Tuesday Poet: Henry Dumas (1934-1968) - theblackbottom

Source: The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture Henry Dumas is a critically acclaimed author of poetry and fiction who captured, in some of his finest work, many of his childhood experiences as an African-American living in southern Arkansas.

Henry Dumas was born on July 20, 1934, in Sweet Home (Pulaski County), sometimes called Sweetwater, and he continued to live there until he moved with his family to Harlem when he was ten years old. Almost no information about Dumas?s childhood is available, yet his life in the deep South and the desolate conditions confronting black Southerners in that era are insightfully depicted in several of his writings, including his widely admired short story, ?Goodbye, Sweetwater.?

Dumas graduated from Harlem?s Commerce High School in 1953 and then attended City College in New York but quit after one year. He then entered the U.S. Air Force and was stationed primarily at Lackland Air Base in San Antonio, Texas, and on the Arabian Peninsula. While in the air force, he married Loretta Ponton on September 24, 1955. They had two sons.

After his discharge in 1957, Dumas enrolled at Rutgers University as a part-time student, but he left in 1965 without completing his degree. During this period, he also worked as a printer operator at IBM (1963?1964) and as a social worker for the state of New York (1965?1966). He was active in the civil rights movement, transporting food and clothing to civil rights workers in Mississippi and Tennessee.

In 1967, Dumas began a position as assistant director of Upward Bound at Ohio?s Hiram College. He then became a teacher and counselor in the Experiment in Higher Education program at the University of Southern Illinois. It was there that Dumas met Eugene B. Redmond, a teacher, critic, and author who would later champion Dumas?s work and become his literary executor.

On the evening of May 23, 1968, Dumas was shot and killed by a New York Transit policeman. Details surrounding his death remain sketchy and controversial; some evidence suggests that this shooting was a case of mistaken identity, while other evidence suggests that Dumas?s behavior led the officer to believe that Dumas was reaching for a weapon. Regardless of the exact circumstances, Dumas?s tragic, early death serves as a reminder of the capricious state of black men in American society during the 1960s and beyond.

Although Dumas?s work was published in several small magazines and journals in the 1960s, such as Hiram?s Poetry Review, Negro Digest, Trace, and Umbra, and in the anthology Black Fire, he did not publish a book-length collection during his lifetime. A vast majority of his work remained unpublished upon his death. It is primarily through the efforts of Redmond that Dumas?s work has been placed before the public. Some of the collections that Redmond helped guide to publication are ?Ark of Bones? and Other Stories (1974), Play Ebony: Play Ivory (1974), Goodbye, Sweetwater (1988), Knees of a Natural Man: The Selected Poetry of Henry Dumas (1989), and Echo Tree: The Collected Short Fiction of Henry Dumas (2003). These works demonstrate that Dumas was a prolific, innovative, and eclectic creator who delved into numerous social and political issues through a variety of modes of expression, such as gospel, jazz, blues, parable, nature imagery, folklore, religion, and superstition.

Source: Modern American Poetry
TAKE THIS RIVER

We move up a spine of earth
That bridges the river and the canal.
And where a dying white log, finger-like,
Floating off the bank, claws at the slope,
We stumble, and we laugh.
We slow beneath the moon?s eye;
Near the shine of the river?s blood face,
The canal?s veil of underbrush sweats frost,
And this ancient watery scar retains
The motionless tears of men with troubled spirits.
For like the whole earth,
This land of mine is soaked?.

Shadows together,
We fall on the grass without a word.
We had run this far from the town.
We had taken the bony course, rocky and narrow,
He leading, I following.
Our breath streams into October
As the wind sucks our sweat and a leaf?

?We have come a long long way, mahn.?
He points over the river
Where it bends west, then east,
And leaves our sight.

?I guess we have,? I pant. ?I can hear
My angry muscles talking to my bones.?
And we laugh.

The hood of night is coming.
Up the river, down the river
The sky and night kiss between the wind.

