Feature on Dr. Allison Joseph and her new chapbook of poetry TRACE PARTICLES

Christal Cooper 1,800 Words

caccoop@gmail.com  caccoop@aol.com

Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/christalann.ricecooper

THE SUCCINCT POET

 “I like succinct titles.”

Allison Joseph’s response when asked why she christened her second chapbook collection Trace Particles.

aljoseph@siu.edu/618-203-6453 

        

         In March of 2014 Dr. Allison Joseph received a welcoming phone call from RHINO editor Ralph Hamilton.

         Hamilton informed her via the phone that she was the recipient of the Paladin Award from the literary journal Rhino Poetry (http://rhinopoetry.org), awarded to Allison Joseph for being a teacher, editor, poet, innovator, mentor and for her extraordinary long-term contribution to poetry in Illinois.

         On April 25, 2014 Dr. Allison Joseph attended a ceremony where she was awarded the Paladin Award from the literary journal Rhino Poetry.

         During the open mic event, Joseph read from her most recent poetry collection, a chapbook called Trace Particles, published by Backbone Press Inc. (www.backbonepoery@gmail.com) (http://backbonepress.org)

         Joseph prefers to write the normal lengthy poetry collections, but she is also a fan of chapbooks.  

         “Yes I like chapbooks a lot.  I loved Tim Seible’s chapbook Kerosene.”

         Joseph has written six poetry collections and two chapbooks (including Trace Particles). 

When asked if there was a difference between writing poems from a chapbook collection than a normal length poetry collection, Joseph responded:  “Nothing really--I wrote the poems as they came, so there wasn't really anything about their composition I'd not experienced before.” 

         Joseph wrote Trace Particles the same way she writes all of her poems – in total silence and with a pen in longhand on legal pads or notebooks, and with no limit to environment or place.

         “I write anywhere I happen to have an idea strike me.”

One would think a chapbook would lack the compelling power and artistic poetic art form of the longer, more typical length book of poetry, but Joseph feels otherwise.

“The chapbook allows you to send a concentrated dose of poems, so it’s good for a lot of the poems of social concern I was working with at the time.”

Trace Particles consists of poems giving voices to black women slaves, women who have been abused or raped, girls who have been molested, or denied their basic human right because of their tiny vaginas, or the color of their skin. 

In the continent of Asia alone, over 4000 cases of rape, half of them girls under the age of 16, have been reported to the authorities in the past year.  This does not include the unreported rapes; nor does it include the rape atrocities occurring throughout Africa, Ireland, the Middle East, and even the United States.

Trace Particles is more than a chapbook of poetry but a powerful tool that every women and girl should have.  It’s like a pill one could take – but with no side effects.

         Joseph arranged the poems in Trace Particles according to darkness of theme:  the humorous poems are first and the darker poems are at the end.

         The most emotional poem for Joseph to write was “31 Shirts” because of its difficult topic of domestic violence, which is evident in most of the poems in this small collection.  Joseph was inspired to write “31 Shirts” when she observed a clotheslines project exhibit. (http://www.clotheslineproject.org)

         Even this reviewer now has a voice and a comrade in Joseph, who admits to having the urge of violence toward the perpetrator who targeted women at Southern Illinois University of Carbondale; but at the same time, she has the maturity and compassion to abstain from that violence. 

                                   

I would love to strangle him

                           with his clothesline, make him see colors

                           of a different kind, but that sort of anger

                           only makes me bitter, does no bit of harm

                           to an old man in a jail cell too eager to plead

                           guilty.

Excerpt from “31 Shirts” from Trace Particles

                                             Copyright granted by Allison Joseph.

         In “31 Shirts” Joseph recognizes all the women and girl victims based on the color of their t-shirts, worn to spread awareness and to prevent the violence from happening again. 

                                                                   purple ones      

                           signifying a woman killed for loving another

                           woman.  Yellow or beige mean rape, though

                           if a woman should live, her shirt can be red,

                           or pink, perhaps orange.  Blue or green

                           for surviving incest, black if you’re attacked for

                           your politics.

         In “31 Shirts” Joseph makes an observation that huge populations of Southern Illinois University of Carbondale students wear the t-shirts; but then she makes a plea both men and women: 

                           I wonder if they stop at all to think

                           about what their own shirts might say

                           what these colors mean,

         The last line of “31 Shirts” leaves no excuse for anyone not to be concerned about violence – not only violence toward women, but toward anyone, and it also make the political statements that there should be more strict laws about guns.

what damage

                           hands can do around a leg or throat or gun.

