June Jordan_Her Life and Letters
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She came back to people—as June lay dying, she was surrounded and cared for by many she’d sworn, at one point or another, never to speak to again. She remained faithful to the idea that love—heated, passionate, brave—is what gives spirit and sustenance to all politics. She stayed true to the messiness and contradictions of desire. Mostly, she remained open to one of love’s greatest blessings—
surprise—and to the possibility that always, somewhere, there is more.30
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During the years leading up to her death, after the mastectomy procedures and months of being practically immobile, Jordan was determined to “come back”
by adopting a rigorous exercise and diet regimen. Also, she was committed to fully enjoying the things that personally mattered to her, including walking in her garden in the early mornings, looking at “the ninety-seven-year-old willow tree and the jasmine blooming aromatic and the honeysuckle bulging into the air and Amigo [her dog] gulping at a bumblebee and a stray bluebird lifting in flight above the roof.”31 Although she often experienced excruciating physical pain, the poet was committed to making use of the energy she did have so as to continue her activist work and prepare for her final days. Before her death, she appointed Junichi Semitsu as director of Poetry for the People Collective at Berkeley, an appointment that received the support of the Poetry for the People students, staff, and the university governing board.
Jordan also began outlining her final requests for her memorial “on a series of Post-It notes, attached seemingly at random to the inside of a file folder containing her UC benefits information.”32 In “For June’s Memorial Celebration, 15 September 2002,” Adrienne Torf writes about some of Jordan’s requests, most of which pertained to musical selections to be played at her memorial service:
The first: (undated)
Music for my memorial, please:
Gladys Knight
Isley Brothers
Donny Hathaway
(“Song for You / “For All We Know”)
Jr. Walker!33
Torf continues by providing additional instructions that were handwritten by Jordan on several different dates:
The second, stuck to the first: dated 10/31/99
I’d really really love
to have Me’Shell
jam “Take Me Higher”
with her whole band
Then the third, on delicate light blue note paper, in a matching envelope, from January 29, 2000:
Dearest ABBT Bongo:
If there’s a funeral or memorial service
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for me, after I check out, please please
play “The Rock Will Wear Away” and “Find A
Way” + “Brooklyn From the Roof” for me.
And ask Bernice to sing “Amazing Grace”
and Sweet Honey to sing “In the Upper Room”
+ The 1st Bach’s Unaccompanied—for cello +
his Suite #2 in D Major—you know the one I love
Otherwise much happy happy Doo Wah34
Torf adds that the poet wanted the popular musical group Sweet Honey in the Rock to perform “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” by Carol Maillard and Junichi Semitisu to perform “Amazing Grace” on his accordion.35 Many of Jordan’s requests were honored, and her days of mourning turned into a powerful day of celebratory gatherings and a “grand send-off”36 in California that honored the life, legacy, and political commitments of the poet.
On September 15, 2002, nearly three months after the poet’s death and private cremation,37 Jordan’s family and friends, in conjunction with the Department of African American Studies at Berkeley, held an on-campus memorial service in her honor. Some of Jordan’s family members, friends, and colleagues in attendance at the service included Christopher David Meyer, Valerie Orridge and her son, artists Cornelius Eady, Sara Miles, Janice Mirikitani, Vicki Randle, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Adrienne Rich, Adrienne Torf, many of the Poetry for the People students, and Robert Berdahl, Chancellor of Berkeley. Authors Toni Morrison and Alice Walker appeared via videotape.38 Prior to this event, Thulani Davis, a Barnard College alumna, former Barnard College English professor, and friend of Jordan, wrote about the need for Brooklyn residents and community activists to create a memorial for Jordan in their neighborhood. In the article “June Jordan, 1936–2002,” which appeared in the July 2, 2002 edition of The Village Voice, Davis insists, “In a borough that has landmarks for the writers Thomas Wolfe, W.H. Auden, and Henry Miller, to name just three, there ought to be a street in the Bed-Stuy called June Jordan Place, and maybe a plaque reading, ‘A Poet and Soldier for Humanity Was Born Here.’”39
Although June Jordan has physically departed this earth, she lives on through the legacy of the work she accomplished while here. From her “running buddies” friendship with New York based writer Alexis De Veaux, to her relationship with the language of Whitman, Neruda, and Kipling,40 Jordan’s death represents more than the passing of sixty-five years of human breath. It signifies political statements on life, sacrifice, struggle, and devotion to social change that have implications for how humans will continue to search for universal love amid assaults to the human spirit. Even as she battled cancer and prepared for her final days, Jordan remained committed to justice—as is evident with how she continued to produce important writings from 1992 to 2002. A brief examination of the literary accomplishments of the poet at that
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time is significant because it reveals her larger, selfless devotion to humanity during a personal battle against death.
