Terence Nance's *Random Acts of Flyness*

Terence Nash (Jemal Countess/
Getty Images), from Colorlines

Watching the first episode of filmmaker and musician Terence Nance's new HBO series, Random Acts of Flyness, five of which are still to air, I wondered, what on earth did he--or his agent, or whoever was in communication with the studio's executives with the power to greenlight new projects--say to convince the subscription channel to approve what, by my estimation, has to be one of the strangest and potentially most innovative and subversive new shows on TV? I say this as someone who grew up watching all kinds of unusual and bizarre situation and sketch comedies, too numerous to name, and, short of The Eric Andre Show, which Random Acts of Flyness mirrors in spirit, few shows on TV (The Chappelle's Show, maybe Atlanta, at times) have approached the unexpected black places, Afrosurrealist, Afrodelic, Afrofuturist, perhaps even Afrorealist if the lens were inverted, that Nance's imagination appears to take him, his cast, and his viewers.

Random Acts of Flyness is a sketch series, a video show, a quirky and queer, postmodern comic anthology and cavalcade, stitched together--or not--by Nance's dream logic.  I say his dreams, since he's directing, co-writing and executive producing, but it's clear he has gathered around him a very talented group of creative minds. (I should add that I the show's movement also reflects the associative, often desultory logic of contemporary social media. Au courant it is.) For Nance there are binding threads, however gosssamer: an impressively original ear and eye, a profound interest in blackness in its various conceptual possibilities, an aim to explore anti-nihilistic critiques in new, dramatic forms, and a willingness, from the sole episode I've seen, to see how far a comic idea, however bizarre can go. The result is a show that exemplifies a radical act of black aesthetic freedom, of the kind that most viewers are not going to see even on semi-regular basis otherwise. 

Tonya Pinkins as Ripa the Reaper,
Random Acts of Flyness, HBO

Take, for example, the first episode's mock cable show skit "Everybody Dies," featuring Ripa the Reaper (Tonya Pinkins, props to her for even agreeing to this), who sends up the idea of black death, ushering people, particularly black children, through a door marked life and out one--shoving them at one point--marked death, as she repeatedly draws out a ditty about how we'll all die set to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," accompanied by what sounds like a toy piano. (When two white children join the queue, she sends them back, to a different fate she cannot determine.) Everyone dies, the sketch shows, but not equally, and the perverse spectacle of children dying defies any attempts to make (too much) light of it. Eventually we see Ripa the Reaper's exhaustion at and surrender to the absurdity of what she has to participate in, a powerful dramatic correlative to our affective responses to spectacles of black death we all witness daily. Watching it I thought, only a very talented black writer--and actor--could pull this off, and Nance--and Pinkins--did.

I won't go so far as to say that every element of Random Acts of Flyness's--why do I want to keep calling it Radical Acts of Freedom?--debut worked, though. Nance's opening gambit, "What Are Your Thoughts on Raising Free Black Children?" which involves him riding a bike and getting stopped by a cop who demands that he stop filming what's happening, at first felt almost too obvious, even though what he was dramatizing happens so regularly it has almost become a cliché, despite its often violent and mortal outcome. To his credit, Nance did not end the segment where you might expect, and his flight--literal and figurative--ultimately did feel satisfying, no least because, in a different but consonant way, the idea animates a great deal of my collection Counternarratives. The strands of African and African American folklore that come together as Nance soars underscored for me both his creative skill and how unlike most TV this show probably will be.

Jon Hamm in a skit on
Random Acts of Flyness, HBO

Another clip, "White Be Gone," featuring actor Jon Hamm rubbing a shoe polish-like black unction into his temples to eradicate "white thoughts" also felt a bit belabored, and made me wonder whom it was geared towards, since surrounding it were other clips, like "Black Face(s)" and an exploration of black sexuality, that seemed geared specifically to black viewers. (In fact, I had the thought at one point that the show ought to be on TV One or BET since Nance seemed to be speaking so directly, and lovingly, to other black folks.)  Given the daring of some of the other sketches, I actually expected Hamm to cover his entire face, and eventually send up a kind of black-face liberalness or wannabe wokeness, though perhaps that might have gotten the show canceled and Hamm's career nixed, however evident the sarcasm. And yet given the video clips on "Black Face," contra "blackface," Nance had already established the terms to go even further.

Copyright © HBO

I will continue watching, though. I expect to be surprised, wowed, enthralled, nonplussed. This is defamiliarization in practice, as praxis. As was the case with Boots Riley's Sorry to Bother You, or Arthur Jafa's very different but sublime Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death, I feel profoundly attuned to what Nance is undertaking, even if I have no idea sometimes what he's up to or where he will head. But I am looking forward to continuing on the journey with him. (Random Acts of Flyness airs on HBO on Friday nights/Saturday mornings at midnight.)

