Director Ava DuVernay talks about the SELMA movie at Sirius XM in New York . (Getty Image by Robin Marchant) For me, the movie Selma provided 3 very important opportunities. The first was to celebrate the fact that the extraordinary story of the people of Selma, Alabama, had received “big-screen movie treatment” with director Ava DuVernay, producers Oprah Winfrey and Brad Pitt, and a cast of some of the most gifted actors working today, including David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King, Jr., at the helm. The second important opportunity was a chance to write about the movie’s potential impact on present-day campaigns to secure various gains won in the past but clearly placed at risk in the present. Due to the nature of the subject, I knew the planned article would require at least a 2-part installment.  However, a trip to Selma in 2009 to participate in the annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee had inspired an essay:  ...

                                 Maya Angelou "Getting the work done." (graphic by Postered Poetics) “My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.” ––author Maya Angelou The death of author Maya Angelou on May 28 and the murderous massacre in Isla Vista in Santa Barbara County, California, on May 23, 2014, occurred within a week of each other. Both forced me to turn my attention away from work on the final proofs for Journey  through the Power of the Rainbow, Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry . Then both, in the end, for different reasons, persuaded me to remain as focused as I could and to get the work done. That last phrase in particular––“get the work done”––stood out because I recalled Angelou using it when noting how prolific James Baldwin (as an author of novels, plays, po...

                                1972 Associated Press photo of Amiri Baraka by Julian C. Wilson . This story was originally published as part 2 of "Two Literary Laureates Celebrated: Herta Muller and Amiri Baraka." It was written at the time in honor of the great Amiri Baraka's (1934-2014) 75th birthday. It is shared now upon the occasion of his passing : While his was not among the names short-listed for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Amiri Baraka has long been lionized for his tell-tale intellectually precise yet poetic analysis of U.S. culture and his fire-brand style of political truth-telling.   A playwright, novelist, poet, essayist, short-story writer and performance artist all wrapped into one, the Newark-born Baraka attended Rutgers and Howard Universities and is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. He launched his writing career under the name LeRoi Jones with the 1958 play, A Good...

        Working cover from the scheduled 2014 book release Journey through the Power of the rainbow . “…We are living in an era in which billions of people are grappling to promote communication, tolerance, and understanding over the more destructive forces of war, terrorism, and political chaos that have characterized the beginning of the 21st Century.” –– Aberjhani, from Journey through the Power of the Rainbow A frequently asked question among readers who took note in 2013 that I was working on a collection of quotations is: have I abandoned the idea? That would have been easy to do considering the reluctance of traditional publishers to invest in books containing any substantial amount of material that has been previously posted on the Internet. The challenge for me, and for the tech angels who get a kick out of throwing whatever pro bono support they can in my direction, was to take a deep breath and dive into the years of published books, unpublished...

“We each have lessons to learn and to teach, and healing is something we all do together.”—David Bedrick ( Talking Back to Dr. Phil ) Black History Month is a time I usually reserve for purchasing and reading books by and about African Americans to help add functional substance to the month’s cultural and educational value .  It therefore was unlikely that I would read David Bedrick’s Talking Back to Dr. Phil ––after receiving a copy as a gift––any time soon.  This is what happened to change my mind: Just as I was preparing to place the book halfway between a stack of titles waiting for my attention, I took a quick look inside at the acknowledgments page and read this opening sentence: “About twenty-five years ago, I had the privilege of hearing the music and poetry of Etheridge Knight, a freedom-loving black poet living in Boston.” Since Knight was one of my all-time favorite tortured-soul scarred-radical-genius explosively-complex literary heroes, I k...

“…The whole purpose of the construction of The Bridge of Silver Wings was to provide a path leading to The River of Winged Dreams, or to serve as a resting place until the river’s deeper and truer nature revealed itself.”              --Aberjhani, from The River of Winged Dreams There were no conscious plans to turn The River of Winged Dreams into one of the most quoted books both on and off the Internet. Had there been such a plan, chances are the users of Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads , Pinterest , Wordpress and other blog sites likely would have been more inclined to avoid the title rather than embrace it. However, that it has become one of the more quietly-celebrated modern works of literature around might be considered less surprising when looking at the private and global circumstances under which it was written. Those circumstances are revealed in the book’s foreword and introduction as well as in the text of the poems and in the es...

Earlier this year, August 2, numerous individuals and institutions acknowledged the eighty-seventh anniversary of the birth of American author James Baldwin, and on December 1 observers noted the twenty-fourth anniversary of his death at the age of sixty-three. Interest in Baldwin’s novels, plays, essays, and life has been on the upswing since the 2010 publication of previously uncollected writings by him in The Cross of Redemption (edited by Randall Kenan). That interest grew stronger throughout 2011 as commentaries surfaced on the Internet regarding Baldwin’s 1963 prediction that the United States would one day have an African-American president. To read the full article by Aberjhani please click the link: Events in 2011 and forthcoming book strengthen James Baldwin's legacy - National African-American Art | Examiner.com