Poetry Speaks: A Response to Nathaniel Mary Quinn

POETRY SPEAKS
A Response to Nathaniel Mary Quinn
February 15, 2019
Participating Poets
Isha Camara
Fabu
Rob Franklin
Derek Johnson
Dana Maya
Oscar Mireles
Cherene Sherrard
Angie Trudell Vasquez

THE POETS
ISHA CAMARA is a college sophomore hailing from South Minneapolis. She’s been writing and performing poetry since the
age of thirteen, working and learning in youth programs and workshop spaces. She was able to write a compilation of poems
highlighting her life from birth to eighteen to create her first self-published chapbook, Selfish. Most subjects she writes about
circle thoughts and experiences of her identity as a Black Muslim woman and the ways in which she navigates in America;
then understanding how America responds to her. Isha’s purpose is to give a narrative that creates conversations driven by
sympathy and encourages readers to be caring and gentle to a life not theirs, and learn how there are beings with dreams,
fears, and desires outside of their way of living that are just as normal and human.
FABU, as she is professionally known, is a poet, columnist, storyteller, and educator who works and writes to encourage, inspire
and remind. The Madison Poet Laureate from 2008 to 2012, she continues to share experiences living in the South, the Midwest,
and in Africa. A scholar of African American literature, Fabu published four books of poetry, Poems, Dreams and Roses; In Our
Own Tongues; Love Poems; and Journey to Wisconsin: African American Life in Haiku—which won an Outstanding Achievement
in Poetry award from the Wisconsin Library Association. She is a Madison Magazine “M” 2018 award winner, a Pushcart Prize
nominee in poetry and her words have appeared in literary journals, at the South Madison Library, and on the sidewalks on
Madison’s near east and west sides.
ROB FRANKLIN, also known as Rob Dz, is the Media Projects Bubblerarian for the Madison Public Library. As a Kennedy Center
certified teaching artist for the Making Justice program, his primary focus is on creating workshops in Hip Hop, spoken word,
and personal branding as positive forms of self-expression. Rob has held numerous residencies for youth in the Madison area.
As a musician, he has performed with the likes of Nas, Eminem, Common, Talib Kweli, and Dead Prez, among others. In 2017,
he was inducted into The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and the National Museum of African American
History and Culture as a member of the StoryCorps program.
DEREK JOHNSON fell in love with the art of spoken word poetry over 20 years ago. He uses spoken word poetry to reflect
on his life, personal experiences, and perspectives. Derek hosted the first city-wide spoken word poetry competition for high
school students in Madison, Wisconsin, titled “Can You Spit?” Over the years, he has worked with a variety of community
centers, schools, detention centers, group homes, and other community-based organizations to help youth connect to the art
of spoken word poetry. For Derek, spoken word poetry has been both therapeutic and recreational. Moreover, it has been a way
for him to give back to the community by inspiring and motivating others through spoken word poetry.
DANA MAYA is from the Mexican diaspora by way of Colorado. She was educated at Vassar College and the University of
Texas-Austin. Her work has been published in Feminist Formations, Volta, the anthologies Listen to Your Mother, and Basta:
100+ Latinas against Gender Violence, and has appeared in diverse public spaces and media. She collaborates with other artists
on interdisciplinary public art projects for social change and writes with a collective of poets called the Spontaneous Writing
Booth. Recent poetic projects have responded to youth incarceration, guns, strangers, longing, diagnosis, immigrations, screens,
and belonging, which is to say: ways of being human.
OSCAR MIRELES has been writing poetry for the past 35 years. He is the current Poet Laureate of Madison and editor of
two anthologies. As a dedicated educator he has assisted over 1,500 young adults with securing GED/HSED credentials and
currently serves as executive director of Omega School in Madison, Wisconsin. He has been named Hispanic Man of the Year by
the United Migrant Opportunity Service (UMOS) and Man of the Year by the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC),
and was recognized by the Wisconsin State Journal as “10 Who Make a Difference.”
Originally from Los Angeles, CHERENE SHERRARD is the author of the poetry collection Vixen and a chapbook Mistress,
Reclining. A Cave Canem fellow, her poetry has recently appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Obsidian III, Verse Daily,
Tidal Basin Review, Los Angeles Review, and Prairie Schooner. She is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison.
ANGIE TRUDELL VASQUEZ received her MFA in creative writing with a concentration in poetry from the Institute of American
Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work has been published in Taos Journal of Poetry, Yellow Medicine Review, Raven
Chronicles, Return to the Gathering Place of the Waters, and Cloudthroat among other journals and anthologies. She has a
page and poems from her first two books on the Poetry Foundation’s website, and was a Ruth Lilly fellow as an undergraduate
at Drake University. She has new work forthcoming from RED INK: International Journal of Indigenous Literature, Arts &
Humanities. Her third book of poetry, In Light, Always Light, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in May 2019. It is part of
the New Women’s Voices Series, in which she was a finalist in 2018.