Black Lightning, the Series

Cress Williams as Black Lightning

When I was a pre-teen, I read comics avidly, but by the time I reached junior high, I shifted mainly to books, alongside movies and records. This preference has continued into adulthood, though I enjoy reading graphic novels and comics for adults, especially if they're formally experimental, from time to time. But the comic book character families, networks and lore that so many nerds and blerds    hold dear to their hearts were not really part of my adolescence, which probably accounts for why now in adulthood, I tend to be mostly uninterested in movies and TV shows based on standard comic book heroes or teams. Netflix's Jessica Jones (2015) and the subsequent Luke Cage (2016) were rare exceptions. Certainly Hollywood's formulaic approach to most of the comic book franchises does not help things, in my opinion, though I have occasionally gone to see some of the Batman and Spider-Man films on occasion, and loved the Batman TV series as a very small chill. Non-comics derived TV shows involving characters with supernatural powers sometimes do draw me in: Charmed was a favorite during its early run, as was Heroes. But speculative narrative shows and comics are two different things.

Black Lightning, DC Comics version

Black Lightning, the new series on The CW channel, is based on a comic book series, but intrigued me. I knew only a little bit about its origins: writer Tony Isabella and artist Trevor von Eeden issued the first Black Lightning comic book in 1977, and as it turns out, he was the first black superhero to have his own DC Comics book. A little more reading up on the forthcoming series let me know that the metahuman hero was middle-aged, as opposed to a youngster, which I found appealing, and it did not hurt that Cress Williams, an actor I remembered and enjoyed from many shows in the 1990s and early 2000s, including Living Single, Beverly Hills 90210 and Prison Break, and the film Doom Generation, was going to star in it. The basic storyline I could have predicted with my eyes closed; after a stint cleaning up his town, Black Lightning gave up his crime-fighting for a career as a principal and educator. More compelling was the fact that his superheroic efforts had destroyed his marriage and divided his family, leading him to retire in part to heal the frayed family ties. In addition, the show's creator, Salim Akhil, has a strong track record as a writer and producer. Husband of the prolific writer, showrunner and producer Mara Brock Akil, writer for Moesha and Sparkle, and creator of the popular show Girlfriends (2000-2008), the Akils co-developed the successful, provocative TV shows The Game (2006-2015) and Being Mary Jane (2013-). The show's alluring ads, I'll admit, did the rest of the work.

Jill Scott and Marvin "Krondon"
Jones III in a scene from Black Lightning

The Black Lightning series is set in an alternate universe (though filmed in Atlanta), and opens with the superhero, known in semi-conventional human form as Jefferson Pierce (Williams) serving as principal of Garfield High School. He lives with his two daughters, first-born Anissa (Nafessa Williams), who is in medical school and a part-time teacher at Garfield High School, and Jennifer Pierce (China Ann McClain), younger daughter, who is a student at Garfield and dating one of the school's track stars, Khalil (Jordan Calloway). Jefferson remains divorced from his wife, Lynn Stewart (Christine Adams), but they maintain a connection for the sake of their daughters. He seems eager to initiate a romantic rapprochement. As Jefferson, he attempts to guide his students on the proper path, but one result of his work as a principal and teacher is his acquaintance with many locals who have gone off the rails, including various thugs and dealers linked, directly or not, to the area's major criminal organization, The 100. Jefferson also stays in close contact with Peter Gambi (James Remar), his oldest friend and an inventor and tinkerer of Italian ancestry who serves as Jefferson's--and Black Lightning's "tailor"; Gambi creates the superhero's suits and devices, which he continues to improve as the series proceeds.

 Marvin "Krondon" Jones III in a
scene from Black Lightning

Black Lightning's and the town's major antagonists are Tobias Whale (Marvin "Krondon" Jones III), who heads up the 100, and, viewers learn in the second episode, Lady Eve (Jill Scott), a diabolical, platinum-tongued mortician who serves as a coordinating link for all of the major power interests in the city. In the third episode, she harangues Whale, who had previously claimed to have killed Black Lightning, to follow up and rid the town of the beloved superhero forever, threatening him with a dethroning, or worse. Krondon, a hiphop artist and actor in real life, is albino, a rarity on US TV, and one of the show's fascinating conceits is that he will only allow white or very light-skinned people to work for him. In other words, his malevolence is manifest in his colorism, yet surprisingly for TV, the series does not overtly state this, forcing the viewer to figure it out. Another of Black Lightning's antagonists is Inspector Billy Henderson (Damon Gupton), a police officer who also is friends with Pierce but has strongly opposed to the "vigilantism" of Black Lightning, blaming him for disruptions in the police force's ability to maintain order. As quickly becomes clear and perhaps as a subtle critique of the inadequacy of police, the citizenry hunger for Black Lightning's intervention because of the authorities' complacency and failures.

