Melba Joyce Boyd
Melba Joyce Boyd is a Detroit poet; the works she produced for the TAS Poetry Project reference Bearden as a presence in Detroit, beyond the scope of the Profile Series works. She places Bearden in the company of the famous muralist and activist, Diego Rivera. Doing this work made her curious about the possible connections between the Diego and Romare, not as artistic influences, but as men. Boyd was especially taken by the photographs of Frank Stewart and references his camera lens for two poems.
Melba Joyce Boyd is a Distinguished University Professor and currently the Chair of the Department of African American Studies at Wayne State University in Detroit.
She is a filmmaker, biographer, editor and author of nine books of poetry. Her last collection of poems, Death Dance of a Butterfly, was published in 2012, received the 2013 Library of Michigan Notable Book Award for Poetry. Her book, Roses and Revolutions: The Selected Writings of Dudley Randall (2009), won the 2010 Independent Publishers Award, the 2010 Library of Michigan Notable Books Award, and was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award and the ForeWord Book Award for Poetry. Wrestling with the Muse: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press received a 2004 Honor Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Her bio-critical book, Discarded Legacy: Politics and Poetics in the Life of Frances E. W. Harper, 1825-1911 (1994) was widely reviewed and praised by literary critics and historians. She is also the author of 65 essays on African American literature and film, and is the editor of the African American Life Series at Wayne State University Press.
“Quilting Time”
Romare Bearden’s mosaic that
was commissioned by the Detroit Institute of Arts in
1986 for the museum’s centennial anniversary
Time. A circle
never ending like
interlocking fragments
of cloth Grandmother
arranges in geometric
patterns interfacing
pale floral prints
worn in the springtime
with satin strips from
her grandmother’s
white wedding dress,
aligning black rectangles
clipped from a necktie
framing red/blue squares
accentuating borders
with the retelling of stories
about chopping tobacco
on plantations and
dicing green peppers
from backyard gardens
to flavor gumbo
in an iron pot,
simmering over
an ageless fire.
Quilting time is time
to gather children,
to recall kinfolk,
to summon ghosts,
who resemble newborns
and distant cousins,
to recall the ancestor
from another century,
arriving in Louisiana
with the French,
a “free person of color”
she reimagines with
the next stitch
before turning talk
to her
tongue dry as cotton
during the drought
and, who drowned
in the floodwaters
after the fierce
storm in ’26
when the
last generation
left the farm for
jobs in the city.
Uncle Dre
strums the guitar,
rephrasing a blues
refrain for each season,
giving and retreating,
revisiting and reflecting
as grandmother
links birth dates
with death dates,
recording legacy
as exactly inscribed
with black ink in
the family Bible,
inside refractions of
a mosaic quilt
of rainbow glass.
Not a single cloud
disturbs the
expansive blue
reaching for
the heavens.
No beginning,
no ending,
only layers of
life interfacing
flesh and spirit,
the surreality of
returning star dust
reimagining space
at sunset.
“Mirrored Vision”
Bearden collects
artifacts from
disparate paths
along migration trails
leading North
to Harlem,
Pittsburgh
Cleveland
Chicago
and Detroit
where a man can get
$5-a-day
to sling steel
in Mr. Ford’s foundry.
Buses and trains
go away from
bone weary,
broke down
plantation shacks,
where sharecroppers
wish and pray
white folks goin’
get better when
Jesus gits back.
Loss and longing,
refracted reflections
in mirrored memories
wrapped in familiar
fabrics attached
to dated newsprint,
still photographs,
and misplaced
postcards retrieved
and reconceived
into elsewhere as
colors giving shape
and forms rendering
something stepping
out of shadow,
out of echo.
“Diego and Romare: from a photograph
by Frank Stewart”
Romare poses
next to Diego’s
frescos of laborers,
metal workers,
engineers and
drafters painted
on all four walls,
a mural to enshrine
Detroit’s working
class.
Earth, wind, sun
and rain are
four women,
figures of four races
with one soul,
stretching across
continents and oceans,
connecting ethnicities,
imprinting power, hope
and aspirations of sons
and daughters of
serfs, slaves and
servants building
automobiles,
crafting dreams
from grit and
sweat rendered
as sacrifice
to breathe
a little freer
at daybreak.
“The Dinner: from a photograph by Frank Stewart”
for Dr. Walter Evans
The photographer
frames the physician
at the head
of the heavy oak
dining table,
directly across from
Romare Bearden,
the esteemed artist
seated outside
the photograph,
but inside Romare
Bearden’s gaze,
the setting is like
a painting, he
arranges patrons
accordingly by
styles and shades,
amid expressions
about Jacob Lawrence
Elizabeth Catlett,
and other Black Art
distinguishing this
art collection of
a physician who
sees healing in art.
Bearden sits
where Sterling Brown
once sat and shared
stories about labor
struggles of “Strong Men”
with the city’s mayor,
Coleman Alexander Young,
who recites this poem
by heart to honor
the poet’s visit
and his poem that
inspired a generation
that refused to submit,
that could never quit.
Bearden admires
the doctor’s library,
and reminscences
about his generation
of poets, about
Langston Hughes’s
blues and jazz verses,
about Robert Hayden’s
“Elegies” of Black Bottom
and Paradise Valley,
and Dudley Randall’s
“Ballad of Birmingham”
and “Roses and Revolutions.”
Tomorrow,
Bearden’s “Quilting
Time” will be unveiled,
and refractions of lives
unknown, unseen
are recognized
in a mosaic made
from tiny glass tiles,
marking the centennial
of the Detroit museum.
and, in that moment
Bearden’s art
collects wonder sighs,
and his aesthetics spark
renewed purpose for
conversations framed
at dinner tables.
as visions of
Romare Bearden and
Diego Rivera converge
and their mutual
appreciation for
workers building
cars for their
annual drive South
for “Quilting Time.”