Seeking

Poetry and Prose Inspired by the Art of Jonathan Green

Kwame Dawes, Marjory Wentworth, Kwame Dawes, Marjory Wentworth

• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781611170924, 9781611170917
• eBook ISBN: 9781611171860
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Art Techniques
• Index: Literature

The best art has the uncanny ability not only to give pleasure to those who view it but also to led to a desire to respond. The best artists are a force for all art, and renowned Gullah artist Jonathan Green's work has inspired a wide range of responses from artists around the world. In Seeking we see how Green's art prompts works of poetry, prose, and memoir. Seeking's evocative power lies in the intimacy of this dialogue, which speaks to the shared sense of landscape and culture that Green stirs in these writers, ranging from close friends and fellow artists from his home state of South Carolina to nationally established authors who regard Green's work as an important cultural institution. The contributors have allowed themselves to be challenged by Green's brilliance, his honesty, his intense spirituality, and his deep love of people. Inspired by a personal quest toward induction into a spiritual community, Green's painting Seeking is rich with history, myth, and truth. The writers in this collection have found fertile ground for their own responses to Green's work, and the result is an engaging and enlivening chorus of celebratory voices.

Edited by Kwame Dawes and Marjory Wentworth, this collection features eleven color paintings by Green in addition to a preface on the history of the project, information on the painting Seeking, and an artist's statement.

CONTRIBUTORS

PAUL ALLEN teaches poetry writing and writing song lyrics at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina, where he has worked since 1974. Published in numerous journals and anthologies, his work includes American Crawl (1997); a chapbook, His Longing: The Small Penis Oratorio (2005), which is a sequence of metaphysical conceits; and Ground Forces (2008). He has also produced a CD of poems and songs, The Man with the Hardest Belly (2001), available on Napster, and a new CD of original songs, Waiting for the Last Bus (2009), available at CD BABY (http://cdbaby.com/cd/paulallen). “Juice,” his essay on coming to an eclectic taste in poetry, received a Pushcart Prize in 2007.

MARCUS AMAKER was born in Las Vegas and has lived in England, Maryland, Japan, and Texas. As an artist, he recorded his first album of original music at the age of nine and has published three books of poetry. His latest book, The Soft Paper Cut, features original artwork and poems. He is also an award-winning professional graphic designer and has performed for Piccolo Spoleto, MOJA, and countless other arts festivals and shows. He became editor of Preview, an entertainment magazine in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2008 after working on the design desk of the Post and Courier for five years. To find out more about him, visit www.marcusamaker.com.

ANDREW CALHOUN is a musician, poet, and music producer. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1957. In 1992 he founded the independent record label Waterbug, based in his home state of Illinois. Writing songs since he was twelve, he also has published two books of poetry and recorded eight albums of original songs, one of Scottish ballads, and one of African American folk songs. The lyrics from spirituals presented in this collection were provided by him. Of his music, according to Chicago Tribune music critic June Sawyers, “Calhoun is a master at story songs, finely crafted works that swiftly and economically capture a moment or express an emotion. Like the best novelists, he is able to assume different personas and see the world through other peoples' eyes.” The cover painting (“White Scarf”) of Andrew Calhoun's latest album, Bound to Go, a collection of African American spirituals and secular folk songs, was created by Jonathan Green.

CAROL ANN DAVIS holds an M.F.A. in poetry writing from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She taught at Randolph-Macon Woman's College, Stonehill College, and Endicott College before moving to Charleston in 2000 to begin teaching at the College of Charleston. She teaches courses in poetry writing at all levels and in literary publishing, with occasional forays into the teaching of contemporary poetry. She edits the literary journal Crazyhorse and directs the creative writing concentration within the English major. Her first book of poems, Psalm, was published in 2007, a year in which she was also awarded a Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Educated at Southern Methodist University, the University of Kansas, and the University of Witswaters-randin, Johannesburg, ELLIE MAAS DAVIS is cofounder and principal of Pressque Editing, a manuscript editing and publishing consultation firm. Davis has worked for environmental and human rights issues with Amnesty International and the Black Sash Trust. The founder and coproducer of Monday Night Blues, the longest running weekly literary event in Charleston, she has been published in a number of anthologies and journals, is an active member of the Charleston Poetry Society and sits on the board of directors for the Lowcountry Initiative for the Literary Arts. She lives on James Island with her family.

KWAME DAWES is an award-winning poet, novelist, playwright, anthologist, musician, and critic and the author of more than thirty-five books, including sixteen books of poetry, the most recent being Wheels (2011). He is the Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner, Chancellor's Professor of English at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, and a faculty member of the Pacific M.F.A. program in Oregon. His awards include the Forward Poetry Prize, an Emmy for his reporting on HIV/AIDS in Jamaica, the Barnes and Nobles Writers for Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is associate poetry editor of Peepal Tree Press and cofounder and program director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. His collection Duppy Conqueror: New and Selected Poems is forthcoming in 2013.

WES DEMOTT was born in Roseburg, Oregon, in a military family that traveled widely before settling in Virginia. He served in the navy during the Vietnam War, then after graduate school he served as an FBI special agent and later as an FBI SWAT member. His novels include Walking K (1998), Vapors (1999; renamed The Fund in paperback), and Heat Sync (2006), all of which have been translated into several languages and which have had commercial and critical success. He lives in Florida.

