Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry

by Essex Hemphill, Charles I. Nero (Introduction)

Ceremonies offers provocative commentary on highly charged topics such as Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs of African-American men, feminism among men, and AIDS in the black community.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, LGBT, Nonfiction, Race, Essays, Memoir

200 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1992

Reviews

[Raul · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a pity that I had to return this borrowed book.

[Noel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I especially loved his story of his sexual awakening at the hands of a white grocery clerk, his in-depth review of Paris is Burning, and his evocation of life under the shadow of AIDS.

* * *

UNDER CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES

I am lonely for past kisses,
for wild lips certain streets
breed for pleasure.
Romance is a foxhole.
This kind of war frightens me.
I don’t want to die
sleeping with soldiers
I don’t love.

I want to court outside the race,
outside the class, outside the attitudes—
but love is a dangerous word
in this small town.
Those who seek it are sometimes found
facedown floating on their beds.
Those who find it protect it
or destroy it from within.

But the disillusioned—
those who've lost the stardust,
the moondance, the waterfront;
like them, I long for my past.
When I was ten, thirteen, twenty—
I wanted candy, five dollars, a ride.

*

SO MANY DREAMS

Had I been clear-headed
there would have been
no pattern of sanity
to follow.
Out of this confusion
I bring my heart,
a pale blue crystal,
a single rose,
a kiss long held for you
before the myth of Atlantis
was created to challenge
the genius of
Memphis and Senegal.
I long for the occult sciences
to inform you of my affections,
and if this evidence
is insufficient,
then let a single dream
containing the content of my soul
spill throughout your sleep,
and from all the nights
I have longed for you
in a spell of masturbation,
take whatever voice I would use
to call out your name
in the sleeping garden,
take whatever suits you,
my love, for now.

[jame✨ · Rating 5 out of 5]

THIS IS THE KIND OF THING WE ALL NEED TO BE READING.

It's like a wound that Essex refuses to let our society scab over, every word a scratch, forcing us to bleed anew and concede to the oppressive structures that pump it through our veins.

