Yaz

An Introduction To My Work

In putting together these pieces, I found myself stuck in a rhythm of wanting to reveal the  truth, or what I believed was the truth, that these writers wanted to convey in their works and trying to digest their work on my own and what I had to say about it; so I went with both. The Harlem Renaissance in and of itself went through its own evolution and revolution  through its people and its landscape which is what I took focus in when executing my poems.


Before I dive more into detail about my insight and inspirations for my poetry I would like to note that poetry knows something that we just don’t know. It’s hardly wrong. It can make us do things we wouldn’t think of doing. But wrong? That only depends on where we end up. Because I knew I had to write or else I would seize to exist. Because to write is to take risks, and it is only by taking risks that we know we are alive. Poetry gives us a voice; exposing us to our true selves. What we are or have under the surface, for me, it’s that and more. Here I am speaking into existence something to someone that may not even respond back. But it doesn’t matter.

In my poems, Ignoring the Physical Decay of Harlem I was mostly inspired by Gilbert Osofskys’ Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto in which he opens up the discussion on how an upper middle class suburb of Manhattan turned into a frowned upon black slums community. His book, partnered with images taken by Ewing Galloway and Gordon Parks, inspired me to create poems that portray Harlem’s decay and how ‘Negro’ families fell victim to a lot of greed schemes by “grey wolves”, as Osofsky mentions as well. In my poem Half In Shadow, I was inspired by Zora Neale Hurston’s’ autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, edited and with an introduction by Robert E. Hemenway. I decided to create a version of the found poem concept in which I “found” or took random lines from her book to create a full poem with my own edits and reconfiguration to portray this sort of emptiness and displacement feeling that Hurston is feeling throughout her book in some ways.

The Harlem Renaissance was an awakening for all, regardless if people were part of the movement or not, and I really wanted to step into a mental space where I could write, somewhat, from these writers’ points of view, or their experience, so that I could showcase their truth.

Poems

Resources:

Hurston, Zora Neale. Dust Tracks on a Road. New York, NY :HarperPerennial, 1991.

Migration, Fragmentation, and Identity: Zora Neale Hurston’s “Color Struck” and the Geography of the Harlem Renaissance Author(s): David Krasner Source: Theatre Journal, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Dec., 2001), pp. 533-550 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

New York Times, Interactive, Public Housing History, June 25, 2018, EDWING Galloway Photographs. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/25/nyregion/new-york-city-public-housing-history.html

Osofsky, Gilbert. Harlem; the Making of a Ghetto: Negro New York, 1890-1930. New York:Harper & Row, 1966. Print. Turabian (6th ed.)

Rosie Fontenelle cleans the Bathtub, Harlem, New York, 1967, Gordon Parks; Date: 1967, Physical Print

Zora Neale Hurston collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library