Etheridge Knight (1931-1991) in conversation with Stan Rogal
The
falling snow flakes
Cannot
blunt the hard aches nor
Match
the steel stillness
—
from: Haiku
Nothing on the tube aside the usual rack and ruin. I decided it was time to shut things down and hit the hay. Elevenish on a quiet Saturday night. Not early, not late, just time. I headed to the bathroom, my mind set to perform the usual evening ablutions, when I was stopped dead in the doorway by a message scrawled in cherry red lipstick on the mirror above the sink: Etheridge Knight. Tonight, midnight. The Annex Billiard Club. Arrive alone and unarmed. There occurred an instant flashback to several Hollywood horror films I’d watched in the past which employed the same crude technique, not the least being The Shining: Redrum.
It took a moment to register the full intent, beyond the obvious, I mean. I stepped closer, almost expecting to find a smiley face tagged onto the end. There wasn’t, which didn’t surprise me too much, as whoever relays such messages to me has never shown even the slightest sense of humour. It’s strictly business and the fewer words the better. What did surprise me was the caution: “Arrive alone and unarmed.” As if I normally packed heat and had backup lurking in the shadows on these assignments. I interviewed poets, fer chrissakes, not hit men for the Cosa Nostra. Of course, it was true that Etheridge had spent several years in the slammer at one point in his life, still… Anyway, I didn’t know what to make of it. What I did know was that the lipstick wasn’t mine. Not even my shade. What I also knew was that my plans to call it a night had been put on hold, indefinitely. Duty called.
It was a chilly October evening, with light drizzle and a threat of rain. I bundled into my black Levi’s trucker jacket with the hoodie up and made my way to the subway, getting off at the Bathurst station. I walked the couple of blocks to The Annex Billiard Club and ascended the stairs. The place hadn’t changed in a million years. Except there was no cigarette and cigar smoke filling the room. Still open from 11 a.m. to 3 a.m. seven days a week. There was a mix of pool and snooker tables, several tables in use, mostly by men, though a handful of women joined in under the glaring fluorescents, one such light fixture adorned with a colourful sign that read “Happy 70th Birthday.” Seemed like a family event with a mix of ages spread over two tables, laughing, conversing. There were no TVs and no canned music, though I could distinctly make out the cool wail of Tom Waits crooning The Heart of Saturday Night in my head: “Tell me, is it the crack of the pool balls, neon buzzin’? Telephone ringing, it’s your second cousin.”
I scanned the room for my man and found him, alone, at a corner table, hunkered over the cue ball, eyeing a shot: Afro-American, short chin beard, bushy moustache, thickened lower brow, his short curly black hair tapered in a widow’s peak. I walked over to the bar and asked the guy behind the counter, what’s he drinking, and pointed out Etheridge. Boilermaker, he said. Fine, I thought. When in Rome. I ordered two shots of whiskey and two bottles of Moosehead lager and picked my way through the muddle of players. I plunked the drinks on a wooden wall ledge that served as a table top, bar stools set below. Etheridge hiked his pants and strode over, cue in hand, glaring at me through squinted eyes. He tossed back one of the whiskies and washed it down with the remains of his beer. Then he started on the fresh bottle I’d brought him. I shot my whiskey and raised the beer to my lips. Etheridge abruptly moved in, up close and personal, his face tilted up into mine. You my connection? he snapped. You better be my connection, if you know what’s good for you. We stared at each other, silent, intense, him rolling his head slightly, like he’s trying to bore into my skull. He smirked and waved his beer in the air, dismissively. I’m just fuckin’ with you, he said. Not that I wouldn’t mind a hit, y’know? He laughed. Old habits die hard. Ha! And old soldiers just fade away. Whatever. He leaned his cue against the wall, sat on a stool, sipped his beer. You got some questions to ask me, is that right? I sat my recorder on the ledge. Something like that, I said. I try to make it more a conversation than an interrogation. Six of one and half a dozen of the other, so far as I’m concerned, he said. Whatever. Knock yourself out. I’m just happy to be off the leash for a while. Those kids were driving me around the fucking bend.
I hit record.
SR: What kids are those?
EK: (He scrunched his face and shook his head). Not kids, exactly. Not really. I mean, they gotta be in their twenties, ‘cause they’re in university, but they look like they’re sixteen and act like they’re twelve.
SR: How many kids are we talking about here?
EK: Four. (He held up four fingers).
SR: And what’s the deal with them?