Vital work, wish I didn't have to return it.

~~~

"I am looking
for Giovanni's room
in this bathhouse.
I know he's here."

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recently found out about Essex Hemphill while I was frontlisting up-coming titles. In case you also didn't know, he was a black, gay poet and activist in the 80s and 90s who died from AIDS in the mid 90s. I found out that one of his most well known works was Ceremonies and of course, it's out of print. But my library has it WHAT UP.

It definitely took me forever to read this book because I have book ADD and because of all the essays dispersed through out the collection. I enjoyed most of the essays, but some were harder to slog through. But really, it made it a more interesting way to read the poetry because I'd read all these poems about crazy powerful shit like being black and gay in the U.S. in the 80s and 90s, plus other heavy subjects such as the black nurse who worked with the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (go ahead, look it up) and a woman who chopped up her son to save him from demons. Hemphill's poetry is full of the raw imagery of sexual acts and violence, yet he always seems to add beauty or a sense of urgency. I don't know what I'm saying. All I'm saying is there were so many poems that I just had to look up from my book and nod and think, "well, fuck." Ya know?

Anyway. So many intersections in Hemphill's work — race & sexuality, obviously, but also gender and class. Not to mention the violence against and within the black community and the violence against and AIDS epidemic within the queer community. He really hits on so many important issues.

I really wish this book weren't out of print because it should be taught in queer studies classes and a new biography of Hemphill (Hold Tight Gently) just came out a few years ago. So much of his work is still relevant and fucking important today. We're still dealing with most of these issues 20 years later.

[Paloma Etienne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Certain, special, lucid

To Essex Hemphill

I am reading you and I am wondering
What the verse does and when and how
You don't betray me with your words
They are piercing
And just a little uncomfortable
(It's your non pacified rage that surmounts everything)

You wear the essence of frustration up your sleeve
It reminds me so much of James Baldwin
That ambition to reach over and win.

You win and take home trophies and amorphous,
gigantic bunches of gift flowers
And overwhelmed by emotion, by other people's searches and falls, you collapse and rest by the side of the bed
which always awaits in return

The ambition for success, that which burns our insides
The quiet success that pacifies our spirits
that drives the mileage of cacophonies away
that works the soil and breaks away starchy weeds
and allows new seeds to grow in the ploughed and rendering soil ...

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! This was a deeply moving and necessary collection. I loved how Essex Hemphill employed really explicit sexual and violent language in his poetry; the imagery is arresting and vivid, as befits such important subject matter. It was really powerful to read about cruising, connecting, and loving under the shadow of the AIDS crisis and the experience of being a Black gay man in America in general. Hemphill’s voice is unapologetic, and his insightful prose really helps contextualize his poetry, especially 30 years later. I hope his work sees a reprint soon (I had to read a random online PDF to get a hold of this!)

Here’s an excerpt from a poem that really resonated with me, “When My Brother Fell”:

When I stand
on the front lines now,
cussing the lack of truth,
the absence of willful change
and strategic coalitions,
I realize sewing quilts
will not bring you back
nor save us.

It’s too soon
to make monuments
for all we are losing,
for the lack of truth
as to why we are dying,
who wants us dead,
what purpose does it serve?

When my brother fell
I picked up his weapons.
I didn’t question
whether I could aim
or be as precise as he.
A needle and thread
were not among
his things
I found.

[Kevvie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best poetry/essay collection I've read since June Jordan.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are the poems I love for- pointed, private, piercing. This collection captures a rare and raw voice.

[Cole McCarthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

stunning, some of the best poems I've ever read, queer content that is perfect and raw and rare. so many feels, also very insightful. would recommend. hopefully one day I'll find a copy to keep.

[W. Stephen Breedlove · Rating 5 out of 5]

“THE NOBILITY OF DECENCY”

I am in absolute awe of Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry by Essex Hemphill. First published in 1992, then reissued in 2000, Ceremonies is now scandalously out of print. Ceremonies contains nine essays and 42 poems. Each piece is powerful and immediately accessible.

Hemphill takes no prisoners when he describes the experience of living while Black and gay in America. In “Cordon Negro,” he writes: “I die twice as fast / as any other American / between eighteen and thirty-five. / This disturbs me, / but I try not to show it in public. // . . . My love life can kill me. / I’m faced daily with choosing violence / or a demeanor that saves every other life / but my own.” Hemphill’s words shoot off the page like bullets; for example, these lines from “The Tomb of Sorrow”: “I struggle against / plagues, plots, / pressure, / paranoia. / Everyone wants a price / for my living.”

In the essay “If Freud Had Been a Neurotic Colored Woman: Reading Dr. Frances Cress Weising,” Hemphill explores “the connection between racism, homophobia, heterosexism, classism, and all other oppressions spawned by patriarchal and white-supremacist domination.” These oppressions were part of Hemphill’s daily life and are still just as prevalent and insidious as they were almost thirty years ago when Ceremonies was first published.

Hemphill writes in “The Tomb of Sorrow”: “I want us to remember / the nobility of decency.” What an eloquent phrase! That is what has been missing in america for a long time [Hemphill doesn’t capitalize America]: “the nobility of decency.”

Sadly, Essex Hemphill died of AIDS on November 4, 1995. He was 38.

Hemphill’s essays and poetry about being Black and gay in America are as relevant today, if not more so, than when the book was first published. We could use Essex Hemphill’s voice right now. Please, someone, bring Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry back into print.

[Marcelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really powerful poetry and short essays by a black, gay author who died of AIDS in the 90's. Confronts issues of race, sexuality, love, lust, public policy, discrimination activism, and oodles more. A particularly touching story about him coming out to his grandmother is included. His work addresses the works of others, including a (rightfully) critical essay about Mapplethorpe's jungle fever.

[Juliana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fearless.

[Nina]

Yes, read this.

[maria]

