Jolivette Anderson , The Poet Warrior, Uses Poetry as a Tool to
Teach and Heal in her latest CD, At the End of A Rope in Mississippi
by
C. Liegh McInnis

If poetry is word painting, then Jolivette Anderson's new cd, At the End
of a Rope in Mississippi, uses every color in the spectrum to affirm
Barbara Christian's notion that writing is one of the primary manners by
which we make or remake the world that we need. Anderson identifies some
very specific issues in the black community (education, the destruction
of the black family, the attack on black men, the romance between black
men and black woman, self-hatred, unresolved injustices) and places them
under the umbrella of white supremacy in an attempt to show that
Africans dislocated in America will never be whole and full people until
they understand the role, legacy and lingering ramifications of slavery.
By attacking these issues, Anderson is re-making the world from a black
or Africentered perspective. Anderson refuses to accept the notion that
African Americans are somehow innately inferior or prone to destructive
behavior and links the destructive elements in African American life to
the legacy of slavery. She does not do this as an attempt to make white
folks the antagonist in a black play. She does this as an attempt to get
at the root of dysfunctional communities. Rather than deal with the
symptom, which is the popular notion today, Anderson goes to the virus
of black dysfunction, which is the unresolved, lingering ramifications
of slavery and white supremacy. These are the issues with which Africans
around the globe must address to heal and evolve.

In many ways this work is about evolution. It certainly displays
Anderson 's growth as a writer. Past Lives, Still Living: Traveling the
Pathways to Freedom, Anderson 's first book, and Love and Revolution
Underground, her first cd, are well constructed works that breathe life
into the continued struggle of Africans to reconnect to their African
selves. At the End of a Rope in Mississippi, however, displays more of
Anderson 's global awareness and her ability to use Mississippi as a
microcosm of America. Also, Anderson 's images are more vivid, precise
and well placed. She is now better able to balance her two loves of the
narrative and verse in a manner that they compliment each other instead
of battling with each other. We take the odyssey with Anderson because
she places well structured images as landmarks along our way, which
propel us to the next point along the journey. There is also an
evolution in her understanding of community. Anderson is a griot in that
she uses everything at her disposal to record and express her people's
journey. This includes other artists and activists. This cd not only
displays Anderson 's talents, but it also displays more of the legacy of
black Mississippi's artistic and intellectual power. Along with local
musicians, Ezra Brown, jazz musician and owner of 7 All Arts Cafe, Daryl
Pete, guitarist and co-owner of Airtight Productions, Ron Carbo, jazz
musician and owner of Soul Kitchen Studio, and Darryl Reeves, jazz
musician, Anderson collaborates with local intellects and activists such
as Bob Moses, Civil Rights Activist and founder of the Algebra Project,
Chokwe Lumumba, Civil Rights Activist and attorney, and Charles Tisdale,
Civil Rights Activist and editor/publisher of the Jackson Advocate.

The work opens with a strong sense of community. Anderson receives a
phone call from a female artist as she is on her way out the door. What
is interesting about this call is that the sister lives in California.
With this call, Anderson is redefining community to mean more than the
people with whom you physically live. Community, in the Pan-African
sense, means the community of people who have the same concerns and
issues as you, whether locally or globally. This motif is continued as
Anderson arrives at a local poetry spot to chat with other musicians
before the first poem. Anderson is showing that good (useful) artists
must be connected to their communities. Art is the mirror of a people;
it is, in many ways, the people's DNA. If an artist is not connected to
her community, then the art is worthless. What makes Anderson 's art so
powerful is her connection to the community.

The first poem, "A Need to Respond," is a collaboration with local
guitarist, Daryl Pete, in which Anderson "wants to resurrect the spirit
of Jimi Hendrix." This duo sets the haunting tone for the album. Pete's
licks and Anderson 's words cry, scream, coddle, and funk in a manner
which causes us to understand that music and words are merely or need to
respond to life--as Smokey Robinson asserts, art is just our souls
responding. Art is a need to respond to life. Her words are "dripping
from my tongue like venom from a rattler's bite injected into your
skin..." Art is supposed to affect/infect people in a serious way. This
is Anderson 's desire, to create a work that will cause a catharsis in
the receiver--make the receiver so horrified, so appalled of global and
human injustices that we have an involuntary need to regurgitate all of
our iniquities. In a similar manner, the artist's work is merely a
natural regurgitation of all that the world is.

