Everybody's Protest Haiku

Bruce Nugent

Everybody's Protest Haiku

for Richard Wright & James Baldwin
__________________

“I am nobody—
A red smoking autumn sun
Took my name away”
—Richard Wright, Haiku #1
This Other World

Baldwin’s plane hovers—
High over the rust-red earth
Over Georgia

He couldn’t suppress—
That this red-tinged earth came from
The blood of black men

Blood dripping down from—
Young black men hanging in trees
Naked, castrated
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Not only just lynched—
But their young manhood cut off
By white men’s sharp knives

Baldwin from Harlem—
Was too young to imagine
Such horrible things

Soon he’d find out tho—
“Nobody Knows My Name”
His Native Son Notes
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What took it away—
Wright’s red sinking autumn sun
Baldwin’s innocence?

Everybody knows—
Pretty much what happened
Between these writers

The bitch fight between—
Wright and Baldwin is well-known
A writerly feud
_____________________

“Giovanni’s Room”—
Just the opposite of Wright’s
Novel “Native Son”

Wright’s failure with his—
Black politics and manhood
His str8t aesthetics

“Many Thousands Gone”—
“Everybody’s Protest Novel”
Pretty much says it all
___________________________

“Giovanni’s Room”—
goes farther tho looking at
Queer black homo love

Wright still caught up with—
The “deadly timeless battle”
Trope of black-white angst

Wright’s “Native Son”—
Still caught up in H. B. Stowe’s
Protest novel style
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Dialectics—
Black-White protest aesthetics
Changed by Miss Baldwin

Giovanni’s Room—
A commingling of black-white
Homoerotics

The love-affair in
“Giovanni’s Room” turns
Protest inside out
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David’s whitey love—
For young black Giovanni
Opposite than Wright’s

Love rather than hate—
The protest novel’s black-white
Aesthetic struggle

Does Wright’s “Native Son”—
Do the same with his haiku
Written late in France?
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Does Wright keep the same—
Protest novel narrative
In his haiku too?

Does the same mixed-race—
Protest dynamic enact
His poetics too?