“What is your favorite sound to echo across your vastness? Is it the cicadas’ thrum or the unexpected first giggle of a child?” Recently the Evergreen Review featured five multimedia art pieces by Guyana-born artist Carl E. Hazlewood to illustrate “Infamy and Other Poems” by Daemond Arrindell. We selected one poem and two paintings to share here; see full article and artwork at Evergreen Review.
Infamy (For Christian)
praise the gift of black boys
praise the light that catches their glint and the shadows
they cast into the corners
praise the bass that kicks
the bass that finds a home in their vocal chords
the chords that signal the transition to manhood
praise the manhood that wants to swallow them whole
and still chew them down to the marrow
praise the marrow inside the bones
passed down
and down
and down
to black boys who don’t yet know their ancestry
to black boys who won’t ever know their beauty
Daemond Arrindell is a poet, playwright, performer, and educator, currently teaching poetry and theater through several arts education organizations in the NYC area. Prior to that he was adjunct faculty at Seattle University; a 2013 Jack Straw Writer; and a 2014 VONA Writer’s Workshop fellow. He has written for City Arts and Cross Cut magazines and has received several commissions from the Seattle and Bellevue Arts Museums. He co-adapted T. Geronimo Johnson’s acclaimed satirical novel Welcome to Braggsville into a stage production for Book-It Repertory Theater, which debuted in Seattle in June 2017. He received his MFA in creative writing from Goddard in 2022.
Carl E. Hazlewood (b. 1951 Guyana, South America) holds a BFA with honors from Pratt Institute and an MA from Hunter College. His work often references Anansi the Spider, a prominent character in West African and Caribbean folklore. Parallel to his studio practice, in 1983 Hazlewood co-founded Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art in Newark, New Jersey. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at the Charlotte and Philip Hanes Gallery (Wake Forest University, SC), Welancora Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Art Basel Miami Beach, and elsewhere. Hazlewood is the recipient of fellowships at MacDowell, Dora Maar House (Ménerbes, France); and the Bogliasco Center (Italy).
Evergreen Review was launched in 1957 and became known for giving a platform to radical voices from the literary and social fringes, including Burroughs, Ginsberg, Susan Sontag, LeRoi Jones, and Henry Miller, alongside a global cast of writers such as Beckett, Genet, Grass, Ōe, Duras, Paz, Walcott, Nabokov, many of whom were introduced to American readers by the magazine.]
For all poetry and artwork, see https://evergreenreview.com/read/infamy-and-other-poems/?emci=f9115e59-1dca-f011-8196-6045bdfe8e9c&emdi=93d7c024-faca-f011-8195-000d3a1d58aa&ceid=628750
Also see http://evergreenreview.com and https://evergreenreview.com/evergreen-back-issues/
[Shown above: Carl E. Hazlewood, Midnight Archer, 2020. Cut paper, pastel pigment ink, brad, color pencil, and vinyl tape on Hahnemuhle paper, 37 x 25 inches. BlackHead Sinker, 2022. Acrylic polymer emulsion, powdered pigments, oil pastel, tape, gold cord, with collage on canvas, 52 x 34 inches. Courtesy Welancora Gallery, Brooklyn, NY.]
“What is your favorite sound to echo across your vastness? Is it the cicadas’ thrum or the unexpected first giggle of a child?” Recently the Evergreen Review featured five multimedia art pieces by Guyana-born artist Carl E. Hazlewood to illustrate “Infamy and Other Poems” by Daemond Arrindell. We selected one poem and two paintings to
