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S A M P S O N I A WAYEMANUEL | HAYES | HAITIAN WRITERS | LAKE | UNIVERSITY OF IOWA WRITING PROGRAM

We CanYelp,Woof,andMoan

A Conversation withLynn Emanuel andTerrance Hayes

LYNN EMANUEL

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In March, 2010, both Terrance Hayes and Lynn Emanuel pub-lished new collections of poetry. While very different works, theirbooks share an urgency of voice, something Emanuel character-izes as “social rage.” At the center of Emanuel’s Noose and Hook is a series of “mon-

grelogues,” or short dramatic scenes in the voice of a dog. The dogkeenly observes the American landscape with a bitterness offset byflashes of humor. He quips, “We iz livin in mid evil an medicatedtimes…make the best uf it.” and “R yew that dogg/ the countree izgoin’ to?” In Lighthead, Hayes also inhab-

its personas conjured throughidiom. With a tenderness rooted incomplexity, he confronts issues suchas war, racial violence, and history.He writes, “Maybe Art’s only pur-pose is to preserve the Self./Some-times I play a game in which myprimitive craft fires/ upon an alienship whose intention is the destruc-tion/of the earth.”On March 17th, we gathered at

Make Your Mark Café in Pittsburgh’sRegent Square neighborhood to talkabout their new works, the differ-ences between politics and poetry,and the importance of humor.

TERRANCE HAYS

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We CanYelp, Woof,andMoan:By Elizabeth Hoover

A Conversation with Lynn Emanuel and Terrance Hayes

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When you write these characters,do you also imagine to whom thespeakers are talking?

Hayes: I always feel like I am bearingwitness. I don’t feel like I am in conversa-tion with the characters I write, ratherthat I am privy to their minds, which arelike little mechanisms in glass jars.

Emanuel: I always want to be turningmy face to the reader. And you do thattoo, Terrance, there are poems where thenarrator swivels around and speaksdirectly to the reader.

Lynn, your book contains aseries of poems in the voice of a dog. Can you tell us how youstarted writing in that voice?

Emanuel: Dogs started in Alabamawhere I was a visiting writer at the univer-sity there—the same position Terrancehas now. I had never lived in the Southbefore. The heat was like God; the cock-roaches were as big as hummingbirds; ifyou stepped on a grasshopper it crunchedlike a seahorse; the plants grew up to heav-en; and as soon as I opened my mouth Iwas the Yankee other.

As you were reading each other’sbooks, were you seeing connec-tions between them?

Emanuel: I thought what connectedour books was a kind of social rage. WhenI was writing my book, I was obsessedwith money—who had it, who didn’thave it. What does money sound like?What does it not sound like? There is a lotof social rage in Terrance’s book. There’s akind of biting commentary in the poems.

Hayes: It’s hard to think about connec-tions because Lynn was my teacher sowhenever I look at what I’m doing Ithink, now, did I get that from Lynn? WithLynn you really get to see how the mindworks and how language is opening up.

In both your books there arehighly voiced poems in whichyou create entire fictional characters in a short space.

Emanuel: Absolutely. There is this linein Terrance’s “For Brothers of the Dragon,”“Tell my story, begs the past, as if it werea prayer/for an imagined life of a lifethat’s better than the life you live.” I feelthat about all these poems. There’s a kindof fictional shimmer to the work evenwhen it pretends to be autobiographical.

Hayes: That’s good. Because that’s whatLighthead is—it’s the illumination of theimagination. In “All the Way Live,” twoboys are lynched, so it’s also the fire ofbeing lynched.

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I felt like I was in another country.Southern speech has a kind of playfulnessand metaphorical quality. I was listeningto the radio one night and some guy calledin and said “Would you play ‘Hunk ofBurning Love’ ‘cause I got that.” The DJsaid, “If you’ve got a hunk of burning loveyou need a penicillin shot.”

I was living in the house for visitingwriters, and there was a weird library ofstuff people left there. One was a book ofpoems by this old newspaper columnistDon Marquis in the voices of an alley catand a cockroach. I thought, I can’t talk butI can yelp and I can woof and I can moan.So that’s what I am going to do. I startedwriting the dog in Alabama, where I feltlike a dog.

Lynn, when I saw you had poemsin the voice of a dog, I thought,uh-oh, because it could easily tip over into the cute or the precious. What was so exciting to me was the precariousnessbecause it never tipped over butthat danger was there.

Emanuel: Thank you for saying that! Itwas a huge risk. Especially choosing a dog.Because everyone thinks I am a dog person.

Hayes: It’s audacious!

Emanuel: I have a restless sensibilityand I get bored. I think you are a restlesssensibility and you get bored.

Hayes: It’s because I am obsessive com-pulsive. That’s why I am obsessed withchanging forms, because all my poems areabout the same thing.

I am interested in what Lynnsaid about social rage and itseems to me that there is a lot ofanxiety among American poetsregarding political poetry. Wheredo you think that comes from?

Hayes: There’s a lot of baggage to theterm “political poet.” The term for me ismore “social.” Is the poet socially engaged?It just leaves more room to deal with things.

Emanuel: Poetry is a kind of communalactivity so there is a place for butterfliesand moths and a place for a politically orsocially engaged poetics. Political poetryis a way to persuade, and persuasion is adifferent activity than being culturallyenmeshed in a way that is more complex.

Hayes: The complexity is where theexcitement is. It’s impossible for me to beclearly on one side, because the imagina-tion wants to look over and see what’s onthe other side. Thinking the impossible isreally the exciting part, but once you picka side there are just places you’re notallowed to go. The richest work is thekind of work that humanizes Stalin, whilewe critique him.

