Award, Black Reel Award, Broadcast Film Critics Association Critics’ Choice Award, and Southeastern Film Critics Association Award for his performance. The accolades that rained upon...

Image still from the video-poem Notes for an Elegy in the Key of Michael . “It’s very important to keep the historical context in mind as you contemplate the nature of love and service required in the 21st century.” –Cornel West, Hope on a Tightrope To what extent might the phenomenal entertainer and humanitarian Michael Joseph Jackson have been the target of an extended guerrilla decontextualization campaign throughout the second half of his life? Hardcore devotees to Jackson’s music and altruistic humanitarian vision would say there can be no question that he was targeted in such a manner. Hardcore doubters might say maybe he was the one doing the guerrilla decontextualizing through the evolving manipulations of his public profile as a performance artist. They point to his chameleon-like shift from a distinctly afrocentric appearance in one decade to androgynously multi-ethnic in the next, and in his final years to an almost ethereal projection––a figure solidly in...

                         C lassic silhouette of "King of Pop" Michael Jackson . (public domain) Assistant program director “Lady Grace" at Savannah State University’s WHCJ radio station (90.3 FM) pointed out during one of her shows at the beginning of June that June and August represented the station’s “Michael Jackson time.” By that, she meant listeners could expect to hear during these months an occasional extended broadcast of music by the late enduringly great Mr. Jackson . She then launched into an uninterrupted set that lasted for longer than I could stay tuned in to listen. The music spanned every period of the creative genius’s exceptionally prolific career and included a variety of samplers from innovative mixes by diverse musicians and producers. In contrast: I recalled a fellow author informing me that she was “burned out” on Michael Jackson and didn’t see the point of different people’s cont...

All writers to one extent or another owe a debt of gratitude to writers in general because so much of what of we produce as authors represents a response to what we first experience as readers. Call it the yin and yang of a literary persuasion stemming from a precipitation of language and meaning that storms into our lives and then evolves to become part of the creative cycle itself.  For the complete post please click the link : Bright Skylark Literary Productions - Literary Persuasions: Book Reviews by Aberjhani

“It has become appallingly obvious that our   technology   has exceeded our   humanity …”  -- Albert   Einstein Guerrilla Decontextualization is a study of trends in social media, mainstream media, and general human conduct that focus on the practice of intentionally distorting images or information for the purpose of gaining influence or popularity. Examples of it are easy to spot in some 2012 political campaign ads when a candidate for a particular office tries to dig up dirt on another candidate and uses certain phrases from interviews (as well as private conversations) or excerpts from a video, to make it look as if that one phrase or image tells the whole story. It may be that the only true or accurate context for any given event––i.e., the birth of an idea, a conversational exchange, a clash or embrace between two or more entities–– is the moment in which it occurs. Everything else is a slanted interpretation, leaning either more toward or a...

When a writer’s name and book titles end up repeatedly on lists of celebrated “best authors” or “best books” it is usually a strong indication they are not only worth reading but occasionally: re-reading. So it is with the Harlem, New York-born author James Baldwin (Aug 2, 1924 - Dec 1, 1987). Were he still alive on this 88th anniversary of his birth, Baldwin could smile with satisfaction at the knowledge that his masterful works continue to illuminate the shadowy depths of human existence and to help empower the lives of socially embattled individuals. In June, the Library of Congress included the author’s classic The Fire Next Time on its initial list of “Books That Shaped America.” Chroniclers of the great author’s powerful impact on contemporary culture and history, however, started making sure in the last century that readers in this century would retain access to his legacy. In 1999, the Modern Library placed his Notes of a Native Son among the top half of “the 100 be...