JOY LINEAGE
Look at me.
None of me is mine yet all of this belongs to me.
Some nights, my smile sways and sings songs I don’t know, but my heart swells with memory.
All my strands and coils remember brown mothers and their mothers’ mothers combing
through, parting and braiding down my scalp. I hear the hair clips and they teach me
childhood games, giggling when I lose.
Every mirror shows me a different body, never letting me remember fully who I was
yesterday.
What kind of blessing; to have a new self everyday.
What kind of curse; to wonder how I’ve became, only to be given new flesh.
Yesterday, my shoe size was ten, now my feet don’t fit in my father’s shoes and I’m relieved.
Yesterday, I was hungry and my memories fed me ripe mangos and kuba right off the stems,
wipe the juice from my cheeks and scowled my eagerness.
Mother says I look like my uncle and my uncle told me I look like how I love, so I shape my
back like a tree bent low, barring shade to anyone in need of it.
Look at me.
Mother of the ugly. Guardian of the loss, of the forgotten.
Learning to love is hard.
Opening my mouth and calling myself back home is hard.
Watching my wounds heal is hard
Eating first is hard.
I learned, almost as hard as surviving this black all the time is trying not to burst under the
pressure of desire for self.
To try and not become a monster when I utter the words I love myself
The creature love makes of us isn’t one easily sated. It is picky and in constant hunger. It asks
a lot of me and sometimes begs for my blood.
And it ask every night.
And it ask when I feel nothing but hurt.
And it ask when I don’t have much to give.
And so, when my given mouth stutters and lacks courage, I reach into my mouths of mouths,
into the space where I share this body with the Earth and with the Ishas before me and find
which one of me is willing and able to declare love loudly.
And I begin my day, loving all of myselves.
—Isha Camara

GROWN LITTLE GIRL
As a precious, precocious little girl in the South, constantly told,
“You’re not grown, little girl” and “Stop acting grown, you are a little girl”
I couldn’t realize until I was an adult that I had been given
this rare, priceless gift of being allowed to remain a little Black girl
cushioned in soft, seeded layers of protective family love
shielding me from the worst wounds inflicted by color and gender.
The grown little girl in Nathaniel Mary Quinn’s painting
(and true for too many Black girls in America)
grow up hurried in depressed families and depraved neighborhoods
infamous for killing dreams, dreamers, and tender young futures
by abbreviated childhoods, the crushing weight of adult emotions
and responsibilities forced onto young minds and bodies too soon.
Looking into this painting of a grown little girl’s insides, she has one small eye
as a child and one large eye as a woman, both dulled by sadness.
I hate what I see;
jaggedness of a life lived in poverty, despair and unlove
beauty fragmented by clown paints that obscure identity
an abstract of who this real little Black girl must have yearned to be.
—Fabu

