Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem, the second offering in the Library of America’s two-volume collection of nine Harlem Renaissance novels, is an outstanding, refreshing, exhilarating, musical work full of sweet longing and suspense, an artful record of the timeless love affair between pain and laughter in which each, mutually and gratefully dependent on the other, flowers and bleeds. The source of pain: American history, ignorance, hatred, prejudice. The source of […]
Again I ask myself, what of these strange drawings? Many years ago, I said they were all self-portraits. But now I wonder. Doesn’t that imply a bit too strongly that I existed prior to them, and that I am the one who made them, rather than the other way around? What seemed true then, feels much less so now. Might it not be that my existence was, and is, born […]
The dogwood is a beautiful red this year. If I were to make myself invisible and walk up to it ever so slowly, and then give the tree a shake, birds would scatter in every direction, a fluttering eruption of bright grosbeaks and chickadees there for the seed. Then, seeing nothing, they would soon return, some from the cedar, some from the maple, some from the birch. And I would […]
It’s good to need a coat again. It’s good to have a coat, and a faithful wool cap to lift from off its summer pedestal of old books by the door. It’s good to walk in the clear frosty air. It’s good to be out with the young moon, and Mars, and Saturn, and Jupiter. It’s good to hear the sound of geese honking overhead, and in the nearby wetland. […]
Now that I’ve finished it, I hope I am able to remember Jean Toomer’s novel, Cane. It has been this way for a great many years. The books I read have a way of passing through me. I retain impressions and moods, and lose most of the details. But the deep, dark poem that is Cane, the story of it, the play, is mood, is impression, is nightmare, stirring and […]
Here in the time of yellowing maples and drifting leaves, the falls and streams are charged with new life by the recent thunderstorms. Numerous spiderwebs cross the path, so fine that one is not aware of them until they are broken in passing through; removed from around the forehead and eyes, parts still cling; or maybe it is the memory of their touch that has not quite died away. At […]
Many years ago, in our old hometown, there was a Japanese man in his nineties who had smoked cigarettes all of his adult life and loved smoking them still, all with no apparent harm to his health. There are people like that, people who can live on terrible, unhealthy diets, or who can consume alcohol in amounts that would make others ill, and yet thrive. As the story goes, with […]
Living shadows, and the solid dreams they cast — The cedar and the lamp post, the school boy and the cloud: The perfect shroud — as if Cain had smiled at Abel, And Abel — had wept — and bowed. . [ 904 ]
Yesterday afternoon, the deep wet grass in front of the house was so green it made the sun smile — a wonderful thing, considering what the sun sometimes has to look down upon, even if it is not a person, and is, as many adults believe, just a star. October 18, 2020 . Child With a Lantern in a Dream Now you can see, Mr. Sun, that there is nothing […]
There remains the possibility, however slight, that even I, who live a very private, quiet life, might be destined to fulfill some kind of public role — public, that is, beyond these poems, notes, and drawings. Throughout history, there have been instances in which individuals have arisen from the common mass, as it were, seemingly coming out of nowhere, often even against their own personal desire or will, with some […]
William Michaelian 