WE ARE YOU PROJECT
Bio: George Nelson Preston
George Nelson Preston was born in NYC on December 14th, 1938, into an art and music family. Preston’s poems have appeared in journals such as Beat Coast East, Black Renaissance Noire, and Dialectical Anthropology. His "Oda a Nelson Mandela" was solicited as the keynote poem at the opening of the Festival Mandela in Santo Domingo 2010.
Dr. Preston earned the Ph. D. in Art History from the Faculty of Pure Science and Philosophy, Columbia University in 1973. His career in art history and criticism includes installation of the African Hall of the Brooklyn Museum in1968; Curator of the America 500 exhibition for the government of Argentina in 1992, in which he replaced the usual critical catalog essay with Belle Lettre style poems for each work of art. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Florence Biennale; and, he has written several books, articles and reviews on contemporary and African Art. Most recently Preston was on the planning committee for The Primero Encontro AfroAtlantico at the Museu AfroAbrasil in São Paulo in 2011. Preston is a recipient of the prestigious "Editor’s Choice Award for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry."
(Photo by Petra Richterova)
Preston is co-founder of the Museum of Art and Origins, an affiliate of AMAFRO, Salvador da Bahia and Museu Céu Aberto, São Paulo. His career in poetry started with his founding of The Artist’s Studio. In the book Kerouac and Friends, the photo journalist Fred W. Mc Darrah wrote the following:
"George Nelson Preston had a storefront ―Artist’s Studio‖ at 48 East 3rd Street where he orchestrated the most important poetry readings ever held in New York. One historic program on Sunday February 15, 1959, included Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso, Orlovsky, LeRoi Jones, Garcia Villa, [and] Ted Joans."
Norman Mailer, Paddy Cheyevsky, Seymour Krim, Larry Rivers and Frank O’Hara were also frequent readers at the Artist’s Studio.
IT WAS 1965, SUMMER AND HOT
flashes kinky-curled-up our hair
and Diana just out of London,
lissome – as in taught – lycurve
dandauburn hair guilded in tremolo sunlight
our newly whet ardor quaking our clothes.
She was touring and heading for the Alamo
with no more moments to linger in Manhattan
where weʼd met on Broadway
right in front of College Walk and I said
"letʼs meet, go down to Mexico."
And she took off her panties right there,
"Give these to me
when we get down
south of the Border, George."
So! You think this is cool?
And before the sun was under
the cliffs across Broadway
over Henrik Hudsonʼs River
I was gone from my job
at the embroidery design factory
wayupintheBronx under the L
! And why, I donʼt know why,
! but I thought about this movie I saw in 1966,
! and who the hell was Porfirio Diaz? But anyway…
So! You think this is cool, huh?
So did I —until we saw a statue
of Lord Tlaloc. He had telescopic eyes,
behind them lurked a million lacrimal glands
presumed to turn prayers to abundant rain
and a coronary problem fed by sacrifices
of conch shells, whole jaguars, jade celts, sting ray spines
and woe made of palpitating ripped out human hearts.
"The campesinos ….uh, the line when the hancendero
asks, “what did you say your name…” and he says,
“Zapata. Emiliano Zapata.” Alright. So the campesinos…
they were the bleakest clothed trees I could imagine.
Sleeves turned inside-out by humanityʼs void
and so we read the ancient way of writing
on the battered parapets of Quetzalcoatlʼs temple at Teotihuacán
and in the chiseled embroidery of Lord Chaacʼs stony poncho
further South at Chihén Itzá and the campesinos
being suitors of bare lives,
they chased the currents of Godʼs tears….
"(gun shots) No, the horse!
! Get the horse! Kill the horse,
! donʼt let the horse escape,
no dejalo escabillerse ….kill his horse…
(©George Nelson Preston, Atzcapotzalcualco, Mexico and NYC. August, 1965)
En La Estela de Las Carabelas
(Poema conmemorativo en la manera de Nicolás Guillen
por UNESCO, Santo Domingo, October 17, 2006)
En la Estela de Las Carabelas
había ya Cabo Tres Puntos,
en la estela de las carabelas
había ya Kisama
y las alas de las gaviotas tocan el agua.
en la estela de las carabelas
había ya el Fortin de Elimina,
en la estela de las carabelas
habia ya Gran Popo. Cuentame
si los delfines bailaron y cantaron,
en la estela de las carabelas
había ya Rio Muni y Cabinda,
en la estela de las carabelas
había Ouida y el Fortín de Cristiansborg,
En la estela de las carabelas
hay un relicario de huesos con mordidas de tiburones. ..
