Transfigurations

by Wright, Jay

• ISBN13: 9780807126301
• ISBN10: 0807126306
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-11-01
• Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr

Summary

Few poets have as much to tell us about the intricate relationship between the African American past and present as Jay Wright. His poems weave a rich fabric of personal history using diverse materials drawn from African, Native American, and European sources. Scholarly, historical, intuitive, and emotional, his work explores territories in which rituals of psychological and spiritual individuation find a new synthesis in the construction of cultural values. Never an ideologue but always a poet of vision, he shows us a way to rejoice and strengthen ourselves in our common humanity.

Here, together for the first time, are Wright's previously published collections -- The Homecoming Singer (1971), Soothsayers and Omens (1976), Explications/Interpretations (1984), Dimensions of History (1976), The Double Invention of Komo (1980), Elaine's Book (1988), and Boleros (1991) -- along with the new poems of Transformations (1997). By presenting Wright's work as a whole, this collection reveals the powerful consistency of his theme -- a spiritual or intellectual quest for

Table of Contents

THE HOMECOMING SINGER
I.
Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting	3	(3)
The Baptism	6	(3)
Crispus Attucks	9	(1)
Billie's Blues	10	(1)
Feeding the Stove	11	(2)
The Fisherman's Fiesta	13	(1)
Jason's One Command	14	(2)
Two House Painters Take Stock of the Fog	16	(1)
Track Cleaning	17	(1)
The Hunting Trip Cook	18	(2)
The End of an Ethnic Dream	20	(1)
The Man from Chi	21	(1)
A Month in the Country	22	(1)
A Non-Birthday Poem for my Father	23	(4)
The Homecoming Singer	27	(2)
W.E.B. Du Bois at Harvard	29	(2)
II.
Moving to Wake at Six	31	(1)
The Mormon Missionaries	32	(1)
The Neighborhood House	33	(1)
Morning, Leaving Calle Gigantes	34	(2)
Chapultepec Castle	36	(1)
Jalapena Gypsies	37	(3)
Bosques de Chapultepec	40	(2)
Reflections Before the Charity Hospital	42	(4)
An Invitation to Madison County	46	(5)
III.
The Invention of a Garden	51	(1)
Preparing to Leave Home	52	(1)
Origins	53	(2)
The Player at the Crossroads	55	(2)
Death as History	57	(2)
The Crucifixion of the Vine	59	(1)
Historical Days	60	(1)
Variations on a Theme by LeRoi Jones	61	(4)
Idiotic and Politic	65	(2)
My Mother Dances on the Jut of God's Good Hip	67	(2)
Destination: Accomplished	69	(2)
Pastel	71	(1)
IV.
The Regeneration	72	(1)
Night Walk	73	(2)
First Principles	75	(3)
A Nuer Sacrifice	78	(1)
The Desert Revival	79	(2)
Collection Time	81	(2)
Sketch for an Aesthetic Project	83	(3)
Beginning Again	86	(7)
SOOTHSAYERS AND OMENS
I.
The Charge	93	(3)
The Appearance of a Lost Goddess	96	(1)
Sources (1)	97	(1)
Sources (2)	98	(2)
Sources (3)	100	(1)
Sources (4)	101	(1)
Sources (5)	102	(1)
Sources (6)	102	(1)
Benjamin Banneker Helps to Build a City	103	(4)
Benjamin Banneker Sends His ``Almanac'' to Thomas Jefferson	107	(3)
II.
Entering New Mexico	110	(3)
The Master of Names	113	(3)
The Faithful One	116	(1)
