Poetry Show Helps Keep Etheridge Knight’s Voice Alive

We love Knight and are thankful for any efforts to keep his legacy alive. Read this wonderful piece about just such an effort from Telegram.com.

Etheridge Knight’s “Upon Your Leaving”

UPON YOUR LEAVING

Etheridge Knight

—for Sonia
 

Night
and in the warm blackness
your woman smell filled the room
and our rivers flowed together. became one
my love’s patterns. our sweat / drenched bellies
made flat cracks as we kissed
like sea waves lapping against the shore
rocks rising and rolling and sliding back.

And
your sighs softly calling my name
became love songs child / woman songs
old as a thousand years new as the few
smiles you released like sacred doves. and I
fell asleep, ashamed of my glow of my halo, and
ignoring them who waited below
to take you away when the sun rose …

Day
and the sunlight playing in the green leaves
above us fell across your face traced the tears
in your eyes and love patterns in the wet grass.
and as they waited inside in triumphant patience
to take you away I begged you to stay.
“but, etheridge,” you said, “i don’t know what to do.”
and the love patterns shifted and shimmered in your eyes.

And
after they had taken you and gone, the day
turned stark white. bleak. barren like
the nordic landscape. I turned and entered

into the empty house and fell on the floor
laughing. trying to fill the spaces your love had left.
knowing that we would not remain apart long.
our rivers had flowed together.
we are one.
and are strong.
 

“To write a blues song/ is to regiment riots/ and pluck gems from graves.”

“To write a blues song/ is to regiment riots/ and pluck gems from graves.”

Etheridge Knight’s magnificent Haiku sequence, courtesy of The Poetry Foundation.

 

“To write a blues song
is to regiment riots
and pluck gems from graves.”

 

 

etheridge knight at stone soup 4-25-87 (poetry reading)

etheridge knight at stone soup 4-25-87 (poetry reading)

Etheridge Knight reading at Stone Soup from 1987.

Etheridge Knight’s “Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane”

Etheridge Knight’s “Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane”

From Poets.Org

Full text of Etheridge Knight’s “Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane.”