Guest Poem | Guest Quotes | Al's Linx

 Guest Poem:

LOVE IS NOT ALL

Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
and rise and sink and rise and sink again.
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
pinned down by need and moaning for release
or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It may well be. I do not think I would.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay
©1931 by Edna St. Vincent Millay
(from FATAL INTERVIEW)

More about Edna St. Vincent Millay:
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/LeftBank/6865/millayworks.html

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Guest Quotes:

"I want some help on determining who is the more dangerous to
American democracy--the external terrorists like bin Laden or the
internal terrorists like John Ashcroft."

-- Bishop John Hurst Adams, founder and chairman emeritus of the
Congress of National Black Churches

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Al's Linx:

Al Young: Mississippi Writer
Alternative Web Site
The Starkville High School Mississippi Writers & Musicians Project
(under the supervision of Nancy Jacobs)

Al's Classroom

Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz & Literature

Al Young in Manhattan - Judges 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Award;
Reads with Winner Major Jackson at New School

San Francisco Chronicle Profile (July 2001)

OUR SOULS HAVE GROWN DEEP LIKE THE RIVER
(Black Poets Read Their Work; Rhino 2-CD Collection)

Al Young on African American Poetry

About Al Young: A Profile by Don Lee

International Literacy Day

Al Young: Academy of American Poets Bio

Squaw Valley Community of Writers
(Fiction, Memoir, Non-Fiction)

Al Young: A Brief Bio with Crtiical Commentary
(Bell & Howell Information & Learning)

ASILI: The Journal of Multicultural HeartSpeak
(Joseph P. McNair, editor)

Al Young on Aretha Franklin

How Close Al Young's Mother Came to Marrying Aretha Franklin's
Father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin

BELIEVERS: Ploughshares, Spring 1993
Guest Editor: Al Young

Cellar Notes: Al Young's Introduction to BELIEVERS Issue of Ploughshares

THE LITERATURE OF CALIFORNIA-Rediscovering Our Writers: A New Collection Of Classic Writing

IN THEIR OWN VOICES: A Century of Recorded Poetry

Five Poems by Al Young (Ishmael Reed's Konch)

Shasta College (Redding, CA)

Davidson College (Davidson, NC)

Prague Summer Seminars (Czech Republic)

Poetry Speaks: Hear Great Poets Read Their Work from Tennyson to Plath with CD (Audio)

Poet Lorenzo Thomas in Conversation with Daniel Kane

Al Young: 1998 Judge Panelist, IMPAC AWARD for Fiction: Dublin City Libraries; Dublin Ireland

Al Young: Folksinger - During the early 1960s, Al sang and played guitar regularly on Berkeley's San Pablo Avenue at the Cabale [sic], the legendary coffee house cabaret that routinely featured such performers as Barbara Dane, Perry Lederman, Marc Silber, K.C. Douglas, Toni Brown, Bobby Neuwirth, and Reverend Gary Davis. See this January 1962 poster schedule.

Al in the 1970s - The 3rd Annual Old Dominion University Literary Festival

THE LITERATURE OF CALIFORNIA, plus the California Dream, Stolen Poetry, and Genre-Jumping: Steven Boyd Saum interviews Al Young: co-recipient (with Jack Hicks, James D. Houston, Maxine Hong Kingston and the University of California Press) of the Commonwealth Club Silver Medal Winner for Californiana, 2000 California Book Awards.

Al Young's Heaven

VONA: The Voices of Our Nations Summer Writing Workshop at the University of San Francisco.

Shirley Embracing Sam, 1952, (Gelatin Silver Print) by renowned photographer Roy DeCarava. Commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Al Young contributes an original poem based on this photograph to the February 2002 issue of MoMA Magazine.

Poems on Poems
"In the code language of criticism when a poem is said to be about poetry the
word "poetry" is often used to mean: how people construct an intelligibility out
of the randomness they experience; how people choose what they love; how
people integrate loss and gain; how they distort experience by wish and dream;
how they perceive and consolidate flashes of harmony; how they (to end a list
otherwise endless) achieve what Keats called a 'Soul or Intelligence destined to
possess the sense of Identity.'" -- Helen Vendler

POETICA: Al Young on Australian Radio

• 2.05pm Saturday June 16
  The Bay of St Francis, Part 1
  A radio essay by Mike Ladd about the poetic history of San
  Francisco. The program uses soundscapes and interview
  material recorded late last year in San Francisco, diary notes,
  and found texts. Part 1 includes the poetry of Robert Frost,
  Kenneth Rexroth, Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg,
  Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Dianne DiPrima and Garry Snyder.
  Sound engineer: Stuart Hall
  Producer: Mike Ladd
• 2.05pm Saturday June 23
  The Bay of St Francis, Part 2
  In Part 2 of this radio essay on the poetic history of San
  Francisco, we meet contemporary poets of the Golden Gate
  including Al Young, Kathleen Frazer, August Kleinzahler, Michael
  Palmer, Genny Lim, and Gary Soto. We also hear from the work
  of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poet Lyn Hejinian and encounter street
  poet ‘Dawn of Aquarius’.
  Sound engineer: Stuart Hall
  Producer: Mike Ladd
  

The Real Mingus Web

A Night in Italy, 1997 -- Concert in Milano with Al Young (poetry & vocals), Paolo Fresu (trumpet & flugelhorn), Furio Di Castri (bass), Luciano Federighi (MC).
Artisti vari (Al Young-Fresu-Di Castri) 'Atelier musicale del Ventesimo secolo' 1997

Luciano Federighi: BLUES NEL MIO ANIMO: Temi e poesia del blues.Prefazione di Al Young.
(BLUES ON MY MIND: Themes and Poetry in the Blues). Preface by Al Young. Forthcoming Spring 2002, Sicily.

"JazzToldTales" - Franco Minganti (a cura di)
Jazz e fiction, letteratura e jazz
Bacchilega, Imola 1997
Transcription of the presentations (includes Al Young, David Meltzer, Nathaniel Mackey & Geoff Dyer) at the Jazz e Letteratura Conference hosted by Bologna's Istituto Gramsci Emilia-Romagna in Bologna, Italy 1996

ESSAY ON POETRY (Al Young's liner notes for In Their Own Voices: A Cenury of Recorded Poetry)

Al Young & the Henry Miller Connection

May Literary Birthdays
(Walt, Whitman, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Mona Van Duyn, Al Young, et al)

SAYING IT WITH JAZZ: Carmen McRae, Carole Sloane, Etta Jones, Madeline Eastman, Lorez Alexandria, Rebecca Parris; cameos by Joe Williams, Orrin Keepnews and Concrd Records founder Carl Jefferson)
Written & produced by Joan Merrill; narrated by Al Young.
The video opens and closes with performances by the late CarmenMcRae, "the grand dame of jazz vocalists," as narrator Al Young calls her. Merrill Video Productions, 58 minutes, VHS

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Al's Books (a partial list):

Heaven

African American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology

The Sound of Dreams Remembered: Poems 1990-2000

Drowning in the Sea of Love

Mingus Mingus: Two Memoirs

Who is Angelina?

The Literature of California, Volume 1

The Writer's Journal: 40 Contemporary Writers and Their Journals

Sitting Pretty

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