TRIBUTE TO DANIELLE LEGROS GEORGES (1964-2025) By Martha Collins

 

This essay is in Ibbetson Street 57--the latest issue of this Somerville-based magazine.

 TRIBUTE TO DANIELLE LEGROS GEORGES (1964-2025)


By Martha Collins



When Danielle Legros Georges passed away earlier this year, I, like many others, lost a dear friend.

I met Danielle in the 1990s, when she was a participant in a summer translation workshop at the William Joiner Institute at UMass Boston. Some years later she became a colleague who taught that workshop herself and was instrumental in welcoming more writers of color into the Joiner community.

In the years between and beyond, I knew her as a writer whose stunning poems seamlessly fused the personal and the political; as a poetic innovator who took enormous risks in her work; as a researcher who transformed history into beautiful poems; as a translator who carefully brought the important work of Haitian women poets to our attention; as a social activist whose work on behalf of others extended far beyond her written work; and as a friend with whom I shared both deep sadness and grief, and abundant laughter and joy—a woman who shared herself and her many gifts both deeply and widely.



Born in Haiti and raised in Boston, Danielle graduated from Emerson College, earned her MFA in Creative Writing from New York University, and served as Professor and later Director of the Creative Writing MFA Program at Lesley University. She received numerous fellowships and awards, including an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Emerson College, and in 2024 was inducted into the American Antiquarian Society and named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France’s Ministry of Culture.



Many of her awards and recognitions were also opportunities for service. As Boston’s Poet Laureate from 2015 until 2019, she worked tirelessly to bring poetry to the lives of ordinary Bostonians. She partnered with museums and libraries, sponsored poetry workshops for students and elders, collaborated with musicians and photographers, and brought poetry to the attention of the entire city through POETRY ON THE T, the innovative sidewalk installation Raining Poetry, City of Notions: An Anthology of Contemporary Boston Poems, and other projects. She was on the Board of Directors of the New England Poetry Club, for which she spearheaded the creation of two awards for BIPOC poets and projects, one of which is now named for her. She was also a valued member of the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston’s Artist Advisory Council, a founding member of the the Haitian Artists Assembly of Massachusetts (HAAM), and one of the lead editors of HAAM’s Anthology of Haitian Poets of Massachusetts. Her public service will extend beyond her lifetime, as it continues to touch people in the many communities she loved and served.



But Danielle will be remembered best and longest for her poems, which draw from all of these communities, small and large. She first explored her Haitian heritage, as well as her early life in Boston, in Maroon (2001). In The Dear Remote Nearness of You (2016), winner of the New England Poetry Club’s Sheila Margaret Motton prize, she created boldly experimental poems to deal with such disturbingly timely subjects as racism in Boston and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, as well as exquisite lyrics in praise of her friends and loves, her neighborhood and its people, her city and its surroundings.


A year later, she published the chapbook Letters from Congo, which included translations of letters her parents wrote from the Congo when they worked there in the 1960s. The chapbook was a precursor to her stunning full-length collection Three Leaves, Three Roots:

Poems on the Haiti–Congo Story, which was published less than a month before her passing and from which she gave an impressive number of readings during the final weeks of her life.

Expanding her territory beyond family stories into the histories of colonial and post-colonial Haiti and Congo required an enormous amount of research, and transforming it into dazzlingly memorable poems led Danielle into an ever-expanding reservoir of poetic innovation.



In her final published book, a chapbook completed before and published just months after her passing, Danielle continued to transform history into poetry as she turned once again to the city and region where she lived. Aided by research grants, Acts of Resistance to New England Slavery by Africans Themselves in New England took her far back into history as she continued to integrate documentary material into deeply moving lyrics.

Danielle’s adept adaptation of research into poems was paralleled by, and I think related to, her practice of literary translation. In the last years of her life, she translated and published two volumes of poems by Haitian women: Island Heart: The Poems of Ida Faubert (2021) and Blue Flare: Three Haitian Poets: Évelyne Trouillot, Marie-Célie Agnant, Maggy de Coster (2024). A similarly transformative work was Wheatley at 250: Black Women Poets Re-imagine the Verse of Phillis Wheatley Peters, co-edited with Bethany Artress White and published in 2023. I think it’s no accident that these books feature women poets. All of Danielle’s books, from the earliest on, include memorable portraits and mentions of women, and in her poetic accounts of the Haiti- Congo connection and New England slavery, she was careful, as history often is not, to focus on women as much as men.

