Monday, February 3, 2014

Marvin X's Love and War





Perhaps his greatest achievement as a poet is to merge Islamic cadences and sensibilities with scholarly American English and the language of the black ghetto. 

Editorial Reviews

Review

With respect to Marvin X, declaring Muslim American literature as a field of study is valuable because recontextualizing it will add another layer of attention to his incredibly rich body of work.He deserves to be WAY better known than he is among Muslim Americans and generally, in the world of writing and the world at large. By we who are younger Muslim American poets, in particular, Marvin should be honored as our elder, one who is still kickin, still true to the word!
 READ MARVIN X for RAMADAN!....


Mohja Kahf

Associate Professor


University of Arkansas-Fayetteville




Biography


Marvin X (El Muhajir)was a key poet and playwright of the Black Arts Movement (BAM) in the 1960s and early 1970s and is still active today. He is called the USA's Rumi and considered the father of Muslim American literature. He wrote for many of the leading black journals of the time, including Black Dialogue magazine, the Journal of Black Poetry, Soulbook, Black Scholar, Black Theater Magazine, Negro Digest/Black World and Muhammad Speaks. He founded Black Arts West Theatre with Ed Bullins, and Black House with Ed Bullins and Eldridge Cleaver, a political/cultural center which served for a short time as the headquarters of the Black Panther Party, the militant black nationalist group. Always a controversial and confrontational figure, Marvin X was banned from teaching at Fresno State University in the 1969 by the then state governor, Ronald Reagan. When asked in 2003 what had happened to the Black Arts Movement, Marvin X told Lee Hubbard: "I am still working on it..telling it like it is."

Marvin X was born Marvin Ellis Jackmon on May 29, 1944, in Fowler, California, an agricultural area near Fresno. His parents were Owendell and Marian Jackmon who published a black newspaper, The Fresno Voice, in the central valley. His father later became a florist, his mother ran her own real estate business. He has been known as Nazzam al Fitnah Muhajir, Maalik El Muhajir, and is now known simply as Marvin X. Marvin X attended Oakland City College (Merritt College) where he received his AA degree in 1964. He received his BA in English from San Francisco State College (San Francisco State University) in 1974 and his MA in 1975. The drama department at San Francisco State produced his first play, Flowers for the Trashman, 1965. Marvin X was involved with various theater projects and co-founded the Black Arts/West Theater with Bullins and others, 1966. Their aim was to provide a place where black writers and performers could work on drama projects, but they also had a political motive, to use theater and writing to campaign for the liberation of blacks from white oppression. Marvin X told Lee Hubbard: "The Black Arts Movement was part of the liberation movement of Black people in America. The Black Arts Movement was its artistic arm...[brothers] got a revolutionary consciousness through Black art, drama, poetry, music, paintings, and magazines."
By the late 1960s Marvin X was a central figure in the Black Arts Movement in San Francisco and Harlem, New York (a member of the New Lafayette Theatre) and had become part of the Nation of Islam, changing his name to El Muhajir and following Elijah Muhammad. Like the heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, Marvin X refused his induction to fight in Vietnam. But unlike Ali, Marvin X, along with several other brothers, decided to evade arrest. In 1967 he escaped to Toronto,Canada but was later arrested in Belize, Central America. He chastised the court for punishing him for refusing to be inducted into an army for the purpose of securing "White Power" throughout the world before he was sentenced to five months at Terminal Island Federal Prison. His statement was published in the journal The Black Scholar in 1971. 

