To Greet Yourself Arriving
CBC Books | CBC | Posted: May 15, 2017 6:32 PM | Last Updated: May 15, 2017
Michael Fraser
To Greet Yourself Arriving pays tribute to inspirational and illustrious figures throughout black history. A wide range of individuals such as activists, artists and athletes are showcased in Michael Fraser's powerful poetic portraits — Rosa Parks, Barack Obama, Harriet Tubman, Oscar Peterson, Oprah Winfrey, Jean-Michel Basquiat and P.K. Subban. In his foreword to this groundbreaking collection, Canadian parliamentary poet laureate George Elliott Clarke writes, "Fraser gives us characters who, even if tortured by their experiences of "race" and/or racism, win through to a stardom that edges into heroism..." (From Tightrope Books)
Michael Fraser won the 2016 CBC Poetry Prize.
From the book
Louis Armstrong
Named Satchmo after his school-boy
satchel vanished, his voice reinvented
a nation tumbling on its knees,
conjuring steamships and poker buy-ins
up the delta mouth of Old Muddy and quadrilles
circling round dance floors. His cornet
shook middle earth's groove, invoking
ragtime hits down Bourbon Street's
bedlam latitudes. He emerged from
nothing's torn retina to blossom-stroke
May magnolias. His childhood
double-timed as the Jazz Age
walked in from the future,
no more wanna-shoe-shine
mister rattling his octave mouth.
No more newspaper ink dashing
the day's events across his skin.
No more waiting outside doors for
his mother, hoping she earned enough.
Howlin' Wolf
I can hear the train coming
filled with smokestack lightning,
gold-winged sparks polishing
this slate-black Mississippi night.
Mama left before I could spell
my name. I walked barefoot miles
under telephone lines. Followed them to
Papa's towering hug. A dead man stepped
out the graveyard and tuned my
first guitar with spirit ears. Give me
a standard blues progression in A
and I'll show you what misery is.
Even near death, I could never half-ass
the stage. Although I was a tree
of a man, she made me cry last time
I saw her. Scratched glass clear cross
my eyes. Called me Satan with my
rolling, hard-stone living. Most don't know,
hell is a mama that never wanted you.
From To Greet Yourself Arriving by Michael Fraser ©2016. Published by Tightrope Books.