Now a New Milford resident, Neil travels around Connecticut
coordinating Voices of Poetry, a multi-venue poetry and music program that has
been hosted by the Minor Memorial Library in Roxbury, Gunn Memorial
Library in Washington, Wooster School in Danbury and the New Britain Museum of American Art.
A contributor to VerseWisconsin, the Naugatuck
River Review and other literary publications, it was from Hennen’s Observer that Neil received a nomination for the Pushcart Award, as well as the Grand Prize in
its Open Community Poetry Contest for “Madison Avenue” (click here to read its efficient
and unflinching commentary on how financialized trade breeds inequality and consumer
narcissism). You can get a live feel for his timely social insight from
this April reading held at the Hartford Public Library last April:
So Far, So Good, Neil’s 2012
collection (Lulu), will be followed later this year by Present Tense.
In addition to a March appearance at Curley’s, Neil has been the
featured reader at Naugatuck
Valley Community College’s Confluencia literary reading series in Waterbury and
at the Wednesday Night Poetry Series in Bethel.
The
choice between standing passive and standing firm in the piece below demonstrates
historically how repeatedly both witnesses and perpetrators often enable one
another in a cold dance of public atrocity.
Stand Your Ground
Stand
your ground
like a tree that’s planted by the water,
near the banks
of the North Canadian River
this clear day in May,
as you jostle with others
for a good spot
to take pictures
of Laura and
her 15 year old boy Lawrence*
hanging from the bridge
like strange fruit.Stand your ground
like a tree that’s planted by the water,
near the banks
of the North Canadian River
this clear day in May,
as you jostle with others
for a good spot
to take pictures
of Laura and
her 15 year old boy Lawrence*
hanging from the bridge
like strange fruit.Stand your ground
by the large sycamore tree
near City Hall in Waco
on another day in May,
as 17 year old Jesse,**
his body muscled
from hauling bales of hay
now naked and beaten,
baptized in coal oil,
hoisted like a flag
by his neck, and
lowered into the fire,
as the flames lick his skin
and his wordless screams fill thesmoke-filled
spring sky.
Stand your ground
near the noisy fairgrounds
by the silent railyard
as young Henry***
is placed upon a scaffold,
ten feet high,
and his body is caressed
by red hot iron brands
as kerosene is poured upon him,
and set alight,
as little ones eat fried dough
and wave banners.
near City Hall in Waco
on another day in May,
as 17 year old Jesse,**
his body muscled
from hauling bales of hay
now naked and beaten,
baptized in coal oil,
hoisted like a flag
by his neck, and
lowered into the fire,
as the flames lick his skin
and his wordless screams fill thesmoke-filled
spring sky.
Stand your ground
near the noisy fairgrounds
by the silent railyard
as young Henry***
is placed upon a scaffold,
ten feet high,
and his body is caressed
by red hot iron brands
as kerosene is poured upon him,
and set alight,
as little ones eat fried dough
and wave banners.
Stand
your ground
along an asphalt road
this dark night in June,
as James,+ his feet bound -
like a latter-day Saint Sebastian -
is driven across the back roads
of Jasper
greeting every rock
every stone
until his body
gives out.
along an asphalt road
this dark night in June,
as James,+ his feet bound -
like a latter-day Saint Sebastian -
is driven across the back roads
of Jasper
greeting every rock
every stone
until his body
gives out.
Stand
your ground
for this child,
his skin,
the color of
the soil of those river banks
the bark of that sycamore
the lumber of that kerosene-soaked scaffold
the dirt of that Jasper road
has not been the first
who has been laid low
for no reason.
Stand your ground
though it quakes
though it opens beneath you
though it threatens to swallow you whole.
for this child,
his skin,
the color of
the soil of those river banks
the bark of that sycamore
the lumber of that kerosene-soaked scaffold
the dirt of that Jasper road
has not been the first
who has been laid low
for no reason.
Stand your ground
though it quakes
though it opens beneath you
though it threatens to swallow you whole.
Stand
your ground,
like a tree that’s planted by the water;
you shall not,
no, you shall not be moved.
like a tree that’s planted by the water;
you shall not,
no, you shall not be moved.
* - Laura Nelson was raped; she and her 15-year old son Lawrence were then hanged from a bridge over the North Canadian River on May 25, 1911. Hundreds of sightseers gathered on the bridge the following morning, and photographs of the hanging bodies were sold as postcards.
** - Jesse Washington was a 17-year old farmhand who was tortured and lynched on May 15, 1916 after he was found guilty in a one-hour long trial for the rape and murder of a wealthy 53-year-old white woman. Although Jesse signed a confession, he was by all accounts illiterate.
*** - 17-year old Henry Smith was tortured and murdered at a public, heavily attended lynching on February 1, 1893 at the Paris Fairgrounds in Paris, Texas. Six days later, Henry's stepson, William Butler, was also lynched due to suspicion that he had known, and not divulged, the whereabouts of Henry Smith after he had fled.
+ - James Byrd, Jr. was murdered by three white men in Jasper, Texas on June 7, 1998, when he was dragged behind a pick-up truck with a heavy logging chain wrapped around his ankles. Byrd was pulled along for about three miles as the truck swerved from side to side. Byrd - who reportedly remained conscious throughout most of the ordeal - was killed when his body hit the edge of a culvert, severing his right arm and head.
Hosted by Frank Chambers and PoemAlley's Nick Miele, the Barnes
& Noble Open Mic Poetry program meets the second Monday of each month
in the cookbook section on the main floor of the bookstore (located in the
Stamford Down Center), beginning at 7:15 p.m.
Barnes & Noble
100 Greyrock Place Suite H009
Stamford, CT 06901
203-323-1248
Low-budget exploitation movie maestro Roger Corman is justifiably proud of The Intruder (AKA Shame), his 1962 adaptation of Charles Beaumont's intense novel dissecting the symbiotic dynamic animating power, bigotry and mass violence in a story of unreliable first appearances and unexpected sympathies in a Southern town adjusting to school desegregation:
___
Of related interest:
Low-budget exploitation movie maestro Roger Corman is justifiably proud of The Intruder (AKA Shame), his 1962 adaptation of Charles Beaumont's intense novel dissecting the symbiotic dynamic animating power, bigotry and mass violence in a story of unreliable first appearances and unexpected sympathies in a Southern town adjusting to school desegregation:
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