The Albuquerque Graveyard	117	(1)
Family Reunion	118	(2)
Baptism in the Lead Avenue Ditch	120	(4)
Night Ride	124	(2)
III.
The Sense of Comedy: I	126	(1)
The Museums in Chapultepec	126	(1)
Walking Chapultepec	127	(1)
Meeting Her in Chapultepec	127	(1)
Inside Chapultepec Castle	128	(1)
The Birthday	129	(1)
Jason Visits His Gypsy	130	(2)
The Death of an Unfamiliar Sister	132	(2)
Homecoming	134	(3)
IV. Second Conversations with Ogotemmeli
Ogotemmeli	137	(1)
Beginning	138	(1)
The First Word	139	(2)
The Second Word	141	(2)
The Third Word	143	(1)
The Smith	144	(1)
The Sanctuary	145	(2)
Lebe	147	(2)
Binu	149	(1)
Altars and Sacrifice	150	(3)
The Dead	153	(6)
EXPLICATIONS/INTERPRETATIONS
Tensions and Resolutions	159	(2)
Polarity's Trio
Zones	161	(1)
Corrida	162	(1)
San Diego's Dispossession	163	(2)
Harmony's Trio
The Continuing City: Spirit and Body	165	(1)
The Measure	166	(2)
The Sunset's Widow	168	(2)
The Body	170	(8)
Twenty-Two Tremblings of the Postulant	178	(13)
MacIntyre, the Captain and the Saints	191	(14)
Love's Dozen
The Ritual Tuning	205	(1)
Love in the Water, Love in the Stone	206	(1)
Love in the Iron and Loom	207	(1)
Love as Heaven's Nostalgia	208	(1)
Anagnorisis	208	(1)
Transcendent Night	209	(1)
Love in the Weather's Bells	210	(1)
The Crosses Meet	211	(1)
Love Plumbs to the Center of the Earth	212	(3)
The Unwedding of the Magdalene of the Vine	215	(1)
Love's Coldness Turns to the Warmth of Patience	216	(1)
New Adam's Cross	217	(1)
Love as the Limit and Goal	218	(2)
Inscrutability	220	(41)
DIMENSIONS OF HISTORY
The Second Eye of the World: The Dimension of Rites and Acts
The Eye of God: The Soul's First Vision	230	(9)
The Key That Unlocks Performance: Vision as Historical Dimension	239	(14)
The Second Eye of the World	253	(8)
Modulations: The Aesthetic Dimension
Rhythm, Charts and Changes
Teponaztli	261	(1)
Atabaque	262	(1)
Bandola	263	(4)
Huehuetl	267	(1)
Areito	268	(3)
Joropo	271	(1)
Lundu	271	(1)
Son	272	(1)
Tamborito	273	(2)
Vela	275	(1)
Villancico	276	(2)
Pututu	278	(1)
Maracas in Merengue	279	(1)
Bambuco	280	(2)
The Body Adorned and Bare
Cacahuatl: The Craft of a Bead Rosary	282	(1)
The Craft of the Trumpet Shell Bracelet	283	(1)
The Craft of Beating Cloth	284	(1)
Agave	284	(1)
Missangas	285	(1)
The Hat	286	(1)
Choosing My Shoes	286	(1)
The Body Bare	287	(4)
Retablos
Nino de Atocha	291	(1)
El Cristo Negro	292	(1)
Mater Dolorosa	293	(1)
Saint Gertrude	294	(1)
Logbook of Judgments
What Is Good	295	(2)
What Is True	297	(1)
What Is Beautiful	298	(1)
Meta-A and the A of Absolutes	299	(17)
Landscapes: The Physical Dimension	301	(15)
THE DOUBLE INVENTION OF KOMO
The Invocation	316	(1)
Prefigurations: First Instance of the Field, First Instance of Voice	316	(5)
The First Figure of the Stair, the First Casting	321	(1)
The Eleven Altars Dance in the Wood	322	(14)
The First Return, the First Presentation of Instruments	336	(2)
The Opening of the Cycle of Redemption	338	(12)
The Abstract of Knowledge/the First Test	350	(14)
The Initiate Takes His First Six Signs, the Design of His Name	364	(9)
The Opening of the Ceremony/the Coming Out of Komo	373	(50)