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Emanuel: I don’t know about humaniz-ing Stalin!

Hayes: That was an example! What canyou discover in that space between thesides? That makes it difficult to say whereare you in the fight. The writers in exilein City of Asylum maybe face more pres-sure to choose a side, because there arethings at stake and you don’t have theluxury to be in the middle. We workedwith some of the writers in exile when wedid Jazz Poetry in 2008. I was anxious forfolks like Horacio Castellanos Moya and,the following year, for Khet Mar. Butthey were so comfortable. You couldn’tput me on stage in another country andsay, OK, read your poems ... and the audience may or may not know whatyou’re doing.

Terrance, do you find you face akind of pressure to “take sides”as an African-American poet?

Hayes: I did a reading at a community col-lege in Houston, and the audience was pre-dominantly Hispanic and black. Afterwardthis guy came up to me and asked, “What doyou think if your poems make black guyslook bad?” And I said, “I am usually the onewho looks bad, so I don’t have any prob-lem with that.” The conversation veeredtoward obligation. I eventually said to him,if you are rigorous with a poem it will berighteous. If it fails to illuminate and makethings complicated, then it’s not done. Idon’t go into a poem saying this is the sideI take but I know I have to work through

them, so they become righteous and vir-tuous. Writing into a moral stance is theobject of craft.

Emanuel: That’s an interesting idea, thatpoetry should be virtuous in some way.

Hayes: Well, what does art do? Does itbring on evil or does it bring on good?Bad art might bring on evil.

Emanuel: I think Robert Lowell embod-ies an indigenous American poetry. He had away of being a really complex political poet.

Hayes: No one talks about Lowell as apolitical poet, but he was engaged. Herefused to go to dinner at the WhiteHouse. He’s the kind of poet—just likeLynn—where you just get to see themind engaged. You see him processing allthese things that are going on aroundhim. It becomes political because politicsfloats into his consciousness. That’s whatI want to do in my own poems: floatbetween those spaces instead of just writ-ing a poem about one thing. Instead Iwant to look across and get Obama andFrench fries.

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Emanuel: Lowell absolutely implicatedhimself in everything. He was in a privi-leged position because he was a Lowell.He could have just partitioned himselfbehind gorgeous writing and disengaged.But he never did that. He knew he wasimplicated because he was a Lowell andbecause he was a white male. I don’tthink enough poets do that.

Hayes: That stance won’t work in poli-tics. Imagine a politician standing up andsaying, “I’m what’s wrong, I’m what’swrong.” It’s the right position but thenpeople are going to say, “Hey, I’m goingto follow someone else.”

Terrance, you have a series ofpoems in the pecha kucha form.What is that?

Hayes: It’s a Japanese form that’s a crossbetween a PowerPoint and a slam. Thepremise is you bring in people from lotsof different backgrounds and give them aparticular topic and provide the images.You basically have 20 images that last for20 seconds. I like the way it is tangentialbut also organized around a single idea.It’s another way to show the mind at work.

Lynn, what drew you to the formof a two-act play?

Emanuel: I didn’t know I was writing aplay. I was just writing small scenes witha central character. Then I realized I hadthe context of an urban space in my mind.Then I decided on the play form.

Right now poets are in a global villageformally, so we can write in a Japaneseform or in a play. And then there can bethose purists, who are only interested inthe sonnet for the rest of their lives.

Was there a kind of freedom thatbroke open for you when youfound the play form?

Emanuel: There was a freedom in beingan animal. I had to invent an idiom for ananimal. Two things informed that, andone was the cartoonist George Harrimanwho did the cartoon “Krazy Kat” duringthe 1920s and 1930s, a beautiful and omi-nous comic about a cat, a mouse, and a jail.The language is completely Elizabethan.The second was that I took a class inMiddle English, that’s before English wasan imperialist language. It was the lan-guage of a people who couldn’t win iftheir lives depended on it. I wanted towrite the dog poems in Middle English!It was when I got to the idiom that itbroke open. Then in a sense, it didn’tmatter what happened. If I had a voice Ihad everything else.

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Hayes: The answer is still about form,about finding that voice and that freedom.

How do you think living inPittsburgh has informed your work?

Hayes: I don’t feel like a Pittsburgh Poetthe way Gerald Stern is or Jack Gilbert is.But being here has made me think moreabout being Southern.

Emanuel: I don’t yet feel like I have aright to write about this city. There is aspecial culture here that I am still on theoutside looking into. This city is the mostinteresting city—geographically, architec-turally. It’s like a hallucination. There’s

Lynn Emanuel Emanuel teaches at theUniversity of Pittsburgh and is the recipient of numerousawards including the NationalPoetry Series Award and twoNational Endowment for theArts fellowships. Noose and Hook is her most recent work.Her other books are HotelFiesta, The Dig, and ThenSuddenly—.

always some bridge or some body ofwater, and you’ll get lost somewhere thatlooks like the place time forgot. Thensuddenly you’re in some stainless steelhallucination of what a building shouldlook like.

Hayes: I feel that way too. Of course, Idon’t get lost.

I wanted to talk about humor.There is a lot of humor in bothyour books.

Emanuel: I think we come by it natu-rally. You can’t fake it. If you do . . . boy,that would be embarrassing. Humor for mecomes out of a certain rage, from when you

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Terrance HayesHayes is a Professor ofCreative Writing at CarnegieMellon University and is currently a visiting professorat the University of Alabama.Publishers Weekly named hisbook Wind in a Box one of the 100 best books of 2006,and Hip Logic was the winnerof the 2002 National PoetrySeries Open Competition.Lighthead (Penguin Poets) is Hayes’s fourth collection of poetry.

are really afraid or really angry. It’s acoping mechanism.