?You know,? Ben says, ?this is where
I brought Evelyn?.
Look. We sat on that log
And watched a river egret
Till it flew away with the evening.

?But mahn, she is a funny girl, Aiee!
But she looks like me Jamaica woman?.
But she asks me all the questions, mahn.
I?m going to miss her mahn, Aiee!

?But I will . . . Ewie. Ewie I love you,
But I do Ewie . . . Ewie . . . ,? he says
And blows a kiss into the wind.
Broken shadows upon the canal
Form and blur, as leaves shudder again?again

?Tell me this, Ben,? I say.
?Do you love American girls?
You know, do most Jamaicans
Understand this country??

We almost laugh. Our sweat is gone.
He whispers ?Aiee? on a long low breath

And we turn full circle to the river,
Our backs to the blind canal.

?But I?m not most Jamaicans?.
I?m only Ben, and tomorrow I?ll be gone,
And ? Ewie, I love you?.
Aiee! My woman, how can I love you??

Blurred images upon the river
Flow together and we are there?.

?What did she ask you?? I say.
?Everything and nothing, maybe.
But I couldn?t tell her all.?
We almost laugh. ??Cause I
Don?t know it all, mahn.

?Look, see over there?.
We walked down from there
Where the park ends
And the canal begins

Where that red shale rock
Down the slope there . . . see?
Sits itself up like a figure,
We first touch our hands . . .
And up floats this log,
Not in the river
But in the canal there
And it?s slimy and old
And I kick it back . . .
And mahn, she does too.
Then she asks me:
?Bennie, if I cry
When you leave would you
Remember me more??
Aiee! She?s a natural goddess!
And she asks me:
?Bennie, when you think of Jamaica
Can you picture me there??
And while she?s saying this,
She?s reaching for the river
Current like she?s feeling its pulse.
She asks me:
?Bennie, America means something to you?
Maybe our meeting, our love? has
Something to do with America,
Like the river? Do you know Bennie??
Aiee, Aiee, mahn I tell you
She might make me marry . . .
Aiee! Ewie, Jamaica . . . moon!
And how can I say anything?
I tell her:
?Africa, somewhere is Africa.
Do you understand,? I say to her,
And she look at me with the moon,
And I hear the wind and the leaves
And we do not laugh . . .
We are so close now no wind between us . . .
I say to her:
?Ewie, I do not know America
Except maybe in my tears?.
Maybe when I look out from Jamaica
Sometimes, at the ocean water?.
Maybe then I know this country?.
But I know that we, we Ewie?.
I know that this river goes and goes.
She takes me to the ocean,
The mother of water
And then I am home.?
And she tells me she knows
By the silence in her eyes.
I reach our hands again down
And bathe them in the night current
And I say: ?Take this river, Ewie?.?
Aiee, wind around us, Aiee my God!
Only the night knows how we kiss.?

He stands up.
A raincloud sailing upon a leak, whirs
In the momentary embrace of our memories?.
?Let?s run,? I say, ?and warm these bones.?
But he trots a bit, then stops,
Looking at his Jamaica sky.
?Let?s run the long road west
Down the river road,? I say,
?And I?ll tell you of my woman?.Aiee.?
We laugh, but we stop.
And then, up the spiny ridge
We race through the trees
Like spirited fingers of frosty air.
We move toward some blurred
Mechanical light edged like an egret
And swallowed by the night.
Into this land of mine.
And the wind is cold, a prodding
Finger at our backs.
The still earth. Except for us.
And from behind that ebon cloak,
The moon observes?.
And we do not laugh
And we do not cry, And where the land slopes,
We take the river?.
But we do not stumble,
We do not laugh,
We do not cry,
And we do not stop?.

Source: http://theblackbottom.com/?p=15183

packers vikings bob costas jerry sandusky chelsea clinton kat von d tiki barber minnesota vikings packers vs vikings