        

         The poem that Joseph did the most research on was “Snow White”, in which Joseph depicts a would be victim as Snow White, and Walt Disney as a possible future perpetrator when Walt Disney insisted the Snow White caricature be that of a fourteen year old girl.  

                           Thank goodness his animators talked sense to

                           Him or their first full length animated feature

                           Would have been nothing more than an advert

                           For pedophilia, that eager Prince swooning for a girl

                           Less than half his age.

         “Snow White” at first glance escapes being a victim by simply appearing older in the film.  But then, later in the poem, Joseph delves deeper into who is responsible for the victimization towards women; and what victim entails.  In order to be a victim, does a woman/girl have to be sexually violated?  Or could a woman/girl be a victim by false advertisement; not being given their due share of the just dollar?

         Joseph credits Snow White with opening the doors to other Walt Disney characters but no “snow white” is given the hard earned penny; only given to white men.

                                                      750 artists drew you

                           and those dopey dwarfs by hand, frame by frame,

                          

                           two million images to save Walt’s studio

                           from bankruptcy, but you never got a cent,

                           your dulcet singing voice supplied

                           by some Hollywood singing teacher’s daughter.

                 

         “Snow White” has political undertones of the media’s misrepresentation of women, and due to those misrepresentations women such as “Snow White” are coerced into being an image that is impossible to maintain or hold, further victimizing women and especially young girls.

                                                                                  All

                           In all, it’s an acceptable life, and if you

                           Have to down a few pills before bedtime,

                           Who’s to know?  You’re eternally delightful, heroine

                           To millions of pink-clothed

                           Ordinary little girls, their rotund mothers

                           Who were once little girls took all of them

                           Paying more for your likeness than they

                                   

                           Would for their own, the Magic Kingdom

                           They seek nowhere in sight, despite

                           What all the picture books say.

                 

         Joseph in her poem “Aunt Jemina’s Revenge” gives poetic justice a whole new meaning with humor, justification, and the sweetest revenge ever, starting with changing Aunt Jemima’s name to “Aunt Jemina’s Revenge”. 

In the poem, Joseph responds to an article byline of the Quaker Oats Company having to recall Aunt Jemima’s pancake mix due to possible salmonella contamination.  Here the victim pool of possible salmonella contamination is no longer women and girls, but men and women, and more than likely white men and women.

                                                                        She

                           Has you right where she wants you: feverish

                           And glassy-eyes, head in the toilet, pleading

                           For redemption from your own evil.

         Soon, the perpetrator is not the slaveholder or the conservative white but individuals who box in what it means to be black, the media being one.  The perpetrator becomes the advertisers and those who fall for the advertisement – and we are not talking about syrup nor are we necessarily talking about contamination but the misconceptions of what it means to be black.

         Joseph adds biographical unknown elements to the poem “Aunt Jemina’s Revenge” by revealing the face for the Aunt Jemima was actually a white woman.

        

                           A white woman with an Italian name

                           Played her sooty-faced in burnt cork.

         Joseph further offers an important typically unknown biographical fact about the real Aunt Jemina.

                 

                           Late, you learned the first black Aunt

        

                           Jemina came straight off a Kentucky

                           Plantation, hired to bring the World’s Fair

                           1893’s most startling invention:  powdered

                           hotcakes in a box to a grateful, hungry

                           nation.

         The last stanza is perhaps the most humorous that bleeds sweet revenge for all the Aunt Jemina’s everywhere – all the housewives black and white and every other color that are never paid and never thanked for their labors in the kitchen.

                                   

                           The grin of a woman who’s spend

                           a lifetime making your breakfast

                           without you ever once offering to make hers.

There is a bit of pop culture in these poems – Aunt Jemima, Snow White, soap star actress Shell Kepler, General Hospital’s Luke and Laura. 

There is a persona poem of Tennessee Williams walking in Times Square in 1984; and, of course, the powerhouse of a poem Trace Particles, also the titled of the chapbook, about the dangers of contaminated water and its effects.  

         One could spend hours discussing Joseph’s individual poems, their artistic poetic power, their compelling ability, and the versatile meanings.    The poems are magic – it is understood what the poet’s meaning is; and yet, the reader is able to read these poems and see clearly his or her on individual meaning at the same time.  The poems themselves become the living embodiment of what it means to be Muse and Poet and Poem. And, also, what it means to be victim and perpetrator.

Photo Description and Copyright Information

Photo 1A

Allison Joseph.
Copyright granted by Allison Joseph.

