 |
| "Proincetown Poet" by David Bethuel Jamieson 1986 |
I'm not sure if the seriousness of this portrait represents the poet or the artist, but the intersection of these two is what the Studio House at Walbridge was proud to share. They were both young men when they met in Provincetown. I don't know how close they were, but what gay poet or artists could claim any authenticity without making a pilgrimmage to that special place?
Cyrus Cassells? Never heard of him.I messaged my poet friend and master English teacher Alice Jacobs Twombly in New Jersey to see if she had ever heard of him. She knows all the poets. She didn't know Cassells. I decided to look him up. She was going to as well.
 |
| A more recent photo. |
 |
| Elizabeth Eckfort trying to enter Central High School in Little Rock, 1957. She was one of the Little Rock Nine who changed history. What courage it took to confront such hate (shown in the face of that white woman),& all too familiar today. |
Cyrus Cassells, as Alice and I learned, was born in Dover Delaware in 1957. He grew up in the Mojave desert near Los Angeles, CA and got a BA from Stanford, where he started writing in earnest and never stopped. Cassells, who knows many languages and also works as a translator, film critic, and actor, teaches in the MFA program at Texas State University-San Marcos. He lives in Austin.
He's won lots of awards. A National Poetry Series Award for The Mud Actor (1982); a Pulitzer nomination for Soul Make a Path through Shouting,1994; winner of the William Carlos William award and a Lambda Literary Award for Beautiful Signor (1997); a Balcones Poetry Award for The Crossed-Out Swastika in 2012. His latest work, The Gospel according to Wild Indigo, rooted in Gullah culture, is a finalist for the 2019 NAACP Image Award in Poetry and the Texas Institute of Letters Helen C. Smith Poetry Award.
According to the Poetry Foundation, Cassells' poetry, which embraces a wide range of subjects and themes,"examines personal encounters with history, love and eroticism, suffering and violence." Dan Shewan, a reviewer of Crossed-Out Swastika, said that “Cassells approaches his subject with diligence, often choosing to craft poems inspired by the struggles and experiences of real people....The sense of pace is beautifully sustained throughout the collection, alternating between frantic moments of panic to somber reflections on the nature of suffering.”
I started reading some of these poems and found them fascinating. The range of subjects reveals a Renaissance man of diverse interests, a discoverer and adventurer in the realm of thought. I was fascinated that Cassells wrote about Auschwitz and the horrors of World War II, as well as the struggle for civil rights here at home. According to Shewan, Cassells shows us in Crossed-Out Swastika, that "even in its darkest hour, the will and tenacity of the human spirit endures."
Auschwitz, All Hallows by Cyrus Cassells
Look, we have made
a counterpoint
of white chrysanthemums,
a dauntless path of death-will-not-part-us petals
and revering light;
even here,
even here
before the once-wolfish ovens,
the desecrating wall
where you were shot,
the shrike-stern cells
where you were bruised
and emptied of your time-bound beauty—
you of the confiscated shoes
and swift-shorn hair,
you who left,
as sobering testament, the scuffed
luggage of utter hope
and harrowing deception.
Come back, teach us.
From these fearsome barracks
and inglorious fields
flecked with human ash,
in the russet-billowing hours
of All Hallows,
let the pianissimo
of your truest whispering
(vivid as the crunched frost
of a forced march)
become a slowly blossoming,
ever-voluble hearth
revealing to us
(the baffled, the irresolute,
the war torn, the living)
more of the fire
and attar of what it means
to be human.
Cyrus Cassells, "Auschwitz, All Hallows" from The Crossed-Out Swastika. Copyright © 2012 by Cyrus Cassells. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyon
NOTE: Cassells spreads out the lines of his poetry in couplets, sometimes 2, 3 and more spaces between lines. I found them easier to read when I brought the lines together.
Little Rock, Arkansas, 1957, by Cyrus Cassells
Thick at the schoolgate are the ones Rage has twisted
Into minotaurs, harpies
Relentlessly swift;
So you must walk past the pincers,
The swaying horns,
Sister, sister,
Straight through the gusts
Of fear and fury,
Straight through;
Where are you going?
I’m just going to school.
Here we go to meet
The hydra-headed day,
Here we go to meet
The maelstrom –
Can my voice be an angel-on-the-spot,
An Amen corner?
Can my voice take you there,
Gallant girl with a notebook,
Up, up from the shadows of gallows trees
To the other shore:
A globe bathed in light,
A chalkboard blooming with equations –
I have never seen the likes of you,
Pioneer in dark glasses:
You won’t show the mob your eyes,
But I know your gaze,
Steady-on-the-North-Star, burning –
With their jerry-rigged faith,
Their spear of the American flag,
How could they dare to believe
You’re someone sacred?:
Nigger, burr-headed girl,
Where are you going?
I’m just going to school.
From Soul Make a Path through Shouting
No comments:
Post a Comment