Despite his reputation as an activist, Marvin X is also an intellectual, and a celebrated writer. He is most concerned with the problem of using language created by whites in order to argue for freedom from white power. Many of his plays and poems reflect this struggle to express himself as a black intellectual in a white-dominated society. His play Flowers for the Trashman (1965), for example, is the story of Joe Simmons, a jailed college student whose bitter attack on his white cellmate became a national rallying call for many in the Nation of Islam and other black nationalists. Marvin X's own poetry is heavy with Muslim ideology and propaganda, but it is supported by a sensitive poetic ear. Perhaps his greatest achievement as a poet is to merge Islamic cadences and sensibilities with scholarly American English and the language of the black ghetto. 
Like his close friend Eldridge Cleaver, in the late 1980s and 1990s Marvin X went through a period of addiction to crack cocaine. His play One Day in the Life (2000) takes a tragicomic approach to the issue of addiction and recovery, dealing with his own experiences with drug addiction and the experiences of Black Panthers, Cleaver, and Huey Newton (1942-1989). The play has been presented in community theaters around the United States as both a stage play and a video presentation. After emerging from addiction Marvin X founded Recovery Theatre and began organizing events for recovering addicts and those who work with them. His autobiography, Somethin' Proper (1998) includes reminiscences of his life fighting for black civil rights as well as an analysis of drug culture. Drug addiction and "reactionary" rap poetry are two areas of black culture that he has argued have "contributed to the desecration of black people." His latest books are a memoir of Eldridge Cleaver, My Friend the Devil, BBP 2009 and Mythology of Pussy and Dick, a manhood/womanhood rites of passage, BBP 2009.








In the late 1990s Marvin X became an influential figure in the campaign to have 
reparations paid for the treatment of blacks under slavery. He organized meetings, readings, and performances to promote black culture and civil rights. He has worked as a university teacher since the early 1970s, as well as giving readings and guest lectures in universities and theaters throughout the United States. Marvin X has also received several awards, including a Columbia University writing grant in 1969 and a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1972 and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, 1979. 

Selected writings

Books 

Sudan Rajuli Samia (poems), Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1967.
Black Dialectic (proverbs), Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1967.
Fly to Allah: Poems, Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1969.
The Son of Man, Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1969.
Black Man Listen: Poems and Proverbs, Broadside Press, 1969.
Black Bird (parable), Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1972.
Woman-Man's Best Friend, Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1973.
Selected Poems, Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1979
Confession of a Wife Beater and Other Poems, Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1981. Liberation Poems for North American Africans, Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1982.
Love and War: Poems, Black Bird Press, 1995.
Somethin' Proper, autobiography, BBP, 1998.
In the Crazy House Called America, essays, BBP, 2002.
Wish I Could Tell You the Truth, essays, BBP, 2005.
In the Land of My Daughters, poems, BBP,2005.
Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality, essays, 2007.
How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy,BBP, 2008
Eldridge Cleaver, My friend the Devil, a memoir, BBP, 2009
Mythology of Pussy, a manhood/womanhood rites of passage, BBP, 2009



Plays
Flowers for the Trashman (one-act), first produced in San Francisco at San Francisco State College, 1965.
Come Next Summer, first produced in San Francisco at Black Arts/West Theatre, 1966.
The Trial, first produced in New York City at Afro-American Studio for Acting and Speech, 1970.
Take Care of Business, (musical version of Flowers for the Trashman) first produced in Fresno, California, at Your Black Educational Theatre, 1971.
Resurrection of the Dead, first produced in San Francisco at Your Black Educational Theatre, 1972.
Woman-Man's Best Friend, (musical dance drama based on author's book of same title), first produced in Oakland, California, at Mills College, 1973.
In the Name of Love, first produced in Oakland at Laney College Theatre, 1981.
One Day in the Life, 2000, produced at Recovery Theatre, San Francisco.
Salaam, Huey Newton, Salaam, (with Ed Bullins),produced at the New Federal Theatre, New York, 2008.
 
Sergeant Santa, 2002.Other 
One Day in the Life (videodrama and soundtrack),2002. 
The Kings and Queens of Black Consciousness (video documentary), 2002. 
Love and War (poetry reading published on CD), 2001. 

Sonia Sanchez replaced as poet laureate of Philadelphia



Frank Sherlock is Phila.'s second 

poet laureate

Frank Sherlock , whose appointment is to be announced by Mayor Nutter on Friday, succeeds Sonia Sanchez. "I think Frank Sherlock will make things happen," said the head of the poet laureate governing committee.
Frank Sherlock , whose appointment is to be announced by Mayor Nutter on Friday, succeeds Sonia Sanchez. "I think Frank Sherlock will make things happen," said the head of the poet laureate governing committee.
POSTED: February 01, 2014










