Hayes: The kind of humor I shoot for is anuncomfortable laughter. The kind whereyou’re laughing, but you’re also thinkingsomething deep.

Emanuel: The interesting thing abouthumor is that it can change really fast. Itcan really twist a reader around. It is alsoa way to guard against being sentimental.It’s a ballast against sentimentality.

SEE LYNN EMANUEL AND TERRANCE HAYES READ AT COA/P JAZZ POETRY FESTIVAL

Photos: Renee Rosensteel

Between Squalor and Splendor:Haitian Literature and National Crisis

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By Elizabeth Hoover

On January 12, 2010, a massive earthquake rocked the nation ofHaiti. The country’s writers—both at home and abroad—respondedwith poems, articles, and interviews. However for more than ahundred years, Haitian writers have been writing from and for anation marked by both natural and manmade catastrophe. Duringthe country’s history, hundreds of thousands of Haitians have fledor been exiled, creating a sizable and culturally productive diaspora.

Between Squalor and Splendor:Haitian Literature and National Crisis

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In Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s 1968 novella Madness, three poets crouch in a barri-caded shack as what they call “devils” crawl through the streets of Port-au-Princeshooting everything that moves. On the verge of starvation, one poet calls out inagony, “Do you remember…they amused themselves by slapping us and making uscrawl naked on all fours like dogs. No doubt about it, they persecute poets here.”

During the brutal dictatorship of François Duvalier and subsequently his sonJean-Claude (1957–1986) the government not only persecuted poets; they armed amilitia of the desperate poor and set them loose on the country to reduce the pop-ulation and paralyze opposition through fear of torture. Government persecutionof artists and intellectuals for subversion led to their mass exodus.

Writers of the Haitian diaspora have produced a rich body of literature. Thesewriters include Edwidge Danticat, Stanley Péan, and René Depestre, who, in addi-tion to producing their own work, promote and nurture other Haitian writers.There is also a vibrant literary community within Haiti that has survived occupa-tion and dictatorship. Writers such as Frankétienne, Lyonel Trouillot, and GaryVictor have produced a body of work marked by artistic daring.

In many ways, Chauvet’slife and work is emblem-atic of the history ofHaitian literature. Shewas born in 1916, duringthe American occupationof the island.

Photo: Anthony Phelps

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These writers and others promote literature through public readings, theaterproductions, and publications in a country where almost half of the nearly 10 mil-lion inhabitants are illiterate and nearly 80 percent live in abject poverty. The fewpublishing houses on the island mostly produce educational material and reprintsof Haitian classics, so writers in Haiti rely on French, Canadian, and Americanpublishers. Because there are only a few bookstores on the island, writers often dis-tribute their work privately

How much of the fragile publishing industry in Haiti survived the January 12earthquake remains to be seen. What is clear—in the outpouring of letters, essays,poems, and speeches—is that Haitian literature remains undaunted by the disasterand that writers are ready to respond in the best way they know how—in words.

Speaking to UNESCO about the role of artists after the earthquake,Frankétienne said, “Our painters, craftspeople, musicians, and dancers are ourwealth, a wealth that is sacrosanct, as it exists in the imagination, in this cathedralof the human skull.”

For generations Haitian writers protected this wealth in clandestine meetings,smuggled books, and remembered poems. In Chauvet’s Madness, the poets crouchin a squalid shack overcome with the stench of their chamber pot and a body rot-ting outside. However, they write feverishly, even in the dark. “I write with myhand and my heart,” one poet says. “Not with my eyes.”

In many ways, Chauvet’s life and work is emblematic of the history of Haitianliterature. She was born in 1916, during the American occupation of the island.Haiti is the world’s first independent black republic. When America occupied Haiti,African-Americans were still fighting for the right to vote. This may explain the hal-lucinatory quality of the American occupation in Chauvet’s writing.

Chauvet depicts the occupation’s brutality and exploitation in her novella Love.Claire, the protagonist, discovers her voice by writing secretly in a journal. Shedescribes how she spends nights listening to the screams of prisoners and days listening to the trees crashing to the ground as American companies systematically

“Our painters, craftspeople, musicians, anddancers are our wealth, a wealth that issacrosanct, as it exists in the imagination,in this cathedral of the human skull.” FRANKÉTIENNE

Photo: Beowulf Sheehan/ PEN American Center

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deforest the island. Her talent makes her “like a fruit fallenbefore ripening, rotting under the tree unnoticed.”

Despite the stultifying atmosphere of surveillance by herneighbors eager to ingratiate themselves to the occupiers,Claire stubbornly continues writing and, as writing awakensher consciousness, she begins to resist through physical means.Eventually, she commits an act of rebellion that the menaround her are incapable of and stands up to the commandant,who regularly abducts women to rape and torture them.

Like her character Claire, Chauvet persisted as a writerdespite living under the near-constant surveillance of a brutal dictatorship of Duvalier. She hosted meetings of the Les Araignées du Soir(Evening Spiders), a group of poets and writers of whom she was the only woman.She sent a trilogy of novellas to France to be published as a single book titled Love,Anger, Madness. Though the novellas are set during the American occupation, ref-erences to the Duvaliers are unmistakable. When Haiti’s ambassador to France sawan advanced copy, he became concerned that it might offend the government andthey would retaliate by jailing or even killing Chauvet. He asked the French pub-lishing house to halt the distribution of the book long enough for him to arrangefor the author to leave the island.