Photo 2J

Jacket cover of RHINO 2014 issue

Photo 3ZD

The Paladin Award.

Copyright granted by Allison Joseph.

Photo 3H

Allison Joseph holding the 2014 Paladin Award from Rhino in her right hand at the Brothers K Rhino Reads! Open Mic and Featured Readers night on April 25, 2014.

Copyright granted by Allison Joseph

Photo 4N

Backbone Press web logo

Photo 5P (two photos)

Tim Seibles 
Copyright granted by Tim Seibles

Photo 6Q

Jacket cover of Kerosene

Photo 7C

Image of Allison Joseph’s six book collections and one chapbook collection.
Copyright granted by Allison Joseph.

Photo 8O

Jacket cover of the chapbook Voice: Poems

Photo 8N
Jacket cover of Trace Particles 

Photo 9

Allison Joseph reading from Trace Particles

Photo 10ZC

Café Press .com rape prevention logo

Photo 11Z

Web logo for the clothesline project website.

Photo 12R

Serial Killer Timothy Krajcir.  Department of Illinois Corrections.  Pubic Domain.

Photo 13ZA

Logo for the clothesline project

Photo 14T

1937 Trailor of Walt Disney introducing the dwarfs from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Public Domain

Photo 15S

1937 Movie Poster of Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs by Walt Disney.

Public Domain

Photo 16U

Adriana Caselotti, the voice of Snow White on October 10, 1932.
Public Domain

Photo 17V

Sheet Music Cover of Jemima’s Wedding-Day Cake Walk

Illustrated by Martin Saxx

1899
Public Domain

Photo 18X

The famous Welsh woman and heroine Jemima Nicholas also known as Jemima Fawr.

Public Domain

Photo 19Y

Memorial for Nicholas/Fawr at the St. Mary’s Church Fishguard

Public Domain

Photo 20W

Nancy Green as Aunt Jemima.  Nancy Green was born into slavery in 1834 in Montgomery County, Kentucky.  She died in a car accident in 1923.

Public Domain

Photo 21ZB

General Hospital’s Luke Spencer (Anthony Gearey) and Larua Webbar (Genie Francis) on their wedding day November 17, 1981.

Fair Use Under The United States Copyright Law.

Photo 22M

Tennessee Williams walking to the funeral services of Dylan Thomas in 1953.

Attributed to Walter Labertin – New York World Telegram and Sun Staff Photographer.
Public Domain

Robert Gray's "JESUS WALKS THE SOUTHLAND"

Christal Cooper    4,019 words

caccoop@gmail.com  caccoop@aol.coim

Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/christalann.ricecooper

*http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2014/05/robert-grays-poem-day-i-was-born-and.html

Poet Robert Gray’s

Own Road To Damascus:

JESUS WALKS THE SOUTHLAND

“Christianity is part of my DNA.  There are things about it, at least the version I grew up with, that I can no longer accept, but there are also parts that can’t let go of.”

This past April of 2014 Robert Gray’s poetry collection, JESUS WALKS THE SOUTHLAND, was published by negative capability press (www.negativecapabilitypress.org). 

Gray’s previous poetry collections are I Wish That I Were Langston Hughes and DREW: Poems from Blue Water.   

Gray’s JWTS is more than a poetry collection, but a prayer to a higher power, an attempt to rescue Jesus from Christianity, an apologetic to the African American race for his responsibility of racism by simply being white, and a cry for social justice in an America that is still ravaged with racism, especially amongst black and white in Alabama’s south.

Gray was raised, along with his brother Drew, in a devout Methodist family who held to the traditional and conservative views of religion and politics.  Even still, in his small hometown of Sylacauga, Alabama, he attended the integrated Main Avenue Elementary School, in 1970.

“My first grade year was the first year the school system was fully integrated, so for me, all of that was invisible.  I wasn’t aware of anything being different, and for that I am lucky.”

Gray, a choirboy in the Methodist Church, held the standard view of Jesus that most of the white south had:  a tall white male with golden brown hair and warm blue eyes. 

“There was one (picture) in the room I usually slept in at my grandmother’s house.  It was the standard handsome white guy with light brown hair and a halo, the immaculately conceived only Son of God, the Savior of the World, the only key to the kingdom of heaven.” 

