By Vic Burkhammer
Norman Jordan had rheumatic fever when he was about 9 or 10. His sickness was to become a mixed blessing: an attack on his physical resilience but a powerful gift to his spirit.
It is an Appalachian story, a black Appalachian story.
The Ansted native began writing poems more than 60 years ago as he recovered from that serious illness during the segregation era.
“They called our school ‘the colored school,'” he said. “It was on a hill, and rheumatic fever affected your heart. … It prevented you from doing physical stuff, so I couldn’t walk up this hill to the school. I was in Charleston General Hospital for a couple of weeks. When I came home, they gave me an inbound teacher.”
That teacher was from Mount Hope and her name was “Mrs. Charles.” And she loved poetry.
“We would read poems together, and then she started giving me assignments to memorize poems or a couple stanzas from a poem. Eventually, she had me write some poetry, and that’s where I started writing poetry,” Jordan explained.
And he never stopped.
Now, at age 71, Jordan is West Virginia’s most widely published African-American poet, along with being an editor and collaborator. He is a repository of history and the oral poetry tradition, a storyteller, but still extemporizes on the world of the now. Jordan will be inducted into a poet’s collective called the Affrilachian Poets tonight, at the Carnegie Center, 251 W. Second St., Lexington, Ky.
The appellation “Affrilachia” was coined by Kentucky poet and editor of Pluck poetry magazine Frank X. Walker in the title poem to his first collection:
“Some of the bluegrass / is black / enough to know / that being ‘colored’ and all / is generally lost / somewhere between / the dukes of hazzard/ and the beverly hillbillies / but / if you think / makin’ shine from corn / is as hard as kentucky coal / imagine being / an Affrilachian / poet.”
Jordan’s poetic development was a family affair.
“I also had a grandmother who would give us lines of poems to recite at church,” he recalled. “I was introduced to poetry from a very young age. It’s the one thing that’s been more consistent in my life than any other creative expression. I can’t remember the first poem I wrote, but I can remember the first one I recited for Mrs. Charles – it was called “The Wreck of the Hesperus.”
Jordan has developed, in the truest sense, into a poet and performer. He’s a griot, that West African word for a person who is a repository for oral tradition. He is always encouraging other poets.
With his workshops, his writing, his history performances and the African American Heritage Family Tree Museum, which is now in Malden, he still works to provide everyone an entree into the conversation that is poetry. He advocates fidelity to the experience, whether it’s that of the present moment or the past.
He advises young poets “to read, read, read, read other poets, to find some kind of workshop or writer’s group to hang out with, and to write from their own experience.”
In his younger years, Jordan left West Virginia for Cleveland. He met poets there, and blossomed. He later completed a graduate degree in black studies from The Ohio State University. He is friends with but doesn’t talk much with his famous contemporaries like Amiri Baraka.
His son Lionel is better known as rapper 6’6 240. His wife, Brucella, is chairman of the history department at Lane College in Jackson, Tenn., and Jordan visits frequently. He’s a member of the Griot Collective of West Tennessee, a writer’s group of about 16 or 17 poets who meet weekly.
Jordan is featured on The West Virginia Literary Map (www.fairmontstate.edu/WVFolkLife/LiteraryMap/index.shtml). For years he directed the youth camp at Camp Washington-Carver for Culture and History. A leading poet for decades, he used the pseudonym Peter Jesus for a long time. He has taught at WVU and elsewhere.
Jordan will do a public reading as part of his induction into the Affrilachian group. His most recent book, “Where Do People in Dreams Come From? & Other Poems,” features a range of his work presented in chronological order, along with an array of pictures that form a history of his life in poetry.
The people to pay close attention to, a teacher once cautioned, are the ones who have something to impart that they could not have learned in any ordinary way. Jordan seems to be one of those unusual people. His way of writing poems resembles the work of a sculptor: He collects images and sculpts, arranges and polishes.
Hear an audio interview with him on thegazz.com MountainWord blog at http://thegazz.com/ gblogs/mountainword/. Here is the text of one of the poems he recited there, reprinted with permission:
***
“HOW TO SPROUT A POEM”
by Norman Jordan
First place
About seven
Tablespoons of words
In a gallon jar
Cover the words
With liquid ideas
And let soak overnight
The following morning
Pour off the old ideas
And rinse
The words with fresh thoughts
Tilt the jar upside down
In a corner
And let it drain
Continue rinsing daily
Until a poem forms
Last, place the poem
In the sunlight
So it can take on
The color of life.
(1982)
Originally published by For the Gazette.
(c) 2008 Charleston Gazette, The. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.
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