As in her poems, so in her friendships. Even in the darkest times, knowing Danielle Legros Georges was a joy. I miss her. I will always miss her. But I will always have her poems

To order Ibbetson 57 as well as other Ibbetson Street Publications:  https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/ibbetsonpress?srsltid=AfmBOopyQIo5Ss6oAnnjpnlDVFXe6c75p9JBeL4FTGUWY2YFkPLOfDEA

Red Letter Poem #261

 The Red Letters

 

 

I

In ancient Rome, feast days were indicated on the calendar by red letters.

To my mind, all poetry and art serves as a reminder that every day we wake together beneath the sun is a red-letter day.



––Steven Ratiner





Red Letter Poem #261



The Two Liberations of Crispus Attucks





First from his master who had

This to say about



The Mulatto Fellow, about 27

Years of Age, named Crispas.



How his hair was short and curl’d

His knees nearer together



Than common, and his bear-skin

Coat light-colored. That his



Britches were made of new

Buckskin, his yard stockings



Blue, his woolen shirt checked.

What he did not see



Is what he did Not See.

The empty space of Crispus.



How like smoke, like nothing,

Like dust he disappeared.



So to write him in—to restore

The It of him, the ad and mug-



Shot payed-for and run. October

2, 1750, Boston Gazette:



Whoever shall take up said

Run-away, and convey him



To his abovesaid Master, shall

Have Ten Pounds, old Tenor



Reward, and all necessary charges

Paid. And all masters of Vessels



And others, are hereby

Cautioned against concealing



Or carrying off said Servant

On Penalty of the Law.



For the weight of him,

For the worth of him,



Who stands presently

Martyr and master



Of his wounded and full

Self, first among men



Before enslavement,

Among them the actual



Unconceptually detained.

Crispus taking the first



Bullet like a 21st century

Black man, like a Black



Man in a car to convey

Him up the freeway.



The way to free.

The way from tyranny.





––Danielle Legros Georges








"What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July?" That was the title of a speech delivered by Frederick Douglass on July 5, 1852, at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. Douglass was, of course, the American abolitionist, social reformer, compelling orator, writer, and statesman nonpareil––an acclaimed figure at a time when the vast majority of his fellow black men and women living in these United States would have been considered the equivalent of a horse or carriage: property. If you think about how outraged many in Donald Trump’s America would be by the tone (let alone content) of this address, imagine how utterly revolutionary this would have seemed, eleven years prior to the Emancipation Proclamation. Invited to deliver this Independence Day speech, organized by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society, Douglass began to respond to his own query this way: “I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy––a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”



It is always a challenge for any chronicler to make use of centuries-old documentation in such a way as to preserve its historical potency without leaving contemporary readers too much in the dark. Most poets shy away from attempting this. But Danielle Legros Georges did this often, and with unusual efficacy and grace––especially in Acts of Resistance to New England Slavery by Africans Themselves in New England––the small chapbook from Staircase Books published posthumously this year. That word, posthumously, hits especially hard at those who associate the poet with her vibrant spirit, commitment to community, and seemingly bottomless reservoir of energy––even when (we would find out only belatedly) Danielle was suffering from a slow terminal illness. She was determined to live her life on her own terms and with her unique sense of imaginative imperative. In these final poems, she explores the history of enslaved people in the liberal enclaves of New England colonial states, making extensive use of newspaper accounts, slave papers, legal documents, and contemporaneous historical writing. The unusual spelling and syntax she borrows make us feel both distant from these sources and also strangely intrigued––as if we were eavesdropping on some alien world which, it turns out, was situated upon the very ground we presently inhabit. If your memory of high school history class is somewhat a blur, I’ll remind you who Crispus Attucks was: sailor and whaler from Framingham, MA; a man of African and Native American ancestry; and, like Douglass a century later, an escaped slave. He was also part of a rowdy protest in March of 1770 that resulted in British soldiers firing upon the crowd. Attucks was thought to have been the first to die––perhaps the earliest casualty of the approaching Revolutionary War. Contrast this pivotal role in history with how his former ‘owner’ saw him: a sketchy list of clothing items and physical traits. But then the poet illuminates the situation by saying: “What he did not see// Is what he did Not See./ The empty space of Crispus.”