At a City Hall ceremony today, Mayor Nutter announced the appointment of Frank Sherlock, 44, as the second poet laureate of Philadelphia.
Sherlock succeeds Sonia Sanchez. He'll serve for two years, during which he will receive a stipend of $5,000.
Duties include mentoring young poets, a couple of official readings, and community-service work. One of his first duties will be to help select a youth poet laureate, also the second, succeeding Siduri Beckman.
Beth Feldman Brandt, executive director of the poet laureate governing committee, said: "This position is not just an honorary appointment. We make it clear that the poet will be busy writing, working with younger poets, taking a lot of energy and commitment around the city." She said, "I think Frank Sherlock will make things happen."
Contacted at his South Philadelphia home, Sherlock, a native of the city, said he was notified "just before New Year's, but I haven't told many people, to keep the news in for the official announcement."
Sherlock is on a roll, having received a Pew Fellowship in the Arts for last year. He is the author of at least five books of poetry, plus collaborative long-term works such as his project with fellow poet, Philadelphian, and Pew fellow CA Conrad titled The City Real and Imagined, based on walks through Philadelphia. He calls that "a conversation among different Philadelphias."
The appointment was the mayor's idea, announced in a speech in May 2011. It is organized by the Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy. The committee includes a range of writers, publishers, and cultural officials. An open call went out for applicants, and 26 poets applied. That was narrowed to about a dozen, "and then," says Brandt, "the hard part started. We had a small group of finalists come in to talk to us and tell us what they wanted to do as poet laureate. It was really hard to make a choice, because they were all so distinguished.
"Frank spoke in a really compelling way," Brandt says, "about his connections to Philadelphia."
Sherlock grew up in Southwest Philadelphia and attended Temple University, where he met poets. His interest in poetry began after he saw a reading by the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko at the University of Pennsylvania. "I left there, and knew what I wanted to do," says Sherlock, who has worked with nonprofits that include the Food Trust and the Mural Arts Program.
His poetry, he says, is "a poetry of public spaces, a collaboration of encounters, a generative act." He is an urban poet, "because I've been in the middle of a city, and I love a good story, bits of speech you hear in passing. The real poetry is all around us: Everybody is putting it out there. You just have to have an ear for joint conversations."
His poetry is generous, as in these lines at the end of his poem Over Here : "Welcome home now get / back home The oven's been exploded / the bread is still expected This is for you let's eat."
The poem really is meant for the "you" who hears or reads it - and it's a collaborative act, something the poet and the reader make together, and consume together, thus the "let's eat."
There's also a sense of having a party in challenging surroundings. (Even though the oven's been exploded, we still expect bread.) From Ready-to-Eat Individual, a collaboration with the New Orleans poet Brett Evans: "Let us be this new city and liberate ourselves . . . This moment in the history of history, we might climb through the window to coronate ourselves as monarchs of our skin."
Forty-four states and the District of Columbia have poets laureate. Many cities, from Boise, Idaho, to Key West, Fla., do, too.
Is Philadelphia a poetry town? Stroudt says the experience of choosing a laureate showed that "there's an amazing range of really wonderful work being done out there."
The city "has so many contradictions, complications that somehow find a way to work together," says Sherlock. "Through my writing, my own Philadelphias have been transformed."
He says he hopes to start a program, titled "Write Your Block," in which residents "are encouraged to map their own neighborhoods through memories, stories, poetry."

215-854-4406 @jtimpane

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Marvin X (the Human Earthquake) Hits Harlem on Langston Hughes Birthday, Feb 1


Marvin X and Nuyorican poet Nancy Mercado at the Harlem reception for Marvin X,  hosted by poet Rashida Ishmaili in her beautiful home.


Hostess Rashida Ishmaili told the gathering of poets, professors, writers, singers, dancers and filmmakers that it was only fitting they each read a poem by Harlem's greatest poet Langston Hughes on his birthday, February 1. For his selection, Marvin X read Dream Variations:



Dream Variations

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me-
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening...
A tall, slim tree...
Night coming tenderly
Black like me. 
Why not invite Marvin X to your venue for a reading/lecture/conversation on a variety of topics of critical concern: art and revolution, the psycholinguistic crisis of North American Africans, male/female relations, the death of patriarchal mythology, Pull up yo pants, so called Negro, it's about yo mind, not yo behind!? Call 510-200-4164. jmarvinx@yahoo.com