ELAINE'S BOOK
Veil, I	423	(1)
Seals, I	423	(1)
Seals, II	424	(1)
Hathor	425	(1)
The Origin of Mary in a Cathedral Choir	426	(1)
Yemanja	427	(1)
Zapata and the Egungun Mask	428	(15)
Confrontation	443	(1)
Guadalupe-Tonantzin	444	(8)
Tlazolteotl	452	(3)
Confrontation	455	(1)
The Lake in Central Park	456	(1)
Confrontation	457	(1)
Ann Street	458	(1)
Cornelia Street	458	(2)
Confrontation	460	(1)
Confrontation	461	(1)
Confrontation	462	(1)
Guadalajara	463	(2)
Lisboa	465	(1)
Madrid	466	(3)
Confrontation	469	(1)
Confrontation	470	(1)
Orchid	471	(1)
Passionflower	472	(1)
Dandelion	473	(1)
Confrontation	474	(1)
Confrontation	475	(1)
Confrontation	476	(1)
The Anatomy of Resonance	477	(5)
Journey to the Place of Ghosts	482	(2)
Saltos	484	(1)
The Power of Reeds	485	(2)
Desire's Persistence	487	(8)
BOLEROS
1	495	(1)
2	496	(1)
3	497	(1)
4	498	(1)
5	498	(2)
6	500	(2)
7	502	(1)
8	503	(1)
9	504	(1)
10	505	(1)
11	506	(1)
12	507	(1)
(Erato ↔ khat)	508	(1)
(Calliope ↔ sahu)	509	(3)
(Euterpe ↔ ab)	512	(1)
(Thalia ↔ ka)	513	(1)
(Melpomene ↔ ba)	514	(5)
(Polyhymnia ↔ khaibit)	519	(3)
(Clio ↔ khu)	522	(1)
(Terpsichore ↔ sekhem)	523	(2)
(Urania ↔ ren)	525	(3)
Saints' Days
Nuestra Senora de la Paz (January 24th)	528	(1)
Nuestra Senora de Lourdes (February 11th)	528	(2)
San Juan de Dios (March 8th)	530	(1)
San Anselmo (April 21st)	530	(3)
Corpus Christi (May 25th)	533	(2)
San Pedro/San Pablo (June 29th)	535	(2)
Santa Cristina (July 24th)	537	(1)
Santa Clara (August 12th)	538	(3)
Nuestra Senora de Los Remedios (September 24th)	541	(3)
San Rafael Arcangelo (October 24th)	544	(2)
San Diego (November 13th)	546	(2)
Santa Barbara (December 4th)	548	(2)
New England Days
The White Deer	550	(2)
Indian Pond	552	(1)
36	553	(2)
Sources and Roots
37	555	(1)
38	556	(1)
39	557	(1)
Coda I	558	(1)
Coda II	558	(1)
Coda III	558	(3)
TRANSFORMATIONS
The Navigation of Absences: An Ode on Method	561	(2)
The Emerald Sound in Kagame's Kairos	563	(3)
Seguidilla with a Double Heart	566	(1)
Naming the Asturian Bird	567	(2)
The Bullring at the Quinta Real, Zacatecas	569	(1)
Leaving the Buenos Aires Cemetery	569	(1)
Rewriting the Light	570	(1)
The Buried Barn's Own Nocturn	570	(1)
Another Hymn to Trees: Juniper and Pine	571	(1)
Compassion's Bird	571	(2)
Restaurant Bonaparte, Rue St. Francois Xavier, on a Rainy Day	573	(1)
Mid-Spring, Coming into Buenos Aires	574	(1)
The Anti-Fabliau of Saturnino Orestes ``Minnie'' Minoso	574	(22)
A Cowry Rispetto	596	(1)
Popper's Dilemma	596	(2)
Ntu and Emerald: The Day Divine	598	(2)
The Metaphysics of Sorrow	600	(1)
Love's Augustine or, What's Done Is Donne	600	(2)
The Economy of Power	602	(1)
Dreaming: Rhythm I: [Monday]	603	(2)
The Fall into Love's Atmosphere	605	(1)
Ecstasy, Bird and Oak	606	(1)
Don Jose Gorostiza Encounters el Cordobes	607	(2)
The Cradle Logic of Autumn	609	(1)
Braving the Fork in the Road	610	(2)
The Healing Improvisation of Hair	612	(1)
Intuition: Figure and Act	613	(1)
January, Love, and the Galician	614	(2)
Lichens and Oranges	616	(1)
The Hieroglyph of Irrational Space	617	(2)
Coda IV	619	(1)
Coda V	619	(1)
Coda VI	619

