Today is Poem in Your Pocket day (yes, really), an occasion I would have let pass by totally unrecognized if not for my colleagues. My poem? Fellow native Washingtonian Thomas Sayers Ellis’s “Roll Call,” a poem about names—one of my favorite subjects.
“How Washington, D.C. Turned Its Back on Go-Go, the Music It Invented,” Abdul Ali, The Atlantic. (via nprhuddle)
If you are interested in this subject, read Go-Go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City by Natalie Hopkinson. Part of the animus towards go-go stems from class, it's been perceived as a working class music for a long time and has been treated with no shortage of disdain by DC's upper middle class black community long before gentrification started in earnest. (Though as Hopkinson points out, one of the best represented neighborhoods in go-go rolls calls today is also one of the richest black neighborhoods in the entire country: all of these matters are a rat's nest of complication.) But, particularly in the past 12 years, go-go has been a shorthand for the old DC, Chocolate City. Old U Street, old H Street, once hotspots for go-go, are now the playground for a new generation of college-educated, nonnative, and primarily white 20-somethings. And? Well, go-go isn't going away, though it is moving east, now based firmly in P.G. County (Ward 9) and the surrounding environs. It's important to take stock though—Hopkinson's book is the only one I'm aware of that is about either go-go or gentrification in DC in the 21st century. Without it, or articles like these, or (for that matter) Nico Hobson and Thomas Sayers Ellis, go-go's history would evaporate, unexamined and unacknowledged by the wider world, and that's something I find deeply wrong. People want, and need, to hear their names.
Thanks to We Who Are About To Die for pointing out this great essay from the Nation on Thomas Sayers Ellis:
Literary history, at least as far as race in America is concerned, is stuck, and the doctrine of separate but equal has to be overturned again and again, with every book published. If the doctrine were dead, then it would be common knowledge that Robert Hayden is at least as remarkable a poet as Robert Lowell, or that the Hugheses—Ted and Langston—run about even; or that it would be ignorant of a young poet to study Elizabeth Bishop to the exclusion of Rita Dove, or vice versa. It would also finally be possible to assess the claim that Amiri Baraka's work—his early work as LeRoi Jones, anyway—outdoes them all.
Fortunately, poems aren't written at the service of literary history. They're written in the moment, often in ways mindful of tradition (which doesn't rhyme with literary history), and anybody who tells you otherwise is trying to trick you out of your birthright. Poets who start out with one eye on literary history find out sooner or later that they need to focus both eyes—maybe all three—on the poem. In Skin, Inc., his complicated second book of poems, Thomas Sayers Ellis seeks a space apart from the demands of both history and the immediate moment, to protest the overwhelming conditions he finds, or as he puts it in the title poem, "To sit-in/in the sit-in/in the margins."
Thomas Sayers Ellis, a native Washingtonian and a poet who I greatly admire, has swiped a cardboard cutout of Langston Hughes (hereafter "Flat Langston") from DC coffee house / restaurant / book store / performance venue / pretension fluffer Busboys and Poets. I am posting the article in full because it ties up so many things I love and care about, and it's a spectacular stunt. From the Washington Post:
Poetry salary slam
What looked like a literary prank - a cardboard cutout of Langston Hughes snatched from Busboys & Poets last week - has turned into full-blown debate about the D.C. poetry scene.
"I took it," Thomas Sayers Ellis told us Tuesday. The Washington native, poet and assistant professor of creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College said he grabbed the life-size cutout of Hughes as a protest - because he doesn't think that the restaurant/performance space pays poets fairly for their public readings.
"You would think that an establishment that makes as much money as Busboys would have set in place a reading series with a respectful pay scale for writers," Ellis said. The restaurant gives poets a venue, but it also profits from their talent. The literary community, he said, doesn't know if Busboys is the "good guys or the bad guys."
Could be that the restaurant is a victim of its own success: It's a commercial enterprise and a hangout for writers. The rookies are happy to appear at all, while some of the bigger names (who command large appearance fees from libraries and universities) believe they should share in the wealth.
Owner Andy Shallal told us he pays a monthly salary for three poets-in-residence (one at each of the restaurant's locations) as well as $50 each to a host and featured poet at three weekly readings. "We have regular gathering with poets and writers to discuss how we can become more supportive of their craft," he said. "I think we've done a lot to enhance the poetry community in this city."
"I have no issue with Andy making money," said poet Kyle Dargan, an assistant professor of literature at American University. There's been "some grumbling" among D.C. poets about the $50 payments: "Peanuts," he said, compared to Shallal's revenue from the weekly readings. While he doesn't condone the theft of Flat Langston, Dargan said it sparked "the conversation that so many people wanted for so long."
As for the cutout? Ellis told us he knows its whereabouts - but he isn't telling. Some critics (including Ellis) weren't happy about the image of Hughes as busboy and thought Shallal should have picked a more distinguished photo.
Shallal disagreed: "We have exposed Langston's poetry to thousands of people - his birthday is celebrated with the greatest of honor and fanfare." He said Ellis has never approached him with any complaints, and, in any event, it's a poor excuse to steal the cutout.
And yes - if it doesn't find its way back home, Shallal said he'll replace it.
I trust Thomas Sayers Ellis with Flat Langston, and I am in my bones suspicious of Busboys and Poets and their relentless commercialization of DC's literary scene past and present. Also, as a major agent of gentrification chic. That being said, Andy Shallal seems to love the things I love, and is a board member of DC Vote (which garners him automatic points). Ultimately my sympathies lie with Ellis, and I'm glad he's taking a stand for paying poets and for respecting Langston the writer, not Langston the busboy.
More on this at We Who Are About To Die, the Poetry Foundation, poet Sandra Beasley's blog, poet Fred Joiner's blog, and poet Randall Horton's Facebook page.
Interesting fact: Flat Langston cost Busboys $150.
