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James
A. Emanuel (1921-2013)
Selected
Haiku
Photo by
Godelieve
Simons
James A. Emanuel was born June 15, 1921, in Alliance, Nebraska. He earned a B.A. from Howard University, an M.A. from Northwestern University, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Among his books of poetry are Jazz from the Haiku King (1999), De la rage au coeur, (Thaon, 1992, translated by Jean Migrenne and Amiot Lenganey), Whole Grain: Collected Poems, 1958-1989 (1990), The Quagmire Effect (1988), Deadly James and Other Poems (1987), The Broken Bowl: New and Uncollected Poems (1983), Black Man Abroad: The Toulouse Poems (1978), and At Bay (1969). He is also the author of Langston Hughes (1967) and the editor, with Theodore L. Gross, of Dark Symphony: Negro Literature in America (1968). Emanuel's essays and other writings have been included in many anthologies and periodicals. Among his honors are a John Hay Whitney Award, a Saxton Memorial Fellowship, and a Special Distinction Award from the Black American Literature Forum. James Emanuel has been a professor of English at the University of Grenoble and the University of Toulouse, among other universities. He lived in Paris at the time of his passing (September 28, 2013).
Biography from the Academy of American Poets website.
In 1992 in “Le Barry,” the country home of the Plassard family in southwest France, where I have now and then composed poetry for over twenty-five years, I planned an apparently new literary genre, the “jazz haiku”. My “breakaway haiku” in Deadly James and Other Poems (1987) had begun my experiments with the Japanese 3-line form, adhering to its 5-7-5 syllabic pattern, but widening its sensory impact beyond the capacity of the usual single impression. My haiku added the toughness of poverty and racial injustice, the declarative emphasis made possible by narrative style, and the technical challenge of time.
James A. Emanuel
from
Whole Grain : Collected Poems, 1958-1989
Lotus Press, Detroit, 1991
with translations by Jean Migrenne
©1991 by James A. Emanuel
For a Depressed Woman
I
My friends do not know.
But what could my friends not know?
About what?
What friends?
II
She sleeps late each day,
stifling each reason
to rise,
choked into the quilt.
III
"I'll never find work."
She swallows this thought with pills,
finds tears in the glass.
A sa déprime
I
Mes amis l'ignorent.
Mais que peuvent mes amis
ignorer? Amis?
II
Elle traîne au lit
et la couverture étouffe
l'idée
d'en sortir.
III
«J'aurais plus d'boulot.»
Pilule
amère avalée,
dans un verre de larmes.
------------------------------------------------
from
Jazz From the Haiku King
Broadside Press, Detroit, 1999
with translations by Jean Migrenne
The Haiku King
Haiku King subjects
loyal: seventeen each meal
serve Him. Food royal.
Dix et sept féales aux agapes d'Haïku Roi: quel régal! Royal.
------------------------------------------------
Jazzanatomy
EVERYTHING is jazz: snails, jails, rails, tails, males, females, snow-white cotton bales. Knee-bone, thigh, hip-bone. Jazz slips you percussion bone classified "unknown." Slick lizard rhythms, cigar-smoke tunes, straight-gin sky laced with double moons. Second-chance rhythms, don't-give-up riffs: jazz gets HIGH off can'ts, buts, and ifs.
Jazzanatomie
Y
a du jazz PARTOUT:
chez veau, vache, cochon, couvée,
blanche-neige
et coton.
Genou, cuisse et hanche.
Le jazz te secoue, te branche.
Mais, dis, ça vient d'où?
Peinard, lézard, cool,
dans la fumée des cigares;
gin
dans la lune saoule.
Rythmes qu'on rattrape,
riffs à
bout de souffle: le jazz
PLANE quand ça dérape.
------------------------------------------------
Bojangles
and Jo
Stairstep
music: ups,
downs, Bill Robinson smiling,
jazzdancing the rounds.
She raised champagne lips,
danced inside banana hips.
All Paris wooed
Jo.
Banana panties,
perfumed belt, Jazz tatooing
lush ecstasies
felt.
Josephine, royal,
jewelling her dance, flushing
the bosom
of France.