Excerpts

Excerpt

    An Invitation to Madison County

I ride through Queens,

out to International Airport,

on my way to Jackson, Tougaloo, Mississippi.

I take out a notebook,

write "my southern journal," and the date.

I write something,

but can't get down the apprehension,

the strangeness, the uncertainty

of zipping in over the Sunday streets,

with the bank clock flashing the weather

and time, as if it were a lighthouse

and the crablike cars mistook it

for their own destination.

The air terminal looks

like a city walled in, waiting for war.

The arrivals go down to the basement,

recruits waking at five A.M. to check out their gear,

to be introduced to the business end of the camp.

Fifteen minutes in the city,

and nothing has happened.

No one has asked me to move over

for a small parade of pale women,

or called me nigger, or asked me where I'm from.

Sure only of my destination, I wait.

Now, we move out through the quiet city,

past clean brick supermarkets,

past clean brick houses with nameplates and bushy lawns,

past the sleepy-eyed travelers,

locked tightly in their cars.

No one speaks. The accent I've been

waiting to hear is still far off,

still only part of that apprehension

I had on the highway, in Queens.

The small campus springs up

out of the brown environment,

half-green, half-brown, covered over

with scaly white wooden houses.

It seems to be fighting this atmosphere,

fighting to bring some beauty

out of the dirt roads, the tense isolation of this place.

Out to Mama T's, where farmers, young instructors

and students scream for hamburgers and beer,

rub each other in the light of the jukebox,

and talk, and talk. I am still

not in Jackson, not in Mississippi,

still not off that highway in Queens,

nor totally out of Harlem, still

have not made it into this place,

where the tables creak, and the crickets

close up Sunday, just at evening,

and people are saying good night early.

Afraid now, I wonder how I'll get into it,

how I can make my hosts forget.

these impatient gestures, the matching socks and tie.

I wonder how long I'll have to listen

to make them feel I listen, wonder

what I can say that will say,

"It's all right. I don't understand ...

a thing. Let me meet you here, in your home.

Teach me what you know,

for I think I'm coming home."

Then I meet a teenaged girl

who knows that I can read.

I ride with her to Madison County,

up back roads that stretch

with half-fulfilled crops,

half-filled houses, half-satisfied

cows, and horses, and dogs.

She does all the talking,

challenging me to name the trees,

the plants, the cities in Mississippi, her dog.

We reach her house,

a shack dominated by an old stove,

with its smoky outline going up the wall

into the Mississippi air, mattresses tossed

around the table, where a small piece of cornbread

and a steaming plate of greens wait for her.

Her mother comes out, hands folded before her

like a madonna. She speaks to me,

moving step by step back into the house,

asking me to come again,

as if I were dismissed,

as if there were nothing more

that I could want from her, from Madison County,

no secret that I could ask her to repeat,

not even ask about the baby resting there on her belly,

nor if she ever knew anyone with my name

in Madison County, in Mississippi.

Since I can't, and will not, move,

she stays, with her head coming up,

finally, in a defiant smile.

She watches me sniff the greens,

look around at the bare trees

heaving up out of the bare ground.

She watches my surprise,

as I look at her manly nine-year-old

drive a tractor through the fields.

I think of how she is preparing him

for death, how one day he'll pack

whatever clothes remain from the generations,

and go off down the road,

her champion, her soldier, her lovable boy,

her grief, into Jackson, and away,

past that lighthouse clock,

past the sleepy streets,

and come up screaming,

perhaps on the highway in Queens,

thinking that he'll find me,

the poet with matching socks and tie,

who will tell him all about the city,

who will drink with him in a bar

where lives are crackling, with the smell

of muddy-rooted bare trees, half-sick cows

and simmering greens still in his nose.

But I'm still not here,

still can't ask an easy question,

or comment on the boy, the bright girl,

the open fields, the smell of the greens;

can't even say, yes, I remember this,

or heard of it, or want to know it;

can't apologize for my clean pages,

or assert that I must change, after being here;

can't say that I'm after spirits in Mississippi,

that I've given up my apprehension

about pale and neatly dressed couples

speeding past the lighthouse clock,

silently going home to their own apprehensions;

can't say, yes, you're what I really came for,

you, your scaly hands, your proud, surreptitious

smile, your commanding glance at your son,

that's what I do not search, but discover.

I stand in Madison County,

where you buy your clothes, your bread,

your very life, from hard-line politicians,

where the inessential cotton still comes up

as if it were king, and belonged to you,

where the only escape is down that road,

with your slim baggage, into war,

into some other town that smells the same,

into a relative's crowded house

in some uncertain city, into the arms

of poets, who would be burned,

who would wake in the Mississippi rain,

listening for your apprehension,

standing at the window in different shadows,

finally able to say, "I don't understand.

But I would be taught your strength."

The father comes down the road,

among his harness bells and dust,

straight and even, slowly, as if each step

on that hard ground were precious.

He passes with a nod,

and stands at the door of his house,

making a final, brief inventory

all around and in it.

His wife goes in, comes out with a spoon,

hands it to you with a gracious little nod,

and says, "Such as ..."