Cress Williams, in a scene from Black Lightning

I've given the background information about Black Lightning's world, but I have said little up to this point about his particular superhero powers. As his name suggests, his chief gift, beyond supernatural speed and the ability, it appears though it hasn't been stated outright, to pass through solid walls and leap onto roofs and ledges, is lightning-like electrical power, which can stun, disable or even kill his assailants. He also has the ability to create ionized fields, which can distribute the electricity in tiny zaps, and generate an electrical force-field, which can shield him from bullets, grenades, and even bombs. So far the series has not shown him creating a black thunder bolt, but when enraged, at least according to the comic strip, he can do so. Additionally, he is able to gather electrical force in his fists to create even stronger punches, perceive nearby electrical flows (and, in episode 3, with the help of new goggles by Gambi, all electrical currents in the area), and even absorb electricity or disappear into electrical wires or powerboxes, traveling like an electrical current. Given these powers, I have to wonder what could stop or at least blunt him; he does not wear a helmet, so he's vulnerable to anything happening behind him if he doesn't perceive it before it hits him. Viewers got a taste of this when during a peace march, despite Black Lightning's presence to protect his family, one of Whale's deputies shoots the march organizer, Reverend Holt, through the upper chest and paralyzes Jefferson's daughter's boyfriend, Khalil. My immediate thought was that had the gunman aimed a bit to the right, he might have struck the superhero dead on. I suppose we will see what measures Whale devises to bring him down.

Black Lightning stars Cress Williams, Christine Adams,
Nafessa Williams, and China Ann McClain

As in the original comic book, Black Lightning is not alone in his crime-fighting. At the end of the first episode, Anissa cracks off part of the bathroom sink, and then, in subsequent episodes, she comes to realize that she possesses unique metahuman powers, inherited from her father, though she is unaware, as far as the viewer knows, that he doubles as Black Lightning. So far she hasn't unleashed any lightning bolts or electrical sparks, but she can create soundwaves by stomping the ground, and can increase her body density to generate super-human strength, which she has used several times to fight off attackers, including a group of adult men selling drugs to teenage girls. We also learn that she is an out lesbian, which, as far as I can tell, makes her the first black lesbian superhero to appear on US TV. The show's approach to sexuality is refreshing and contemporary; when her parents discuss their concerns about her younger sister's Jennifer's announcement that she plans to lose her virginity, they acknowledge their earlier support, though not without tears and shock, for Anissa's coming out, and Akil and the show's writers have fully integrated her relationships into the fabric of the storyline. At a moment when an anti-LGBTQ backlash is underway, and a white supremacist occupies the White House and racism regularly appears in spectacular form, a show about a mature, middle-class superhero and his family, which includes a lesbian superhero daughter, fighting to save a predominantly black and brown town, makes a statement, without hammering anyone over the head.

Nafessa Williams, in a scene
from Black Lightning

Black Lightning

In some ways, Black Lightning feels like a figure conceived during and in response to the previous, pre-Trump moment. A mid-40-something model of flawed respectability, well-spoken and highly educated, a dutiful though divorced father of two smart daughters, a negotiator rather than a hothead, he at first comes off like a Barack Obama with secret superpowers he's willing to use, almost in spite of himself. (His daughters mirror but complicate this template.) Even the stakes, at one level, feel lower than what we currently face as a country and globe. Instead of a supranational or external power, like a fictionalized version of Russia, or against the current hyper-neoliberal/libertarian, overtly racist, misogynistic, anti-liberal political and economic threat, embodied by the Trump administration, the villain he faces is a mostly local crime syndicate. As with Luke Cage, the villainry he's battling is not the result of larger structural and systemic forces, but corrupt and corrupted black people. I understand the desire to depict an enclosed black speculative world, and, more so than with Luke Cage, it feels well built out. But in some ways, it also feels a little inadequate; can this parallel world open out into something that more fully resembles our own? On the other hand, given the current moment of overt backlash, a flawed black superhero family feels appropriate, and, to some degree, emotionally comforting. But is it enough?

What I am waiting to find out is when Jefferson and Anissa will recognize not only that they both possess superhuman powers, but that Black Lightning has a potential partner, if he is willing to accept Anissa--Thunder's--participation in crime fighting. When will Jennifer's powers manifest themselves? Will Jefferson and Lynn get back together? Will the writers allow Anissa's relationship with her Asian American girlfriend, Grace Choi (Chantal Thuy), last the entire season? What is behind Gambi's seeming duplicity in deleting a video feed of Anissa's demonstration of her power, and, in a confusing move, his deletion of Whale's image on a camera feed after the shooting of Reverend Holt? Will the cops work with Black Lightning or continue to see him as a vigilante? I also want to know how Whale's scheme to take out Black Lightning will resolve itself. What other smart, unexpected elements in the series plot and characterization will the writers introduce? Will the show end on a cliffhanger? But let me not get ahead of myself, because there are nine more episodes to go in the thirteen-episode first series, meaning there will be more than enough time to learn how things are going to turn out.

Skye Marshall and Cress Williams,
in a scene from Black Lightning

Review: Empire (on Fox)

Terrence Howard and Grace Grealey
(Photo still © Chuck Hodes)

Like almost everyone we know, C and I made time to catch Empire, the new midseason drama that debuted on Fox on January 7.  Extensively ballyhooed on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere, Empire is the creation of Academy Award-winning director Lee Daniels and Danny Strong, and aims, as some accounts I have read suggest, to be a fusion of Dynasty, the 1980s evening soap opera, hip hop, and King Lear. And don't forget The Sopranos. It definitely has Dynasty's melodrama and larger-than-life acting, a good deal of original hiphop in its soundtrack, and Shakespeare's three battling children (including a queer Cordelia figure), as well as the former New Jersey show's cast of semi-domesticated gangsters, but whether it all works together--though it most definitively is the work of Lee Daniels, as anyone standing in the next room overhearing could tell without much effort--is another matter.

