Free
Film Programs at the National Museum of African Art Note:
Next
program: Presented in celebration of Black History Month ------------------------------------ Thomas
Sayers Ellis book release, reading and signing Friday, Jan 28th,
7 pm THOMAS
SAYERS ELLIS was born and raised in Washington, D.C.,
co-founded The Dark Room Collective; and received his M.F.A. from Brown University
in 1995. His work has appeared in The American Poetry Review; AGNI; Best American
Poetry (1997 and 2001) Boston Book Review; Boston Review; Callaloo; Fence; Grand
Street; Hambone; Harvard Advocate; Harvard Review; the Kenyon Review; Ploughshares;
the Pushcart Prize 1998; the Southern Review and The Garden Thrives: Twentieth-Century
African-American Poetry; Tin House; Giant Steps: The New Generation of African
American Writers; American Poetry: The Next Generation and Wax Poetics . He
has received fellowships from The Ohio Arts Council, The MacDowell Colony, The
Fine Arts Work Center (in Provincetown) and YADDO; and in 1993 he coedited On
the Verge: Emerging Poets and Artists. Mr. Ellis is a contributing editor of
Callaloo and his first collection The Good Junk (1996) was published in the
Graywolf annual Take Three. He is also the author of a chapbook The Genuine
Negro Hero, (Kent State University Press, 2001); and the forthcoming The Maverick
Room (Graywolf 2005). An Associate Professor of English at Case Western Reserve
University (Cleveland, Ohio) and a faculty member of The Lesley University low-residency
M.F.A program (Cambridge, Massachusetts), he is currently compiling and editing
Quotes Community: Notes for Black Poets. The
Chicago Picasso The
Chicago Picasso
-------------------- new
photo gallery here.
Photo gallery for Ralph Wiley HERE.
Finally,
NEW PHOTO
GALLERY FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE!!! AND
ANOTHER!! '04
color gallery # 1, '04
color gallery #2, and the
dc i see, pt. 2!!. -------- --------------------- "Each
of us has in him/herself a fool who says I'm wise. Most
novices picture themselves as masters--and are content with the picture. This
is why there are so few masters. When
I speak I am persuaded. People
mistake their limitations for high standards. Ordinarily,
each person is a cartoon of him/herself." JEAN TOOMER The
Creative Process "Perhaps
the primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that
state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone. That
all men are, when the chips are down, alone, is a banality--a banality because
is it very frequently stated, but very rarely, on the evidence, believed. Most
of us are not compelled to linger with the knowleds, for it is a knowledge which
can paralyze all action in this world. There are, forever, swamps to be drained,
cities to be created, mines to be exploited, children to be fed: and none ot
these things can be done alone. Byt the conquest of the physical world is not
man's only duty. He is also enjoined to conquer the great wilderness of himself.
The role of the artist, then, precisely, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze
roads through that vast forest; so that we will not, in all our doing, lose
sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling
place." JAMES BALDWIN ---------------------
Click here for DivineCipher.com's Blog
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Resistance and Self-Doubt
Self doubt can be an ally. This is because it serves as an indicator of aspiration.
It reflects love, love of something we dream of doing, and desire, desire
to do it. If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), "Am I really
a writer? Am I really an artist?" chances are you are.
The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.
Steven Pressfield from The War of Art
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For those of you who missed the opening and still have not made it up to check out the work at the Proud Continuum
Exhibit at Howard check out this link maybe this will move you (myself included) to go check it out some selected works
by clicking here!
- Fred
The
Language You Cry In
Saturday, February 5, 2005, 2:00 p.m.
National Museum of African Art Lecture Hall, Level 2
The Language You Cry In shows how African Americans have retained powerful
links to their African past despite the horrors of the Middle Passage and
the long years of slavery and segregation. It is a story of memory and how
a song that pieces together the memory of a family connects those who sing
it with their roots (U.S.A., 1988, 52 min.).
You have to go see this movie. It is a powerful testimony to the resiliency
of the human spirit
to retain those things that define us and give us strength. For African-Americans
too, this film shows
us how much of what we do and who we are today is not only anchored on the continent
of Africa,
but in some cases simultaneously occurring and has been since our separation.
--Fred Joiner
Bab el-Oued City
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
National Museum of African Art Lecture Hall, Level 2
Merzak Allouache's award-winning drama is set in the working-class Bab
el-Oued district of Algiers, where young Abdou works as a baker. A
religious moderate, he's so infuriated by the hateful propaganda blaring
from the local fundamentalist faction's announcement system that he
vandalizes one of the loudspeakers. The fundamentalists' bullying reprisals
intensify when they discover that Abdou has been sleeping with their
leader's sister (Algeria, 1994, 93 min., Arabic with English subtitles).
For further information, see the museum's calendar of programs or visit
africa.si.edu.
Saturday, Jan 22nd, 2 pm
Karibu Books The Mall at Prince George's
3500 East/West Highway
Hyattsville, MD 20782
(301) 559-1140
Hyattsville, MD
Chapters: A Literary Bookstore
445 11th St., N.W.
Near Metro Center, 11th St. Exit
Washington, DC 20004
Tel: (202) 737-5553
Washington, D.C.
August 15, 1967
Gwendolyn Brooks
``Mayor Daley tugged a white ribbon, loosing the
blue percale wrap. A hearty cheer went up as the
covering slipped off the big steel sculpture that
looks at once like a bird and a woman.''
---Chicago Sun-Times
(Seiji Ozawa leads the Symphony. The Mayor smiles. And 50,000 See.)
Does man love Art? Man visits Art, but squirms.
Art hurts. Art urges voyages---
and it is easier to stay at home,
the nice beer ready.
In commonrooms
we belch, or sniff, or scratch.
Are raw.
But we must cook ourselves and style ourselves for Art, who
is a requiring courtesan.
We squirm.
We do not hug the Mona Lisa.
We
may touch or tolerate
an astounding fountain, or a horse-and-rider.
At most, another Lion.
Observe the tall cold of a Flower
which is as innocent and as guilty,
as meaningful and as meaningless as any
other flower in the western field.
check out new
photos....
want a laugh? look at some old pics
here
and
here and
here
Ka'ba
A closed window looks down
on a dirty courtyard, and Black people
call across or scream across or walk across
defying physics in the stream of their will.
Our world is full of sound
Our world is more lovely than anyone's
tho we suffer, and kill each other
and sometimes fail to walk the air.
We are beautiful people
With African imaginations
full of masks and dances and swelling chants
with African eyes, and noses, and arms
tho we sprawl in gray chains in a place
full of winters, when what we want is sun.
We have been captured,
and we labor to make our getaway, into
the ancient image; into a new
Correspondence with ourselves
and our Black family. We need magic
now we need the spells, to raise up
return, destroy,and create. What will be
the sacred word?
--Amiri Baraka
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