During my first BHM blogging marathon while I was still involved in my graduate school marathon, I said of the poem, The Idea of Ancestry:
I can stay in graduate school learning the craft of social science research for another 10 years. I could graduate tomorrow and begin a productive 25 year career as a respected social scientist. I could be visited an hour from now by the magical god of social science insight, who would gift me with the secrets of humanity as well as the talents to uncover and communicate them to others.All this could happen. And still I would never be able to so vividly capture the essence of family and kinship and relatedness and loss like Etheridge Knight did with this poem.
I note that my original link featuring Knight reading this piece is no longer active. But while searching the web for another audio clip I came across something even better. Hear--and see--for yourself, courtesy of this wonderful slideshow interpretation:
To see how Knight's legacy lives on, explore the Etheridge Knight Festival website: http://www.ekfestival.org/aboutus.html
Posted by perry032 at January 18, 2008 08:25 AM | TrackBack