Ntozake Shange - Poet Woman, in Admiration

How do you tread on a Tiger’s tail ?

Baby.. we are jealous, her exciting voice and outcry

Gave us new understandings for sharp color, real color

Poetry & ProseNina KuoApril 10, 2020Ntozake Shange, Poetry, Nina Kuo, Steve Cannon, a gathering of the tribes

Arts for Art Tribute to Steve Cannon - September 6, 6:30pm

On our minds, Poetry & Prose, Tribes and the CommunityChavisa WoodsAugust 23, 2019Steve Cannon, a gathering of the tribes, Arts for Art

Upcoming Fly By Night Press release: LIVING WITHOUT SKIN by Gabriel Don

This is Gabriel Don. Her light cannot be kept in a jar. Her words turn lead into gold. Don’t mess with her babies — she will G check you without a posse. She is Queen Elizabeth I encamped at Tilbury, she is Isis piecing Osiris together, she is dangerous and vulnerable and powerful. Powerful because vulnerable. This is Gabriel Don’s first collection and she doesn’t mean business; she means “Oh Henry you can’t be so clumsy with your cock.” Don’t let the politeness fool you.

- Sharon Mesmer, Polish-American poet, fiction writer, essayist and professor of creative writing

Dinner with Good Friends

On our minds, PhotosChavisa WoodsFebruary 27, 2019Steve Cannon, a gathering of the tribes

Where Did That Designer Get That Idea? (New York Times)

LONDON — A few weeks before her London Fashion Week show, scheduled for Sunday, the prizewinning fashion designer Grace Wales Bonner was wandering around a show of a different kind at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery here.

Vilma Hodo, a Volunteer here at Tribes

On our mindsChavisa WoodsFebruary 11, 2019vilma hodo, actor, a gathering of the tribes, volunteer

Daffodils at Tribes

On our mindsChavisa WoodsFebruary 5, 2019flowers, daffodils, a gathering of the tribes, Steve Cannon

The Shore

Maybe it's because

My skin's the color of the

beach floors their ancestors conquered

So familiar to be taken

Poetry & ProseLuci BerriosJanuary 14, 2019Luci Berrios, a gathering of the tribes, The Shore, poetry

Did ‘Hamilton’ Get the Story Wrong? One Playwright Thinks So (The New York Times)

The 15 or 20 minutes before the performance ticked by the same way they do on nights when Rome Neal presides over jazz at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. But this time Mr. Neal was directing a reading of a play. It takes aim at the sensation that is the theatrical juggernaut “Hamilton” and its creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda.

In “The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda,” Ishmael Reed Revives an Old Debate (The New Yorker)

Consensus and bipartisanship seem like a distant fantasy in today’s America. “Hamilton,” the musical created by Lin-Manuel Miranda that débuted in 2015 and is well on its way to becoming a billion-dollar production, is a rare source of general accord.

On our mindsThe New YorkerJanuary 14, 2019Hua Hsu, Ishmael Reed, a gathering of the tribes, hamilton, ron chernow

Searching for American Truth

Over the past several years there has been a number of American history books that have taken up the task of providing the reading public with a grand narrative of who and what we are as Americans.

What's the Harm?

I don’t delete those numbers although

they’re dead, I’ve been told,

those persons, not numbers.

Poetry & ProseRajnish MishraJanuary 14, 2019What's the Harm, Rajnish Mishra, poetry, poem, a gathering of the tribes

Night Beach (After Walt Whitman)

Beach, bright water, moonstreaked clouds

A triadic configuration of the summer night

Standing on the cliff above the beach

The Overcoat

Since you’ve been gone...

I am left here all alone, with no one to talk to on the phone

With only the overcoat to keep me warm

Poetry & ProseChavisa WoodsDecember 18, 2018overcoat, steve cannon, poetry, a gathering of the tribes

Internal

Fought to escape my own existence

I drifted in the void of empty promises

Left my soul in the catacombs of my mind

Poetry & ProseKevin JosephDecember 11, 2018Kevin Joseph, Internal, Poetry, Steve Cannon, a gathering of the tribes

History Becomes Her Story (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wins Joe Crowley’s 14th district)

If history repeats itself then the story of conquering Hernan Cortes is on the shelf while pol, Joe Crowley‘s hunkering down. She’d said she wouldn’t back the candidate if she should entertain defeat, but campaigned like a potentate, as capable as she seemed sweet.

Finding Modernism in Venice

Canals filled with turquoise water instead of streets bustling with cars and bicycles come to mind when I think of Venice. Joseph Brodsky’s essay Watermark (1993) resonates deeply with the visitor, as does a watery dream conjured by Robert Altman: I was immediately reminded of his film, 3 Women (1977) upon arrival. Brodsky only visited Venice in December for he longed to celebrate the beginning of a new year with “a wave hitting the shore at midnight.” He explained “that, to me, is time coming out of water.” Brodsky also described the city as being “part damp oxygen, part coffee and prayers” and he described the canal-side structures as “upright lace.” Brodsky, born in Leningrad, was exiled from his homeland due to his “having a worldview damaging to the state, decadence and modernism, failure to finish school, and social parasitism . . . except for the writing of awful poems” (Brodsky went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987). He thought of Venice as the closest incarnation of Eden and “the greatest masterpiece our species produced.”

WHERE DID YOU COME FROM?

to set a trap

catch air

A CRISIS OR A BORING CHANGE

7pm in April

and i hate everything

Black Male Writers for our Time (New York Times)

Through the institutional cultural cache garnered during these many moments, our literary ancestors carved pathways to success. Harlem Renaissance writers parlayed white patronage to create inroads to the apparatus of publishing. The Black Arts Movement brought about radical changes in university curriculums. New institutions were founded, including New York City’s Medgar Evers College, providing black writers with access to the support and stability of academia. The poet Gregory Pardlo points to the rise of the New York and Chicago slam poetry scenes in the ’80s as a conduit for many writers, including the novelist Paul Beatty. Jacobs-Jenkins discusses ’90s-era evolutions in black writing that produced “an incredible sea change of influence,” when writers like August Wilson and Toni Morrison “achieved black arts excellence and major status in the same breath.”