Poets know how language conveys the overt meaning of the speaker while also betraying the covert intent. How easily the mind ricochets from “run” (as in a notice in a newspaper) to “runaway” (with visions of slave-catchers and manacles.) If the stance throughout much of the poem feels like that of the historian, nearing the conclusion the incendiary intent of the poet is revealed: “Crispus taking the first// Bullet like a 21st century/ Black man, like a Black// Man in a car to convey/ Him up the freeway.// The way to free./ The way from tyranny.” The contortions of language reveal just how hard the struggle has been to assess the distance between those antebellum slave days and our (supposedly) ‘post-racial’ 21st century America. Douglass’s rhetoric and the magnitude of its righteous indignation function like a sledgehammer. But Danielle’s language is more elliptical, subdued––right up until she places a needle into the center of the wound, shocking us with the reminder of how slowly the racial landscape has changed across the two-and-a-half century arc within this poem.



I will not spend my remaining sentences here detailing Danielle’s accomplishments (though I hope you’ll explore them further online.) I will only hint at the mark a poet can actually make upon this world, represented simply by some of what has been planned in her absence: France’s Ministry of Culture posthumously awarded Danielle a Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres; the newly redesigned Copley Square Park will feature her poem “How many kinds of love,” carved into the stone; a scholarship in her name is planned for students of Boston Public Schools; and the New England Poetry Club’s biannual fellowship for young writers of color will be titled in Danielle’s honor. These will now themselves become historical facts. And who, in the unscrolling years, will be moved by them and incorporate such reflective moments into poems?

 

 

 

 

The Red Letters

 

* If you would like to receive these poems every Friday in your own in-box – or would like to write in with comments or submissions – send correspondence to:

steven.arlingtonlaureate@gmail.com

 

 

* To learn more about the origins of the Red Letter Project, check out an essay I wrote for Arrowsmith Magazine:

https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices

 

and the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

http://dougholder.blogspot.com

 

* For updates and announcements about Red Letter projects and poetry readings, please follow me on BlueSky

@stevenratiner.bsky.social

and on Twitter          

@StevenRatiner

 

And coming soon:

a new website to house all the Red Letter archives at StevenRatiner.com

Red Letter Poem #241

 The Red Letters

 

 

In ancient Rome, feast days were indicated on the calendar by red letters.

To my mind, all poetry and art serves as a reminder that every day we wake together beneath the sun is a red-letter day.

 

––Steven Ratiner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Red Letter Poem #241

 

 

 

 

The Many Names

* Author's Note for “The Many Names”: The descriptions of black in the poem’s second half are drawn from fugitive slave ads published in 18th-century New England newspapers.

“black” (negro) once meant the color

of the “night sky” nigrum…

—Éric Morales-Franceschini





Once meant a line of demarcation so clear

As to be a sword.



Once meant wholly distinct. Extinction mark.

Attempt. Meant.



Many. Names for the status. Complex-

Ion. Description bade.



For the body. Its recovery. The body.

How like the dark obsidian



Mirror. Through which such strata surface.

And disappear in the night.

_________



Is deep black. Is coal black. Is Jet black. Is

Very black. Is handsome black.



Is pretty black. Is of dark color, but cannot

Be said to be black. Is of black cast.



But not the very blackest. Is a dark griff color.

A copper color. An olive colour.



A dark brown or ginger-bread color. Is of a pale

Complexion. Tawny. Yellow.



Is of a light color. Of a swarthy complection.

Of a brownish complexion.



Is blacker than common, with a remarkable

Roman nose. Is of a redish complexion.

_________



Is of the color of morning before first

Light. The color of cusp



And nerve. The color of mourning

Deferred.



––Danielle Legros Georges



“The term “race,” used infrequently before the 1500s, was used to identify groups of people with a kinship or group connection. The modern-day use of the term “race” (identifying groups of people by physical traits, appearance, or characteristics) is a human invention. . . This categorization of people became a justification for European colonization and subsequent enslavement of people from Africa.”

––from: “Talking About Race”

The National Museum of African American History and Culture



* * *

"I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstance, are inferior to the whites in the endowment both of body and mind."