Chauvet hoped the book would cause such a scandal that it would attract inter-national attention to the conditions in Haiti, but it quickly disappeared. After itslimited release in Haiti, Chauvet’s husband bought as many copies of the book ashe could find and destroyed them in order to protect their family members still onthe island. Pirated copies and private editions surreptitiously circulated, but thebook wasn’t distributed internationally. In 1973, Chauvet, then 57, died of braincancer while in exile in Queens, New York.

By that time, the dictatorship had passed from “Papa Doc” Duvalier to his son,“Baby Doc.” Foreign investments had established an exploitative sweatshop sys-tem, and the Haitian government had started shipping its own citizens to work insugar plantations in the Dominican Republic like slaves, as Edwidge Danticatwrites in her introduction to Love, Anger, Madness. Writers and intellectuals leftthe country en masse.

“Exile is certainly one of the dimensions which ... gives Haitian culture itscoherence,” wrote author Yanick Lahens in a 2003 essay for Callaloo magazine.Today nearly half a million people born in Haiti reside in the United States, andsome 80 thousand live in Canada. This means places such as Montreal and NewYork are sites of Haitian cultural production as significant as Port-au-Prince.

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There is a tradition in Haitian diasporicliterature of the exiled intellectual asvagabond. It can be traced back to theinfluential novelist Jacques Roumain,who was exiled during the 1930sbecause of his support of Communism.During his exile, he met many otherwriters, including Langston Hughes,and worked in the ethnography depart-ment of Columbia University.

Reflecting on the idea of the exiledHaitian intellectual as a citizen of theworld, poet Depestre said, “As I havebeen Brazilian in São Paulo, Czech inPrague, French in Paris, Italian in Milan,Cuban in Havana, Haitian at everyhuman crossroads of tenderness and

freedom, each succeeding self will have created my identity at this time of globalcultural interrelationship.”

Exile also creates a sense of distance from one’s home country and culture, onewhich Chauvet was perhaps trying to close in her final work, Les Enfants D’Ogoun(Children of Ogoun); Ogoun is the Haitian god of war. In Haitian tradition, godscannot cross water, but perhaps Chauvet still considered herself a child of that far-away god. She completed only a few pages of the novel before her death.

For other Haitian writers, exile imprints itself on the level of language. The poetAnthony Phelps, one of Chauvet’s fellow Evening Spiders who now lives inMontreal, wrote, “In the algebra of exile/I can only play/with words which cannotform sentences.”

Language is contested terrain for Haitian writers. The vast majority of the pop-ulation on the island speaks Haitian Kreyól, a polyglot idiom with influences fromFrench, Arabic, indigenous Caribbean languages, various African languages, and—more recently—English. In 1969, it joined French as the official language of Haiti.Most Haitian literature is in French, while Kreyól is the language of public life, oraltradition, and theater.

Published in 1859, Stella is considered to be the first Haitian novel. It was writ-ten in French by Emeric Bergeaud, while he was in exile for participating in anunsuccessful coup against President Faustin-Élie Soulouque. Like much work of thattime period, the novel is heavily influenced by European romanticism and symbolism.

Language is contested terrain for Haitian writers.The vast majority of thepopulation on the islandspeaks Haitian Kreyól, a polyglot idiom with influences from French,Arabic, indigenousCaribbean languages, various African languages,and—more recently—English. In 1969, it joinedFrench as the official language of Haiti.

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Jean Jonassaint, professor of Francophone and Caribbean literature at SyracuseUniversity and native of Haiti, argues that immediately following independenceand through the American occupation Haitian writers felt a pressure to write inand master French as a way to “prove to the world that blacks weren’t barbarians.”He added: “If you are a black man or a black woman you don’t want to act like aslave, but you don’t want to be a master. Instead you want to take things from themaster because they are useful.”

During the American Occupation, a group of intellectuals and writers startedpushing back against the primacy of French. They argued that Kreyól should be thelanguage of literary expression. This movement was lead by writers includingSuzanne Comhaire-Slyvain, the daughter of Georges Sylvain, whose 1901 Cric?Crac! is the first book entirely in Kreyól. The renaissance of Kreyól literature was

part of a movement called Indiginisme, which advocated a return to African roots.Given this history, a writer’s choice of language carries significant political freight.

“Our story is very complex, and you can’t tell it in just one language,” Jonassaintsaid. “You have to map Haiti in more than one language.” While critics argue aboutthe political ramifications of language, writers make choices based on aestheticconsiderations. Many writers contend with Haiti’s complex tradition by stitchingtogether French, Kreyól, English, and Spanish in formally innovative works thatreflect the fracturing of Haitian culture. Chauvet’s work, though largely in French,is peppered with Kreyól phrases. It is saturated in both Haitian oral culture andclassic French literature, with references to voodoo sitting comfortably next toquotes from Balzac and Dumas.

In his more than thirty works including poetry, novels, and plays, Frankétienneconstantly shifts idioms in a way that makes his work difficult to categorize.Jonassaint, who has studied the artist extensively, places him in the company ofexperimental writers such as James Joyce and John Dos Passos. “The first concern

“Why would you call a writer to ask about the Haitian economy. Ask an economist!People forget that Haitian writers are tryingto be part of a larger literary tradition. It’s a racist position that Haitian writers must be political.” JEAN JONASSAINT

Photo: Catherine Benoît

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of a writer isn’t social or political,” Jonassaint said. “It is the specific use of wordsand how one form relates to another form. People ignore that. They want to putHaitian writers in a political box.”

Jonassaint argues that the freedom of exile comes with the shackles of politi-cal expectation. He said “some Haitian artists feel they could lose support oraudience if they don’t write about Haitian politics or the ‘Haiti Problem.’ Theyalso face pressure to be spokespeople for their country rather than artists deal-ing with issues of poetics.”

