American Book Review

(for Benjamin Rucker, 1889–1934)

I can still remember Dr. Stephen Henderson in his small office in Founders Library of Howard University eating a half-smoke at his desk. He had been reading about Toni Morrison. Newsweek magazine had put her on their March 30, 1981, cover and placed the words "Black Magic" near her head. Henderson was munching and mumbling about how white people could only explain Black genius as being something strange and mystical. Was it possible Morrison had a big pot somewhere and simply had to stir and add characters and ingredients to produce a novel? If one possessed a wand, was it necessary to master craft? Black intelligence has always been questioned. History celebrates our bodies and not our minds. Black writers have always had to prove themselves as if they were being forced to stand on a literary slave block. How good can a Black writer mimic a white writer? Can a Black writer master form and master one's craft without a master? All my life I wanted to wear hats like Thelonius Monk or sit down in front of a computer and play the keys like Cecil Taylor. Who would then question my line breaks or my funky sonnets? Who would ask if my work was universal?

"Do you only write Black poetry?" This is the equivalent of a Black poet being stopped by the police. The asking of the question is brutal. It's a knee on one's imagination. When Black poets do certain things, people stare. I wonder if people stared at the hem in Gwendolyn Brooks's sonnets as if she were Aretha Franklin singing "Nessun Dorma."

During the height of the COVID pandemic I found myself spending more time in my backyard. I became more contemplative and aware of nature. I watched blue jays, cardinals, robins, and squirrels flying and running around the large statue of Buddha that sits in my yard. While doing "quiet" thinking I thought of my brother, Richard, who joined a monastery in 1962. He went off to the Trappist community of the Abbey of the Genesee in Piffard, New York, where the monks made bread. I imagined him stopping for a moment [End Page 108] and taking in his new surroundings. My brother was one of those individuals who was influenced by Thomas Merton.

Thinking about the outdoors and my brother inspired me to reread a collection of Merton's writings called When the Trees Say Nothing. This was a small book given to me a few years ago by my friend Joanna Chen, a writer and translator living in Israel. I was particularly moved when I came across these words by Merton:

How necessary it is for monks to work in the fields, in the rain, in the sun, in the mud, in the clay, in the wind: these are our spiritual directors and our novice masters. They form our contemplation. They instill us with virtue. They make us as stable as the land we live in.

As I sat behind my house I wrote poems. I started writing haiku. As many of us worried about the spreading pandemic and the increasing number of deaths around the world, I became aware of my own mortality. Staring at the Buddha in my yard, I was reminded of the importance of mindfulness, the sacredness that comes with each breath one takes and the celebration of the moment.

When I started writing poetry in the late sixties and early seventies, I wrote short poems. I was influenced by Langston Hughes, Norman Jordan, and the early work of Sonia Sanchez and Haki Madhubuti (then Don L. Lee). This soon became an invitation and an opportunity to begin to "go steady" with haiku. I like the simplistic structure and the connection it makes to nature. I like the playfulness in how the language might pause suddenly, the emphasis on an image or a moment in time.

My regular writing of haiku soon became a working manuscript—the little book of e. When one thinks of African American poetry and the writing of haiku, one immediately thinks...