A fond goodbye to Lucille Clifton

The amazing and irreplaceable poet Lucille Clifton died Saturday; see a thoughtful tribute from Elizabeth Alexander in the New Yorker.

To mark her passing, here is a passage from an interview Nicky Finney conducted with Clifton for the anthology THE RINGING EAR, published in 2007:

NF: I've been thinking a lot about the journey of your mother, Thelma Sayles. A poet in her own right, yes?

LC: Yes. Oh yes.

NF: It is my understanding that she wrote and read to you preciously and often.

LC: Yes, she recited poems to me. I've recited my mother's poems that she recited often to me. "Abu Ben Adam," "The House by the Side of the Road," Paul Laurence Dunbar, whom she loved. Paul Laurence Dunbar's and my birthday are the same date. Different years, of course. [laughs]. I would sit on my mother's lap until she died. I was twenty-one when she died. I never thought that was odd. Here is this big pregnant -- I was huge with my first child -- and she would rock me and recite Paul Laurence Dunbar and other poems.

NF: I don't know another Black woman poet who had a working poet for a mother. It sounds as though your mother's personal affection for language and for poetry prepared your ears for being a poet in this world. I see what she gave you as almost a second birth.

LC: Oh my. Oh, yes indeed. I hadn't thought about that. Yes, yes indeed. Absolutely. It was! It was. You know what is interesting too? My mother was a great numbers player, as were the other women in the neighborhood, and oddly enough, when I was a kid in elementary school, at lunch I would go home and go across the street tot the number runner's house and take calls on his phone for him. I bet there are a lot of women poets who went to college but never had this experience [laughs]. Her number was 254 and that was our address at one point. Well, when I went in for my kidney transplant, I knew I would be OK for two reasons: one, because my hospital number was 425, and the other was because my mother couldn't finish writing her poems. I have a poem called "Fury" about my mother burning her poems. And I knew she would not allow me to not be able to finish. I really do believe she guides me on not allowing me to not do my work. She was amazing -- I have a short story called "The Magic Mama"--a very short story. I think you're right. She did prepare me to hear the language, because to this day, I'm still a very aural person.

NF: Our anthology is entitled The Ringing Ear. The name is borrowed from Forrest Hamer's fine poem "Middle Ear." It's in here in the ear for us as poets isn't it? Poetry is so intimately a sound-based art.

LC: I really think people forget about sound in poetry. When I was at Columbia, I taught a course on hearing poems. My mother's poems were very traditional, iambic pentameter verse. I remember I would be writing a poem and my mother would say, "Ah, baby, that ain't no poem! Let me show you how to write a poem." . . . My father would recite the Bible. He knew the Bible very well, but my father couldn't write. Just hearing the language. I didn't purposely say, "I want to hear the tones!" Hearing and listening just became part of who I am.

NF: In the bones?

LC: Absolutely, in the bones.

THE OYSTER QUESTION receives OAH Turner Award honorable mention

Christine Keiner's multifaceted analysis of the decline of the Chesapeake Bay oyster industry, THE OYSTER QUESTION, has been given honorable mention by the 2010 Frederick Jackson Turner Award Committee.

The award, presented each year by the Organization of American Historians, commends an author's first book on some significant phase of American history; a list of past winners and honorable mention titles can be found here, and it's extremely congenial company. The winner of this year's prize will be announced at the organization's annual meeting in early April.

Keiner's book, part of the press's Environmental History and the American South series, argues that in contrast to the well-known argument for "the tragedy of the commons," Maryland's officials, scientists and oystermen were able to successfully sustain a regulated commons until a string of events in the 1980s with severe ecological impact.

The search for a workable solution to the oyster question is still very much at the forefront in Maryland; current news stories (Baltimore Sun, South Maryland News) are following the response to Governor Martin O'Malley's proposed Oyster Restoration and Aquaculture Development Plan, which would dramatically increase the habitat protected in state oyster sanctuaries and encourage aquaculture.

Short Takes

Geoffrey Becker (BLACK ELVIS) releases his new novel, Hot Springs, this week. Reviews in Elle and the LA Times.

The South Carolina Historical Society announced Marko Maunula's GUTEN TAG, Y'ALL as one of four finalists for the George C. Rogers, Jr. Award for the best book on South Carolina history in 2009, with Janet Hudson's Entangled by White Supremacy named as the winning title.

The Washington Post interviews poet Kyle Dargan about a new anthology of poems of urban Washington, Full Moon on K Street. His newest book, LOGORRHEA DEMENTIA, is forthcoming from Georgia in Fall 2010.

"Cottonmouths are not, in fact, aggressive toward humans. Either they don’t see you or you are in the way." Review of LIZARDS AND CROCODILIANS OF THE SOUTHEAST and SNAKES OF THE SOUTHEAST from Don Noble of Alabama Public Radio.

Review of Michael Martone's RACING IN PLACE from the Indiana Review.

Next week in Atlanta -- Georgia history, free and open to the public:
Thursday, February 18 at 7 pm
GEORGIA WOMEN: THEIR LIVES AND TIMES
Georgia Center for the Book, Decatur Public Library
in association with the Georgia Association of Historians annual meeting
Discussion featuring editors Ann Short Chirhart and Kathleen Clark, and contributors Michelle Gillespie (speaking on Mary Gay) and Steve Goodson (speaking on "Ma" Rainey)

Saturday, February 20 at 4 pm
THE CULTURE OF PROPERTY
Auburn Avenue Research Library
Author LeeAnn Lands and a community discussion of questions of housing, gentrification and Atlanta neighborhoods.

Now available:
AFRICAN AMERICAN LIFE IN THE GEORGIA LOWCOUNTRY
Edited by Philip Morgan
Ten multifaceted essays that contextualize and celebrate Gullah Geechee culture and its significance in the Atlantic world.

Short Takes

Christine Keiner details the root conflicts of Maryland's "hell on the half shell" in an interview on THE OYSTER QUESTION on WYPR's Maryland Morning. Listen here.

Atlanta Magazine on AFRICAN AMERICAN LIFE IN THE GEORGIA LOWCOUNTRY and RACE AND THE ATLANTA COTTON STATES EXPOSITION OF 1895 ("This is a fascinating slice of American history, written with deep insight and unusual grace.")

The American Historical Review on Adele Oltman's SACRED MISSION, WORLDLY AMBITION, which chronicles a movement she calls "Black Christian Nationalism" in 1920s and 30s Savannah: "a groundbreaking work...a compelling narrative for the concurrent lives of those African Americans who did not migrate [north] and who indeed, within a few short years, would provide the main force for a new transformative southern freedom movement. Every scholar who studies twentieth-century African American history and religion needs to read this book and to weigh Oltman's arguments."

Several University of Georgia Press books listed in Choice magazine's feature on Recent and Forthcoming African American Studies titles.

Now available:
THE BREEDING BIRD ATLAS OF GEORGIA
Edited by Todd M. Schneider, Giff Beaton, Timothy S. Keyes, and Nathan A. Klaus

A comprehensive record of all free-ranging bird species known to be breeding in Georgia, based on an extensive collaborative survey conducted from 1996 to 2001 with private, public and individual effort. Each of the 182 species is profiled with a color photograph and distribution map, a graph showing population trends, and details of the bird's habitat and behaviors.