Empire tells the story of music mogul Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard), who has raised his three sons Andre (Trai Byers), Jamal (Jussie Smollett) and Hakeem (Bryshere Gray) by himself as his ex-wife Cookie (Taraji P. Henson in an every-scene-stealing performance) has served time for a drug conviction, though when the series starts, she's just been released, of course without anyone else's foreknowledge. It's unclear how old Lucious is supposed to be--yes, black don't crack but the man doesn't appear a year over 45, even though his eldest son could be nearing 30 (it is biologically possible, I know)--but he is thinking about his eponymous empire, which he is about to take public, and about his potential successors. By the end of the pilot episode, he also receives health news that will eventually take him off the show (unless it turns out to be a misdiagnosis; the writers have written themselves in a bit of a corner with this one). He also commits a mortal crime (I don't mean the hair), but it's so clumsily handled that it can only lead to serious problems.

In Lear fashion, the sons don't exactly delight in each others' time. Andre, the eldest and CFO of Lyon Entertainment, feels he doesn't get enough respect from his father because of his lack of musical ability, suffers from bipolar disorder (I'm almost cringing to see how this is depicted), and is married to his white college sweetheart, Rhonda. Jamal, who possesses enough music skills to make Prince jealous, is openly gay, anti-corporate, estranged from his father--who, in a scene taken from Daniels' life but nevertheless horrifying, throws the child in a trashcan (!) when he appears in drag during a family party--and lives with his Latino boyfriend, Michael (Rafael de la Fuente). Hakeem, who struck me as the least well drawn character so far, parties too much, loves older woman (Macy Gray, Naomi Campbell, etc.) and holds deep hostility towards his mother for having abandoned him (prison, remember). He would send the "Empire" down the drain if left with it for too long.

Bryshere Gray and Jussie Smollett
(Photo still © Chuck Hodes)

That leaves Cookie, who blows out of prison like a tornado and heads first to see her children, to reconnect with them if not exactly to make amends. She wants to manage Jamal. She wants respect from Hakeem, whom she beats with a broom (!) to show him she still Mama and boss. (Cookie don't play that....) She wants her piece of the company. She wants to head the company's AR division. She...well, fill in the blank. Henson is a talented actress, with a capacity for small-scale to megadrama-style acting, and so it was no surprise that once she made her appearance, especially in this role, she would turn things out. One problem with her scenes, though, is that it's not clear Daniels has found the right surrounding frame for her yet, throwing everything off and rendering the proceedings a bit cartoonish. The general tinniness of the dialogue--though there are some great moments--does not help. 

Other characters include Grace Grealey as Anika Calhoun, Lucious's lover and head of Empire Entertainment's AR division and thus Cookie's rival; Malik Yoba as Vernon Turner, a longtime friend of Lucious' and chairman of the company; and Antoine McKay as Bunkie Campbell, a longtime homeboy of Lucious and Cookie from back in the day who ends up paying a serious price for speaking up for himself. Also filling out the cast is actress Gabouré Sidibe, with blond highlights no less, playing Becky, Lucious' assistant. None of these characters was especially compelling, though something tells me that in addition to Bunkie's seeming demise, we may witness some of these other characters taken out or with their hands on a trigger of some sort. I sincerely hope Yoba gets to do more than sit and take insults, and that Sidibe isn't racing breathlessly behind Howard in future episode.

The show raises lots of questions, including whether focusing on a faltering industry, and in this way, is the right setting for a 2015 series; were this show set in 1990 (or had it been made then), it might have resonated much more in every way, but today while there are still music companies, both indies, semi-independents and those fully attached the conglomerates, we can see a cavalcade of their members and participants with minimal varnish and maximum drama on Real Housewives of Atlanta or Love and Hip Hop Atlanta, New York or LA. Are the technical aspects of music-making that this series features anachronistic today? Indeed, the entire landscape of music as an enterprise, along with related industries like music journalism, music TV, etc., has been transformed. Other than Henson's or Smollett's characters, was anyone on the show half as interesting or compelling as Stevie J and Joseline, Li'l Scrappy, Erica Mena and Sin, Joe Buddens and Tahiry, Peter and Amina Buttafly, or Ray J and anyone else on that LA mess factory?

Taraji P. Henson and Terrance Howard
(Photo still © Chuck Hodes)

That the show traffics in stereotypes also rankled, but I know that drawing with broad and familiar strokes is Daniels' purview, and seeking too much subtlety probably was asking too much. Nevertheless, given the paucity of shows about contemporary Black life, anyone traveling this road should make the best effort possible. Respectability isn't the answer, but neither is a lack of complexity. But we will see. The treatment of homophobia, also played into stereotypes. A harshly homophobic Black father isn't such a stretch, of course; I've lived that scenario myself. But did Cookie have to refer to her son as a "queen" and his boyfriend using a feminine pronoun? It was a positive step that the boyfriend ended up being Latino (and we learned that an earlier one had had dreadlocks, if I heard correctly), so the gay = white equation didn't hold. But I will be interested to see how the series plays with Jamal's character, and whether in the interests of pleasing the broad audience, homonormativity becomes Jamal's norm. As is, he's refreshingly distinctive as TV show portrayals go.