Bojangles et Joséphine
Danse et grand sourire sur l'escalier : c'est du JAZZ, c'est Bill Robinson. Champagne en haut, pagne en bananes : tout Paris, oui, a tes genoux, Jo. Taille de réglisse, houle de bananes, rythmes de JAZZ et délices. Ton strass et ta danse te couronnent Joséphine, enflamment la France. ------------------------------------------------
Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington
Satchmo's
warm burlap,
Duke's cool cashmere: fine fabrics
make your love "Come
here!"
Louis Armstrong et Duke Ellington
Satchmo,
toile à
sac,
et Duke en cachemire; l'habit
et le moine l'attirent.
------------------------------------------------
Ella Fitzgerald
Pin- La- SCATS : ball dy tis- tas- bumps ket raps ket, back. yel- bas- Wins low ket.
Ella Fitzgerald
Flip- El- SCATS : per la tis- tas- res- ketraps ket, sort: gagne Partie! encore.
------------------------------------------------
Charlie "Bird" Parker
Once Ugly Duckling, rich plumage grew. Poised, Bird flew. Flocks followed. Me too.
Charlie Parker, the Bird
L'oiseau de peu s'est fait oiseau bleu. Quel envol ! Tous plein ciel. J'y vole.
------------------------------------------------
John Coltrane
"Love Supreme," JA-A-Z train, tops. prompt lightning-express, but made ALL local stops.
John Coltrane
«Love Supreme»: ça file et JA-A-Z éclair, mais sans bruler d'arret.
------------------------------------------------
Chet Baker
Songbird,
lost, bright lights
His
guide afar, JAZZ his fate,
Icarus
his star.
------------------------------------------------
Michael Jackson
There ain't NO-BO-DY can dance like THAT, 'cept them twins Jazzlene and Jazzphat.
Michael
Jackson
Tr. par Godelieve Simons
Non.
Non. Non. perSONNE,
personne ne danse comme ÇA sauf
Jazzmaigre/Jazzgras
------------------------------------------------
Four-Letter Word
Four-letter word JAZZ: naughty, sexy, cerebral, but solarplexy.
Gros mot
JAZZ
est un gros mot :
qui te prend du sexe au cerveau :
tu l'as dans la peau.
------------------------------------------------
Dizzy Gillespie (News of His Death)
Dizzy's
bellows pumps.
Jazz
balloon inflates, floats high.
Earth
listens, stands by.
------------------------------------------------
Mahalia Jackson
“I sing the LORD'S songs” (palms once tough to stay alive, alarm clock on five). Cinnamon cheeks, Lord, cornbread smile. SONGS feed your ribs when you're hungry, chile. Washboard certainties, soldierly grace, text and style in her brimming face. Your hand on your heart, her voice in your ear: pilgrim, rest easy. Sit here.
Mahalia Jackson
«Je
chante le Seigneur»
(j'en ai tant bavé pour vivre,
levée a cinq heures).
Joues cannelle, Seigneur,
sourire mais. CHANTER fait
ventre, petit sans
pain.
Foi de lavandiere,
charme militaire, message
et classe
du visage.
La main sur le cour,
sa voix dans l'oreille : pelerin,
sois ici en paix.
------------------------------------------------
Farmer
Good-grip
Jazz, farmer:
ploughed
music like fields, worked late,
kept
all furrows straight.
------------------------------------------------
Dynamite Evening
Jazz
band's saddest gig
where
Baby-9's Mister Big.
(Teenage
party. Dig?)
------------------------------------------------
Greens
Lid's on, steam's risin': collard greens, Lord, bubblin' JAZZ! That's appetizin'.
La Potée
Ça
monte, la pression :
le JAZZ bout dans la marmite
MMM ! ça va etre
bon !
------------------------------------------------
Jazz as Chopsticks
If
Twin's the arrow
Chop
plays bow. No JAZZ fallin'
if
they both don't go.
Chop
makes drum sounds SPIN.
Twin
coaxes them, herds them in,
JAZZ
their next of kin.
Exuberant
probes,
clean-wood
finger, lacquered bone:
JAZZ
dining alone.
“One-legged
music?
No
such thing.” Wouldn't say that
if
they heard Chop sing.
When
stuck on his lick,
Chops
runs the scale. Twin slides loose,
then
harpoons the whale.
“Chops,
whatcha doin'?”
“Waiting
for Twin. It's my bass
his
melody's in.”
Chops:
“Hey! That a tree
that
fell?” “No. Just me dreamin'
of
Mademoiselle.”