Anderson is not only responding to Raynard Johnson's death but to the
notion that white Mississippians had the gall not to consider the notion
or the possibility of a lynching when black children are still lynched
by gun violence, the erosion of their families by poverty and crack, the
legal system, and the department of education. Anderson's need to
respond is a need to respond to living in a world where being black is a
liability because African peoples suffer from the schizophrenia of the
what Cornell West calls the "normative white gaze," or what Langston
Hughes calls "the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of
American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American
as possible." This is a form of psychological lynching, which is the
greatest asset of lynching, the psychological control over Africans.
Writing is one of the ways that African Americans have been able to
fight against this psychological control by refuting that they are
sub-human by producing works that defy their inferiority. Anderson is
not what Zora Neale Hurston calls "tragically colored," but she, as an
artist, has a responsibility to tell the truth. This means that often
the pictures that she paints are not pretty, in the false Victorian
fallacy that European expansion brought the world civilization, but her
work is beautiful in that (B)eauty is (T)ruth. She dips her pen into the
bowels of humanity, enabling us to release the excrement of our
existence, releasing the toxins held in our metaphysical selves. If we,
the world, want to heal from a history and legacy of global inhumanity,
we must hear and heed Anderson 's words rather than hide from them.

Along with the poetry, the cd contains =
interviews/conversations/dialogues with three of the most important
figures in Mississippi and Civil Rights history: Moses, Lumumba, and
Tisdale. The interviews are based on Anderson 's weekly radio show, the
Mississippi Cipher, and work as examples of Anderson being what Kalamu
ya Salaam calls a neo-griot. Griots use the tools and technology of
their day to disseminate their work to the masses. ya Salaam's concern
is that modern griots are not using all of the tools of technology to
get their work to the masses. As ya Salaam asserts, "If you do not have
Internet access, you are not serious about being a writer...at least not
in the tradition of being a griot." Anderson combines her radio show,
her cds, and her oral presentations as supplements to her writing. This
combining of her radio show with her recorded poetry speaks of an artist
who wishes to evolve in a manner that her work is relevant and easily
accessible to a wide audience.

The conversations are also relevant because they represent the oral
nature of African American art as creative expression and a manner to
pass along history. The dialogue is akin to the African call and
response technique where the artist's work is directly related to the
community. Thus, the conversations become key to contextualizing
Anderson 's poetry as well has keeping the linear progression of the
subject matter. Poetry comes from a "need to respond," or a need to
articulate our ideas about life experiences. These conversations with
community activists work, then, on three levels: The first is discourse
as a tool to examine our community. Anderson is taking the discourse
from radio, television and academic conferences and bringing it back to
the community folk. Through this, she is sharing the power of front
porch meetings and storytelling. Anderson is refuting the lie that we
talk only about Jerry Springer or Oprah. The truth is that the discourse
is what has always sustained black culture and survival, as in Earnest
Gains' A Gathering of Old Men in which storytelling was the only tool
and voice the black community had against the injustice that they
suffered. Secondly, the conversations show from where artist gain their
inspiration. The issues in all of the conversations appear in Anderson 's
poetry. Anderson 's work is an amalgamation of her life experiences (her
childhood, her romances, her formal study, the people whom she has met
in her lifetime). Finally, the conversations are an urge to reconnect or
close the generation gap that exists in the African American community.
With Lumumba, Tisdale and Moses, Anderson places herself as the student
or child learning from the elders. African American children need to
reconnect with their living, breathing and walking libraries. At the
same token, African American elders need to find ways to spend time with
and reconnect to African American children. These conversations show the
importance of mentoring relationships in the passing along of history to
maintain and perpetuate a positive community.

Anderson 's conversation with Moses places lynching in a socio-political
and historical context. We understand lynching as a practice or a tool
to maintain white supremacy and black second-class citizenship. Moses
urges us to understand lynching in this manner so that we are better
able to understand lynching in all of its forms. As he asserts, "gun
violence is the new form of lynching...King was lynched by gun violence.
Malcolm was lynched by gun violence. Me and Jimmy Travis were shot at as
a way to scare and control us. Medgar was lynched by gun violence...And
the Hurbert Lee was lynched by gun violence." When we understand Moses's
concerns, we understand that we need always do critical thinking to move
pass the symptom and deal with the virus. Lynching is a symptom. White
supremacy is the virus. If we know this, we are better able to recognize
and identify lynching in all of its forms.