EK: They’re taking a creative writing course and one of them happened upon some poems of mine in an anthology, which got past on to the others, one thing led to another and they hatched a plan that included me. Dumbest plan ever, so far as I can tell, and certain to end badly. And not in the way they hope for.
SR: I’m not sure I follow.
EK: Join the club. (He tipped his bottle at me and drank, cheers).
SR: I mean, what plan? Why you?
EK: Apparently, the course sucks. Worse, they suck. Their writing sucks. I told them, what did they expect? Buncha privileged kids livin’ their privileged lives. What’s there to write about? Who gives a rat’s ass? They agreed. Said they wanted to write about being oppressed and victimized. I laughed and said how do expect to do that? They said, the same way I did. (He pulled at his chin with his fingers).
SR: Meaning?
EK: Meaning they want me to help them set up a bank robbery. Only it all goes wrong. We get caught. We go to jail.
SR: Wait a sec. They expect to get caught?
EK: Expect? They want to get caught. They want to experience what I experienced and come out the other side with something worth writing about. Meanwhile, it’s all their pain, their torment, their suffering, their grief. It’s navel-gazing bullshit. I never wrote about me. I wrote about the human condition. The black human condition struggling to be heard in white America.
SR: Yeah, you wrote about black criminals, heroes, and martyrs. Flukum, the good soldier shot dead in the street only when he returned home to the US from the war.
EK: (His voice and tone went mellow and sing-song). “He died surprised, he had thought / the enemy far away on the other side of the sea.”
SR: Shine, the stoker, who jumped ship from the Titanic and left the white passengers to drown. One reviewer commented: “The poem's tone is defiant and celebratory, as the speaker sings of Shine's triumph over adversity.”
EK: “And how the banker's daughter ran naked on the deck / with her pink tits trembling and her pants roun her neck / screaming Shine Shine save poor me / and I'll give you all the pussy a black boy needs — / how Shine said now pussy is good and that's no jive / but you got to swim not fuck to stay alive…”
SR: Uh-huh. Hard Rock, the convict whom the white authorities could defeat only by destroying his brain.
EK: “The WORD was that Hard Rock wasn’t a mean nigger / Anymore, that the doctors had bored a hole in his head, / cut out part of his brain, and shot electricity / through the rest.”
SR: (There was the N-word and I wondered what the editors would do. After all, it was Etheridge who’d used it, not me, and it was a part of his poem, never mind the fact the poem had appeared unedited in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, as well as elsewhere. Who could complain? I pressed on. Leave it for the powers that be, any decision forthcoming was way above my pay scale). Historians have said that prison led you to use an unorthodox style of street language, drug culture vocabulary, black slang and frequent use of obscenities, which was unusual in poetry at that time.
EK: Shit, I had all that in my back pocket long before prison. My school was juke joints, pool halls and underground poker games. That, and the Korean war. I listened to guys high on heroin recite “toasts,” which are narrative-style oral poetry that tell a story, usually funny, though often peppered with sex and profanity. Prison gave me time and opportunity. I studied. I wrote. I worked as a journalist for prison publications. I sent poetry to the Negro Digest. I made connections outside of prison with poets and professors, like Dudley Randall, Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez. These kids here don’t want to work at it. They want it handed to them on a silver platter. Slackademics is what they are. They wouldn’t last five seconds behind bars before they called their mommies to please get me out, take me home, give me my allowance and a hug. Pathetic.
SR: You were sent to prison for armed robbery, is that correct?
EK: (He slumped forward and rocked his head). Man, oh man, that whole thing has been blown out of all proportion. These kids think I was some kind of master-mind bank robber, right out of Al Capone.
SR: And you weren’t?
EK: Hell, no. I was strictly a two-bit dope-head, tryin’ to make enough to support my drug habit. What I did was, I got caught snatchin’ a purse from an old lady.
SR: And for that they gave you an eight-year sentence? Seems extreme.
EK: No shit. (He shrugged and threw out his hands). I mean, I’d had prior run-ins with the law, so they were none too happy having me around. They figured it was best to use this latest “felony” (he uses air quotes with his fingers) to get my black ass off the street and out of their hair. The longer the better.
SR: Your release in 1968 coincided with the publication of your first book, Poems from Prison. In an autobiographical note, you wrote: “I died in Korea from a shrapnel wound and narcotics resurrected me. I died in 1960 from a prison sentence and poetry brought me back to life.”