THIS IS LIFE
This....this is life; Showing the people that we see by day and by night-
From the streets, to the blocks, to the sides of town;
Hood to hood, this is what we feel in life’s sights and sounds-
See, the people in a community are those to whom we draw near;
That have earned the respect to say bring yo big teeth ass here-
You can’t trip, cause that was somebody Mama, Auntie or Granny;
Simply translated, it means get over here, you understand me-
Now depending on the tone of the voice it could have been a phrase of endearment;
Or if you messed up it was time for you to fear it, cause
This...this is life
See the characters might change but the game is universal;
Like how practice makes perfect in choir rehearsal;
Infatuation in the choir stand;
See the preacher daughter and long to be her man;
Choir director trying to get your section its notes-
But all you thinking about is sowing your wild oats-
Making eye contact and wondering if should you take a chance;
Cause is it spiritual love, lust or true romance?
Don’t know if she’s checking for some other dudes;
Just want her time as we recite the Beatitudes-
Makes one want to testify and hope that she cares;
And if you seem to distracted you get a stare from Miss Chairs, cause
This.....this is life

See, the places we stay have their own type of love;
And every block has their own Junebug-
Flashy, yet ghetto classy;
Eyes bloodshot and slightly glassy-
Talk real slick and move real quick;
And he always got a treat for every trick-
Everybody on the block adores him;
How he slide through with his tilted brim-
Gold fronts in his mouth keep him looking ghetto classy;
He keeps his circle tight, his homeboys are Ethan and Buck Nasty-
To those that have never experienced hood life, you may not understand;
The different ways that the streets raise a boy into a man-
Of the streetlight games you may not be a fan;
Here’s another case of just doing the best we can, cause...
This....this is life
These blocks are where we find our relief;
No matter what city there’s always a First and Fifteenth-
The numbers might change, but the corners remain the same;
Finding peace somewhere between joy and pain-
And though the PTSD gives our bodies inertia;
It is easy to find release when talking to Big Bertha-
She’s been through so much, you can see it in her eyes;
The raspiness of her voice let’s you know that she is wise-
See, come from where we come from, people are quick to judge;
But the tough times are what makes for tough love-
We just trying to get through from day to day;
Getting prayers by way of Claire Mae-
We rise from the ashes of the ways of the world;
So we do this for the banger boys to the grown little girls-
Our tests make testimonies so we only win and not fail;
Cause those are the things that make our Jaytail-
And though at times our language is misunderstood;
You can feel our stares that say I wish a muthafucka would-
The world casts us as villains, but to our blocks we are heroes;
Cause our stories are the makings of a Super Negro-
So we keep keeping on, by way of day or by night;
Kendrick said we gon’ be alright, Why?
Cause this....this is life.
—Rob Franklin

MIS-CONFIGURED
In profound contemplation as I sit here
in this soft authentic black leather chair.
Musing mind of self-reflection on a man misconfigured, but well positioned.
Abstract in every sense of its inhuman existence.
Navigating through societal configurations with resilience.
Beaten and bruised from a cruel world, but still managing to keep my head up toward the imaginary
stars in the distance.
He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
In silence I sit here and listen.
Wishing that the world would accept me for who I am.
A human creation of shattered pieces.
Masterpieces circling through all of life’s jagged and bare edges.
Unexposed etches and detached sketches.
Delicately hand-crafted to perfection.
Similar to the configurations of my red bead necklace.
—Derek L. Johnson (2019)
Inspired by Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Junebug, 2015

