Far From Over

 “I write because I accept my responsibility as a witness, and because I believe in the transformational power of art.”  Frank X Walker wrote that in his personal introduction in Poetry and Protest.  Then he delivered a new sermon, re-envisioning of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a young man living a hard life today.  Someone whose face might even be called “unremarkable” by a coroner or himself as poet Tim Siebles did.  Walker’s poem Li’l Kings brought the moment of the civil rights movement face to face with its heirs, the DJs, rappers, emcees and ballers of right now and showed it’s still the same fight.  And it’s still on.

Al Young’s prescient denial of being bent to the warp of the “New Criticism” that colonized English departments helped form the voice of a man who chose to continue to listen to himself.  He followed his own path in walking away from his first degree to live and write until he was ready to return on his terms.  He is a superstar in poetry and in the literary world and it took this class and this book to introduce me to him.  His poem, “Blues for Malcolm X” time traveled from the moment in Oakland when Young attended his speaking engagement, complete with Malcolm’s kiss blowing to the people he said he loved, “all black, brown, red and yellow, people” to where we find Malcolm X today.  Hidden in plain sight, contained on the tiny estate of a stamp.

So many of the poets in this collection and in contemporary culture through songs and murals still tag Malcolm and MLK and Medgar and Huey.  The fight isn’t over but is the end in sight?  Not with Mike Brown and Trayvon and Sandra Bland and the new administration bent on buying bullets instead of breaking bread.  The poetry editor of this collection begins with the incantation of hope that one day it will stand as a relic of the insanity of what has been visited upon Black American citizens.  The Reverend Dr. William Barber II in the Epilogue meets the call Michael Warr issues with a response of hope.  Barber insists the appearance of so many disenfranchised voices rising, uniting; refusing silence is the proof of a “Third Reconstruction movement in America that will push us toward our truest hope of a ‘more perfect union.’”

May it be so.  And may we add our voice and energy to this movement through our protest in the streets, our wallets and by picking up the pen to pray and be heard.