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...

                   Albert Camus graphic with quote by Aberjhani provided by Postered Poetics . After kicking off the Text and Meaning Series with an article on Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech in August, the latest installment is on Albert Camus’ classic book, The Myth of Sisyphus. The Text and Meaning Series is one reminder that some of the battles we’ve found ourselves struggling through in 2013–– as if thrashing while asleep and trying to wake from nightmares–– have been fought before. In many cases it was believed victory had already been won. I started the Text and Meaning Series largely as a way of introducing classic works into conversations on current topics and events. It presently consists of the following: 1) Text and Meaning in Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream Speech 2) Text and Meaning in Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance 3) Text and Meaning in Langston Hughes The Negro Artis...

                      Author Albert Camus (photography by Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004 ) "The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” –– Albert Camus , The Myth of Sisyphus Albert Camus may have died tragically when the car in which he was a passenger crashed on January 4, 1960, but the novels, plays, essays, articles and notebooks he left behind continue to help lend clarity to individual and collective conflicts within the world in 2013. November 7 marks the 100th anniversary of the author’s birth and even though his works are already taught in high schools and universities around the world, the occasion of his centennial has prompted numerous events that have been taking place throughout the year. On November 7 and 8, the Albert Camus Society will host a Centennial Conference from 9:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. on both days at the Swedenborg Society Buil...

“Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream was a manifestation of hope that humanity might one day get out of its own way by finding the courage to realize that love and nonviolence are not indicators of weakness but gifts of significant strength.” -- MLK poster art with quote by Aberjhani courtesy of Bright Skylark Literary Productions . Different roads provide diverse routes to freedom. For many, the path is an interior one. It first requires an individual to the clear from the landscape of inner being those areas overgrown with woody thickets of doubt and trauma or buried beneath swamplands of self-imposed limitations. There are others––like the Americans who struggled for civil rights in the 1960s, and citizens of the Middle East and various African countries currently battling for basic human rights–– who take a more public journey to freedom. Their sense and experience of liberty is defined by interaction with the external dictates of history, evolving cultural persuasion...

“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...

                                    (Poster courtesy of Bright Skylark Literary Productions ) Recently the following quote from the poem A Poet Is a Clinton D. Powell , also known as “A Poem for a Poet,” has been making the rounds on the Internet: “A poet is a verb that blossoms light.” The poem was written to commemorate my friend Clinton’s inspired life and early death on January 2, 2011. That others have been gleaning some small inspiration and motivation from the phrase seems appropriate enough. He would have liked that because although he was not particularly prolific as a poet, he was an extraordinary champion of the art and those who practiced it. There were few venues in Savannah , Georgia, where he did not turn up for open mics or other poetry showcases (including  classrooms on every educational level) to lend his support.  To read the full post by Aberjhani ...

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

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...

"Interpretation of Harlem Jazz" a.k.a. "Drawing in Two Colors" art by German artist of the Harlem Renaissance Winold Reiss. (circa 1917, public domain) “Life calls the tune, we dance.”   ―   John Galsworthy , from Five Tales It was almost enough for me to simply join PEN American Center and set up a profile page without doing much else to qualify its existence. Such a page alone could allow me to relax inside the satisfaction of knowing I had remained true enough to my literary calling to place my name beside that of authors whose lives and craftsmanship had so often empowered my own. That idea, of course, faded very quickly as I further allowed myself to acknowledge something I have long known: you do not claim rights to an honored tradition just because a few books allowed you to bring them into the world or because you managed to cough up the obligatory dues. One claims a right to such traditions very much the way runners on a winning Olympic relay ...