––from: Thomas Jefferson's "Notes of the State of Virginia" (1785)





We are each limited in our perspective. We’ve been––consciously and unconsciously––shaped by the societal and familial environment into which we were born. This is even true for a man thought of as a model of the Age of Enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson, whose blind spots about the subject of race were both considerable and tragic. So I must be mindful, circumspect in today’s Red Letter, acknowledging my own circumstance; after all, there’s no telling where my host of blind spots are lurking. I am an older white man living in the 21st century, commenting on the poem of a black woman who is writing specifically about the issue of race. And all this, in our especially volatile moment, at the dawn of a second Trump presidency which has already issued statements and policies concerning race and culture that are, to say the least, troubling. But what better way to welcome another Black History Month than to use this superb new poem by Danielle Legros Georges to shine a little light into even the darkest corners of the American experience. Learning leads to growth which makes survival possible.



Today’s poem is part of a sequence that will appear in a chapbook tentatively titled Acts of Resistance to New England Slavery by Africans Themselves in New England, scheduled to be published by Staircase Books. Danielle is a poet, translator, and editor; her most recent collections are: Three Leaves, Three Roots (Beacon Press), exploring her Haitian ancestry; and Blue Flare: Three Haitian Poets (Zephyr), a bilingual translation of three prominent women poets from that Central American nation. She is Professor Emeritus of creative writing at Lesley University; and was appointed as Boston’s second Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2019. The poems from this project are a result of her research into Black emancipatory practices under Northern slavery, and the experiences of fugitive slaves, reflected in run-away slave ads that appeared in area newspapers (which accounts for some of the idiosyncratic spellings used in “The Many Names.”)



Immediately, I was entranced by the rhythmic force of Danielle’s verse, the repetition and internal rhyme (sometimes, echoing like a signal drum; other times, the clang of manacles.) I remember visiting The National Museum of African American History and Culture, surprised by the many displays detailing the construction of this new concept about race as determined by skin color, rather than affinity group or hierarchy. Legislation in Virginia and South Carolina spent a great deal of care in defining what constituted black––and then, when so classified, all the prohibitions to be applied (for example, forbidding “enslaved African people from growing their own food, learning to read, moving freely, assembling in groups, and earning money. It also authorized white enslavers to whip and kill enslaved Africans for being ‘rebellious.’") It was made clear that the ability to read and write might allow for alliances between blacks and poor white people––quite the threat to the rich white landowner––and the othering portrayed by skin color was a powerful tool for dividing oppressed people. “The body/ How like the dark obsidian// Mirror. Through which such strata surface./ And disappear in the night.” After the objectifying language of the slave ads, the poet’s tone shifts and becomes that of celebration: “Is of the color of morning before first/ Light. The color of cusp// And nerve. The color of mourning/ Deferred.” Just the use of that final word cannot help but to call up in the ear the famous poem by Langston Hughes: “What happens to a dream deferred?/ Does it dry up/ Like a raisin in the sun?.../ Or does it explode?” The slave states got one thing right: if the potency contained in written language was acquired, the enslaved peoples could not possibly be contained indefinitely. They would grow into fully-empowered voices like Danielle’s. Some political forces today may try to (literally) whitewash the complex history of our nation, but more compelling voices will always find a way to be heard. Is it too much to hope that we finally broaden our perspective, learn from our mistakes?



“Hello, my old friend

You change your name but not the ways you play pretend

American Requiem

Them big ideas are buried here

Amen”



––Beyoncé from: “Ameriican Requiem”

(Cowboy Carter was just awarded the 2025 Grammy for Album of the Year)

 

 

 

 

Red Letters 3.0

 

 

 

* If you would like to receive these poems every Friday in your own in-box – or would like to write in with comments or submissions – send correspondence to:

steven.arlingtonlaureate@gmail.com

 

 

* To learn more about the origins of the Red Letter Project, check out an essay I wrote for Arrowsmith Magazine:

https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices

 

and the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

http://dougholder.blogspot.com

 

* For updates and announcements about Red Letter projects and poetry readings, please follow me on BlueSky

@stevenratiner.bsky.social

and on Twitter          

@StevenRatiner

 

And coming soon:

a new website to house all the Red Letter archives!