“Why would you call a writer to ask about the Haitian economy,” Jonassaintasked. “Ask an economist! People forget that Haitian writers are trying to bepart of a larger literary tradition. It’s a racist position that Haitian writers mustbe political.”

Jonassaint also encounters an expectation that Haitian literatureshould be simple “after all, we are a simple people, right?” Jonassaint

pushes against overtly political and simplistic readings of Haitian literature in hisscholarship, which treats Haitian literature with the same rigor as Greektragedy.

The fall of the Duvaliers in 1986 opened up freedoms for Haitian writers,though the country remained politically unstable and desperately poor. Inrecent years, there has been a growing audience for Haitian writing.

Contemporary works by young Haitian writers are rich in complexity anddiverse in terms of form and craft. These include Danielle Legros Georges’ 2001poetry collection Maroon in which she creates intricate metaphors and Lahens’novels in which she filters scenes of daily life through virtuosic narrative exper-iments. Lehens’ Aunt Résia & the Sprits was published earlier this year by theUniversity of Virginia Press.

Photo: (left) UNESCO/Logan Abassi, (right) UNESCO/Fernando Brugman

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In America, interest in Haitian literature has been growing since 1998 whenOprah chose Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory for her book club. In 2007Danticat received a National Book Critics’ Circle award for her memoir Brother,I’m Dying and a MacArther “Genius” Fellowship in 2009. She has used her fameto promote Haitian writers, penning introductions to countless works, editinganthologies, and ferrying others through publication.

In 2009 the Modern Library published Chauvet’s “lost book,” Love, Anger,Madness in its first English translation. In her preface, translator Rose-MyriamRéjouis writes that Danticat was instrumental in the book’s translation. Réjouisadded that the work “offers a literary means of articulating the challenges Haiti’shistory poses to its citizens and to the rest of the world, an articulation that is pos-sible only because her protagonists are complex thinking subjects and not simplyromantic heroes.”

The January earthquake poses a new challenge for the citizens of Haiti and,indeed, the rest of the world. Haitian writers appear poised to accept the challenge.Lehens has been keeping a diary since the day of the quake. “This event, no matterhow trying it has been, did not succeed in extinguishing the writer in me,” shewrote. At the time of the quake, Frankétienne was in the midst of rehearsals for hisnew play, Melovivi or Le Piège. Eerily prophetic, the work takes place after anearthquake as survivors crouch in the rubble. The play was performed in Paris at theUNESCO-sponsored forum, “Rebuilding the Social, Cultural, and IntellectualFabric of Haiti.”

In Michel-Ange Hyppolite’s poem “Speech,” he writes about a student who haslost his voice, but the final words of the poem could also describe the writers andartists of Haiti and its diaspora: “His voice is/ the artillery of words loaded/ to uncoilour strength.”

READ MARTIN SMARTT BELL’S ARTICLE “PERMENANT EXILE: ON MARIE VIEUX-CHAUVET” FROM THE NATION

READ AN EXCERPT OF JEAN JONASSAINT’S “HAITIAN LITERATURE IN THE UNITED STATES 1948-1986” FROM AMERICAN BABEL ON GOOGLE BOOKS

READ JEAN JONASSAINT’S “SUR UN CHAMP MINÉ DE BONNES INTENTIONS” IN FRENCH IN FRANCOPHONE POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES

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Selected Recommended Reading Prepared by Nadine Pinede and Danielle Legros George

Poetry Volumes

Félix Morisseau-Leroy, Haitiad and Oddities

Danielle Georges, Maroon

Marilene Phipps, Crossroads and Unholy Water

Patrick Sylvain, Love, Lust and Loss

Anthologies

Edited by Claudine Michel, Marlene Racine-Toussaint & Florence Bellande-Robertson,Brassage: An Anthology of Poems by Haitian Women

Edited by Edwidge Danticat,The Butterfly’s Way

Edited by Paul Laraque & Jack Hirschman,Open Gate: An Anthology of Haitian Creole Poetry

Fiction

Jacques Stephan Alexis, In the Flicker of an Eyelid; General Sun, My Brother

Georges Anglade, Haitian Laughter

Edwidge Danticat, Breath, Eyes, Memory;Krik? Krak!; The Farming of Bones; The Dew Breaker

René Depestre, Festival of the Greasy Pole

Jan J. Dominique, Memoir of an Amnesiac

Dany Laferriere, Heading South

René Philoctete, Massacre River

Fiction continued

Jacques Roumain, Masters of the Dew

Lyonel Trouillot, Street of Lost Footsteps

Young adult novels

Joanne Hyppolite, Seth and Samona

Jaira Placide, Fresh Girl

Tales/Picturebook

Diane Wolkstein (compiler), The Magic Orange Tree: and OtherHaitian Folktales

Walter Dean Myers, with paintings byJacob Lawrence, Toussaint L’ouverture:The Fight for Haiti’s Freedom

Toussaint L’ouverture

Websites

Haitian Studies Association

Women Writers of Haitian Descent

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For three days in March, Oliver Lake visited Sampsonia Way onPittsburgh’s North Side where City of Asylum/Pittsburgh has a rowof houses for writers in exile adorned with original artwork. Lakehas travelled to Pittsburgh for five consecutive years to participatein COA/P’s annual Jazz Poetry festival. However, this time Lake washere as a painter, preparing to design the Oliver House, a yellow andblue house on the alley that will soon be covered inside and outsideby murals and ornaments of his design.

