| When I wrote these poems I signed them “Abdulhakim Muhammad” – the only name I used at the time. ("God of the Universe" was signed "Lester 2X".) Recently (as of March 2003), I’ve begun to use, once again, the name my parents gave me and, for whatever reason, I’ve decided to re-sign these poems with that name – “Lester Allyson Knibbs”. All but two of the poems ("God of the Universe" and "a simple request") were written in New York City in 1981. At the time I wrote them, I was employed as a clerk-typist and word-processing operator at Chase Manhattan Bank. I worked at the headquarters, Chase Manhattan Plaza, one of the tallest of the several steel-and-glass towers located in the financial district of lower Manhattan. In actual fact, there was little work to do. I had a desk, a typewriter, a telephone – and I sat there hour after hour, day after day, struggling desperately to stay awake. I was told it was important that I be available to the two assistant vice-presidents and treasurer for whom I did an occasional task. When my friend Arthur Williams announced that he was conducting a poetry workshop I was eager to participate – not only to be supportive of a project that was woefully under-attended, but also to give me something to do with a typewriter and a super-abundance of time. So I wrote. As you may notice, these are not the poems of a professional poet. Some of them, I think, are quite good. Many others, I wonder if they should be called poems at all. I have not attempted to weed out the bad, let alone the mediocre, from the good. Except for one or two minor instances, I have neither edited nor altered them. Punctuation and capitalization remain as they were. Two changes that I have made are these: in “subway”, a word originally misspelled has been returned to its original accidental (but now deliberate) misspelled form; in “alien”, a much needed change in the rhythm of a recurrent question has been indicated by spacing – solving a problem that has nagged at me since the day the poem was written. Several years ago – I do not recall when – I put these poems into the groups and in the order that appear here. At this time, I see no reason to change this. They are neither in chronological nor in any other systematic order. This arrangement merely seems pleasing and logical to me. There are two indexes – an index by title and an index by first lines. There is also a list of the poems in chronological order. A few words need to be said about the last poem – “bio-fragments”. It is actually incomplete, with no hope of completion. At the time I wrote it, I still believed that my father’s mother had died when I was three. For one thing, I remembered her funeral. And I never saw her again. But then, a few years ago, my father’s sister (my aunt) mentioned that my grandmother (their mother) had died when her younger daughter (my aunt’s younger daughter) was three – which would put my grandmother’s death five years later than I had thought. The explanation is that my grandmother had spent the last five years of her life in a hospital. The story becomes more strange, but I will leave off here. I have no idea whose funeral that was. Some old woman had died, but it wasn’t my grandmother. There is an embarrassing nakedness to writing poetry. I am gorgeously proud of not rhyming, not burbling along in some regular rhythm. Two rhythmic, rhyming poems, “wet suit” and “God of the Universe”, are more enjoyable in this context, I think, than they would be in the company of other poems with regular rhythm and rhyme. I love iambic pentameter, and may use it again sometime. Thanks to Arthur Williams and Ptah Hotep of the poetry workshop at the Langston Hughes Community Library and Cultural Center in Corona, New York, and to Rodney Lee, former curator at that wonderful institution, for their support, encouragement and critical comments. Thanks to you, dear Reader, and to various friends, acquaintances and relatives who have read and responded to my poetry. And thanks above all to the Creator of the heavens and the earth, who makes all things possible. Lester Allyson Knibbs Pinehurst, North Carolina April 5, 2003 |
| Preface |
| EXPRESSIONS 1981 |