AT THE NATHANIEL MARY QUINN
EXHIBITION: WEARING THE CROWNS
Walls like a roll-call, the placards name
one by one, who’s here & who’s gone
missing, this long time. Names
called by nobody’s mother: rowdy,
sweet, street, & a bit secret: Junebug,
Big Bertha, Claire Mae, Jaytail,
Charles, Miss Chairs, Thundercat,
& that wild one: Buck Nasty.
Each head has its crown: high black hat,
wide black hat, plush-red pillbox
hat, or a dense orb of hair with
bouquets of red flowers over each ear,
like horns—& there & here
in the dark surround—are tossed small
gold orbs, like stars, or like confetti,
or like snow, just shining.
Our crown has already been bought and paid for.
All we have to do is wear it.
—James Baldwin
Sprouting all over—under a hat,
or behind an ear—are strange blooms
going by the name Matisse, bright sprigs like
little hands waving or happy flags or like
a thick patch of whiskers or lashes, or like
quotation marks or a cowlick, or like
tiny kitten claws or fans of sea-coral or like
small pools of spilled ink.
A red hibiscus vest & a pale fern dress &
a blouse with white pleats at the collar &
there— a slash of pink-white skin, torn
from a shiny page like a crude coupon
that could, re-grafted here, be redeemed.
In one frame, a man in pelts of fat fur, like some
Rembrandt noble, but hold your hat, now—
it’s Buck Nasty! Straight out of Chappelle &
Murphy ca. 2003, dressed for the Players
Haters Ball, insults flying, crowd happy as all hell.
He throws names like throwing roses on
a player’s stage: affront as appreciation. Insulted
just right, and it’s touché, a caress. Cause the thing is,
every head in this show already paid, turned
the insults of history to ornament, to gold rings,
velvet hats, to the dignity of sweet & rowdy names.
—Dana Maya

NATHANIEL MARY QUINN
The name Nathaniel conjures up images from the play Hamilton
and the name has both biblical and revolutionary standing.
Mary as many of you may know was the name of his mother and by taking her name
as his official middle name was not only an act of love but he wanted her to share in all
the educational degrees he had earned. Love comes in many forms and ways.
Quinn, it is safe to say is an unusual name. I don’t know many people named Quinn
either first name or last name. Quinn sort of rhymes with Finn as in Huck Finn which
not only takes us to an old but familiar era and different way of thinking but others
would say not much has changed in 150 years. Maybe we are just better at ignoring
things instead of changing them.
Once you see the paintings you are struck by several notions immediately.
Nathaniel Mary Quinn makes it appear so simple it is almost if a child could paint this.
He has turned the art form of collage on its head with the breathtaking way he
rearranges Art imitating life.
While his collages appears to be cut out of magazines and pasted together like a
Saturday afternoon project.
Instead his collages are a painstaking accurate renderings of layers of paper
compiled to show us behind the scene and illuminate the inner person.
All his portrait paintings seems to have an air of familiarity evoking the feeling that I
have seen this before.
But in closer inspection
The familiar becomes distorted into the new vision of another view.
While the artwork is amazing,
His lecture covered a gamut of current topics and issues and facets of his past life.
The range of his intellect and intelligence has allowed him to never forget the coping
skills learned surviving on the Chicago streets, military boarding school, musical
training, college and being a teacher in an inner city classroom.
Nathaniel Mary Quinn also completely understood where his art work stands among
the great artisans of the past and their artistic lineage.
He paid homage to his mother and father who both nourished his artistic talents in
their own ways.
Sometime the tragedies of our unfortunate circumstances in our lives serves as
inspiration for creativity and direction, instead of a path for hopelessness.
—Oscar Mireles

MAMA SAID KNOCK YOU OUT
—after Nathaniel Mary Quinn’s This is Life
I am always on the lookout
for beauty in the quotidian.
Each slice of paper marks
a suture in time. Minutes
might be bullets and I’m
rocking a glass cradle.
What harm did I do you
on my knees is what Milk-
Man’s mother prayed in
Song of Solomon. He didn’t
defend her name. Just took.
His sisters, artificial florists,
snipped petals of hot pink
taffeta, like those adorning
Miss Chairs and Mister Charles,
but not Big Bertha. She’s alright
as she is: lacquered lips, raspberry
pillbox, pinstripes at the ready.
—Cherene Sherrard