In this interview with the well-known composer, saxophonist, flautist,and bandleader, he discusses many of the other disciplines he isinvolved in, particularly painting. Just as he improvises with his saxon the stage, in this conversation he answers fast and precisely.

Even though most of people know you as a musician, you are anaccomplished poet, painter, and performance artist. When did youstart combining these activities?My background goes back to The Saint Louis Black Artists’ Group. That was in1968. There were musicians, poets, dancers, actors, and visual artists. I always thinkabout it as my school. I primarily consider myself a musician and a composer, butworking there with the poets I was inspired to start writing my own poetry; afterwatching the visual artists, I started to painting. When I moved to New York (in themid-1970s) I was doing one painting a year. But about five years ago I started tospend more time in painting.

OLIVERLAKE“I Like to Jump to Things

By Silvia Duarte

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“I Like to Jump to ThingsI’ve Never Done Before”

Photo: COA/P Archives, Paintings: Oliver Lake Archives

Why did you change your routine five years ago? It was the inspiration of a friend of mine. I told him that I wantedto paint more, but I didn’t have time. And he asked me if I had 15 minutes by day. I said, “Yes I have 15 minutes.” He said, “Well,you can start painting”.

So you started by painting everyday for 15 minutes? Everyday I painted for 15 minutes, and then I did it for 30 minutes.After a year I had enough work to do a show. My friend made merealize that I shouldn’t have stop because I didn’t have lots oftime. Now, I do it maybe an hour a day. Some days when I’m writ-ing music, rehearsing, or travelling—I still travel a lot—I can’t make an hour, but I always try to make time.

Put All My Food On theSame Plate! A world-renowned musician,Lake has also published a book of poetry entitled Life Dance,exhibited his unique painted-sticks, and toured the country in Matador of 1st and 1st, his soloperformance piece blending poetry, theatre, and music.Though his greatest reputationexists in the world of jazz, Lake’seclectic musical approach is bestexpressed by his popular poemSEPARATION: put all my foodon the same plate!

VIEW OLIVER LAKE’SWEBSITE HERE

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You also make unique painted-sticks,which were exhibited at the MontclairArt Museum. Where did the idea of thesticks comes from? They started out just as walking sticks. My familyand I used to go to camping every year and wewould grab some sticks and paint them. Then I didit with my kids. Now I have a whole wall of themwith different names: talking sticks or life sticks,for example. In fact, nobody uses them as walkingsticks anymore; people who have purchased thempurchase them as pieces of art.

Do these different disciplines (such aspoetry, performance, music, and paint-ing) affect each other sometimes? Arethere times you really want to be writingpoems and you are playing music?

No. Everything is everything. I don’t feel like I missing anything when I’m doinga certain thing. If I’m writing poetry or I’m painting, I’m doing that.

But you also have priorities…My priority is music—to play the saxophone and to compose for the variousgroups I’m in. The painting started as a hobby and, as the time has gone on, I havebeen able to participate in some shows. And this project with City of Asylum—the Oliver House—is the biggest project that I ever had.

How did you react when City of Asylum asked you to collaboratewith them and design the Oliver House?It was a big surprise and I was really excited about it. I’m always a person who likesto jump to things I never done before. When they spoke about painting the house,and about having an “Oliver House” with my signature, I was very excited: I’mlooking forward to starting it. As you see, I started to make some sketches to getideas of how the final design will be.

Let’s talk about your relationship with City of Asylum. Tell me abouthow you became involved in City of Asylum/Pittsburgh’s Jazz PoetryFestival in 2005.I had an agent, who actually was the one in touch with Henry Reese (Director ofCity of Asylum/Pittsburgh). Henry called him looking for another musician, andmy agent told him that I was a better choice for his project because I did poetry

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WATCH LAKE READ HIS POEM: DO YOU REMEMBER THE TIME?

WATCH LAKE’S INTERVIEW WITH DUARTE

WATCH A VIDEO OF LAKE SHOWING HIS SKETCHES

and I have worked with poets. So it was a kind of serendipity to be here. When I talkedwith Henry, he mentioned the fact that I would be working with Huang Xiang, aChinese poet who didn’t speak English. That became my first reason to do it. Now,we have done six years of this in collaboration with bands in which I play. I came as asoloist the first time, and then I came with the World Saxophone Quartet, then withTrio 3 and Gerri Allen, our special guest last year. And this year I’ll bring my 17-piecebig band. So the relation continues to grow each year and this is exciting for me.

In the City of Asylum’s Jazz Poetry Concerts, you have improvisedmusic for writers from around the world. What does this particularexperience mean to you? City of Asylum is very unique in how they deal with exiled writers. Working withthe poets who are speaking in foreign languages and trying to make my music compatible with what they are saying—even though I don’t understand them—is another challenge for me. I’m very happy that Henry has asked me to do the composition and work with the poets in the last five or six years.

Your performance with these poets and your work with manybands evinces your ability to collaborate, a unique skill. How didyou develop this ability?Well, I go back again to talking about the group I mentioned before, The SaintLouis Black Artists’ Group. And I have been working with World Saxophone forover 35 years and with Trio 3 for over 22 years. Both of them are cooperative groupsand in order to be part of these groups, you have to being able to cooperate andcommunicate with each other on the stage and off the stage. That is a kind of work I have been doing all of my career and I’m always have been level-headed with mymusicians and friends through all my life. That, I think, is part of my personality.

I saw you in some rehearsals and one thing impressed me so muchis your humility. Your focus was on the work and enjoying the collaboration rather than on being the center of the performance.How did your life experiences inform your humility?All the experiences I had made me who I’m. But in terms of humility, I neverthought about myself in that way, but now you say it, maybe being humble is crucial when you are working with bands and cooperating with musicians. I thinkthat another aspect that helps me to work with the group is self-confidence.

