Max Pierre Max Pierre
Done
Our pain is over
like a flame under water
Nobody is able to see the wings
nor feeling the pain
deep in the heart
deep in the brain
We are untied like the swallows
prisoner-birds
freed from their row cage
and that are flying
flying
and that are lost in the azure
We have become monochords
according mankind joy
And the suffering is gone
perished in the surf
Should we throw in the day
this joy in the aorta of the heart
Our pain is extinct
when all of us we are
twisted like a rope
It is no longer in my dreams
Today it is no longer in my dreams
that I see you
Here you are so close to me
that a bunch of delight
takes my heart
and send it till the stars
You are so close to me
that you are
the light on my face
the flame
in the palm of my hands
You are candlelight
in the cavern of my heart
It is no longer in my dreams
that I see you
Joseph McNair is A Poet in the City
Some poets in the past were poets in the city, and some others, like Joseph McNair in Miami today, are living in many different cities in the world. These artists are beyond belief, and their actions are engraved in our minds. Various names of poets in the city are Jelaluddin Rumi, Rainer Maria Rilke, Langston Hughes, Frederico Garcia Lorca, Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) Jacques Roumain, Eugene Redmond, Davertige (Villard Denis), René Philoctète, René Depestre, and many more. An immense artistic figure for his works, Joseph McNair is a poet, a novelist, a playwright, a musician, a folklorist/storyteller, an essayist, and a journalist. He has been affecting a poetic way of life as the best spiritual path a man can take once he reaches the consciousness that we are all brothers who must learn to live in harmony.
The lives of these poets of the city, alive or dead, are analogous to Joseph McNair whose prophetic extrasensorial poetic activities are touching us deeply. The expression ‘poet in the city’ does not simply indicate a title given to a legendary poet for his/her writing by the people in a city; this connotation is broadened toward a more widening significance. Reading his poetry much closer, especially poems from ‘An Odyssey’, reveals that his greater dream is to destroy walls that human beings create between other humans and themselves.
Jelaluddin Rumi who was born in Afganistan and he lived between 1207 and 1273. His story advises all and sundry that it is essential that we look for camaraderie, which is the only mode to fetch solution to our human problems and to soothe human sufferings. Rumi was a poet in the city since he carried within himself a soul that aspired to true friendship, and that he found in the person of Shams of Tabiz, when the two of them met in 1244. It was a profound companionship founded on cosmic vibrations that create harmony and closeness. The two poets represented the energy center of the people; and the cultural, social and intellectual life in the city was alive. Later, the other people, like always, could not bear the attachment of Rumi and Shams, secretly, kidnapped and then murdered Shams of Tabiz. Since then, until his death in 1273, Rumi was alone, looking the world over, hoping to find his friend.
McNair in his poetic writing/activities is putting across his attachment to a universal society on earth. Joseph McNair overpasses the confining notion of blackness to go building a one world community with a blissful and burly human destiny. There is in his symbolic movements, a vivid search for connection and camaraderie. He is carrying a soul similar to Jelaluddin Rumi’s. He is searching for a common vision and understanding so that we might perform better actions in this world. This poet’s poetry expresses a profound quest for harmony between humans, which he sees as being the key to living well.
Rainer Maria Rilke, a poet from Australia, was born in Prague in 1875, and he lived in Paris where he published ‘Letter To a Young Poet’ in which he expresses his solitude. In this world, all authentic artists live in the solitude created by other people, and which is disharmony that impedes true communication, understanding, and brotherhood among earth inhabitants in order to create better stances. Like Rainer Maria Rilke, Joseph McNair is a poet in the city.
Jacques Roumain, one of Haiti’s greatest writers, was also a poet in the city where ever he lived. He was a poet in the city in the United States when he was a student at Columbia together with his comrade Langston Hughes, the immense African American poet. In Havana Cuba where he met with Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen, another comrade, he was a poet in the city. Roumain was a poet in such cities as Paris, Havana, Geneva, Mexico, and NewYork. It is, however, in the city of his birth, Port-au-Prince, where he died in 1944. He was a poet in the city for he expressed the desire to change the situation of mankind by trying to resolve the existential problems of Haiti’s peasants and those of the world through poems, intellectual interventions, teachings, stories, and novels. He evaded himself into this magical realism that inspired him ‘Gouverneurs de la Rosée’ (Masters of the Dew).
Like Jacques Roumain and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author of the famous novel ‘Ciento Anos de Soledad’ (One Hundred Years of Solitude), Joseph McNair did two things: a subversive poetic esthete to open up collective awareness toward social change, and a mystical realism in his poetry as a way of telling his stories. He is optimistic that the audience, the readers, and who ever is reading or listening, would seize in the point.
Frederico Garcia Lorca in his ‘Search for Duende’ means a moment when the artist, possessed by the spirit of the arts, can perform anything spectacular, something that can never be recurring the same way a second time (A momentum in the life of the artist). Garcia Lorca was a poet in the city who could not bear social injustice; he taunt to face the dictator and oppressor Franco. Possessed with duende, Garcia Lorca gave some of the most poignant poetry of all times. So does Joseph McNair in his poetic offerings.
René Depestre, since 1946, has always been a poet in the city where ever he settles. Influenced by Jacques Roumain who already in the 1940’s, showed an epistemological rupture with both the indigenous movements and the negritude at large, to embrace and valorized the state of exile. René Depestre in turn, has developed the concept of exile into ‘’errance’’, ‘’errantry’’(the self-transformation of the artist in exile who becomes a nomad in touch with other people, other cultures.) that facilitates the discovery of oneself through contact, in which the other becomes a liberating partner. In that same way, Joseph McNair is a poet in the city.
Davertige (Villard Denis) and René Philoctète are known to be among Haiti’s greatest poets of all times. They were poets in the city. Their visions were parallel regardless the differences that exist in their thematic and styles. Philoctète is the poet of the festive and of the celebration, whose source of inspiration is from the deepest spring of the Haitian socio-cultural life. Davertige is a poet who articulates both Haitian socio-cultural life and transcendental meditation. He lived most of his life in exile while Philoctète, deliberately, chose to remain in Haiti until his death a few years ago. Joseph McNair resembles them both in his lifepoem/cryptogram wherever he is, in San Francisco, in East Palo Alto, in Zaria, Nigeria, or in Miami.
Joseph McNair is a poet of celebration and grandeur who belongs to and transcends the Black Arts Movement. Like Eugene Redmond, Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) (also member of the beat generation with Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure), Joseph McNair in his own way has helped to redefine the "black experience" in the United States, and to articulate the primary value and magnificence of black citizens in an America that had used up a lifetime trying to mortify people of African descent. The work of the artists of the Black Arts Movement was converted into a major part of the struggle against the forces that were killing the oppressed, both spiritually and physically. Joseph McNair's work reaches back to teach, reveal and heal the lessons of the past as well as project a vision of the future.
The Black Arts Movement was energized by the bravery to confront the condition. Joseph McNair believes that words and poetic social actions can alter human acumen; free the human spirit. His poetic life/activities/writing reveals a deep engagement; therefore, it is authentic subversion. Joseph McNair is a poet in the city.
By Max Freesney Pierre
© 2007 by Max Pierre
Cover Design: Joseph McNair
Web Author: Joseph D. McNair Copyright © 2007 by Joseph D. McNair -ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
