Art is born of pain; art is currency ∴ pain is money.
We live in a violent world ∴ we live in a beautiful world.
Zora Neale Hurston criticized her own color during the Harlem Renaissance, died poor in Florida beyond sandy beaches, abandoned. Hurston was buried in a pauper’s grave, unmarked. Her grave was so lost until Walker asked Hurston’s ghost to lead her, and Hurston’s spirit did. After Walker stepped in the grave, Hurston was found. Alice Walker brought Zora Neale Hurston’s works like Their Eyes Were Watching God back to life. Alice Walker brought Zora Neale Hurston back to life.
Alice Walker won the Pulitzer Prize. Walker’s work is immortal. She published a poem in 1973 about Rock Eagle, a Native American animal effigy just north of Milledgeville in Putnam County, Georgia:
Eagle Rock
In the town where I was born
There is a mound
Some eight feet high
That from the ground
Seems piled up stones
In Georgia
Insignificant.
But from above
The lookout tower
Floor
An eagle widespread
In solid gravel
Stone
Takes shape
Below;
The Cherokees raised it
Long ago
Before westward journeys
In the snow
Before the
National Policy slew
Long before Columbus knew.
I used to stop and
Linger there
Within the cleanswept tower stair
Rock Eagle pinesounds
Rush of stillness
Lifting up my hair.
Pinned to the earth
The eagle endures
The Cherokees are gone
The people come on tours.
And on surrounding National
Forest lakes the air rings
With cries
The silenced make.
Wearing cameras
They never hear
But relive their victory
Every year
And take it home
With them.
Young Future Farmers
As paleface warriors
Grub
Live off the land
Pretend Indian, therefore
Man,
Can envision a lake
But never a flood
On earth
So cleanly scrubbed
Of blood:
They come before the rock
Jolly conquerors.
They do not know the rock
They love
Lives and is bound
To bide its time
To wrap its stony wings
Around
The innocent 4-H Club.
(“Eagle Rock”, Revolutionary Petunias, pp. 20-3)
It’s a beautiful poem.
“Cherokees” didn’t build Rock Eagle, but the mistake is a perfect example of misinformation approved by The State of Georgia and extended to Walker at a young age, as a student. Creeks didn’t name themselves Creeks no more than the Cherokee named themselves. In all, it’s an ultimate example of how malleable history is and how wrong, and rhetorical, history is. When I was young, Alabama History taught me Creeks were “belligerent”, yet Cherokees were good because they were peaceful. I’ve no doubt Georgia History taught Walker the same. What is peaceful?
Emma Johnekin was/is from Putnam County. Walker and Emma Johnekin grew up near the same road near Lake Oconee–a lake created by damming the Oconee River, for power. The road is called Old Phoenix. The lake was dammed after 1949.
Enough pain put into words, music, or other media makes one rich. Enough pain put into words also can make one poor. If not for Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston would remain intentionally forgotten, particularly forgotten by the Harlem Renaissance. Jean Toomer oversaw a school in Sparta, and Toomer often passed as a white man.
Flannery O’Connor lived in Milledgeville. Alice Walker lived here when her bluest eye was shot-out by her brother. Jean Toomer lived in Sparta. Joel Chandler Harris is also from Eatonton, which is where Brer Rabbit is thrown in the briar patch after the run-in with Tar Baby, which put Brer Rabbit at the mercy of Brer Fox who set the unspeaking trap made of pitch, dead, in the rabbit’s path.
‘Skin me, Brer Fox,’ sey Brer Rabbit, sezee, ‘snatch out my eyeballs, t’ar out my years by de roots, en cut off my legs,’ seize, ‘but please, Brer Fox, don’t fling me in dat brier-patch,’ seize. (Harris 18)
Brer Fox is smart, but Brer Rabbit is smarter. The briar patch is the rabbit’s home. The fox and the rabbit, the crow, the turtle, and others, are tricksters borrowed, or taken, from Native American lore known as Trickster Tales retold through oral tradition from indian to slave to indian to slave to indian-slave until the stories reached Harris’s ears, and eventually Walt Disney makes a movie called Song of the South that offends. Actual bombs that kill thousands are expected, but words are painful. Savage is now a cool, hip word. If anyone at all, the word offends few. It’s a rad word. It’s applied many times in The Declaration of Independence to describe a people The United States of America reduced to 1% of the current North American population. The original document is behind bullet-proof glass. Officials in Washington DC are also bulletproof. If you’re important enough, it’s another person’s honest job to take a bullet for you. Read past the two famous paragraphs of the eternal document if you want to see the savage words.
Toomer’s Cane, O’Connor’s works, Walker’s juke joint, The Color Purple and Walker’s mothers’ gardens might be, or might range a twenty mile radius from Milledgeville. Dee (Wangero) moved to the big city, but Mama and Maggie lived in the country. Maggie was scarred by a fire.
Continue reading “Eye-Gougers and ‘Duellists’: A Sense of Continuity” →