Guns, Blunts, and Poets: Major Jackson reads his work, 4/26/07

            I sat at a flat screen computer terminal, 6:44 p.m., waiting to head up the library stairs and into the lecture hall, but realizing suddenly that I had an urgent need to urinate.  I closed the window I’d been looking at.

            As I stood at the urinal I thought about the droopy Columbian kid who’d sat down beside me just as I rose to leave.

            “Hey,” he proposed.

            “Sorry, no time,” I offered in the form of an explanation; while it wasn’t true at first glance, I had resigned to specifically NOT talk to him this evening, at risk of adopting his droopy stature and outlook on reality, which is specifically what I had no time for.

            As I stood outside the auditorium I became aware that I was not, in fact, alone.  I was unable to secure a seat outside, and I didn’t want to be stuck in a gluey roundabout one thread conversation with the bystanders with longing eyes and silent tongues (for the most part). 

            I looked up from my notebook.  It never fails: Dan Alexander.

            “Hey man!”

            A 45-year-old hipster who fancies himself a poet.

            “I’m a junior now, I’m taking a fiction class,  and I live on campus. ENOUGH!” I boomed and maneuvered forcefully past him.  I ran for the door of the auditorium.  Was this going to be a night riddled, as was so common, with gruesome social onslaughts?

            I sat in the second row on the left, I spotted classmates.

            There was a sudden hush.  I turned to the podium where Major Jackson was being given a rumbling long jargonic introduction.  He sat a row ahead of me posed as though for a photo on the back of one of his collections.  He surprised me: I always forget what a ham he is for publicity.

            “Leaving Saturn, published by Such and Such Press…”

            He sat, hands crossed, then reached for his papers and took the stage, all horn rimmed glasses and black leather jacket.

            “A lot of light emerges from our class,” he observes.

            Such a soft-spoken man, I wondered if he planned on leaning into the mic, or if I should just make things up to make this writing more interesting than the reality of it.

            Major opened with “Hoops.”

            I’ve always wondered if his poetry had as calm a feeling when he wrote it as when he reads it: here was a man I’ve never seen get more energetic than a preacher given a chance to read Deuteronomy for a change.  Or perhaps that was his energy.

            He speaks of Spalding missiles, radar, and Old English inebriation.  His eyes lifted from the page calmly and matter-of-factly.  Suddenly I felt a strong desire to see this level-headed young man throw down his book and charge the audience,  letting out some kind of primal cry, like a panther leaping on its prey from a branch far above, for a frenzied rage to overtake him and for him to wreak havoc on the crowd, complete with wailing and gnashing of teeth.

            Does this man carry a gun? I suppose not, that would be out of character.  But then, what did I know? I knew much less of this man, with whom I’d workshopped and edited new poems for four months, than I thought.  What can you know of a man when you can’t say for sure whether he carries a gun?

            But he doesn’t, I know.  No poet of his confessional-fiction breed would do so.  The Dark Room collective aren’t exactly savage and volatile. 

            “That was a long one, I’m gonna get some water.”
            Applause, quiet chuckles.

            I looked up.  Yes, yes, this was his energy, his passion.  These words, these painted ghettoes and watery drive-by seconds were real, he was reliving them, but the indicators of this were a subtle engine.  He read “Selling Out.”  By little coincidence I had read the piece this morning.  Was this McWorker he told of held at gun point in a Philly alleyway in a coke deal gone desperately wrong, the same Major I knew?  What kind of God would wish such a life on a young man?

            “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea…”

“Fond” is quite a way to describe memories of an old neighborhood such as he described so matter-of-factly.

            I began to wonder who it was that had REALLY sold out.

            He ends his poems so abruptly.  Turn his pauses down a notch and you’ll find that they don’t denote any breaks from one great long poem.  I never even noticed when he switched collections: all that registered was that the cover switched from hard to paperback.  The slick bastard: he’d pulled a phase shift on me, from Selling Out to Block Party and Blunts.

            He tells of the day he uttered the incantation that conferred upon him the tongue of God.

            Poems.

            “Fever.” “I think it’s a love poem.  I don’t write love poems.”

