The nameless, useless nobodies who sleep behind the taverns, who sleep beneath the El. Who sleep in burnt-out busses with the windows freshly curtained; in winterized chicken coops or patched-up truck bodies. The useless, helpless nobodies nobody knows: that go as the snow goes, where the wind blows, there and there and there, down any old cat-and-ashcan alley at all. There, unloved and lost forever, lost and unloved for keeps and a day… Algren\u2019s noir prose poetry of the urban, riffed like three card monte-men, or street corner Rolex salesmen. -Bill Harris<\/p>\n Let Us Now Praise Famous Men<\/em> \u2013 James Agee<\/strong> That region of the earth on which we were at this time transient was some hours fallen beneath the fascination of the stone, steady shadow of the planet, and lay now listing toward the last depth; and now by a blockade of the sun were clearly disclosed those discharges of light which teach us what little we can learn of the stars and of the true nature of our surroundings. –James Agee, On the Porch, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The precision of Agee\u2019s language in describing the ordinary\u2014a plywood wall, the stillness of an Alabama night, was revelatory. –Bill Harris<\/p>\n \u201cTell me a story. \/ In this century, and moment, of mania, tell me a story. \/ Make it a story of great distances, and starlight. \/ The name of the story will be time, \/ But you must not speak its name. \/ Tell me a story of deep delight.\u201d Warren showed me how to tell a short story in poetic form. –Bill Harris<\/p>\n LeRoi Jones \/ Amiri Baraka \u2013 The Dead Lecturer<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n A political art, let it be \/ the society Let the combination of morality Baraka\u2019s Greenwich Village hip take tapped into bebop and New Thing music and the confusion of being oneself.–Bill Harris<\/p>\n Go Tell It On the Mountain, first edition, 1953<\/p><\/div>\n James Baldwin \u2013 Go Tell It On The Mountain<\/em> <\/strong><\/p>\n The world turned dark, forever, everywhere, and windows ran as though their glass panes bore all the tears of eternity, threatening at every instant to shatter inward against this force, uncontrollable, so abruptly visited on the earth. Baldwin was like a sanctified baptism in blues and the Bible, and facing the failures of institutions such as America, family and the church. A series of sermons, by singular voices, that preached directly to my one-man choir. –Bill Harris<\/p>\n The world’s most comfortable reading chair. -Photo: Bill Harris<\/p><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/chicago.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n–Nelson Algren<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Audubon<\/em> \u2013 Robert Penn Warren<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nRobert Penn Warren, Audubon: A Vision (1969)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\ntenderness, low strings the fingers
\ntouch, or the width of autumn
\nclimbing wider avenues, among the
\nvirtue
\nand dignity of knowing what city
\nyou\u2019re in, who to talk to, what clothes
\n\u2014even what buttons\u2014to wear. I address<\/p>\n
\nthe image, of
\ncommon utopia.
\n\/ The perversity
\nof separation, isolation,
\nafter so many years of trying to enter
\ntheir kingdoms,
\nnow they suffer in tears, these others,
\nsaxophones whining
\nthrough the wooden doors of their less
\nthan gracious homes.
\nThe poor have become our creators. The
\nblack. The thoroughly
\nignorant.<\/p>\n
\nand inhumanity
\nbegin.
\n–LeRoi Jones, Short Speech to My Friends, The Dead Lecturer, (1964)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/a>
\n–James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n