No niegues esto.
En la esquela de las carabelas
había ya la vereda desde Mozambique a Ngola...
¡Oye, Diógenes de San Pedro de Macorís!
¿De donde esta tu abuela? Dicen
que tu padre hablaba Catalán.
¡Oi Wilson Santos de Rio de Janeiro!
Quem e sua mâe, quem e sua mâe.
Tu padre habló portugués.
En la estela de las carabelas,
bajo la estela de las carabelas
donde las mandíbulas de los inolvidables ancestros
siguen burbujeando desde el fondo del mar...
No nieges esto. No nieges esto.
Hola Xiomara de Santiago de Cuba,
tu abuela cantó en Arará -
ya sabemos que tu padre fue a misa.
No nieges esto.
Óyeme Preston de Nueva Yor’
¿Quien tú te crees?
Tu papa habló inglé
pero tu abuela hablo Twi.
Don’t try to deny this.
Andruw Jones gran pelotero de Curazao
tu papa habló holandés
pero tu abuela habló Avikam.
Óiganme ustedes de la islas danesas...
No traten de escabullirse. ¿De donde
sacaron esos nombres como Carlos Freilund?
Guilermo Eeckhout y Mercedes Nielssen?
Y tu Nadège de Port au Prince.
y Lucille de Sans Soucy o Guadeloupe,
yo sé que ustedes no nos niegan.
Vous ne les oublieron
En la estela de las carabelas
las alas de las gaviotas tocan el agua
y la pesca es buena.
Palenque man go say
El padre es de vidrio,
La madre es de oro.
Desde el relicario bajo el océano atlántico
las mandíbulas rotas de los ancestros
dicen, no nos olviden, no nos niegues.
Nago man go say,
Gaga man go say
el padre es vidrio,
la madre es oro
padre es vidrio
madre es oro.
(Translation by Reynald Kerr)
Santo Domingo, Republica Dominicana, 10/10/2006
Aniversario de Acto de Liberacion de los esclavos en Cuba, 1886.
Ode to Melanie Viola My Muse
Praxiteles and Lysippos would have blown their cool
shamelessly coming to blows roiling
in plain view of polite company
or the kings of Athens and even Apollo
for exclusive purview to free you and only you
from the blocks of marble on the Isle of Paros
stirring in drowsy impatience
for you my eternal muse, to emerge from fitful stone
Meanwhile, that sneaky badass Daedalus
tacks up the Hudson in full glissade mode
on an ice-flow precisely at 21st March 2015
reinvents himself as usual and scoffs
at Lyssippos and Praxiteles, " Oh you fools,
it is I who invented your mallets and chisles
and the pen and inky hubris
of the besotted fool who writes this poem!"
Today is The 15th September Anno Domini 2010,
as the tardy feathers of nocturnal mist
spill from my lips curling ancient scrolls
of Carib and Tupi speech ascending
from this red earth called Brasil, severed
from the breast of her Mother Africa
less than a cosmic moment ago.
Yonder distant I can see the doors and windows of dawn
revealing the little town of Amparo for another day.
I can even see a small girl. Her hair is braided,
walking a dog and still further away an ant of a man
followed by another and another
and then another who carries on his back
a load of something I cannot see. Why...
is this reminding me of the man ascending
the hill away in the background of Mantegna’s Crucifixion?
You know --the one with a Roman soldier
eternally asleep in the right foreground?
Or maybe like the other man ascending a path,
faintly seen in the distant landscape, oblivious
to Caravaggio’s ambiguous angel
who stays the obedient hand of Abraham
to put an end to the last human sacrifice?
Has the knife really dropped? Is it merely
suspended in art? Therefor let the sword,
rifle, cannon and sidearm fall also
so that we can have a right to ask, is there a God?
Do not ask me. Do not tell me.
Just look, further distant beyond the town
wending its way to meet the mountains,
all of it so imperfectly magnificent
in its irregularity. Can any of this
know everything,
love everything
and forgive all that is perfect?
Do not ask me, do not tell.
.