            Short, fiery, leading into designer fashion utterings, he finds that he’s brought the wrong copy of his poem.  He fumbles for it briefly.

            Who is the latest, the fashionablr malr whose tongue guides cameras and pens?  Tom Cruise? Stephen Colbert? Certainly not Carl Rove? What does Major think, I wonder. 

            But wait! This is a poetry reading.  Where have I gone?

            Where has his long form gone?

            Merrimack Soul.  Kerouac.  Major came to find the man.  Did he think, as I once did, that here, in Lowell, he’d find what was so fastidiously hidden from the rest of America, say 40, 50, 60 years ago? Had it been that long? Was it longer? Hidden in Rhyme Royale among the pages of the silly writers we are that come to these conferences seeking golden advice on diagramming the Truth of America for free, plus refreshments. Cleverly inserted between the pages of poets who had long since taken their own lives, we discern and divine what we believe is truth for us, while it’s really only half as true to us as it was to Plath and Sexton.  Does Snodgrass know we are doing this? Someone should warn him…

            Jackson’s poetry turns now to the greats of hip hop, a topic that seems so curious and displaced on the wind of his lips.  Sent to Gwendolyn Brooks as Auden sent his letter to Lord Byron.

            Major’s son Langston now the topic of his poems.  His fear that the Beast Beneath our Skin might confront his son as it has him, and all of us in turn.  His fear that virtual insanity might overflood the boy’s innocent mind.  We’ve developed alternatives to vacationing: round the clock access to more work.

            Television with 500 channels.  30 second Youtube clips.

            Hyperreallity.

            Soon our fingers will shed their analog skins and upgrade to digital.

            In twenty years, will we still need history?

            Gwendolyn Brooks.  Could she really save us as Major prays?

            “Thank you.” Applause.

            Who inspired Major? Gwendolyn.  She found inspiration in her own community.  A fierceness about the art of poetry itself.  “Poetry,” he says.  Poetry isn’t like a child’s coloring book.

             Jazz piano.  Ludacris.  A five mile smile.

            Robert Lowell.

            How did he deal with the confessional poets? It’s not so much what they were confessing, but more that their poems were simply well made.

            “You can go to Gertrude Stein, but Sexton…such a sound of music.  She didn’t lean on sensationalism, but strove for art that transcended sensational kind of dimensions…”

            Sharon Olds. Doreanne Lux.

            The irony of Virginia Tech’s plight came to mind.  Men find themselves shooting their very brothers and peers in the same where we can sit around and write about beauty and revolution.

            Why, do we as writers advocate this violence?

            Oh, Impetus.

            This man, too, feels the pinch of being unintentionally boxed into his own walls of subject matter.  This year he’s taken a turn towards…what?  Mr. Jackson, have you ever written and fiction?

            “One act plays,” he says.  But of course, my poetry is coming back to life for me.  Short fiction is difficult for me: I believe you serve one God.”

            One God, I thought.  Jesus, where would we be if this were the case?

            This, from a man from Vermont.  But yet, as he says, he is of course, still haunted by these memories from North Philadelphia.  You can’t get away from your roots, you see: they hold you down: that’s what roots do.

            “Go live the world, get some experience,” he says. “Do drugs.”  Should I take this the way of an exposée? Would I be doing Major a disservice? Yes, I think.  This is a man who I think can handle his own affairs.  He’s living his experience now, whether he knows it or not.

            “I really do believe in bards,” he asserts to us, a man just mad enough to remain hopeful.

            What do our words mean to our audiences?

            As Major stepped down, I looked around suddenly, not having expected such an abrupt end reminiscent of one of Jackson’s poems.  Now what? Should I leave? Should I approach him?  I believe I’ve taken enough of his time this week, having sat in on a class and editing the work of his new crop.  He looked tired, and while usually this wouldn’t stop me, I decided to step out and head back to where a beer and a cigarette awaited me before my mad late-night dash to Denny’s to discuss musical arrangements for an upcoming art show.  It took me seven cups of coffee, half a pack of cigarettes, and the rest of the night to shake the feeling that I had forgotten something vaguely important, but as with all things, this mystery passed with the onset of sleep some twelve hours later.