As discussed throughout this book, June Jordan’s political and creative interests spanned from New York City to the Bahamas, and from the Middle East to California and Lebanon, among other places, and took the forms of poetry, essay, and drama. The poet’s work did not diminish as a result of her cancer diagnosis; instead, Jordan increased her number of writing assignments. This is significant because it proves Jordan’s refusal to be defeated and give into death without a “good fight,” a point that has long-lasting political consequences for generations of activists. In the following section, I discuss the literary pursuits that the poet marveled in and fulfilled during her breast cancer battle in order to demonstrate how she remained focused on living and writing.
June Jordan was known for collaborative work with other world-class artists. She worked with Peter Sellars and John Adams on the opera I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, with Adrienne Torf on the musical compilation June Jordan and Adrienne Torf: COLLABORATION, and with various other artists who included her poetry in musical projects. Jordan was involved with documentary projects such as Bang Bang Uber Alles in the 1980s and A Place of Rage in the 1990s. In framing this discussion it is vital to note the poet’s early reflections on the work of Angolian political leader Agostinho Neto and writings on the universal education of women, ideas that helped shape the work Jordan produced during her final ten years of life. This discussion highlights the effects of Jordan’s creative work on her dedication to a political life undefeated by cancer. Even with death looming before her, the poet stood steadfast, immovable, and relentlessly devoted to her craft—points befitting of analysis.
In 1995, composer John Adams and director Peter Sellars asked Jordan to write the libretto for I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, described as “a contemporary romance carried by seven young men and women living on the West Coast of the United States in the nineties. For them, it’s earthquake/romance.”41 She agreed and eventually gave birth to the speech of all seven Los Angeles-based characters dealing with the effects of race and love at the outset of the 1994 Los Angeles Northridge earthquake. (The opera derives its name from the quo
tation of a survivor of the earthquake cited in an article in the Los Angeles Times.) The main characters are Dewain, a black man described as a “reformed gang leader” who is the opera’s lead role; Mike, a white police officer, who arrests Dewain for stealing liquor from a convenience store; and Tiffany, a white reporter, who documents the heated confrontation on tape. Shortly after the incident, an earthquake strikes the city, causing various insights, and emotional and physical injuries to Dewain, Mike, and Tiffany.
The audience also glimpses the lives of lovers, Leila, a counselor, and David, a preacher, and various others. They are all connected by their confrontations with life and love; their commitments to themselves, their communities, and
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their country; and the struggles they share with other people. The music that accompanies the performance combines the sounds of gospel, doo-wop, blues, and R&B, allowing the piece to appeal to a nontraditional opera audience. I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky premiered in May 1995 at the Zellerbach Playhouse in Berkeley, California and went on to the Festival de Theatre des Ameriques in Montreal, the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, and other locations. Clearly, Jordan’s work as a librettist highlighted her creative talents with words, realities, artistic collaborations, and romance.
Jordan began writing about Lebanon as early as the 1980s and, in the 1990s, her attention to the country increased. Some of the poet’s representative writings include the poems “Apologies to All the People in Lebanon,” “The Cedar Trees of Lebanon,” and “Lebanon Lebanon,” and the essays “Eyewitness in Lebanon” and “Life After Lebanon.” In the latter essay, Jordan writes about the feelings that circulated after Israel invaded Lebanon:
The complicity of Americans through tax monies that supported the invasion, the slaughter of Lebanese peoples, the decimation and rout of the Palestinian peoples, the awesome determination by whitemen, in this country, to silence or to discredit American dissent, the vicious wielding about of the term anti-Semitic whenever anyone protested the interminable carnage executed and precipitated by that invasion, left me extremely embittered, shocked, and wondering about life after Lebanon: What would that be like?42
The poet’s feelings of disillusionment and resentment motivated her to increase her activist writing in the form of poems and essays. Particularly during the final fifteen years of her life, Jordan reexamined the political landscape of America, taking note of the journeys of many—from the decision of Jesse Jackson to try “to become President of our country” to the organizing efforts of the many “Jewish women who never quit from sending out flyers and making phone calls” to the strong women advocating civil rights and peace in Lebanon and elsewhere.43 In 1996, many years after Jordan penned the aforementioned sentiments and pondered the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, she traveled to Lebanon to document how the region was devastated by militarism.
Concerning her travels to the country, Jordan documents the following: this massacre
I photograph
the withered aftermath
the oozing consequence
the swollen stump
the burned out cranial configuration
of a 6 year old
recovering
from abrupt incineration
of her dress her hair
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her plastic daisy bracelet singed
into a 3rd degree
tattoo
do I exaggerate?44
Then, in 1999, Jordan increased her creative writing on the war in Kosovo and the ensuing efforts to rebuild that country. Some of the poems include “April 7, 1999,” “April 9, 1999, for Ethelbert,” and “April 10, 1999.” These poems, among others, are recorded in her collaborative project with musician Torf, entitled June Jordan and Adrienne Torf: COLLABORATION, Selected Works, 1983–2000. The compilation includes selections on South Africa ( Every Night, Winnie Mandela and Song for Soweto), Nicaragua ( Dance: Nicaragua), and the experience of living in a hurtful, pain-filled world ( One of Them Is You).
