Lifes Rich Pageant

Martin Luther King Jr Day

Mahalia Jackson singing "I been buked"

Archibald Prize Nominee

A triple portait of troubled aussie rules football player Ben Cousins painted in a Subiaco hotel bedroom has been entered in Australia's most popular art competition.

Melbourne artist Megan Roodenrys' entrty for the $50,000 Archibald Prize is called Waiting For The Day and depicts the Eagles football star in bed during a sleepless night.

The self-confessed drug addict was banned by the AFL for a year in 2007 for bringing the sport into disrepute, shortly after being sacked by West Coast.

Roodenrys, 40, painted the former Bronwlow star in August over three sittings.

"Particularly at that time in his career, his future was very uncertain," she said. "The sense you get when you meet him personally is quite different to his public image.

"There's a sense of energy there in that he's a very strict, very determined, focused person, but also a respectful person,"

The Archibald Prize winners will be announced in March.

Inaugural Poet

For only the fourth time a poet will be a part of the Presidential inaugural tomorrow. Obama has chosen Elizabeth Alexander to join the ranks of Robert Frost and Maya Angelou. It's highly appropriate for a man who is both a reader of poetry (he admits to being inspired by June Jordan and was seen with a book of Derek Walcott during the transition period)

Elizabeth Alexander was born in Harlem, but grew up in Washington, D.C. Her father worked as a prominent D.C. lawyer who advised President Lyndon B. Johnson, and was named the first black secretary of the Army. Alexander’s mother teaches African-American women’s history at George Washington University and her brother teaches at Seton Hall Law School. An expert in campaign finance, he served as a senior adviser to Mr. Obama’s campaign and is part of the President-elect’s transition team.

Politics was, “in the drinking water in my house,” Alexander told The New York Times. She grew up an intellectual, though more inclined towards the arts than politics. Currently, Alexander is a professor of African-American Studies at Yale University, where she teaches courses in African-American poetry, drama, and 20th century literature.

Alexander has written four poetry books, “The Venus Hottentot,” (1990) “Body of Life,” (1996) “Antebellum Dream Book,” (2001) and “American Sublime” (2005). She has won several prizes, as well as recognition from the American Library Association and a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize.

More information about Alexander and her work is available on her Web site, including sample poems from her books.

Here is two of her poems:

Emancipation

Corncob constellation,
oyster shell, drawstring pouch, dry bones.

Gris gris in the rafters.
Hoodoo in the sleeping nook.
Mojo in Linda Brent’s crawlspace.

Nineteenth century corncob cosmogram
set on the dirt floor, beneath the slant roof,
left intact the afternoon
that someone came and told those slaves

“We’re free.”

***********

Ars Poetica #28: African Leave-Taking Disorder

The talk is good. The two friends linger
at the door. Urban crickets sing with them.

There is no after the supper and talk.
The talk is good. These two friends linger

at the door, half in, half out, ‘til one
decides to walk the other home. And so

they walk, more talk, the new doorstep, the
nightgowned wife who shakes her head and smiles

from the bedroom window as the men talk
in love and the crickets sing along.

The joke would be if the one now home
walked the other one home, where they started,

to keep talking, and so on: “African
Leave-Taking Disorder,” which names her children

everywhere trying to come back together and talk.

Snowy New York

 

Downtown evening

Food cart - Financial district

New Years Snacks