One last question that I could not stop asking was: WHY is Terrance Howard running around with a conk? I kept trying to think of figures he might be based on, but since the show is set after 1965, I confess to bafflement. I could even see an old head with 1) a high-top fade--late 80s still and forever, 2) a fro, 3) a Jheri curl, 4) even dreadlocks or a Quo Vadis, but that pressed hair seems straight out of someone mistaken fantasy. His clothing choices also seemed off, as did Hakeem's, but that could just my finickiness. That said, all the houses, cars, and bling do seem appropriate, so perhaps a bit of recalibration can get the show to where it needs to be. But this is just my opinion; it turns out, unsurprisingly, that a good portion of viewers are starved for representations of anything involving Black people or other people of color, and Empire's first night ratings were through the roof. I enjoy watching beautiful people, especially black people, doing their thing, as well as a good soap opera, so I will be tuning into Empire next week too.

National Book Awards & Poem: Mary Szybist

I watch too much TV, still. I say every single day that I am going to cut back, and I have had periods (like winters in Chicago) when I could go for long stretches watching almost nothing except a show or two (The Wire, Sleeper Cell, Project Runway, etc.), but now that I'm back in New Jersey full-time, part of the rhythm of home involves that infernal digital box (I was going to write cathode ray contraption, but those days are now mostly gone). My TV watching--which does not preclude reading, for classes, for pleasure, etc.--even extended recently to a program I never thought I would sit through, the 2013 National Book Awards ceremony. It ran on CSPAN-2, I believe, and I know that I wasn't the only one watching, because as is now the case with many TV programs, it included a vibrant social media component, which meant that my Twitter feed lit up with comments from Twitterati I follow (or who were retweeting other wits and observers) who were watching the program too.

The fiction finalists

One part of me did think that it was perhaps ridiculous to be tweeting about an awards ceremony focused on book awards, but another part of me said, how wonderful that literary arts, though framed by a strong commercial push from the National Book Foundation and major global and domestic publishers, are not only being celebrated, but televised, and not just televised, but watched and reviewed in real time. Most of the people in my Twitter feed, as did I, tended to celebrate the authors, make positive comments about the winners' work and self-presentation, and cheer about specific books that were nominated and those that won. I thankfully did not see many--any?--negative comments about the authors or their book nor did I see arguments break out about the selections. In truth it is so rare to see living poets, fiction and nonfiction writers, and authors of young adult literature individually or together, and their work, their art, our arts, being celebrated no less, on our dominant cultural mass medium that I think this may have held a lot of negativity in check.

The nonfiction finalists

One person who provoked a smidgen of negative commentary was one of the two co-hosts, Mika Brzezinski. She struck me as somewhat incongruous amidst the proceedings, though it turns out that the National Book Awards finalists were revealed on Morning Joe, the program she co-hosts with former GOP Congressman Joe Scarborough. I am not being snide or snarky when I say that while I think she may be a savvy person--and she has gotten quite far in the world, admittedly with the boost of a famous parent--she does not give the impression of being a regular reader or literary enthusiast. But I have not studied her life exhaustively and could be quite wrong; she did study English at Williams College and very well may consume books the way many around us devour reality TV shows and TV melodramas, and perhaps her performance on Morning Joe is more performance than anything else. She unfortunately did make a major flub when, after having announced the order the prizes would be handed out--there were only four, so it should have been fairly easy to remember them and figure out something was amiss, especially for an on-camera professional--she announced the nonfiction presenter instead of the person presenting the award for fiction. Allegedly she also left before the awards ceremony was over. I guess too much of the book business can get to some.

The poetry finalists

The winners included author and musician James McBride for his Civil War-era novel about a young man who accompanies abolitionist John Brown, The Good Lord Bird (Riverhead Books/Penguin Group USA); nonfiction writer George Packer, for his meditations on the contemporary state of American society, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux); Cynthia Kadohata's young adult book The Thing About Luck (Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster); and poet Mary Szybist, who gave the most affecting speech this year, for her collection Incarnadine (Graywolf Press). A few years ago a furor arose because the five fiction finalists were not well known, and most were with smaller presses, but as this year's winners make clear, the big houses mostly cleaned house. There also was for the first time a Man Booker Prize-like longlist, which I think aimed to generate a bit more "buzz" and was a good idea in terms of honoring more writers than fewer, though in a sense it also seems a bit cruel to those who did not advance to the finalist stage. But what are you going to do? In any case there are several more big American/global literary prizes to go (the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prizes, and the various PEN awards, etc.), so perhaps some of the nominees who did not win this time will merit consideration for some of the ones for later this award season cycle, and other authors, like the great Jay Wright, and my brilliant and prolific Rutgers colleagues Rigoberto González, Jim Goodman, Rachel Hadas, Jayne Anne Phillips, Brenda Shaughnessy, all of whom I believe published new books (several in the case of Rigoberto!), will also receive some of these honors. Congratulations to all this year's winners--and to all 2013 authors too!