Gray inherited his mother’s sense of power and wonder of religion.  He also inherited from his father permission to doubt and think against the norm, which he exercised when he took a lecture course on William Blake, and as a result, experienced the beginnings of spiritual awakening and fulfillment that were absent in his conservative and religious upbringing. 

blake was first introduced to me through the words of lectures

languishing in the error and blindness that is the theme of

all his work but I’ve since found the maker of the lamb and tyger is

kept from our restrained eyes so that we can finally see at albion’s

emanation that all deities do indeed reside within the human beast.

*Excerpt from “A POEM FOR WILLIAM BLAKE”  Page 35

“I thought they were brilliant when I was listening to them.  When I studied Blake in much more detail later on (and I owe much of my understanding to my dear friend and mentor, Vic Paananen, who died of cancer last year), I realized that you can’t really understand the earlier stuff that everybody reads (e.g., The Songs of Innocence and of Experience and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell) until you’ve read the later prophecies that almost nobody reads (e.g., Milton and Jerusalem) because they’re almost incomprehensible.  But the Songs and Marriage take on entirely different levels of signification through the frames of the prophecies.”

Gray started writing poetry in his college years when he was a member of a rock band, and given the sole responsibility of writing the band’s lyrics, but he did not start writing poetry seriously until he took a British Literature survey course and fell in love with Romanticism and the poet William Wordsworth.

the natural world wordsworth wrote of long ago

was harmony wrought in the style of church hymns

or flowing lines of tintern abbey and the ode

immortal harmony and beauty we no longer see

the world’s a poem that doesn’t rhyme

it lacks a certain metric or sense of time.

*Excerpt from “RHYMING LANDSCAPES” page 70

                 

“When I was about fifteen, I went to England with my church choir.  We visited the house of some guy named Wordsworth.  I had no idea who he was, but I loved the beauty of his Lake District.  Several years later, I took a British Lit survey course and read his work.  After reading his poems and connecting them to my memories of those landscapes, I was hooked.”

After taking the British Literature survey course, Gray made the decision to become an English major, earning his B.A. and M.A. in English and a Ph.D. in Instructional Technology, all from the University of Alabama. 

He encountered other books and writers during his college years at the University of Alabama and Michigan State’s doctoral program that he mentions in his poetry collection JWTS:  some of which are Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.  His reading of these books, especially Moby Dick, made an impact on him while studying for his Master’s comps.

how long must we believe

biology shapes behavior

blaming our own oppression 

on whales   

         *Excerpt from “OF SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS” Page 67      

  

“I got up one day, started reading Moby Dick, and put it down when I finished it and went to bed:  long day, but a good day.  That poem was written as part of the Remaking Moby Dick Project, which was curated by Trish Harris.  There was a museum installation in Norway and a book published.  She put out a call for responses to individual chapters.  I drew that chapter (88).  It was actually a part and aspect of the book that I couldn’t remember, so it was a neat experience.”

( http://remakingmoby.wordpress.com)

Gray took his first poetry writing class while in graduate school, which was not a pleasant experience for Gray, even though, in the long term, it made him a better poet. 

“I fell in love with poetry because I fell in love with Romanticism and was studying and primarily reading the English Romantics, so when I started writing poems, I sounded like I was in England in the 1810s.  In fact, my teacher told me I sounded like John Clare.  It took me several years to figure out how not to do that, how to move my voice up a couple of centuries.”

Perhaps Gray’s most autobiographical and most fictional poem from the collection is “THE ROAD TO DEMOPOLIS”, where Gray is the symbolic blind unbelieving Paul until he is visited by the real Jesus/ the real truth, and finally, in the end, his eyes are open to what is truth and what is right.  

i was on the road to demopolis

to meet an old friend

at a barbecue joint

when a light flashed from above

and a voice called my name

above the din of daydream

and dave matthews

i know why you persecute me

after making sure I was still

awake and on the road

i sheepishly asked

lord is that you

a voice more like jackie mason

than james replied

no I am paul the apostle

find the epistles

that one you’ve been persecuting

in your poems but let us fix

your eyes on me the real me

*Excerpt from “THE ROAD TO DEMOPOLIS” page 37

In Gray’s own personal life, it took poetry, the works of great storyteller masters, and his own witness and observation of injustice and racial inequality in the south for him to finally see the truth, and thus, he is a new creature.

“I don’t know if it was anything I studied in particular so much as intellectual maturation and growth.  It wasn’t until much later that I realized the concepts of English Romanticism circa 1800 had seemed radical to me because the worldview I grew up in was the same one the Romantics were speaking out against…”

         As a result, Gray is no longer a Methodist, but a member of his local Episcopal Church, not necessarily because of its dogma, but its celebration of questioning and doubting of typical brands of Christianity, and this is felt and expressed through his poetry in JWTS. 