"Medgar's Last Words" is a tribute to Evers and a call for African
Americans to heed the call of the ancestors. In Hamlet, Hamlet is
propelled to bring justice to a past crime by his father's ghost. Yet,
this is treated in a trivial manner when African Americans talk about
reconnecting to their ancestors as a guide to their actions and future.
This work will disturb many who wish to see the past as something that
no longer concerns us. Anderson is dealing with history as a current
acting agent in the lives of man. If we do not heed the lingering calls
of the ghost of the past, we will be damned to hell and insanity. Did
not Hamlet dangle on the edges of insanity until he chose to deal with
his present by dealing with the past? Anderson assets this. "I slay the
system (the continued system of oppression) with words and deeds...The
truth is what I hear. It is you that I hear...the shadows on the wall
demand that I do something...I use words to right the wrongs...turn me
lose." The "you" that Anderson hears is not only the voice of Evers but
the voice of history, demanding that we do something. The "shadows on
the wall" represent the lingering cloud of shame and injustice that
hovers over the head of Mississippi and America until they both make
right their past wrongs.

"Lynching on My Mind" is notable because Anderson is recreating a
technique called free-writing, where a writer sits down and just writes
whatever comes to mind. For the most part it is a technique used to hone
one's instrument or to keep oneself ready at all times. What we find in
this brainstorm is that Anderson 's tool is well oiled and clicking on
all cylinders. There is an excellent marriage between her improvisation
and that of the piano player. Anderson 's cd is not the ranting of a
frustrated rapper, like so many "spoken word" cds. Anderson uses music
as a backdrop, often in a metaphoric sense to enhance atmosphere. But,
it is her words that are the driving element of this work. As "Lynching
on My Mind" blurs almost into a scat, Anderson takes random snapshots of
verbal pictures and lays them, one on the other, until she has built her
piece--another picture of black life under the umbrella of white
supremacy.

Anderson 's conversation with Charles Tisdale prompts us to understand
Mississippi as the axis and meter for world civilization. Tisdale wishes
us to understand that by forgetting our history we lose our way along
the path of justice, freedom and autonomy. Tisdale asserts, "Our leaders
no longer live with us. They live with people who don't care about us.
Therefore, our leaders do not care about us." Tisdale's worlds cause us
to understand that losing our history causes us to lose our integrity
and our intensity in our struggle toward first-class citizenship.
Furthermore, Tisdale calls us to W. E. B. DuBois' notion that art is
propaganda and a tool, first and foremost, of teaching. Until we realize
this, our community "caucus will continue to twist in the wind of the
city council."

In "Straighten out This Miss," Anderson addresses the issues of
self-hatred and American hypocrisy. "Self imposed genocide, somebody
lied..." Anderson is shining a light on some of the destructive
behaviors and attitudes of African Americans and linking these attitudes
and behaviors to a self-hatred inspired by always trying to live up to
certain white standards. Much like Pecola in Toni Morrison's The Bluest
Eye, Anderson shows how black America's love for white society more than
they love themselves creates in them a self-hatred, which justifies
their inferiority, allowing them to place themselves in a secondary
position. "You feel bad about Jerret Ledbetter." Ledbetter was a local,
mentally challenged white man who was beat to death by another white
man. Anderson juxtaposes the public outcry over Ledbetter to the
deafening sounds of apathy for black children who go without on a daily
bases. "Stop praying for others before you pray for yourself." In doing
this, Anderson is equating freedom with dignity and self-respect. "How
you gone be free, standing on the land where Medgar, Channey, Goodman
and Schwner were shot down...where everyday you get clowned in the
Jitney Grocery Store?" Thus, for African Americans to be a free and
autonomous people, they must alleviate the grip that self-hatred has on
their community and learn to love themselves as much as they love
America.

