Southeastern Massachusetts University - Scrimshaw Yearbook (North Dartmouth, MA)

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natural process--and the eoiniiig lie age seems to reinforce those suggestions about that...Stokely asked me how I knew that an lee Age was coming about and I said 'You know our people are very adaptive and very intuitive...I knew that an Ice Age was coming the first time l saw Blgglx P90916 Skiillgls A Black person has to be damaged, it seems to me. to play in the snow. I don't care what it's called. it's playing in the snow. I think we adapt too well...One of our problems is that we have adapted to hell itself, hell being history of abuse...to adapt to hell you have to become hellish . As such it affects your perspective about other people. And it affects your love relationships, your values, your sense, and your perception of your history...The fact is that there is nothing so existential as the Nigger and there is no term as romantic as the term Negro, as the Negro in the western world. Romantic in any sense of that term...and a lot of us mindlessly tend to perpetuate that romance, live up to the adjective. Can you imagine, most people are proper nouns, we started off by being called an adjective, black. But we, having that dropped on us, as Blaelcf people often do, have taken that ankd created a proper noun out of it. And have created a proper noun out of blackness: a state of mind, not something that helps to modify an object... S: You had mentioned earlier that psycholinguistics is a fundamental concern of Blagk poets and the concept of Nommo, the creative and procreative power of the word. What does it all mean? H: Psycholinguistics is very important. Any poet...must deal in titJ...It,s the psychological ramifications that go along with the way a person says something or describes something. Or the value...judgements that go with a certain way of phrasing things.Whe.n a Black person uses the term denigrate, a 'Blagkperson is doing damage to the concept of blackness as a positive state of being, and he needs to be aware of that. Because youlre speaking in forked tongue, you're saying that Black is beautiful, then you're saying that Black is negative... If the words carry basic, fundamental humanl messages. they're gonna i - , .i....., !.' ii' its .ilklixlgg s tty- tleetl lit t:.iiis,-xiii I lllt' t'.ll.'c' .i i..tf.'L' lift ,g ii, still ll utltft '... Lilltl li igiiyyg, lacl that Int in i uw- ti it I' A '- i x ki . lsr ' . Llel ol- liberation. .is 'stun ,,,4 I ll.,,I,,, says. ls to destroy that rage Iziei are certain arelietypes that lSl.nl. people have..their lllsltily list-li lx urfhclylllll- Rootsl' brings that 0ut...the arehelype is the tourney ...among other things. journey .intl CUSC. are archetypes associated with the Black experience. But also dinsn. the blues woke me up this morning . There's always that shape ul hopefulness. S: Do you think there will come a time when these arc-lzetypes will jade away, say, in the twct1t,1'-ji'rsr ewitzujr ' H: Yes. because there may not be the eyes here to read them. l'd like to read two poems that deal with this: Toomer said Man's stark alternatives are these: transcendence or 'extinctionfl Jacques Cousteau subsequently, has echoed Toomerk worryings about manls propensity tt. want his self-destruction Unless we reverse our tendencies, all oceans will be dead seas in thirty to fifty years. So what does that mean? Well...the ocean produces at least ninth-tenths of the world's oxygen and what a dead sea is is a sea that supports no life. Welre running out of fresh water...the Army Corp. of Engineers is giving out water in half-gallon containers...and that is a prophesy of things. to come in the national level...people are going to be fighting over food and water. literally in the streets...and this is the country that is supposed to be the metaphor for plentitude...so. we in our little corner. getting our little degrees. teaching our little classes can suggest to ourselves that all is well because we are cushioned by the boundaries ol' the University. that cushions us from reality. But more and more starkly the alternatives that Toomer talked about. transcendenee or extinction. are becoming increasingly apparent . yellow urgemji' PULES Ihr' lurri tl hKUAl l15 'lltltlltll lltt ' urrnmtlttil nrtlioiit roofs gllftx Is lfllllhtltl Wllll tullltw it irc' .Xl'fL'tllll.N Crtsttttc' llffltllrml Clllxillllit' liolaliori' DU-fjrtclils ,Xt'I1lll1t'l seeritlvss silerzu' to the .sun The trunipel 's l'oli's Lc'al'c'.x' of copper itisulatecl l7I'UllllIt'N of hum tclepliotics and light hnllvs blossom in an imagistic' bloom wt' 611111101 .s't't1st' the public .vtztiliol Costttll' Vifllallotl Chvttzlt' l'1'oli1l1'fft1 r fullflhllljllll l:i't'retr llouglutttl

