Essex Hemphill Was Not A Fiery Poet

A character in Felice Picano's novel,The Book of Lies (Alyson Books, 1999), which is loosely based on the members of a white gay male literary group called the Violet Quill*, states that in the 1980s "Essex Hemphill [the late black poet] had come up from DC" to do a reading at the Gay Community Center in New York and that "Essex was still doing his fire and brimstone act." 

The Essex Hemphill I saw at poetry readings in New York and Philadelphia wasn't doing a "fire and brimstone act." Picano's characterization of Essex does him a disservice. It makes Essex sound like some kind of demagogue. That approach would have turned off many black gay men. Instead, his eloquent, healing words boosted the morale and self-esteem of black gay men, thereby making him the foremost black gay poet in America, whose work has been widely anthologized and celebrated.

*Note: Felice Picano was a Violet Quill member.

Donald Trump, America's Savior?

Last November, President Donald J. Trump tweeted: "I am the candidate of...hard-working, law-abiding patriots of every race, religion and creed!"

How law-abiding and patriotic were those who stormed the Capitol building in D.C. on Wednesday, January 6, 2021 when the Congress was in the process of counting and finalizing the Electoral College votes?

The right-wing, Pro-Trump, Edmond,Oklahoma-based religious magazine The Philadelphia Trumpet declared, in a January 2021 article by Stephen Flurry ("The Radical Left's Ongoing Coup"), that "The radical left is making a coordinated, sustained, powerful, illegal, immoral effort to seize power over the United States!"

That description more accurately fits those thousands of white nationalists who terrorized and threatened elected officials and vandalized government property. All of this happened because they were unhappy with the 2020 presidential victory of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and felt that the election was stolen from Trump.

"Donald Trump," writes Gerald Flurry, the editor-in-chief of The Philadelphia Trumpet and writer Stephen Flurry's father, "certainly has his problems, and God sees those--but He chose him as a SAVIOR, temporarily, for America!" (Cover story, "Why Donald Trump Will Remain America's President," The Philadelphia Trumpet, January 2021.)

Mary Trump, Donald Trump's niece, would scoff at that idea. In her book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man (Simon & Schuster, 2020), she describes her uncle's mindset--"the person with the power...got to decide what was right and wrong. Anything that helped you maintain power was by definition right, even if it wasn't always fair." Also, she writes,Trump believes that you must "be tough at all costs, lying is okay, admitting you're wrong or apologizing is weakness."

Does any of that make you feel that Donald Trump is America's savior?