“In his blurb on my new book, JWTS, Hank Lazer said I was trying to save Christ from Christianity, and in some ways, while many would probably find my book offensive or even blasphemous (at least in a couple of poems), taken as a whole, it is a kind of testimony to a Christianity that is about justice, about fighting oppression, about granting dignity to all human beings.”

         Gray, through his own conversion experience, has changed his views on Christianity and Jesus, though he will not go into great detail, which is the ethical duty of a poet:  a poet and a poem are two separate entities and poems belong to the reader as much as to the poet.

“Whether the crucifixion and resurrection literally happened or not has no effect on the “truth” of the story.  I still see Jesus as the archetype of humanity and still greatly value the example he gave us for how to live. 

To me, the Gospels are about how to live in this world (and) about how we are to sacrifice our selves.  We are literally to be consumed by the world in our fight against injustice and oppression so that every human being can stand with dignity.  That, in my reading, is the "way" of Christ.

It would logically follow that if you are a Christian merely so that you will go to heaven, you're doing it wrong.  Heaven may or may not enter into it, but that’s not something I am going to concern myself with.  This world is a heaven that we have turned into a hell for the vast majority of its inhabitants.  The only thing keeping it from being a heaven is our lack of will to make it so, mostly because we are more concerned with maintaining our place and stake in that world than with elevating others.  And the role that historical and contemporary Christianity has played in making sure the haves feel “blessed” and the have-nots feel comforted by the world to come is as great an evil as the world has ever known.   

Gray not only has revolutionary ideas about Christianity, but poetry as well, and like some Christian circles, there are poetry circles that consider him a rule breaker as well:  poet Gray refuses to use capitalization and punctuation in any of his poetry.

“I was just writing a poem one day and would come up with several lines at once, but when I would get to an end of a line, I would struggle to decide what punctuation to put there (a period? a dash?  a semicolon? etc.).  So I just stopped using punctuation and soon figured that capitalization should go too.”

He didn’t feel like he had the right to call himself poet until after his second poetry collection DREW:  Poems From Blue Water was published.  DREW:  PFBW is dedicated and focused on his brother Drew, his brain cancer, and his death.

“It took me a long time to make that recognition.  I thought of myself as someone who wrote (or at least had the capacity to write) pretty good poems as early as the late 1990s, but I wasn’t really comfortable with calling myself a poet until my second book came out.”

Gray describes JWTS as a poetry collection on religion and politics divided into three sections: Politics (ONE:  IT’S DIFFERENT GROWING UP IN THE SOUTH); Religion (TWO:  JESUS WALKS THE SOUTHLAND); and Metaphysical Observation Poems/Meaning of Life Poems, which are neither political nor religious (THREE:  AND THE WORLD WAS GOD). 

“I originally had the religion section first, but both Lorna Dee Cervantes and Sue Walker recommended I put the political ones first because of the danger of the religion poems putting some readers off too early.  The placement or order of the poems in each section was just by feel.  A few of them bounced between sections before finding their permanent home.  I also felt strongly that each section should have the same number of poems, I guess so that one wouldn’t be privileged over the others.”
        

Some of these poems may be disturbing, particularly to those who are white, conservative, and evangelical Christian.  In  “I WISH THAT I WERE LANGSTON HUGHES” Gray makes an argument of what is black poetry and what is white poetry and the difference between the two.

i have long found

a fundamental difference between white poetry

and black poetry

and I have often envied it

and while I am certainly

as guilty as anyone and

would never wish to oversimplify

it seems to me that white poetry

has often soared on the ethereal

wings of imagination and philosophy

african american poetry

on the other hand

has preferred to labor

with its hands  in the earth

it had on its work

in the everyday

*Excerpt from “I WISH THAT I WERE LANGSTON HUGES” pages 5 and 6.

“I don’t think I would say that Black poets are “labor poets,”

though.  That implies a kind of class distinction that I wasn’t going for.  If I were to restate or explain it here, I would say that white poets, especially pre-20^th-century ones, tend to be more concerned about the meaning of life, while Black poets tend to be more concerned with life itself.  But again, there are many exceptions to this.”


There is also the hint of being ashamed of being white or being held responsible for the racial atrocities happening to the African Americans based on one simply being white.