The young people's literature finalists

I thought I would post two of the most formally daring poems from Mary Szybist's Incarnadine. Their content and rhetoric give a good sense of the book and its concerns, though these two poems go much further, in terms of their formal daring and visuality, than the rest of the book, thus making them almost unrepresentative. I have to say that I like them and like looking at them and like trying to read them, and like that an author is both tackling the subject of God and the numinous, and yet also doing so in ways that are unexpected. And I like that some other poets and critics, serving as judges, saw fit to honor such daring. Several of my undergraduate students have been particularly interested in poetry's non-verbal qualities and abilities, its multiple capacities for signification, and these poems, hearkening in some ways back to George Herbert in the case of the "How (Not) to Speak to God" and to May Swenson or the Concrete poets, just to offer a few examples, in the case of "It is Pretty to Think," exemplify what my students and I have been talking about.



Enjoy:

Copyright © "How (Not) to Talk to God" and "It Is Pretty to Think," by Mary Szybist, from Incarnadine, Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2013. All rights reserved.

Summerfall in Chicago + This and That

SUMMERFALL
When I left Jersey City last week, autumn had arrived. Cool days and cooler evenings filled my final week at home. In Chicago, however, it's still summery. Actually mid-summery. Every day the thermometer's crossed the 80°F threshold, and today it's so warm (90°F) I'm finding it difficult to believe that classes are about to start and October is just around the corner. Rather than calling this Indian summer, it's basically Summerfall. Or Sutumn. Or Faummer.

JENA 6 RALLYING LAST WEEK

From Los Angeles Times: Chris Graythen / Getty Images

Last Thursday I wasn't able to head down to Texas to participate in the Jena Six protest and rally nor was I able to participate in the local demonstrations, so I signed up to call Louisiana state officials to urge justice in the case, in which six African-American teenagers were arrested, and one convicted as an adult, for an attack on a White schoolmate. The attack on the White student was the culminating event in a series of clashes that began White students decided to hang a noose from a tree, as an racially inflammatory affront to Black students who'd decided to sit under it (and to Blacks in Jena more broadly), and received only token sanctions as a result, their action being labeled a "prank." The case has rightly sparked international outrage, and last's week's public protest drew many thousands of participants.

Since I'm shy and not especially comfortable on the telephone, I was a little nervous about calling, but ColorofChange provided scripts and numbers, and I set to dialing. I can report that of the actual human beings I actually reached, all were unfailingly polite, some even apologetic, and one sounded exasperated, especially after I said that I was calling from Chicago, Illinois. (I think C said she probably was thinking "Damn Yankees!") This same person also said she would put me "on the list," which I assumed meant a list to be presented to the state official to whom I was lodging my protest, but then I also considered that the same list might end up in the hands of scary right-wing types (even though I realize we may be undergoing wiretapping, which I say with no little amount of horror and rage), so while I gave my name, she at least got a dummy phone number.

I do not for a minute think that my telephone rallying matched the commitment and courage of those who were present at the marches and rallies, or the bravery of the young defendants. I also think that one response by some of the officials involved will be what it was in before, during and after the Civil Rights movement: defiance, though they have been served a wake-up call, not only by the longstand Black leadership, but by a new generation of activists who are fed up by the persistence of racism in its most grotesque and spectacular forms.

Louisiana's officials probably will respond to the threat of economic boycott, but they also probably realize that many of the supporters of the Jena Six are also strong supporters of those who suffered from Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, and cutting off the state of Louisiana could harm New Orleansians just as readily as racist district attorneys in rural parts of the state. So it strikes me that one of the best positions to take is to keep the pressure on, publicize the miscarriages of justice far and wide, and not let Louisiana's officials of whatever party off the hook. The Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Director of Tourism, top judicial officials, and everyone else in power should know that last Thursday was not the last hurrah--that won't come until all of the Jena Six are fully cleared, and there is a public apology and investigation into everything that occurred.

And, now that the New York Times has abolished Times Select, you can read Paul Krugman's take on the protests and on the electoral corner the Republican Party, through its Southern, a/k/a racist strategy, has painted itself into. (I would add that the Democratic Party and politicians also engage in racist discourse when they feel--wrong--the need to do so.)

And as Metta Sama noted in a recent email she sent, "it ain't just a Southern thang."

And as Reggie notes, the issue of Black on Black violence, and Black male violence against women, deserves a similar nationwide demonstration and rally.

HASTA, LIBRERÍA LECTORUM
Sic transeunt ruae Novi Eborici.

Herbert R. wrote Reggie and me to pass on an article from Críticas saying that the landmark Librería Lectorum, the major Spanish-language bookstore in New York, has closed. Founded in 1960, the store can no longer afford the burgeoning rents on its strip of West 14th Street--that's right, rents are exploding on West 14th Street!--and ironically, the landlords are the sons of the store's founder, Argentinian Gerome Gutiérrez. The heirs no longer own the business, which was sold along with the Spanish-language publishing arm, Lectorum, to the publisher Scholastic, which now plans to shift the entire outfit to the online world, though there's a slender--nonexistent--possibility that they will find another storefront in New York.