EK: (He squeezed his eyes shut and moaned). Yeah, those kids keep throwing that comment back in my face like it’s gospel. It was mostly hype, fer chrissakes, to help sell the book and make me look like I’d reformed. Meanwhile, the monkey was still on my back; I was still using, only I didn’t have to steal to pay for my habit.
SR: You got hired on to be writer-in-residence at various universities.
EK: Correct. And whereas if I was just another derelict black man on the street I’d be called a worthless junkie, within the hallowed halls of academia, much is accepted and forgiven. The place was full of functional alcoholics and functioning lunatics. I was considered a well-respected poet who maybe was dealing with a bit of a drug issue. (He fluttered a hand in the air). Maybe. It was all kept very hush-hush.
SR: Right. Michael Collins called you “a mighty American poet.” Robert Bly said “Etheridge Knight and Wallace Stevens stand as two poles of American poetry, Etheridge being a poet of the belly and Stevens a poet of the ache left in the intellect after it tears itself from God.”
EK: High praise, and I’m thankful. A “poet of the belly.” I like that.
SR: Uh-huh. (I took a pull from my bottle). I’d like to know a bit more about these four students. What can you tell me?
EK: (He drank and sucked beer from his moustache). Not much. Two of them seem to be a couple. He’s Jewish. It’s his parents’ house where we’re all staying. His folks are apparently out of the country. Both are professors gone to Europe for a month on sabbatical. The girlfriend is Asian. Chinese, I think. They talk to each other in baby talk all the time. It’s annoying as hell. She calls him pumpkin, he calls her Honey Bunny. Another gal is a heavy-set black woman. Everything is fuck this, fuck that. Anger issues, fer sure. Calls herself The Wolf. (He pointed a finger at me). That’s the other funny thing, they each use nicknames.
SR: Really? (Something was beginning to sound familiar to me).
EK: The fourth one is East Indian and over-the-top gay. Florid, if you get my drift. Not that I care one way or another if he’s gay or not. It’s just, he can’t shut up and can’t talk without moving around the room. Never sits still. Has a leather briefcase handcuffed to his wrist.
SR: A leather briefcase? Did you ask what was in it?
EK: How could I not ask? It’s like a freaking albatross flapping around at the end of his arm every time he speaks. (He mimics, waving his arm madly in front of me).
SR: Did they tell you?
EK: Are you kidding? They just giggle and say they can’t tell me. If they tell me, they have to kill me. Like I said, they behave like a bunch of twelve-year-olds. Worse, they’re like four bad stereotypes out of a crappy TV sitcom.
SR: Uh-huh. And what does the guy call himself? His handle.
EK: (He grinned and shook his head). Mr. Pink. I mean… (He shrugged and raised his eyebrows). I mean, could he be more…you know…
SR: Sure. What about you? Did they give you a nickname?
EK: Yeah.
SR: Lemme guess. Is it Jules?
EK: How’d you know?
SR: Just a hunch. And what’s the plan? For the robbery.
EK: Dumb and simple. Tomorrow at high noon. We enter the bank waving toy guns. I’m supposed to yell out: Everyone down on the floor. I am a bad mother fucker. Any of you move and I’ll execute every last one of you. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. Then I go to a teller with a bag, say fill it. Say I want all the cash in the drawers, plus — and this is the craziest thing — I want a royale with cheese. (He takes a large swig of beer). Whenever anyone says this line at the house, the four of them break down in hysterical, uncontrolled laughter. I don’t get it. What does it mean? Any idea?
SR: Yeah, it’s a joke.
EK: A joke? I don’t get it.
SR: The kids aren’t four stereotypes from a crappy TV show, but they are using elements from two Quentin Tarantino movies, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.
EK: Who’s Quentin Tarantino?
SR: He’s a famous film director, after your time. The briefcase is a McGuffin. It’s a common literary device.
EK: Yeah. A distraction used to lead the audience away from the real issue. A red herring.
SR: Right. Like the maltese falcon. Everyone is after it. People get killed for it. In the end, it’s a worthless fake. And the nicknames. These are characters out of the two films. Jules Winnfield is out of Pulp Fiction, AKA, “Bad Mother Fucker,” played by Samuel L. Jackson. That’s his words you’re repeating when you enter the bank.
EK: And the royale with cheese?
SR: Something he explains to John Travolta. What they call a Big Mac in Paris.
EK: I think I’d need to see the movie.
SR: Probably. (I tapped the bar with the heel of the beer bottle). Anyway, same with the other nicknames: Pumpkin, Honey Bunny, The Wolf, Mr. Pink; characters from the films.