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AMBERGRIS I assist the fluke-tailed, white Cadillac Overheated. Spouting steam, parked at the evil side of the road taken but it 's got a smooth transmission Listen to... the mechanical melody, a whale 's song modulated. The desperate sonar of an endangered species. The unseen stream of sperm whale oil transmits evil automatically. The whale 's sonic vision stares loudly at my soul. My unblinking ear hears blues. The desperate sonar of an endangered species floats up like ambergris, the mechanics of modulation. Note: Until recently, the oil derived from sperm whales was used, in this country, in automatic transmission fluid. Copyright: Everett Hoagland I 9 75 S: How do you see yourself as an educator in trying to overcome those problems? Or is it too big a task for you to deal with? H: Well there is a certain amount of frustration when you're teaching a specialty and you can't elaborate on your speciality because you have to so much mechanical work with the students. You get critiques and you're involved in doing what you do with E-lOl students. It not only slows you down, it also gives you the impression that the studenths ability to deal with abstract skills for putting the stuff down on paper are not there. So the in the material may be high I ' ability to translate and .tfwiffling the material or a opinion with the are to a type written page, this not there. And so I with the primary and fundamental business of being able to write what you think. I,m finding that Ilm getting Juniors and Seniors who are incapable of that. I know that the English department is trying to do everything that it possibly can to remedy that situation, but the department is unable to rectify a less than ideal High School, Junior High School, and elementary and home situation. S: Do you consider college to the key to success for Black folk? H: The so-called 'key to successl, feducationl is not necessarily that key. Once you get there they switch the lock on it. You may have a key in your hand, but they really don't want you in the system in a meaningful way. My whole generation, my parents existed so that we could live with education as an aid, and so that we live so that our children can flourish, because Black people are getting tired of just surviving. Survival is a habit that we have gotten together very well. We need to stop thinking about it-a fungus 'can survive- we need to start thinking about living and flourishing. An education at the College level is not necessarily a way to do that. In a system that doesnlt regard you as having any meaningful humanity...you're being educated for what...to what-... It's something to think aboutf' S: What do you think is a way out? Do you have any notions as to what the future holds? H: No way out. We don't always have to talk about flight of escape. A way of changing it is to provide alternatives and that has to be done at the graduatels level. Beginning in the mid-sixties, black people who had educational backgrounds and high interests in the welfare of their children, have, in large cities, established alternatives to institutionalized education as it's whipped on kids by public sectors in this country. This makes for degrees of success, it may not prepare you for success in the 'system' but the system dehumanizes Black people...In some cases they say we do not exist. A metaphor which Ralph Ellison chose, The Invisible Man is very, very appropriate, even today...I,m part of it because a University Professor is a servant of the system, and anyone that tells you he is not, is a liar. When we cease to be a servant of the system, they will fire you. You are working for the State, the Commonwealth and you adhere to the laws of Massachusetts and to the laws of the United States which are designed to support and strengthen' the system...and you walk fine lines, so what do you do? You live with yourself and you face yourself in the mirror as you shave, and with a certain amount of pride you say to yourself, 'I got to do some other thingsf tI've got to tell people who are important to me about themselves, about their backgrounds, about their present beauty, and about their beautiful potential., So you organize a Third World writing group. So you teach and develop an African and West Indian Literature courseg You organize and develop a Blackamerican Lit. course. You ,deal with the aesthetics that are alternatives aesthetics that are rooted in folk mores, in folk forms of expression. among people that did not come out of the tradition, historically of the sonnet and the ode, etc... that came out of the tradition of Bop , of 'tMama of the tradition of i'Blues'l .. of string bandsf, S: Thinking in terms of W.E.B. DuBois' phrase The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line. would you venture to discuss what you feel shall be the problem of the twenty-first? H: 5 The problem of the twenty first century is going to be the'survival of our species. I came to college as a Zoology major, I have an interest in life and all its forms. I- like to think of myself as a life-affirming poet, a very desperate situation these days, as Black people are on the endangered species list, but so is all mankind. And in a Laughing-to-keep-from-crying way I asked Stokely Carmichael 'what does the dialectic havetfor this 'Hawk'?,' fthe Hawk is thelname black people give to the winter wind, the coldb, because an Ice Age is coming. And uthe manw is building a space shuttle so that he can get off the planet, because he has nothing for the Hawk. There is nothing that technocracy has to stop this Ice Age...Michael Harper talks about cosmic payback' which has to do with natural pollution and the cosmic violation--the willful perversion of

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