Lectorum Publications president Teresa Mlawer says that street traffic has plummeted and the neighborhood has been gentrifying for years, but 14th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues was still fairly gritty when I walked it many times this summer, although it has changed somewhat even from last year. Still, it's no SoHo or Chelsea, at least not yet, and ousting the store will only help speed the gentrifying process. It's a major loss for New York's Spanish-speaking community and for the city's culture, on multiple levels, not least because of the disappearance of an important venue and meeting place for Spanish-language authors from across the city and globe, and because of the ongoing dismantling of 14th Streets's longstanding cultural economy, which is set to shift into another mode altogether.

I realize New York, like all vibrant cities, is always changing, and that from its origins it's revolved around commerce, but it still painful to acknowledge the loss of yet another key institution like this. I also think the Gutiérrez brothers ought to be ashamed, but is that even a valid emotion in our contemporary society? I visited the store several times this summer, primarily to look for books in Spanish by the late Roberto Bolaño, and I also recall one of the first times I went there, back in the 1990s, and found a book by the Dominican fiction writer and scholar José Alcántara Almánzar, and the woman at the registered, noting his back cover and glancing up at me, asked me if I was he! Given how bad my spoken Spanish was then and that I was flattered into speechlessness, I had to deny it with a headshake.

Neither of the two articles mentions that one block west, another Spanish-language bookstore, Macondo, remains, though it long has hand only a fraction of the texts as Libreria Lectorum, and on occasion I've almost had to wake the attendant who was working in there. I wonder how much of a lease and life it'll have as the relentless march of luxury condos and stultifying chain stories continues across every square inch of Manhattan's grid.

The New York Times's article on the store's closing is here.

Que nunca se la olvide, que siempre se la recuerde.

AHMADINEJAD IN NEW YORK
Re: the brouhaha surrounding the visit by the decidedly wacko, authoritarian, Israel-hating, democratically elected, figurehead president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to New York to attend the opening of the UN General Assembly, and his "roast" (to use C's apt term)/conversation/free-for-all today at Columbia University (which should not be punished by New York State politicians for hosting the talk), I came across a great quote from the comments section after Glenn Greenwald's post on this topic:

"History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure."--Thurgood Marshall

In light of the events this year and the past seven years, that "urgency" deserves scare quotes, BTW.

UPDATE: Here's a New York Times report on Ahmadinejad's bizarre riffs today, including his claim that there are no gay people in Iran (though they're persecuted, like the Baha'i and other religious, social and sexual minorities, and hanged there) and that the Holocaust was theoretical rather than actual (though Iranian TV is featuring a very popular miniseries on this topic). He did get in a few knocks at his questioners and at his chief antagonist, W, though he said little of substance, whether about the appalling heinous human rights record in Iran, its support of Hamas, or its connection to the corrupt and ineffectual quasi-government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki.

WHERE DID THE TV GAYS GO?
There are fewer gay characters (and Latino characters) on network TV, but more on cable. So says a new Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) study. According to GLAAD's report, most of the network gay characters--all 6 of them--are on one channel, ABC, with the other one appearing on NBC; there are no gay characters on CBS, Fox, or CW. The last channel has the largest percentage of characters who're people of color. CW used to be the WB, and snapped up content from UPN, both ghettos for neo-minstrelsy, right?

(BTW, what categories does Wentworth Miller fall into? Racial, that is, for the survey purposes. Just asking.)

I'm not sure what the mainstream network folks are thinking, and I'm not suggesting there's a conspiracy so much as the usual oversight, indifference and neglect, but given the high gay quotient both in Hollywood and New York, it makes you wonder.

No word on how many of the few remaining network gays, lesbians, bisexuals, or transgenders or their cable kin have lots of melanin, though. And the lone show featuring lots--a whole cast full!--of Black and Latino gay people, Noah's Arc, problematic as it was, is off LOGO, so I'd imagine the numbers aren't great on cable either. It's not just on Queer as Volk that queers of color don't exist....

UAW SAYS STRIKE
GM wants to cut costs while to compete with foreign automakers. The United Auto Workers want to keep jobs in the US. GM says, No. The UAW says no more more work until they get a guarantee. Health care costs and liabilities are a major aspect of the negotiations. But if we had a single-payer national health care system, GM and the UAW wouldn't have haggle over this issue. Would they?

DEMOCRACY IN MYANMAR
Finally, this is what I'd call religious, moral and ethical leadership.

Franky G

Reggie H. sent me and Ryan this photo today (it originally was posted on MostProper, a blog that features lots of "phyne sights" in Reggie's words), letting us know that Franky G. (pictured at left) will be in Saw 2, which I gather is the sequel to Saw. I had to write back to let Reggie and Ryan know how out of it I must be, since I'd never heard of the initial film, which according to IMdB (the online encyclopedia of film information), appeared in 2004. A horror movie directed by James Wan (¿quién es él?), starring Danny Glover, Cary Elwes, and quite a few actors I've never heard of, it concerns a serial killer whose calling card is a circular saw, or something like that. The general viewer rating for Saw is 7.5 stars out of 10, which ranks higher than Hitchcock's superb Suspicion or Cassavetes's standard-setting Gloria. Yeah, right.