In "The 13th Letter," Anderson continues to invoke the necessity of a
connection with the ancestors. It is the spiritual connection and
essence which has gotten African American through this existential
existence. The voices of the ancestors keep us grounded and rooted in
our work of making our communities better. "Knowledge and rage
tap-dancing like Mr. Bo Jangles doing a soft shoe on my chest." By
hearing and heeding the calls of the ancestors, we have a responsibility
to fight to make things right for their souls. "I hear the tree moan...I
see blood raining from Mississippi trees falling on white magnolias."
The blood falling on white magnolias represents the role of the artists
to refute the lie of white civility's positive affect on black culture,
not allowing movies such as Patriot, staring Mel Gibson, to wipe away
the reality that while the American colonist were fighting for their own
freedom, they were denying the freedom of black people. As ya Salaam
asserts, "The words, 'all men are created equal,' were first uttered by
men who had slaves." It is the job of the artist to tell the truth, and
Anderson does that.

In Anderson 's conversation with Lumumba, he provides a historical
overview of the colors of the African Liberation Flag and the symbolism
of those colors. Central to his discussion is the assertion that African
black nationalist within America are not seeking to create a nation,
they are a nation, both because of their one God, one aim, and one
destiny as well as because America has worked to keep black people a
separate and second-class group from the mainstream of America. Lumumba
challenges black people to understand that in order to be free they will
need a land. His question is, "How many are up to the challenge of
fighting for a land where they can be free people?"

"Stars and Bars" is an answer to those who criticize Anderson for
placing too much emphases on the past. Anderson connects black concern
around Raynard Johnson to white support of the rebel flag. When so
called Mississippi intellects and statesmen such as author Shelby Foote
proclaims, "confederate flag forever," Anderson relates this to the need
for African peoples to see themselves as a nation, as Lumumba asserts,
and strive to end their oppression through the building of a strong and
sovereign people. She is able to find--in the words and desires of Foote
and others--history's continuous oppressive hand over black life as
evident in the state flag. For Anderson, the survival of African
Americans rests on the necessity to remove black babies from beneath
this symbol of oppression. "

"Back to the Sack (When I Was a Sperm)" is a longing for African
Americans to return back to an Africentric view of the world. African
Americans have embraced a European perspective in order to compete in
its capitalistic system. By embracing this view of the world, they have
embraced, accepted and eternalized the negative view of themselves. What
Anderson wishes to show is that an understanding of history and the
embracing of African and African American tradition and culture is what
has preserved African Americans. She uses a sperm's survival as a
metaphor for the survival of African Americans: those who survived the
middle passage, those who survived slavery, those who survived a failed
reconstruction, those who survived Jim Crow and Judge Lynch, those who
survived the Civil Rights Movement, those who survived the Republican
Revolution and those who are still surviving. The sperm relies on its
genetic coding as African Americans must rely on their cultural encoding
to survive continued colonization. She then affirms this in "At the End
of a Rope" when she asserts that African Americans are saved by
embracing the "roots" of their cultural tree which digs deeply into the
soil.

In "Where Is God," Anderson asserts that the second component to African
American survival is finding the divinity of themselves by finding the
God in themselves. "God is where he's always been, in the eyes of black
men." If blacks are not able to find God (goodness) in themselves, they
will never be whole or free. Anderson is practicing what Mercer Cook
calls linguistic liberation by battling to change the connotation of
words in a manner that brings pride to African Americans and not pain.
After briefly showing the African or black presence throughout the
Bible, Anderson questions this notion that somehow black men are
innately evil. "Father gods made me. Brother gods protected me. Uncle
gods saved me." Black men must be seen as being in the image of God, or
the black community will never see the divinity of itself. "God is a
black man named neighbor, friend, husband or daddy."

Anderson ends with an expression of love with "Love Hell or Right
(featuring Arabi Allah)." Anderson is not doing the vague, overly
generalized notion of love, but the notion that to understand love we
must understand the socio-political landscape (matrix) which embodies
and influences love. Anderson contextualizes the issues or problems of
black love in a historical sense. This shows that for love to survive
and thrive between black men and women, they need to deal with the
historical and psychological realities of their existence in America
under the umbrella of white supremacy. "I dreamed you into a reality."
Love is a manifestation of building...this is love. This is the love
that is needed by African Americans to build a community. Man and Woman
must be "partners of the journey into the light."

For more information, contact She Prophecy Entertainment at thepoetwarrior@hotmail.com or www.jolivetteanderson.com

C. Liegh McInnis is an instructor of English at Jackson State University
and an author of six books.  He can be reached through Psychedelic
Literature, P. O. Box 3085, Jackson, MS   39207, 1725t ... @bellsouth.net.