LUMINISM
the light that is in us
for those who let fire out
of their ‘fist’ chest
raise heart to blue moon
and howl,
who bear children or not
who lost one or chose to because
we are all complicit
in breath and death
and in the lives of each other…
for holy planet, sun cycle
and golden seasons –
so light do we treat Her
thinking we are not half blinks of history
sand our ancestor
savannah our first base –
for the ones who escape
and sparkle in the black ink night
constellation like
with gold rings, blood diamonds
that drip cut the flesh
around the finger
hold, blind and bind
to remove
is to suggest separation
maybe maybe we are right
to fling hands up and dance the blues
and drink moonshine all night
telling how we could kick our nose
or play basketball all day long
bouncing the ball
wherever we walked
from the front stoop
to the playground
at Olbrich park
and back again
eyes ablaze from the heat
pleased sweaty kid smell
going home for supper
or not, maybe our dad
died when we were young,
too young and our mom
took to drink and valium,
despair destroying her kidneys –
bodies strewn on sidewalks
the way we treat ourselves
when we hurt really hurt…
this brilliant man,
his Father’s first gift
canvas white plastic
shopping bags split –
stretched out
on his makeshift desk
in the pantry
his uncle Junebug
Mother’s brother
a caricature
from what vision careens
through electric hand
to the page eye scapes
delicate oils, pastels
delineate a man supreme
hustler, emerald fashionista
gold ring
bullfight like
between nostrils
a spectacle
to behold
no matter
the planet
an uncle,
those lucky
with aunts and uncles aplenty
never want
for metaphors
pupil light pierces looker
the “no count”
hangs out
with royalty
in portrait galleries
gazes back at the hoity-toity.
—Angie Trudell Vasquez
Original poem based on Nathaniel Mary Quinn’s artist talk and his piece entitled, Junebug. Please
note the italicized lines are mine, recycled from other poems, and not Nathaniel Mary Quinn.

IMAGE CREDITS
FRONT COVER Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Miss Chairs (detail), 2014. Black charcoal, gouache, oil pastel, oil paint on Coventry
vellum paper. 50 x 43 1/2 inches. Collection of Andre Des Rochers, New York. Image courtesy of the artist and Rhona Hoffman
Gallery.
GROWN LITTLE GIRL Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Grown Little Girl, 2016. Black charcoal, gouache, soft pastel, oil pastel on Coventry
vellum paper. 21 1/2 x 21 1/2 inches. Jones Hawrylewicz Lieber Collection. Image courtesy of the artist and Rhona Hoffman
Gallery.Photography by Alex Yuzdon.
THIS IS LIFE Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Bring Yo’ Big Teeth Ass Here! 2017. Black charcoal, gouache, soft pastel, oil pastel, oil paint
stick, acrylic gold powder on Coventry vellum paper. 38 x 38 inches. Collection of Lee Wesley and Victoria Granacki, Chicago.
Image courtesy of the artist and Rhona Hoffman Gallery. Photography by Michael Tropea.
MIS-CONFIGURED Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Junebug, 2015. Black charcoal, gouache, soft pastel, oil pastel, oil paint, paint stick,
acrylic silver leaf on Coventry vellum paper. 41 x 44 inches. Collection of Dr. Daniel S. Berger, Chicago. Image courtesy of the
artist and Rhona Hoffman Gallery. Photography by RCH.
AT THE NATHANIEL MARY QUINN EXHIBITION: WEARING THE CROWNS Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Buck Nasty: Player Hater’s
Ball, 2017. Black charcoal, gouache, soft pastel, oil pastel, acrylic gold powder on Coventry vellum paper. 34 1/2 x 35 inches. Hall
Collection. Image courtesy of the artist and Rhona Hoffman Gallery. Photography by Michael Tropea.
MAMA SAID KNOCK YOU OUT Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Big Bertha, 2015. Black charcoal, soft pastel, oil pastel, oil paint, paint
stick, acrylic, silver leaf, gouache on Coventry vellum paper. 38 x 41 inches. Collection of the Sheldon Museum of Art, University
of Nebraska-Lincoln, Olga N. Sheldon Acquisition Trust, U-6501.2015. Image courtesy of the artist and Rhona Hoffman Gallery.
Photography by RCH.
BACK COVER MMoCA Opening of Nathaniel Mary Quinn: This is Life. Photo by Sharon Vanorny.

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