        

          for no matter how much

i read or think or discuss

          no matter how enlightened I may feel

          i can never understand

          as a white poet

          privileged by nothing else

          but my own whiteness

          how the truth in their words

          can see so well into the life of things

          and so I am damned

          by that same whiteness

          *Excerpt from “I WISH THAT I WERE LANGSTON

HUGHES” page 5.        

          

“I wouldn’t say that I am (or have been) ashamed to be white.  And I don’t think I can be anything but a white poet, but hopefully one that has learned to push against my limitations.  Sure, there are many, many things that white people have done that I’m not proud of, but I’m not aware of any ethic or racial group that has a history free of such things (although, I must say, white people undoubtedly have more than our share). 

No one should be ashamed of their identity.  Shame is such an unproductive and crippling emotion.  But if shame enters into it anywhere, I suppose it should be in regards to how you respond to your identity.  So, if you are a white person who professes to be a Christian and have all of this residual evidence of the violence and oppression that whiteness continues to express in our society, and you choose simply to go on with your life, re-inscribing and perpetuating those expressions, as well as benefitting from the advantages and privileges that previous injustices have provided, instead of doing something to work against them, then at that point, shame does have a place in all of this.”

many might argue that poetry

should be above the baseness

of politics and there may well be

a richness to those arguments

but there is also a whiteness

silently blinding us to the life of things.

* Excerpt from “I WISH THAT I WERE LANGSOTN HUGHES”

page 6

“I fully realize the limitations of the binary I set up in “I WISH THAT I WERE LANGSTON HUGHES,” but the deconstruction bit at the end was intended to undermine that binary.  I originally had a line or two that talked about not wanting to oversimplify, but it just sounded too coldly academic so I took it out.  I’m still not sure if that was the right decision.  There are certainly many, many examples of exceptions to these generalizations, but as generalizations, I think they do tend to hold. 

it mocks the historic lines

underlying lady liberty

undergirding what is supposed

to constinute our national greatness

while htose who cry out for the

poor the tired the tempest-tossed

those who cry out against the madness

are cast aside as madmen crying out

*Excerpt from “OUR COUNTRY IS BROKEN” page 22.

In “OUR COUNTRY BROKEN”, a fair interpretation could the be condemnation of republicans and evangelical Christians, but Gray insists that’s not the main point he is trying to make in the poem.

“Rather, I think of it as a condemnation of the willful ignorance that pervades our culture.  I suppose you could say, then, that it’s a condemnation of how the Republican party works to perpetuate and manipulate that ignorance and how the fundamentalists fall right for it.  Primarily, though, I think it’s about how deceptive political discourses are and how important it is in a democracy for the people to be smart enough to not be duped and how we are failing miserably at being smart enough.”

In “GOOD LITTLE GIRL” Gray describes, in his view, the political views that a true Christian should never have.  In the poem he describes a good little girl who is supposedly a Christian who reads her red Gideon Bible every day, and how she loves the color red because it reminds her

          of the blood of jesus

          

and how it matches

almost perfectly the roses

on her laura ashley comforter

*Excerpt from “GOOD LITTLE GIRL” page 12.

        

This description can apply to all Christians, who, according to Jesus, are called to love their neighbors and their enemies as their own selves, which involves turning the other cheek, and giving one his or her last coat during the coldest of seasons.  Unfortunately, in today’s world, even the Christian world, this is not always the case.

“I was just trying to point out that the current political views publicly held by “conservative Christians” seem, at least to me, a bit antithetical to the teachings of Christ.  There is part of me that wanted to go a lot further with that depiction, but I held back.”

Gray insists that he is not writing poems that express a blanket commentary about Christianity or even to all Christians, but is expressing disappointment in certain segments of Christians and Christianity who exhibit behaviors that are cruel to individuals or groups of individuals.

“There are a lot of good and bad Christians, good and

bad white people, and good and bad Black people.  I play with the stereotypes of the political views of conservative whites that are perpetuated in the media and verified daily in my Facebook feed and email inbox, but I hope my poems don’t suggest that all white people are like that.  I can’t think of where they would.

Though he may not claim the title, he is a civil rights activist and is constantly and consistently seeking out the rights for minorities, LGBT groups, and specifically African Americans, which are ever present in Alabama and in his personal and professional life.

         “Besides writing books and making movies for racial equality, I am currently working with the mayor’s staff in Mobile to organize a series of events an programs to address racial divisions in the city.”         

Presently Gray resides in Mobile with his wife of 24 years Kim and their two children Liam and Emily in an integrated neighborhood, but not integrated enough for him. 