RAY DOMINGUEZ, also known as Knowledge, has been on the spoken word poetry scene for more than ten years. He is a native of the Bronx, New York. A graduate of Barry University with a degree in English, Ray Dominguez founded the nonprofit organization the Write Side Poets Inc., which teaches students to read and write through poetry. Knowledge is a member of the internationally known poetry troupe Black-on-Black Rhyme and a founding member of the National Youth Spoken Word Coalition. Knowledge has been on three different Slam Poetry teams: Spit Fiya 2003 in Chicago, Florida State United 2004 in St. Louis, and the Del Ray Beach team, which placed tenth overall at the 2005 National Poetry Slam. Knowledge has also been published in Go Riverwalk and the Soul Frito Urban Newspaper.

TRISH DUNAWAY is a gifted resource teacher in Macon, Georgia. She collaborated with Jonathan Green in the production of “The Circle Unbroken: Gullah, Gospel and Jonathan Green” for the 2008 International Cherry Blossom Festival. This event included an exhibit of Jonathan Green's work at the Tubman African American Museum, an exhibit at the Museum of Arts and Sciences featuring Gullah culture, a lecture by Green at Mercer University, and an original drama based on the Gullah culture and his Green's work. A native South Carolinian, she has written five children's books (unpublished) and enjoys life as a “moveable feast” with her husband, children, and grandchildren.

LINDA ANNAS FERGUSON is the author of five collections of poetry. Her full-length book, Bird Missing from One Shoulder, appeared in 2007. Her third chapbook, Stepping on Cracks in the Sidewalk, had came out the year before, 2006, and her most recent collection of poems, Dirt Sandwich, appeared in 2009. She was selected by David Trinidad as the 2005 Poetry Fellow for the South Carolina Arts Commission and served as the 2003–4 poet in residence for the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, S.C. A recipient of the Poetry Fellowship of the South Carolina Academy of Authors, she is a member of the academy's Board of Governors. She was a featured poet for the Library of Congress Poetry at Noon Series, and her work is archived by Furman University's Special Collections in the James B. Duke Library.

NIKKY FINNEY was born in Conway, South Carolina, in 1957 to parents who were deeply involved in the 60s movement for equality for African Americans. She earned a bachelor's degree from Talladega College in Alabama and a master's degree from Atlanta University. She is a founding member of the Affrilachian Poets, a collective of Appalachian poets of African descent who explore themes of regional and transnational identities and communities in their work. She is Provost's Distinguished Service Professor of English at the University of Kentucky. She wrote the script for the 1995 PBS documentary For Posterity's Sake: The Story of Morgan and Marvin Smith, the liner notes for folksinger Toshi Reagon's compact disc Kindness, and the introduction to photographer Bill Gaskins's 1997 collection Good and Bad Hair. Her book of poems Rice was awarded the PEN American Open Book Award, and her book Head Off and Split was the winner of the National Book Award for Poetry in 2012.

DAMON L. FORDHAM was born in South Carolina in 1964. He earned his bachelor's degree from the University of South Carolina. His articles have appeared in the University of South Carolina's Gamecock newspaper, Voices of Color Magazine in Columbia, South Carolina, the Lexington Kentucky Community Voice, and Tribal Voices Magazine. His poetry has appeared in the anthologies Stop the Butterfly and Moon Come Out. Fordham has been writing for the Charleston Coastal Times since 1994 and was a 1996 recipient of the Outstanding Young Man of America award. He is a research assistant and tour guide at the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture and a teacher in the Avery Scholars Youth Program. He is currently working on his master's degree in history at the College of Charleston.

RICHARD GARCIA was born in 1941 and began writing in his teens. After publishing his chapbook Selected Poems in 1972, he stopped writing for a number of years until an encouraging letter from Octavio Paz convinced him to return to writing. He earned an M.F.A. degree in creative writing from the Warren Wilson College Writers' Program in 1994. His third volume of poetry, Rancho Notorious, was published in 2001, and he released his fourth volume, The Persistence of Objects, in October 2006. Garcia's works have appeard in Ploughshares and the Colorado Review, and his numerous awards include the Pushcart Prize and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. For twelve years he was the poet in residence at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. He currently teaches creative writing in the Antioch University Los Angeles M.F.A. program and the Idyllwild Summer Poetry Festival. Garcia makes his home on James Island, South Carolina, with his wife, Katherine Williams, and their dog, Louie.

Born in the South Carolina lowcountry, where he also grew up, ALVIN J. GREEN currently resides in Rhode Island with his wife, Margie. His poetry often embraces those who lived in the Sea Island fishing and farming communities; it captures a simpler life and other times in the New England area. He teaches in the Providence public school system.

BARBARA G. S. HAGERTY is a native of Charleston, South Carolina, whose essays, columns, and poems have appeared in a wide variety of national and regional periodicals. She has also written two books—Purse Universe and Handbags—that examine the cult...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• About the Painting
• About the Artist
• What Is Required
• On Viewing Roudnice Triptych, c. 1410–1420(?), and Viewing Jonathan Green's Seeking at Mepkin
• Into the Forest
• October in Eden
• Singing at the Edge of Need
• Anagram of Seeking
• Seeking
• Awakening to Myself
• Giving Birth
• Furnace
• Caul • Call (after) Jonathan Green
• No Longer Seeking Allegories
• Seeking
• Last Stand
• Lost and Found
• Seeking
• Packing a Suitcase
• Crossing
• The Seeking Child
• One Year
• A Different Year
• Becoming Me
• Brother 2 Brother
• Seeking
• You's a Stewart
• Open Spaces
• Seeking—A Performance
• Seek and Ye Shall Find
• Seeking
• Never Forget the Bridge
• Contributors