Kwanzaa Annotarions


KWANZAA ANNOTATIONS: building a cage for meaning







WINTER poems --what they bury blooms in SPRING







WHEN IMAGES  MAKE WAR  IN WINTER



words celebrate

irony:  Gosden and Correll,

old inkfaces blazing

for no exit, blazing

in justice, blazing

forever more the faux-blackness

of what James believed to be "the real thing."



When truth is truly told

Rastus, Jemima, and Ben

take paper to pen,

implode boxes, deform cages,

liberate graven images

of iconic laughter,

eradicate soul damage.



Such epic chaos

has become the duration of beauty,

the unheard noise of peace,

the unseen evidence of treaties yet unsigned.





December 21,2019





ANNOTATIONS



Stanza 1 ---The proximity of Christmas Day and Kwanzaa provides a habitation for irony and reasons for thinking about appropriation, how people of African ancestry (products of linguistic and physical creolizations ) have incorporated contradictions in the historical process of African Diaspora. Protests begat by the film "Birth of a Nation" can be viewed in hindsight against less vigorous protest the radio sounds of Gosden and Correll  in "Amos 'n Andy," which eventually became the televising of the foibles of black folk. In many instances, black audiences were much amused by the representations of black speech, black bodies, and black minds.  The minimal protest about the micro-aggressions of Gosden and Correll reveals  the ontology of KUJICHAGULIA during the 20th and 21st centuries.  How is bloodless violation to be dealt with in considerations of racially motivated, bloody violence  from 1865 to the present?  How ought we deal with the faux-blackness of what is real?  How do we deal with the fires of time present?

Stanza 2 --- What Maximus Wright has named "soul damage" in his debut novel  is never thoroughly eradicated as the icons of American  advertising --- the Gold-Dust twins,   Jemima, Rastus,  Ben and dozens of other darkies are born again in cosmetic adjustments.  We have reason to  remember, in the names of UJIMA and UJMAA the efforts of  Black Arts Movement visual artists  to pull our coats in terms of enabling and disabling graphics, and the still fresh efforts of racists in using graphics  to dehumanize and demonize President and Mrs. Obama.  They upped the ante in the domain of political cartoons. Does the KUUMBA of racist enemies  jolt our IMANI?  Does that perverse use of KUUMBA persuade us to have more investment in NIA?  It is never easy to truly tell the truth to ourselves about the permanent metaphor of war.



Stanza 3 --The epic chaos I associate philosophically  with actuality not reality obscures whatever we desire to count as beauty, peace, and evidence.  We do not sit meekly in darkness, but the brilliance of sunlight does not ensure we automatically see what needs to be seen.  Rhetorical appeals to UMOJA infrequently gives eyesight to the blind.



Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            Saturday, December 28, 2019
























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