California Quake

Each March, Professor Dean Nelson of Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego, California holds a weeklong celebration called Writer’s Symposium by the Sea. I highly recommend attending if at all possible. My friend, Luis Urrea (author of Into the Beautiful North) presented at last year’s event. This year I heard Garrison Keillor and Professor Michael Eric Dyson of Georgetown. Dyson is a wild man. He was there to speak about his Martin Luther King, Jr. book, April 4, 1968 and hip hop culture. I couldn’t resist, had to write this ditty after the dynamic presentation.

Crill Auditorium Epicenter
of Point Loma Quake

By Charles Redner

Yo, Professor Dyson
Jive’n like Ali
but bite’n like Mike Tyson.

Had a message, delivered it strong—
there are words that just don’t belong.
For a Black man began with “N”
The other invective, come again,
for a woman “H” it ends.
While spoken festive style
no joking in the aisles.
Those two words will delete
this audience never to repeat.

Yo, Professor Dyson
you shook the foundation
of our “I have a dream” education.

Made us think of race
as a on-going case,
not just historical footnotes
of nineteen-sixty’s quotes.
A work in progress
amid giant strides
providing we all don’t backslide.

Yo, Professor Dyson
you set the stage on fire
then received a standing O.

Oh, so deservedly so!

March 25, 2010