"Such as ...," as I heard

when my mother invited the preacher in,

or some old bum, who had fallen off

a boxcar into our small town

and come looking for bread crumbs,

a soup bowl of dishwater beans,

a glass of tap water, served up

in a murky glass.

"Such as ...," as I heard

when I would walk across the tracks

in Bisbee, or Tucson, or El Paso, or Santa Fé,

bleeding behind the eyes,

cursing the slim-butted waitresses

who could be so polite.

"Such as ...," as I could even hear

in the girded ghettos of New York.

"Such as ...," as I heard

when I was invited behind leaky doors,

into leaky rooms, for my loneliness,

for my hunger, for my blackness.

"Such as ...," as I hear

when people who have only themselves to give

offer you their meal.

Benjamin Banneker Sends His "Almanac" to

Thomas Jefferson

Old now,

your eyes nearly blank

from plotting the light's

movement over the years,

you clean your Almanac

and place it next

to the heart of this letter.

I have you in mind,

giving a final brush and twist

to the difficult pages,

staring down the shape of the numbers

as though you would find a flaw

in their forms.

Solid, these calculations

verify your body on God's earth.

At night,

the stars submit themselves

to the remembered way you turn them;

the moon gloats under your attention.

I, who know so little of stars,

whose only acquaintance with the moon

is to read a myth, or to listen

to the surge

of songs the women know,

sit in your marvelous reading

of all movement,

of all relations.

So you look into what we see

yet cannot see,

and shape and take a language

to give form to one or the other,

believing no form will escape,

no movement appear, nor stop,

without explanation,

believing no reason is only reason,

nor without reason.

I read all of this into your task,

all of this into the uneasy

reproof of your letter.

Surely, there must be a flaw.

These perfect calculations fall apart.

There are silences

that no perfect number can retrieve,

omissions no perfect line could catch.

How could a man but challenge God's

impartial distributions?

How could a man sit among

the free and ordered movements

of stars, and waters, beasts and birds,

each movement seen or accounted for,

and not know God jealous,

and not know that he himself must be?

So you go over the pages again,

looking for the one thing

that will not reveal itself,

judging what you have received,

what you have shaped,

believing it cannot be strange

to the man you address.

But you are strange to him

--your skin, your tongue,

the movement of your body,

even your mysterious ways with stars.

You argue here with the man and God,

and know that no man can be right,

and know that no God will argue right.

Your letter turns on what the man knows,

on what God, you think, would have us know.

All stars will forever move under your gaze,

truthfully, leading you from line to line,

from number to number, from truth to truth,

while the man will read your soul's desire,

searcher, searching yourself,

losing the relations.

Saints' Days

22

    Nuestra Señora de la Paz (January 24th)

At the upper end of this continent,

along the St. Lawrence,

one has to learn to live with winter,

a wood cat with a devouring patience

and a tempered ear for the softest harmonics

                               of resignation.

Some of us call it an affordable peace,

and tuck the winter in journals

that stand hip to hip with rose bibles,

and string, on midwinter rosaries,

our spring weariness.

Hour to hour,

coquettish January sits in our warm rooms,

undresses, draws near and caresses

               the longing within us.

Strange to think of such a virgin,

drawing a midwinter veil over our hearts,

and trying to sound the enharmonic note

that will distinguish peace from death.

    The Healing Improvisation of Hair

If you undo your do you wóuld

be strange. Hair has been on my mind.

I used to lean in the doorway

and watch my stony woman wind

the copper through the black, and play

with my understanding, show me she cóuld

take a cup of river water,

and watch it shimmy, watch it change,

turn around and become ash bone.

Wind in the cottonwoods wakes me

to a day so thin its breastbone

shows, so paid out it shakes me free

of its blue dust. I will arrange

that river water, bottom juice.

I conjure my head in the stream

and ride with the silk feel of it

as my woman bathes me, and shaves

away the scorn, sponges the grit

of solitude from my skin, laves

the salt water of self-esteem

over my feathering body.

How like joy to come upon me

in remembering a head of hair

and the way water would caress

it, and stress beauty in the flair

and cut of the only witness

to my dance under sorrow's tree.

This swift darkness is spring's first hour.

I carried my life, like a stone,

in a ragged pocket, but I

had a true weaving song, a sly

way with rhythm, a healing tone.

Copyright © 2000 Jay Wright. All rights reserved.