Marvin X tour schedule, 2014

February 4

New York University tribute to Jayne Cortez and Amiri Baraka

February 8

Schomburg Library, Harlem tribute to Amiri Baraka

February 17

Tribute to Watts Poets and Amiri Baraka
Eastside Arts Center, Oakland

February 22

Marvin X speaks at Hinton Center, Fresno CA

February 24

Marvin X speaks at Fresno City College

February 28 thru March 2

Marvin X at Black Arts Movement Conference
University of California Merced
Merced, California

April 24,25,26

Marvin X in Philadelphia for Mumia Abu Jamal's 60th Birthday

May

Marvin X in Newark, NJ for Ras Baraka, next Mayor of Newark

May 29

Marvin X 70th birthday celebration and exhibit
Contra Costa College, Richmond CA

 



Saturday, February 1, 2014

Marvin X on tour: Black History is World History


 
 
By Marvin X 
 
Before the Earth was
I was
Before time was
I was
you found me not long ago and
called me Lucy
I was four million years old
I had my tools beside me
I am the first man
call me Adam
I walked the Nile from Congo to Delta
a 4,000 mile jog
BLACK HISTORY IS WORLD HISTORYI lived in the land of Canaan
before Abraham, before Hebrew was born
I am Canaan, son of Ham
I laugh at Arabs and Jews
fighting over my land
I lived in Saba, Southern Arabia
I played in the Red Sea
dwelled on the Persian Gulf
I left my mark from Babylon to Timbuktu
When Babylon acted a fool, that was me
I was the fool
When Babylon fell, that was me
I fell
BLACK HISTORY IS WORLD HISTORY
I was the first European
call me Negrito and Grimaldi
I walked along the Mediterranean
from Spain to GreeceOh, Greece!
Why did you kill Socrates?
Why did you give him the poison hemlock?
Who were the gods he introduced
corrupting the youth of Athens?
They were my gods, black gods from Africa
Oh, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle
Whose philosophy did you teach
that was Greek to the Greeks?
Pythagoras, where did you learn geometry?
Democritus, where did you study astronomy?
Solon and Lycurgus, where did you study law?
In Egypt, and Egypt is Africa
and Africa is me
I am the burnt face, the blameless Ethiopian
Homer told you about in the Iliad
Homer told you about Ulysses, too,
a story he got from me.
BLACK HISTORY IS WORLD HISTORY
I am the first Chinese
China has my eyes
I am the Aboriginal Asian
Look for me in Viet Nam, Cambodia & Thailand
I am there, even today, black and beautiful
BLACK HISTORY IS WORLD HISTORY
I used to travel to America
long before Columbus
came to me asking for directions
Americo Vespucci
on his voyage to America
saw me in the Atlantic
returning to Africa
America was my home
Before Aztec, Maya, Toltec, Inca & Olmec
I was here
I came to Peru 20,000 years ago
I founded Mexico City
See my pyramids, see my cabeza colosal
in Vera Cruz and Yucatan
that's me
I am the Mexican
for I am mixed with all men
and all men are mixed with me
I am the most just of menI am the most peaceful
who loves peace day and night
Sometimes I let tyrants devour me
sometimes people falsely accuse me
sometimes people crucify me
but I am ever returning
I am eternal, I am universal
Africa is my home
Asia is my home
Americas is my home
BLACK HISTORY IS WORLD HISTORY


Marvin X tour schedule, 2014

February 4

New York University tribute to Jayne Cortez and Amiri Baraka

February 8

Schomburg Library, Harlem tribute to Amiri Baraka

February 17

Tribute to Watts Poets and Amiri Baraka
Eastside Arts Center, Oakland

February 22

Marvin X speaks at Hinton Center, Fresno CA

February 24

Marvin X speaks at Fresno City College

February 28 thru March 2

Marvin X at Black Arts Movement Conference
University of California Merced
Merced, California

April 24,25,26

Marvin X in Philadelphia for Mumia Abu Jamal's 60th Birthday

May

Marvin X in Newark, NJ for Ras Baraka, next Mayor of Newark

May 29

Marvin X 70th birthday celebration and exhibit
Contra Costa College, Richmond CA