EK: Shit. And they wonder why they can’t write. They don’t have an original idea in their heads. They lift them all wholesale from the movies.
SR: (I didn’t want to get into a long, involved discussion about how Tarantino was also notorious for having lifted story elements and characters from other films, other directors. As was said of Bertolt Brecht: “Yes, of course Brecht steals, but he steals with genius.” And maybe this is the difference). Sounds like, yeah.
EK: Hell, maybe I’m wrong; maybe they do need to be plucked from their safe secure environments and thrown headlong into the deep end of the pool, behind bars, and see if they sink or swim.
SR: “Making jazz swing in / Seventeen syllables AIN’T / No square poet’s job.”
EK: (He stared at me and stretched his lips into a smirk). Yeah, you’re right. Too little, too late. Speaking of which… (He looked at his watch). I was told to be back by three.
SR: Otherwise?
EK: Otherwise, I figure I’m like Cinderella, I turn into a bag of cat shit and get dropped unceremoniously on the front doorstep.
SR: And it’s okay that we’re talking?
EK: Are you kidding? They’re over the moon, thrilled. The more publicity the better. Like I said, crazy. (He squinted toward a clock on the wall). Still some time, though. Do you shoot stick? (He leaned his cue at me).
SR: I’ve been known to.
EK: Good. Try to find yourself a cue that isn’t crooked as a dog’s hind leg.
SR: So, you gonna go through with it, or what?
EK: The bank job, you mean. (I nodded). Apparently, I have no choice in the matter. I am at their beck and call. Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to jail we go. Same shit, different day. Some things never change. I’ll rack the balls. (He finished his beer). I’m empty. Your shout, I think.
SR: Got it.
I grabbed the empties, made my way to the bar, ordered two more boilermakers. While I waited, I recalled Knight’s poem, Vigo County, a haiku. “Beyond the brown hill / Above the silent cedars, / Blackbirds flee the April rains.” Reminiscent of Stevens’ “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” if one was so inclined, the message supposedly aligns with the Black Arts Movement in that artists were no longer going to be imprisoned by silence; they would use their voices and art to escape. Ironic, then, that Knight developed cancer, so wasn’t able to continue teaching in the university, and ended working as a punch press operator in a chain factory in Indiana. I wondered whether Knight would see the irony, if he’d find it amusing on any level, him about to be clapped in chains yet again, and maybe I should throw the question past him, see what he thinks; how he responds. Then I thought, no, too soon. Too raw. Besides, he was happy at the moment. Out on his own, free, drinking boilermakers, shooting pool, not a care in the world. Leave him, let him enjoy. Like that other movie…what was it called? With Jack Nicholson, Otis Young and Randy Quaid. Oh, yeah, The Last Detail. It begins in Norfolk, Virginia. Navy lifers Signalman First Class Billy "Badass" Buddusky and Gunner’s Mate First Class Richard "Mule" Mulhall are assigned a shore detail escorting 18-year-old seaman Larry Meadows to Portsmouth Naval Prison near Kittery, Maine. Meadows has been court-martialed, dishonorably discharged, and sentenced to eight years in the brig for attempted robbery of $40 from a charity donation box, which happened to be run by the wife of the Norfolk Naval Base Commander. So, art imitates life and vice versa. As Knight said, same shit, different day. Some things never change.
I picked up the drinks and wandered back to the snooker table. Knight chalked his cue. Loser breaks, he said, and laughed. That’ll be you. With the Tom Waits’ ear worm for encouragement — Tell me, is it the crack of the pool balls, neon buzzin’? Telephone ringing, it’s your second cousin — I bent over, gave the cue ball a solid smack, and watched the red balls chase each other around the table, bang off the rails, collide with the coloured balls, rattle around the various pockets. Nothing fell. Knight downed his whiskey and laughed. Tough luck. Watch and learn, my son, he said. Watch and learn. You’ve left me some pretty good shape. He proceeded to rack up points, sinking reds and colours in rapid succession. I sat on the edge of the stool and took a sip of beer. I figured it would be a while before I got another turn, if I got another turn, he was that good. Fine by me. The subway would be shut down, but the Bloor bus ran 24 hours. I had nothing but time.
Stan Rogal lives and writes in Toronto along with his artist partner Jacquie Jacobs and their pet jackabee. His work has appeared almost magically in numerous magazines and anthologies. The author of several books, plus a handful of chapbooks. Currently seeking a new publisher: anyone??? Co-founder of Bald Ego Theatre and former coordinator of the popular Idler Pub Reading Series.