Noticing

Have you noticed that in whatever medium, things are these days being said, posted, printed, published that once would have been suppressed? Good, better, best, I suppose, as things that are suppressed tend to simmer and then explode. Maybe the American Revolution was one such. Surely, the Civil Rights Movement was/is. The BLM movement? What else? It's interesting though, that the current PC movement may be the most suppressive of all, have you noticed that?

poem-a-day arrives in my email, posted daily about five o'clock in the morning. It's not that I'm stunned or even surprised, more that I notice in passing. Notice what?, well IDK quite how to say it without - - venturing, I guess, so let it trail off in an ellipsis ...

Jonathan Turley is a one-man ongoing crusade against anything that curtails our most basic national principle of freedom of speech, even speech that outrages all sense of human decency.

Cortney Lamar Charleston's is an interesting if startling poem making a point that violence can, and perhaps should, must, will, go both ways, come from either direction, where poem-a-day itself seems to be taking a noticeably interesting direction. A linked as "related poem" on this entry is "Ode to the Happy Negro Hugging the Flag in Robert Colescott's 'George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware River'" by Anaïs Duplan. In going there and reading Duplan's poem, I saw no link to Colescott or his art; so checking out Colescott I learn that the painting apparently is actually titled

GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER CROSSING THE DELAWARE: PAGE FROM AN AMERICAN HISTORY TEXTBOOK

that this is his painting

that Wiki offers this to introduce Colescott, who was into parody:

Robert H. Colescott (August 26, 1925 – June 4, 2009) was an American painter. He is known for satirical genre and crowd subjects, often conveying his exuberant, comical, or bitter reflections on being African American. He studied with Fernand Léger in Paris. Colescott's work is in many major public collections, including (in addition to the Albright-Knox) those of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

with this announcement of the auction of the painting:

Robert Colescott’s 1975 painting, George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware River: Page from an American History Textbook, a riff on Emanuel Leutze’s widely-known 1852 painting of the first President of the United States crossing the Delaware river by boat, will be sold at auction next month. The painting will be offered with a guarantee during Sotheby’s contemporary art evening sale on May 12, where it is expected to achieve a price of $9 million–$12 million— far above the artist’s auction record of $912,500, which was set in November 2018.

In Colescott’s painting, he has replaced the white figures in Leutze’s scene, which has been in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s permanent collection for more than a century, with Black figures representing racist tropes that have been used throughout American history. Colescott, who in 1977 became the first Black artist to represent the U.S. at the Venice Biennale, is recognized for his oeuvre’s satirical edge. He died in 2009.

Bitterness can indeed be turned to fame and fortune. Here's the poem that stirred my noticing:

It’s Important I Remember

that the Moral Arc of the

Universe Bends—

Cortney Lamar Charleston

but it doesn’t break, and neither breaks toward justice

nor away from it. It simply bends, as the bow does

before propelling the arrow where it may, agnostic

to everything but flight. I don’t mean to make morality

a weapon in this way, but it already is one and has been

for some time. The shackles, after all, were explained

as saving us from ourselves, our naked savagery,

though it was their whip that licked us and left a kind

of tactile text on our bodies. The Bible will have a man

beating on someone as easily as it will have another

taking one, turning the other cheek, civilly disobedient

even when the bombs blow up in their church, not to say

saying no to violence isn’t commendable, just to say

a strong case can be made for cracking a skull or two

like an everyday egg in hopes whatever golden light

resides inside shines through, throughs the crimson tide

for the rest of time so the tide will, mercifully, recede.

+++++++++++++

About this poem

“One of the cultural hallmarks of my country is a pervasive and pacifying narrative of progress which is buttressed by the belief that the United States is inherently good and virtuous despite whatever crimes it has committed and is committing presently. Of course, this erases the actual labor required to build a just and equitable society and it likewise erases the people who provide that labor, on the ground, in the proverbial trenches. In the absence of their efforts, the only thing guaranteed to occur is continued violence against marginalized people—justice will not be thrust forward by a myth. In this poem, I’ve allowed myself, however briefly, to contemplate a different choice for the marginalized, through the lens of the Black experience, that perhaps is the only that could force a confrontation with the truth my country has conveniently and consistently eluded. One can debate if it’s the wisest choice, but it is an understandable one, even Fair.”

—Cortney Lamar Charleston

+++++++++

If not addressed and dealt with healthily, bitterness and anger at injustice, real or perceived, will, willy-nilly, boil over into violence in due course. Pearl Harbor was a case. 9/11 was a case. ...