But anyways, who cares about Saw or Saw II, really? At my age I'm able to recognize quite clearly there's enough horror going on in the world around me that I don't wish for or need cinematic treatments of it anymore--the important issue is the man above. I know I'm not alone in thinking that the New York native Puerto Rican-American Franky G (for Gonzalez) is one of the more beautiful men in film and TV, am I? And the man is the same age as me, 40 years old! Sadly and unsurprisingly, Hollywood doesn't know what to do with this kind of (male) beauty, which has always fallen and continues to fall outside its "mainstream." In my alternative universe, Franky G, who does have some acting talent (though he's no Denzel Washington or Robert DeNiro, and that's OK!), would have regular roles, both in movies and on TV. And he'd have material suited to his talent and looks, not the sort of dreck that characterized Johnny Z, his late show on Fox, which brings me to another point.

As I stated in my second post on Noah's Arc, I intend to keep watching that show, despite how bad it is. Thinking of Johnny Z, I realized that in fact lack of quality is no bar to my watching a TV show, if it has other things going for it (humor, attractive stars, some catchy element). For much of my life I eagerly watched bad or retrograde TV (F Troop, My Three Sons, One Day at a Time, Good Times, Dallas, Eight Is Enough, Family, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, Three Is Company, The Dukes of Hazzard, The Greatest American Hero, Cybill, Melrose Place, Beverly Hills 90210, Sister Sister, The Parkers, etc.) for a variety of reasons other than quality (which I think was and is one key element of, for example, Batman, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Schoolhouse Rock, Zoom, The Electric Company, Speed Racer, The Patty Duke Show, Get Smart, Monty Python, Maude, The Golden Girls, Frank's Place, The Cosby Show, Seinfeld, SCTV, The Kids in the Hall, Mr. Show Show, certain seasons of SNL, The Wire, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Comeback, etc.). 

As I age, though, I can't really take too much bad or retrograde TV anymore, especially shows that depict a world set anywhere but Iceland or Finland (or Wyoming, let's say) that's focused excessively on the very young and rich or economically privileged and devoid of any people of color. Just no. No. NO. My tolerance for minstrelsy also has shrunk to nil. I don't want to waste my time what's essentially a repurposed lost script for Amos n' Andy. Nevertheless, friend David M. and I caught the first episode of Franky G's Johnny Z and faithfully watched the really awful--dreadful, cringe-inducing, appallingly badly written--subsequent ones every week, until, mercifully, it was pulled. If you never saw the show, you missed little--except, of course, for Franky G.

He was the ONLY reason to watch it. The entire scenario--a Latino late-30s-something, with a kid and ex-wife, gets out of jail, is on parole in NYC, has to keep clean yet cannot help getting involved with criminals, etc.--started out with a mild stench. So much of it was utterly implausible: a British gangster in NYC...wait, let me repeat that. A British gangster--in New York City! Okay, there may be British gangsters in New York (New York has all kinds of people, and there certainly are quite a few in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, etc.) but seriously, and at the risk of political incorrectness, while I appreciate the writers' attempts at being...inventive?...wouldn't a Black or Latino or Italian or Irish or Russian or Albanian or Greek or Chinese crime boss be more believable...well, you get my drift. We're talking about New York City. Any student in an introductory fiction class would find every mention of this character in a story based on the initial premise of Johnny Z surrounded by circles and question marks. 

Then there was his sidekick, this endlessly babbling, unspeakably annoying, wannabe comic White nerdy guy who looked like a plucked chicken, and they shared a huge apartment...in New York City...I kept wondering, why on earth wasn't this waste of space and dialogue shed during the development phase? David and I both concurred, of course, that the network probably thought that the show wouldn't succeed without a central White character. So why not instead give us a real New York type, a White tough, say from Queens or Brooklyn or Staten Island, or if you need to ramp up the comedy, New Jersey, who, far more conceivably, might have met Johnny Z on the inside and then caught up with him when they both got out? Instead, the quasi-Jerry Lewis-esque buffoon the show selected didn't work at all. And then they added an Australian bail bondswoman, who just happened to be a busty blonde bruiser, which satisfied some other show runner's or writer's fantasies, and...well, the show was off the airwaves not long thereafter.

So there is no chance anymore to watch horrible TV just to see Franky G every week. I doubt I'll go see Saw 2, so I'll have to miss Franky G's newest star turn. Which is a shame, because I relish any opportunities to see Franky G. onscreen. And not only Franky G, but any number of other actors that whose beauty lights up the screen, but whom Hollywood and the major networks in New York don't know what to do with. (Mekhi Phifer has kept his job on ER and there's the two guys, Eva Longoria's husband and Alfre Woodard's son on Desperate Housewives, a show I don't watch, but that's about it now that Taye Diggs, Keith Hamilton Cobb, Matthew St. Patrick, etc. are no longer on regularly airing shows.) But then things may change, as they already have in my lifetime, though slowly, slowly.... So cable TV stations, just so you know, Franky G could still be a contender....