Houston, TX
Born 1944, Panama-Died 2005, Houston, TX
Poetry is both our most ancient art and our next invention. I used to think that it was more like music than politics. And then I changed my mind. And then I changed it back again. Still, it is an art that tunes the mind for high performance; and, if it is useful, poetry is- in an old fashioned sense- a witness. It is an antidote to forgetfulness, yet also a way of promoting new perspectives. In other words, the drum needs the hand to be lifted, too.
My hope is that my poetry-and my other writings-add credence to the possibility that being human includes the ability to share our experience and our perceptions so that mine might help someone else to live more sensibly and suffer less than if you didn't have my words. But even if the poems don't reach you, I hope that they might do that for me. Then I can try again tomorrow.
2001 Professor of English, University of Houston-Downtown
1996-2000 Associate Professor, University of Houston-Downtown
1987-1996 Assistant Professor, University of Houston-Downtown
1984-1987 Lecturer in English and Writer-in-Residence, University of Houston-Downtown
1974-1984 Educational consultant Texas Commission on the Arts, Austin, arkansas Arts Council, Little Rock, AR
1967 BA in English Literature and Communications (Radio- Television), Queens College (City University of New York)
2000 Extraordinary Measures Afrocentric Modernism and 20th Century American Poetry. Literary Criticism. Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press.
1998 Sing the Sun Up: Creative Writing ideas from African American Literature. Editor. New York: Teachers and writers Collaborative.
1996 There are witnesses / Es Gibt Zeugen. Poems; bi-lingual edition. Eggingen, Germany: Editions Klaus Isele.
1982 Blues Music in Arkansas. With Louis Guida and Cheryl Cohen. Monograph. Philadelphia: Portfolio associates.
1981 The Bathers. Poems. New York: Reed and Cannon.
1979 Chances are Few. Poems. Berkeley: Blue Wind Press.
2000 Fund for Poetry Grant
1983 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
1974 Lucille Medwick Award