Photos: Renee Rosensteel

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Oliver LakeLake is a featured artist onmore than 50 recordings. Lake has created chamberpieces for the Arditti and FluxString Quartets, arrangedmusic for Björk, Lou Reed and A Tribe Called Quest, collaborated with poets AmiriBaraka and Ntozake Shange,choreographers Ron Brown and Marlies Yearby andactress/author Anna DevereSmith. He is co-founder of theWorld Saxophone Quartet andTrio 3 and leads his SteelQuartet and Big Band.

“I never thought about myself in that way, being humble,but now you say it, maybe being humble is crucial whenyou are working with bands and cooperating with musicians. I think that another aspect that helps me to work with the group is self-confidence.” OLIVER LAKE

Photos: Renee Rosensteel

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Miloš Djurdjevic, a Croatian poet, essayist, and translator, felt fortu-

nate to be going to Iowa City to participate in the University of Iowa’s

2009 International Writing Program. But within days of arriving in

Iowa, he and a handful of the program’s other international writers

found themselves leaving the literary-minded, college town, and head-

ing to the post-industrial, working-class city of Pittsburgh. There

they were to perform their poetry for the Jazz Poetry Concert spon-

sored by City of Asylum/Pittsburgh (COA/P).

Photos: Renee Rosensteel

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Two programs for international writers join in a common mission

By Desiree Cooper

In 2004 businessman Henry Reese established COA/P as a refugefor creative writers suffering from persecution in their homelands. Sixyears later, COA/P is a series of row houses fronting on a narrow alleycalled Sampsonia Way in Pittsburgh’s historic Mexican War Streets dis-trict. Endangered writers in exile receive two-year residencies. To date,COA/P has welcomed writers from countries like China, El Salvador,and Burma. Jazz Poetry is the organization’s premier public event. Itcouples international writers with American jazz greats on stage for afree, community-wide celebration.

For Croatian writer Miloš Djurdjevic, the opportunity to participatein COA/P’s Jazz Poetry event was beyond his imagination. “I was soexcited, especially when I learned that I would be on stage with ReggieWorkman and Oliver Lake,” he said. “I saw them in Zagreb at one smalljazz festival held at the beginning of the 1990s, so it was like my dreamcome true.”

StrangeAttractors

“ I am not just a poet-essayist-fiction writer,” said Meena Kandasamy,

an English lecturer at Anna University in Chennai, India. “I am also

a grassroots activist. At the end of the concert, it was so comforting

to know that the angst of my poetry could strike a chord with the

audience; that they could empathize with me, cheer for the anti-caste

struggle, and above all, be so generous with their appreciation.”

Photos: Renee Rosensteel

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The odds may be slim that a Croatian poet would recite his poetry accompaniedby the music of Guggenheim-Fellow Oliver Lake before an eclectic Pittsburghaudience of jazz fans, poetry enthusiasts, and neighbors. But those are exactly thekinds of synergies that City of Asylum/Pittsburgh strives to achieve.

“The collaborations between the musicians and poets performing in languageslike Mongolian, Urdu, Arabic, and Burmese, have helped to make Sampsonia Waya home for free expression,” said Reese. “Art is an especially important way to buildbridges to others, even your neighbors. And the joy of the performances is totallythrilling, actually physical. When you are watching and listening, you understandthe power of creative free expression and why it is so vital to living a full, free life.And hopefully you take this feeling with you and use it.”

The world in their backyardJazz Poetry began with China—or at least with a particular Chinese poet.

COA/P’s first at-risk writer was Huang Xiang, often called the Walt Whitman ofChina. In 2005 he painted his poetry on the outside of his residence on SampsoniaWay, and “read” his house to an awestruck audience.

“Huang Xiang’s voice was operatic,” said Reese. “He danced, jumped, rolled onthe ground, and did anything but stand still, acting out his poems. I thought that itwould be natural to have him ‘sing’ to music.”

The idea for a Jazz Poetry concert featuring international writers reading in theirnative languages was born. “Jazz musicians seemed to be perfect collaborators,” saidReese. “Because they are experienced in listening to one another and collaboratingimprovisationally.”

Not only that, but jazz is emblematic of American democracy in the way that ithonors and melds individual voices, said Reese.

In 2006 Nobel Prize-winning, Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka was the featuredauthor for the concert.

“The audience almost doubled the second year, so we decided to continue theexperiment and invite poets from around the world for the third year,” Reese said. But where would he find enough international poets to round out the program?

“The Iowa International Writing Program (IWP) seemed like a natural partner,”said Reese, who first contacted IWP in 2007. “I had met Chris Merrill, who is thedirector, so I asked if him if their international writers might find it interesting tocome to Pittsburgh and try something unusual.”

For more than 40 years, IWP has been the premier writing residency for inter-national writers.

“We bring about 35 writers from overseas for three months each fall,” said HughFerrer, IWP associate director. “While the writers are here, we like to create otheropportunities for them both locally and nationally.”

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The partnership has helped build the reputation of COA/P’s Jazz Poetry. It isgenerally in the fall, only a few days after the writers arrive in Iowa.

“Henry and I look over the roster as soon as we have one, and talk about whomight fit,” said Ferrer. “We like writers who can help clarify what Cities of Asylummeans. If we have writers coming from totalitarian governments, we start there.Having a writer from Cuba makes more sense than four writers from Scotland.”LISTEN TO IOWA WRITERS 2009 SOHEIL NAJM (IRAQ), MILOŠ DJURDJEVIC (CROATIA)AND MEENA KANDASAMY (INDIA) TALK ON POETRY VERSUS GOVERNMENT

Along with Djurdjevic, two other IWP writers performed last fall, includingIndia’s Meena Kandasamy. Kandasamy is a woman, a Dalit (an Untouchable, thelowest rung of India’s ancient caste system), and a Tamil (an oppressed minority inSri Lanka)—three identities that have subjected to her persecution.