Jordan’s poetic creativity accompanying Torf’s compositional and instrumental talents creates a music of urgency, immediacy, and rage that forces an audience to search for the reasons to love and live as well as the reasons to fight and protest—indicative of the collaborative relationship between the poet and the musician. As Torf writes,
We were of different races, different generations, different backgrounds. Yet the collaboration flourished, rooted in our shared desires as artists and our shared responses to political events in America and in other countries. Each of us classically trained, we shunned ivory-tower isolation: the sounds and rhythms of the city were our lifeblood.45
The opening selection on Jordan and Torf’s COLLABORATION “Freedom Suite Now: Part 1,” speaks well to their “shared responses to political events.”46 It is comprised of a powerful rhythmic sound infused with the soft, yet forceful voice of Jordan: “this is Selma, Lord,” “this is Birmingham, Lord,” “this is Albany, Georgia, Lord, Lord,” and “this is Mississippi Mud and I am marching through.”47 As the force of the musical vibrations increases, so does the poet’s
“marching through” in ways reminiscent of the 1960s civil rights protests.
Jordan and Torf demonstrate a conscious effort to “march through” defining national and international political events through poetry, performance, and activism. COLLABORATION serves as one of Jordan’s and Torf’s political statements; they prove that by collaborating with vocalists and instrumentalists they can work toward the eradication of injustice through art. In 2001, Jordan and Torf performed for the final time in front of an audience of supportive listeners in Boston, Massachusetts. In 2003, just a year after the poet’s death, COLLABORATION was released on CD.
While COLLABORATION is Jordan’s final recording, it was not the only one.
In 1977, musician and composer Leonard Bernstein created a duo with Langston Hughes’ poem “I, Too, Sing America” and Jordan’s poem “Okay
‘Negroes,’” and included them as the first in a series of other duets and songs on his album Songfest. Other duets include “Trio: To My Dear and Loving
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Husband” by Anne Bradstreet and “Duet: Storyette H. M.” by Gertrude Stein.
Jordan’s poem “Okay ‘Negroes’” reads:
Okay “Negroes”
American Negroes
looking for milk
crying out loud
in the nursery of freedomland:
the rides are rough.
Tell me where you got that image
of a male white mammy.
God is vague and he don’t take no sides.
You think clean fingernails crossed legs a smile
shined shoes
a crucifix around your neck
good manners
no more noise
you think who’s gonna give you something?
Come a little closer.
Where you from?48
One can hear the music in this poem, from the lines that question the “image”
of righteousness in relation to a “white mammy,” “a crucifix,” and “no more noise,” to the line that protests, “Where you from?” One can feel the seriousness and urgency that jumps from this poem’s inquisitive tone—“crying out loud,” “God is vague,” “who’s gonna give you something?” It is no surprise that Bernstein, much like other composers and performers, such as Roy Brown, Stanley Walden, and Bernice Reagon Johnson, founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock, could feel the music in Jordan’s poetry and therefore decided to set many of her writings to music. The poet’s words, let alone her reading of them, are sophisticated in their lyricism and musicality. Paired with Hughes’
Jordan’s creativity and popularity are further marked by the inclusion of some of her poems on Sweet Honey in the Rock’s musical recording . . . Twenty-Five, . . . released by Rykodisc in 1998. The lyrics from the CD’s first selection,
“We Are the Ones,” are from Jordan’s “Poem in Honor of South African Women;” the music is provided by Jordan’s close friend and colleague, Bernice Johnson Reagon. In 1989, Flying Fish records released Sweet Honey in the Rock’s CD Breaths, on which Jordan contributed lyrics to the third track,
“Oughta Be a Woman.” Included before the lyrics to this song in the CD’s jacket is Reagon’s message: “I talked to June about my mama and she sent me these words on thin blue paper. I think she just about got it right.” The tenth track,
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“Alla That’s All Right, But,” is from Jordan’s poem of the same title, published in her collection Passion: New Poems, 1977–1980. In part, the poem reads, I been scheming about my people I been scheming about sex I been dreaming about Africa and nightmaring Oedipus the Rex But what I need is quite specific
terrifying rough stuff and terrific49
Jordan was always “scheming about my people” in ways that called for a revolution of minds, bodies, and action. Given that she was a classically trained pianist who studied the art form as a child in New York City before receiving professional training during her young-adult years, it is no wonder that so many people took a serious interest in setting her poetry to music—her writing always embodied elements of lyrical sophistication. In her home in Berkeley, California sat “a well-worn volume of Beethoven Sonatas perched on the music stand of her piano.” On this point, Torf continues, “If you ever surprised her with a visit, you may have heard her playing one of those Sonatas, those most beautiful hands moving comfortably across the keys, pausing only to flip the page.”50 The poet’s love for music was phenomenal, and the recognition that this love received was remarkable; it ranged from artists performing Jordan’s words against the backdrop of music to the inclusion of her work on musical compilations, as was the case with the 2000 release of Our Souls Have Grown Deep Like The Rivers: Black Poets Read Their Works by Rhino Records.