A brief break from the Jamaica postings to tell you about an important portrait exhibit at the International Center of Photography. The exhibit is called “Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits” curated by Deborah Willis. The ICP is located at 1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street here in New York. And the portraits are amazing, ranging from the 19th century to the present. I think my favorite was an old picture of Eartha Kitt.
Last night was the second of two events in conjunction with this exhibit, organized by the American poet Elizabeth Alexander. Four Cave Canem poets read their work: my friend Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (go buy her book Black Swan; Ross Gay; Aracelis Girmay; and Tracie Morris).
The reading was great: Lyrae opened with a June Jordan poem and two Brooks poems before three of her own (though admittedly, the June Jordan poem’s repetition as a device stopped working about three-quarters of the way through and it needed to be shorter); Ross Gay’s wonderful anecdotes, such as Lafayette’s letter to Washington at the end of the Revolutionary War about ending slavery then; and Girmay’s interweaving of Hayden, Brooks, and her own work. Morris is an interesting performer (I’ve heard some of her sound projects before) though her end performance–where she vocally plays with different tones while repeatedly singing a melody and simple lyric over and over again–wasn’t the best I’ve heard from her (but there were a couple moments where she hit it right and I felt an energy pulling from the portraits hanging on the walls around us). I was amused at how it made the white people, especially some of the skinny hipster women, uncomfortable, so much that at one point, this tall lanky gal at the front of the room hopped up and literally PRANCED across the front aisle in front of the stage and off into the side gallery. As if by prancing and being a deer she would be less conspicuous in her sudden need to leave.
Anyway, if you’re in New York or will be visiting, check it out: ICP