“I am not just a poet-essayist-fiction writer,” said Kandasamy, an English lectur-er at Anna University in Chennai, India. “I am also a grassroots activist. It was themost marvelous moment of my life to perform with these jazz legends and to readmy poetry before the American public. At the end of the concert, it was so com-forting to know that the angst of my poetry could strike a chord with the audience;that they could empathize with me, cheer for the anti-caste struggle, and above all,be so generous with their appreciation.”

Home away from homeCatherine Ryan lived in Saudi Arabia for 12 years before eventually moving toPittsburgh’s Mexican War Streets in 2007.

“When I heard that City of Asylum needed volunteers to house international writ-ers during Jazz Poetry, I offered our home,” said the freelance graphic designer.

She and her husband, Entezam Sahovic, have hosted several poets from theMiddle East. “When we lived in the Middle East, we received so much hospitality,”said Ryan. “I wanted to return the favor.”

Ryan has maintained contact with her 2008 houseguest, Iranian poet MaryamAla Amjadi. The experience made her more aware of what it was like to live underfear of government reprisals.

“I have emailed her more than once and then said to myself, ‘What was I think-ing?’” said Ryan. “I forget that I have to think about what I say, or I could jeopardizeher. She emailed me back and said she was studying in India and that it was OK. Butyou forget that you can’t be free.”

John Allison is another neighborhood resident who has hosted poets during JazzPoetry. Allison and his wife, Cécile Desandre, met in Prague in the 1990s. He feltkinship with their last guest, Djurdjevic. “My wife is a filmmaker, who’s done trans-lating,” said Allison. “I’m an editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. This is right upour alley—these are my people.”

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Djurdjevic felt equally at home, citing the generosity of his hosts during his stay.He was also impressed with the venue.

“The alley on Sampsonia Way in fact functioned as theatre space,” he said. “Ithas good acoustics, and an attentive, grateful audience. It is one of those rare andprecious spaces that with a minimum of intervention could sustain artistically verycomplex and technically demanding events.”

Kandasamy agreed: “I loved the homes, the art on the homes, the warmth of thealley, and how every single aspect came together to create magic,” she said. “A poethas to bleed before people. That I could do on Sampsonia Way. I have read in lotsof spaces, but nothing matches the sheer delight of throwing your words at hun-dreds and hundreds of people of all ages and colors and walks of life.” WATCH VIDEO OF KANDASAMY AT THE JAZZ POETRY CONCERT

The favorable experience is one reason IWP continues to partnership with COA/P.To date, nine IWP writers have performed in Jazz Poetry, including writers fromMongolia, Iraq, and Cuba. “It goes back to Henry’s vision about how to use arts tobuild a neighborhood and how to make a neighborhood a good place for arts,” saidFerrer. “This is all happening in an intimate way.”

A South African discovers snowIn addition to partnering with IWP for Jazz Poetry COA/P offers some of the IWPwriters a three-month residencies following their stay in Iowa City.

South African novelist Maxine Case came to the United States in 2009 to getaway from her grueling schedule as a senior writer for the development organiza-tion Cape Town Partnership.

“I had a fulltime job that was quite demanding,” said the winner of the 2007Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Best First Book in Africa. “I would often wake

up at 5 a.m. to write fiction.”She came to the IWP in 2009 hoping to

find solitary time to write. “However, in Iowa City, about 30 of us

lived on the same floor of a hotel,” Case said.“My writing was often interrupted by a call toplay poker, go out to play pool, or to go out fora meal. Still, Iowa freed the fiction writer inme and once more gave me a voice.”

Maxine Case

Photo: Courtesy of Author

An extra three months in Pittsburgh helped solidify that voice. “Once the mercury dropped in Pittsburgh, there was very little to distract me from my writ-ing,” she said. “I told a friend about how much writing I was getting done, and hereminded me how prolific so many of the old Russian writers were, given the long,extremely cold winters.”

The South African added: “I can also write quite confidently about snow.”Of course, Case had time to relax in Pittsburgh, too. “I’ll definitely remember singing karaoke—‘Purple Rain’ by Prince—in Nico’s

Recovery Room,” said Case. “It was great that I was not only not booed, I was actu-ally applauded.”

Two other IWP writers extended their stay in the United States with the three-month residency at City of Asylum/Pittsburgh: Glaydah Namukasa of Uganda andMarius Ivaškevicius of Lithuania. Vijay Nair of India stayed for one month.

A collaboration that delivers us the worldThe synergy between IWP and COA/P has benefitted the tiny Mexican War Streetsdistrict and the writers themselves. “The effects have been both playful and pro-found,” said Reese. “But I hope that they all have lead to a deeper appreciation fordiverse voices—and empathy or perhaps self-questioning—and for the importanceof creative free expression in everyday life. Each writer has been extremely produc-tive, so the residencies seem to work well for the writers too.”

The collaboration has also benefitted IWP. “We value the collaboration betweenIWP and Pittsburgh as a City of Asylum for writers at risk, and the many vital con-nections forged between our two literary cities,” said Christopher Merrill, directorof IWP. “We look forward to reading the next chapter in this book!”

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Marius Ivaškevicius Soheil Najm

Photo: Courtesy of Author Photo: COA/P Archives