Happy to be in this issue of SO IT GOES, the annual journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum & Library in Indianapolis, Indiana. The contributors include Nikki Giovanni, Gary Soto, Martin Espada, and others, including a number of military veterans, a special concern of the Vonnegut center.. The theme this year is civic engagement. I’m very impressed by the activities of the center.
American Art
We were up to the Addison Gallery in Andover, Mass.,
Enjoying famous Homer seascapes in the collection,
The black-and-yellow log cabin canvas by alum Frank Stella,
And a small Louise Nevelson with halved stair spindles,
As well as the model ships in the crypt, the lot of them
Like doll houses for men, precise and climate-controlled
In their jumbo cases, craft-works by retired captains,
The mother ships built in Boston or Newburyport,
Running the lanes from Liverpool to East America
Or down to Venezuela and back through the Antilles—
Before we stepped left into the library of blond wood
Whose walls held photo-documents of the nation’s race
War of the mid-20th century, pictures by Gordon Parks,
James Karales, Ernest Withers, Stephen Shames: a young
John Lewis getting in the way just as he urges us to do;
Men in suits with Allah placards; a pained Rev. King
Waiting to speak at the memorial for four girls murdered
At the bombed 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham;
One African-American soldier on his way to Vietnam;
And an image of a white woman in a dress outside a diner
Who is scolding a bunch of white men tormenting Black
Human rights defenders sitting in the street, a drama
Photographer Danny Lyon saw only once in those years,
According to Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement.
When the white men taunted: “Why don’t you marry one?”
She sat on the ground with the freedom fighters.
So It Goes annual journal, 2020