Rice: Poems

Acknowledgments

xvii Acknowledgments There have always been those on various shores pointing and blowing this raft of grainy words, as well as its navigator, out in search of a good warm sea wind. Those who have said in all kinds of ways and deeds: Keep writing and the rest of it will come. I have been buoyed here by Percival Everett, Gurney Norman, Peter J. Harris, Kwame Dawes, Linda J. Thomas, Opal Palmer Adisa, PJ Hamilton, Michael Brock, and Joan Hazlett of 1972. There have been organizations that turned their ceiling fans and windmills on me as I worked. Because of their financial support I was able to have the unthinkable : time to write. They are The Kentucky Foundation for Women and The Kentucky Arts Council. It was the unconditional assistance of the Bluegrass Black Arts Consortium, The Writer’s Voice of Central Kentucky, the English department at the University of Kentucky, and the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington that helped this manuscript through to publication. Abyssinian, Denise Rodgers, Lena Boxton, Ellen Sumter, Claire Prymus, Tony Riddle, Lorain Harmon, and Makeba never let me drift unanchored. LaVon Van Williams, master artist, created in wood and paint the visual stories of Black folks’ lives. Charles Joyner and his book Down by the Riverside, from which various quotes were pulled, were invaluable in quilting scholarship with the southern life I know in the first person. Bobby Finney, uncle extraordinaire, teacher of the fierce beauty of truth and pride of self. Beulah Lenorah Davenport, I am blessed to have at my side, still grandmothering to me in the ancient ways of the plain earth, she having wondrously lived through every year of the twentieth century. Makeda Silvera and Stephanie Martin, and the word-loving crew at Sister Vision Press, who for the past ten years have consistently thrown out their loveliest anchors to others and now to me, determined that our honest breath must live on, for posterity’s sake. The queen sea turtle herself is Opal K. C. Baker, who is where the green Halfway xviii Tree, Jamaican sky intersect the blue Carolina sun and make shadows dance upon the walls, and without whose editing eyes all life would be jumbled. And the dozens of dozens of folks who for the past several years invited me to read or suggested a place where I might send work, or took the time to write a note, or did something so generous and selfless to help get the work out there again, after ten years— Gratefully, I bow. Rice Handlin’the Rice d Wash de rice well in two waters, if you don’t wash ’em, ’e will clag an’ put ’em in a pot of well-salted boilin’ water. You mustn’t hab a heavy han’ like ’e was ’tata or sich, but must stir ’em in light an’ generous so ’e can feel de water all t’rou. When ’e done be sure you dish ’em in a hot dish, les ’e take a smart chill an’ go flat. —“a queen of a santee kitchen,” as reported by mary alston read simms ...