------------------------------------------------
"I'm a Jazz Singer," She Replied
He dug what she said: bright jellies, smooth marmalade spread on warm brown bread. "Jazz" from drowsy lips orchids lift to honeybees floating on long sips. "Jazz": quick fingerpops pancake on a griddle-top of memories. Stop. "Jazz": mysterious as nutmeg, missing fingers, gold, Less serious. "Jazz": cool bannister. Don't need no stair. Ways to climb when the sax is there.
«Moi je chante le jazz,» fit-elle
Mots
de pain béni :
noire tartine et gelée
de fruits étalée.
'Le jazz' se cueille sur
levre : orchidée langoureuse,
abeille
amoureuse.
'Le jazz' : claque des doigts,
crashe tes souvenirs et
retourne
a la case départ.
'Le jazz' : mystere comme
la
main sans doigts, la muscade,
l'or ou boule de gomme ?
Quand le jazz
est la
le saxo t'envoie en l'air
sans en avoir l'air.
------------------------------------------------
Jazz Meets the Abstract (Engravings)
Space
moves, contours grow
as
wood, web, damp, dust. Points turn,
Corners
follow. JAZZ!
------------------------------------------------
Introduction
to James A. Emanuel
A short introduction to James A. Emanuel, the man and
his work, by Jean Migrenne, his French translator.
http://plagiarist.com/features/emanuel/migrenne_intro.php
Whoever wishes to meet with the man must climb the 99 steps (no lift) that lead to his 6th floor den in the Montparnasse district of Paris, France. But James A. Emanuel is not one of your latter-day expatriates aping those Lost Generation geniuses who drank themselves into literature and other ecstasies before WWII. Emanuel's is a deliberate exile. He has no plans, he says, to return to the U.S.A. .
Whoever wishes to know more about his life and the reason why he chose to live his second life in France must read The Force and the Reckoning, published by Lotus Press, Detroit, in 2001. But there is more behind it than he is willing to write about. Emanuel will not readily open those pages again. If I, his translator and friend, were to summarize it all, I'd say that the story of the first, longer, part of his life reads very much like the conventional and exemplary biography of the young American of humble origin, jack of all trades by necessity, who finally made himself and reached the top. The all-American cliché? Yes, and no. There was one parameter in the equation that killed the process, not in the bud, but in its prime and offshoot, right to the bone and marrow of the man: color. Emanuel took his share, and bore the brunt of the unrest and struggle of the 60's, as can be read in the poems he wrote at the time, and in the aftermath of his great divide.
The divide itself gradually turned into an unbridgeable gap after Emanuel, by then a university professor, went East, to France and Poland, first with his family, and then on his own. The air he breathed on this side of the Atlantic was different. New roots began to set, and they turned vital when his decision to quit the U.S.A. was made.
Whoever wishes to know Emanuel as a poet can read his Whole Grain: Collected Poems, 1958-1989, Lotus Press, Detroit, 1991. His JAZZ from The Haiku King, Broadside Press, Detroit, 1999, adds an entirely new facet to the diamond he had been cutting so far.
Yes, in a way, James A. Emanuel cuts, "chisels" his poetry. "In the dark," as he once wrote, but with incomparable skill.
To give you the briefest version of the man/poet's achievements, let me quote and translate the title of a bilingual anthology (out of print) of his poems that we published in France in 1992. We called it De la rage au cour. A fine double-entendre, involving the two poles of his interest as man and poet: the rage and the heart; but also the change he underwent, passing from heart to rage within the heart and then to heart without rage. (Beware of puns!)
I, personally, never worked shoulder to shoulder with the man/poet in the days of his rage. I first met him a few years after he had crossed the Atlantic for good, and from that time onward I have been working heart to heart with him and for him. I am proud to call him my friend and to be considered one of his true friends.
Jean Migrenne
May 2002
------------------------------------------------
http://www.james-a-emanuel.com/
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0940713144/ref=sib_dp_rdr/002-3875034-8205618
http://plagiarist.com/features/emanuel/whole_grain.php
http://plagiarist.com/features/emanuel/jazz.php
http://poetry.poetryx.com/poets/18/1/
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m2838/4_35/82554826/p1/article.jhtml?term=
http://www.cosmoetica.com/Neglected%20A-F.htm#James
Emanuel
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/James-A-Emanuel