         “Our street is about two blocks long, and currently, everyone who lives on it is white.  There are African Americans who live at each end and on the streets on each side of it and on the one that intersects it in the middle.  So, in a way, yes, it is integrated, but I would like for it to be a little better integrated.”

Gray believes more integration is part of the answer to our racial issues in America today, but that it is not the sole answer, and in order for it to work properly both sides of the equation must to do it voluntarily, willingly and cheerfully. 

“The thing about integration, however, is that it’s very much like the theorizing I do on interaction in my instructional technology day job: both sides have to change for it to happen.  If it is truly going to work, then the (now almost lost) virtues of the African American schools that constituted the heart of many communities of color have to be incorporated fully and respectably into the majority schools.  And the children of people with power, influence, and wealth can’t flee to private schools.  The same has to happen in neighborhoods and workplaces.  We can’t just make people of color transform themselves to fit white spaces; the spaces have to cease being “white.””

It’s obvious Gray has given his blood, sweat, tears, heart, mind, body, and soul in these poems that make up JWTS.( http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Walks-Southland-Robert-Gray/dp/0942544943/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405295745&sr=8-1&keywords=Robert+Gray+I+WISH)  His favorite poem, if he had to pick from the collection is “JESUS WALKS THE SOUTHLAND”, which he described as a journalist account of a true story.

“A couple of weeks after I moved to Mobile, I went home to visit my wife and kids for the weekend, who were back in Birmingham trying to sell our house.  I was driving back that Sunday evening and reached Montgomery right at dusk.  There was a lot of construction going on at that time on I-65, and traffic was pretty heavy.  All of a sudden, a bum literally stumbled out of the traffic in front of me, and as I passed by him, I looked in my rearview mirror.  It was like he was staring right into my soul through my rearview mirror.  It was really strange. 

And although he was balding on top and didn’t have much hair and only a scraggly beard, his face and eyes looked just like Jesus, or at least just like that shared image we all have of Jesus.  And even though I was well past him and traffic was horrible, I felt a strong impulse to pull over and give him a ride, primarily because of that superstitious belief most Southerners are raised with that such figures could be angels sent to test us.  I immediately scoffed at such an impulse but also immediately looked over into my passenger seat and remembered that I was moving a lot of stuff from home to my new apartment, so there were boxes in the front seat and a book case in the back.  There literally wasn’t room in my car.  Even if it was Jesus! 

I then started thinking about the richness of that experience and how it could be interpreted in so many ways.  So as soon as I got out of town and traffic lightened up a bit, I pulled over on the shoulder of the exit ramp to Pintlala, grabbed my laptop, which was on the floor in front of the passenger seat, and typed it out.  When I got to my apartment a couple of hours later, I played with it for a few minutes and called it done. 

A year or two later, I was teaching Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” and thought how the message in that poem about suffering always going on in the margins aligned very nicely with my poem, so I added the “somewhere to get to” as an allusion/homage to Auden.”

JESUS WALKS THE SOUTHLAND

tonight I saw jesus

in my rearview mirror

he was on the side

of the road in montgomery

and looked just like

he always did

in those paintings

except that he was

a bit thinner on top

and a lot dirtier

which I guess was

just from the shit

that’s been dumped

on him recently

i couldn’t really tell

if he was hitchhiking

or just walking along

it all happened too fast

but it wouldn’t have mattered

anyway because I wasn’t looking

out for him besides

i had somewhere to get to

and didn’t have room in my car.

Complete Poem “JESUS WALKS THE SOUTHLAND” from JWTS. page 27.

         Contact Robert Gray via email at rmgray@southalabama.edu

or grayrobe@comcast.net; via facebook at https://www.facebook.com/grayrobe?fref=ts ; via web at http://robertgraypoetry.net : or via telephone at 251-380-2616.

        

Photos A

Robert Gray amongst trees

Photo B

Front jacket cover of JESUS WALKS THE SOUTHLAND

Photo C

Jacket cover of I WISH THAT I WERE LANGSTON HUGHES

Photo D

Jacket cover of DREW:  Poems from Blue Water

Photo E

Robert Gray (far left) and older brother Drew (far right in red)

July 1968

Copyright granted by Robert Gray

Photo F

Robert Gray’s 1975-1976 class, middle row, sixth from left

Copyright granted by Robert Gray

Photo G

Painting of Jesus

Public Domain

Photo H

Gray, *(number 39) and his family

Copyright granted by Robert Gray

Photo I

Gray (back left) and his family

Copyright by Robert Gray

Photo Ja

"Portrait of William Blake, engraved by William Bell Scott 1811-90" oil on Canvas, location: Fitzwilliam Museum - University of Cambridge.

