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Articles by Etheridge Knight
Haiku by Etheridge Knight
1 Eastern guard tower glints in sunset; convicts rest like lizards on rocks. 2 The piano man is stingy, at 3 A.M. his songs drop like plum. 3 Morning sun slants cell. Drunks stagger like cripple flies On jailhouse floor. 4 To write a blues song is to regiment riots and pluck gems from graves. 5 A bare pecan tree slips a pencil shadow down a moonlit snow slope. 6 The falling snow flakes Cannot blunt the hard aches nor Match the steel stillness.
Levy And Danny Take A Polygraph Test!?!?
"On the chessboard, lies and hypocrisy do not survive long" — Emanuel Lasker, 2nd World Chess G.O.A.T. IMs Danny Rensch and Levy Rozman come together for the interrogation of their lives! Tied to a polygraph, the two exchange questions about their deep, dark secrets while simultaneously playing two 10-minute chess games. A professional handles the lie detector machine in the corner, sometimes confirming, "There's a little bit of deception indicated." What questions were asked?
Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration
FALL PROGRAMS 2023 FILM SCREENING: MASTER OF LIGHT Wednesday, October 11, 2023 | 6:30 PM Join us for a screening of this deeply personal film, featuring George Anthony Morton, a classical painter who spent ten years in federal prison for dealing drugs. While incarcerated, he nurtured his craft and unique artistic ability. Morton is one of 40 artists currently featured in the Schomburg exhibition Marking Time.
Poem: For Freckle-Faced Gerald
By Etheridge Knight Selected by Reginald Dwayne Betts Dec. 9, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET This is the poem that turned me into a poet. Knight, writing about a 16-year-old boy in prison named Gerald. I was 17 when I read it. Had been in prison for nearly two years, and my voice cracked as I spoke.
The Idea of Ancestry by Etheridge Knight - Poems | Academy of American Poets
1 Taped to the wall of my cell are 47 pictures: 47 black faces: my father, mother, grandmothers (1 dead), grand- fathers (both dead), brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins (1st and 2nd), nieces, and nephews. They stare across the space at me sprawling on my bunk. I know their dark eyes, they know mine. I know their style, they know mine. I am all of them, they are all of me; they are farmers, I am a thief, I am me, they are thee.
The Idea of Ancestry
1 Taped to the wall of my cell are 47 pictures: 47 black faces: my father, mother, grandmothers (1 dead), grand- fathers (both dead), brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins (1st & 2nd), nieces, and nephews. They stare across the space at me sprawling on my bunk. I know their dark eyes, they know mine. I know their style, they know mine. I am all of them, they are all of me; they are farmers, I am a thief, I am me, they are thee.
The Sun Came by Etheridge Knight
And if sun comes How shall we greet him? —Gwen Brooks The sun came, Miss Brooks,— After all the night years. He came spitting fire from his lips. And we flipped—We goofed the whole thing. It looks like our ears were not equipped For the fierce hammering. And now the Sun has gone, has bled red, Weeping behind the hills. Again the night shadows form. But beneath the placid face a storm rages. The rays of Red have pierced the deep, have struck The core. We cannot sleep.
Feeling Fucked Up
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Feeling Fucked Up
Lord she’s gone done left me done packed / up and split and I with no way to make her come back and everywhere the world is bare bright bone white crystal sand glistens dope death dead dying and jiving drove her away made her take her laughter and her smiles and her softness and her midnight sighs— Fuck Coltrane and music and clouds drifting in the sky fuck the sea and trees and the sky and birds and alligators and all the animals that roam the earth fuck marx and mao fuck fidel and nkrumah...
For Malcolm, A Year After by Etheridge Knight
Compose for Red a proper verse; Adhere to foot and strict iamb; Control the burst of angry words Or they might boil and break the dam. Or they might boil and overflow And drench me, drown me, drive me mad. So swear no oath, so shed no tear, And sing no song blue Baptist sad. Evoke no image, stir no flame, And spin no yarn across the air. Make empty anglo tea lace words— Make them dead white and dry bone bare. Compose a verse for Malcolm man, And make it rime and make it prim.
No Square Poet’s Job by Tony Rehagen
In solitary, Reginald Dwayne Betts never knew what was coming. It was 1996, and Betts was just beginning a nine-year stretch in the Virginia state prison system for a carjacking he and a friend had committed. Betts’s codefendant occupied the prison’s only juvenile unit; Betts was put in solitary to keep the boys separated. He was 16 years old. Betts killed time by reading whatever he could get his hands on, burning through three or four books a day. Fiction was always preferred.
Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane by Etheridge Knight
Hard Rock / was / “known not to take no shit From nobody,” and he had the scars to prove it: His yellow eyes, and one long scar that cut Across his temple and plowed through a thick The WORD / was / that Hard Rock wasn’t a mean nigger Anymore, that the doctors had bored a hole in his head, Cut out part of his brain, and shot electricity Through the rest. When they brought Hard Rock back, Handcuffed and chained, he was turned loose, Like a freshly gelded stallion, to try his new status.
The Idea of Ancestry
On April 19, 1931, Etheridge Knight was born in Corinth, Mississippi. Although he dropped out of school at age sixteen (as soon as he was old enough to join the army), his education in the uses and joys of language continued as he explored the world of juke joints, pool halls, and underground poker games. He began to master the art of the toast, a form of long, improvised, humorous poetry that dates back to the 19th century and has its roots in African storytelling.
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 1): “The Idea Of Ancestry”
This column is the first of 21 pieces on poems I’m interested in, and I hope you will be too, that I want to offer here as poems that have shaped America. By that I don’t mean poems really, truly “shaped” America. Or created America. Poems don’t have the impact of creating mass perceptions as Hollywood or politics, or the latest iPhone. Rarely anyway.
No Moon Floods the Memory of That Night
No moon floods the memory of that night only the rain I remember the cold rain against our faces and mixing with your tears only the rain I remember the cold rain and your mouth soft and warm no moon no stars no jagged pain of lightning only my impotent tongue and the red rage within my brain knowing that the chilling rain was our forever even as I tried to explain: “A revolutionary is a doomed man with no certainties but love and history.” “But our children must grow up with certainties and...
In praise of poets: Gwendolyn Brooks and Nikki Giovanni
Two powerful wordsmiths—Gwendolyn Brooks and Nikki Giovanni—were born on this day, June 7. From different generations, both black, both female, they broke barriers and boundaries with pen and poem, engraving words into a universal psyche. Both write with incisive political and personal impact for their readers.Poetry has always played a key role in the lives of black Americans.
Kenneth Goldsmith Says He Is an Outlaw
In August 2014 an 18-year-old unarmed black man named Michael Brown was shot six times and killed by a white police officer named Daren Wilson on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. His blood-soaked body remained in the street for four hours waiting for investigators to arrive.
Etheridge Knight
Shiny record albums scattered over the living room floor, reflecting light from the lamp, sharp reflections that hurt my eyes as I watch you, squatting among the platters, the beer foam making mustaches on your lips. And, too, the shadows on your cheeks from your long lashes fascinate me--almost as much as the dimples in your cheeks, your arms and your legs.
The Sun Came | Poetry Out Loud
By Etheridge Knight And if sun comes How shall we greet him? —Gwen Brooks The sun came, Miss Brooks,— After all the night years. He came spitting fire from his lips. And we flipped—We goofed the whole thing. It looks like our ears were not equipped For the fierce hammering. And now the Sun has gone, has bled red, Weeping behind the hills. Again the night shadows form. But beneath the placid face a storm rages. The rays of Red have pierced the deep, have struck The core. We cannot sleep.
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