Public Domain 

Photo Jb
Vic Paananen

Photo K

Jacket cover of SONGS OF INNOCENSE AND OF EXPERIENCE

1826

Public Domain

Photo L

Jacket cover of THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL

1790

Public Domain

Photo M

Robert Gray’s rock band.  Robert Gray is in the very back.

Copyright granted by Robert Gray.

Photo N

William Wordsworth about the time he began writing The Prelude at age 28 in 1798

Public Domain

Photo O

A 2 × 3 segment panorama of the town of Keswick, nestled between the fells of Skiddaw and Derwent Water in the Lake District, Cumbria, England. Taken from about 3/4 of the way to the summit of Walla Crag.

Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0

Photo P

Jacket cover of I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

1969 original edition.

Photo Q

Jacket cover of To Kill A Mockingbird

1960, original edition

Photo R

Jacket cover of Moby Dick

1851

Photo S

Jacket cover of Remaking Moby Dick

Photo T

Trish Harris

Copyright granted by Trish Harris

Photo U

John Clare

1820

Public Domain

Photo V

Saul’s Onversion to Paul on the road to Damascus

Oil on canvas 1600-1601

Michelangelo Merisi (or Amerighi) da Caravaggio

Public Domain

Photo W10

The archetype of the Creator is a familiar image in Blake's work. Here, the demiurgic figure Urizen prays before the world he has forged. The Song of Los is the third in a series of illuminated books painted by Blake and his wife, collectively known as the Continental Prophecies.

Public Domain

Photo W11

Hank Lazer

Attributed to Greg Jay

Copyright granted by Hank Lazer

Photo X

Back jacket cover of JESUS WALKS THE SOUTHLAND

Photo Y

Painting of Jesus walking on water.

Unkown attribution or artist.

Fair Use Under the United States Copyright Law

Photo Z

Jesus walking on water.

Anonymous

Fair Use Under The United States Copyright Law

Photo ZA

Painting of Jesus walking on water

Unknown attribution of artist

Fair Use Under the United States Copyright Law

Photo ZB

Photo 38

Drew Gray

Copyright granted by Robert Gray

Photo ZC

Boxes of JESUS WALKS THE SOUTHLAND copies.

Copyright granted by Robert Gray

Photo ZD
Lorna Dee Cervantes 
Copyright granted by Lorna Dee Cervantes

Photo ZE

Sue Brannan Walker, Poet Laureate of Alabama from  2004-2012,  the Stokes Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the

University of South Alabama, and Editor/Publisher of Negative Capability Press. 

Copyright granted by Sue Brannan Walker.

Photo ZF

Langston Hughes at the Lincoln University in 1928

Credit:  Yale Collection of American Literature

Fair Use

Public Domain

Photo ZG

Blake's "A Negro Hung Alive by the Ribs to a Gallows", an illustration to J. G. Stedman's Narrative, of a Five Years' Expedition, against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam (1796).

Public Domain

Photo ZH

Eastman Johnson – the lord is my shepherd

Oil on canvas

1863

Public Domain

Photo ZI

Celebration cake for the publication of JESUS WALKS THE SOUTHLAND

Copyright granted by Robert Gray.

Photo ZJ

Painting titled The Reader

Jean Honore Fragonard

1770-1772

Public Domain

Photo ZK

Robert Gray.

Copyright granted by Robert Gray.

Photo ZL

The Robert Gray Family
Robert, Liam, Emma, and Kim

Copyright granted by Robert Gray.

Photo ZM
The Robert Gray residence.
Copyright granted by Robert Gray.

Photo ZN
Robert Gray residence street.
Copyright granted by Robert Gray.

Photo ZO

School integration Bernard School in Washington .D.C  1955

Thomas J O’Halloran

Public Domain

Photo ZP

Black Santa Clause

Attributed to Robert Gray.

Copyright granted by Robert Gray.

Photo ZQ

Alexi, a homeless man, in Prague since the fall of communism.

October 7, 2009

Attributed to Ricardo Liberato

CCASA 2.0 generic

Photo ZR

Depiction of Jesus walking

Unknown

Fair Use Under the United States Copyright Law

Photo ZS

Side view of Robert Gray

Copyright granted by Robert Gray

Photo ZT

W.H. Auden

In 1939

Car Van Vechten

LOC PD

Photo ZU

Robert Gray amongst trees

Copyright granted by Robert Gray