"You left me begging for things
most men thought they had
below their belts.
I was reaching higher.
I could throw my legs up
like satellites, but I knew
I was fucking fallen angels.
I made them feel like demigods.
I believed my mission
to be a war zone duty:
don't create casualties,
heal them.
But I was the wounded,
the almost dead,
helping the uninjured.
Men whose lusty hearts weakened
in the middle of the night,
and brought them to tears,
to their knees
for their former lovers.
They could look at me and tell
they did not want to endure
what beauty love scars give me.
So touch me now --
Hannibal, Toussaint.
I am a revolution without bloodshed.
I change the order of things
to suit my desperations.
You can raise your legs,
almost touch heaven.
I can be an angel,
falling."
-The Edge, part III

[Mark O. Estes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essex Hemphill’s Ceremonies is an experience every black gay male from various walks of life and ages should endure. The prose and poetry between this under 200 pager is concrete evidence that what black gay men and black people in general are currently experiencing in 2018 is nothing new. In fact, it’s quite sad that the trails blazed by Hemphill, Joseph Beam, Assotto Saint, Marlon Riggs, and others ‘grew cold’ in recent years in some areas, but that we’re still facing resistance to the revolutionary act of black men loving black men as well. Hemphill is/was a godsend and Ceremonies has truly changed my life for the better.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished Ceremonies by Essex Hemphill and already feel like I need to read it again. So grateful to the San Francisco Public Library for keeping this book in circulation. It is out of print and copies on the internet are going for upwards of $200. Hemphill writes unabashedly about Black queer experience. He takes on Mapplethorpe’s objectification of the Black make body. He writes about the ball culture, his experiences of his his sexual awakening with an older white grocery clerk, and the spectre of AIDS with frankness, immediacy, anger, and tenderness that refuse summary. Read this book while you still can.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm genuinely devastated this book is out of print and nearly impossible to find. It's one of the rawest and most important volumes of poetry I've ever read, and Hemphill's works about the AIDs crisis need to circulate forever. They're far too important to queer history to be swept under the rug or forgotten.

I was able to get my hands on a copy through Interlibrary loan, and that was solely due to being extremely lucky and having a well-staffed and well-funded library system. Still, I feel lost not being able to own literature this important or being able to lend it to friends. If there's any justice, it'll get a reprint sometime in the next decade.

[Leia Deva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Came across Essex Hemphill’s poem “When Seed Falls” in Isaac Julien’s film Looking for Langston and was so struck by it that I had to seek out the source. I really appreciated this collection and its uncompromising politics, its critical eye to white and black America. Kindness leaks out of tragedy in many poems. And his writing is simply beautiful.

[b · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really incredible collection of personal essays and poetry, possibly the most accessible idiosyncratic queer literature I’ve ever read. Cherished this read, and was sad to finish it. Essential reading!

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Who are the heartless
sons of bitches
sucking blood from dreams
as they are born?”

Funny, provocative, insightful. Revolutionary. This collection of poems and essays are all of these things. I wish we had to read these poems at school instead of those boring War poems

8/10

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

We were promised
this would be a nigga fantasy
on the scale of Oz.

[thalia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poetry and prose in perfection

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

such a great collection to read in pride month.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

everyone needs to read this.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought the essays in here were great and the poems were mostly just okay.

[Scout Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://archive.org

[Java · Rating 5 out of 5]

THIS IS HOW YOU USE WORDS!.

[hania · Rating 4 out of 5]

You wanna sleep on my chest?
You wanna listen to my heart beat
all through the night?
It's the only jazz station
with a twenty-four-hour signal,
if you wanna listen.

[Sebastian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the best writing ever

[Erwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok last one for real this time.

In an art history class not too long ago, I was introduced to trans-activist and overall queer incendiary Sylvia Rivera's heartbreaking speech at I think it was the first Stonewall Commemorative Gay Pride Parade. In front of a booing and hostile audience who wanted her off the stage because she epitomized the trifecta of being trans, melanated , and a sex worker, Sylvia laid down one of the best openings to any speech I think I've ever heard: "What the fuck is wrong with you?" After explicitly reminding the very white, very cis, and very gay audience that none of them would be there if it wasn't for people like her, she capped off her words with a mutinous declaration that the fight for true equality would persist regardless of their support. When she went home that evening, she slit her wrists. She only lived to tell the story because she was discovered by friend and fellow activist Marsha P. Johnson, who nursed whatever was left of her body and spirit back to life. A few decades later, Marsha would be found dead in the Hudson River, and Rivera herself passed away not too long ago. Their lives were not defined by tragedy, but were by no means easy and though it might've not been the remedy to all their problems, the warmth that Marsha showed Sylvia that night, the warmth that saved her life, for a time, was, because it gave her the will to continue. Essex Hemphill, in this wonderful, WONDERFUL collection of poems and essays, heralds the warmth that can save lives, while mourning our insistence that it be temporary. Directed at gay communities of color that were going through the apocalyptic throes of the AIDS epidemic, Ceremonies was a necessary refutation of the idea that gay people solely exist to fuck, make art, and die (not that there’s anything wrong with that tho). That at a time when gay communities were facing extinction — literal trash bags were being used to tote the dead — you didn’t have to want a dog and a house in the suburbs, but it wasn’t too much to ask for the body of a lover not to end up in the hands of their homophobic family, or for their true character to not be erased for a more acceptable one. Or as Hemphill puts it in better words than I ever could:

“I ask you brother: Does your mama really know about you? Does she really know what I am? Does she know I want to love her son, care for him, nurture and celebrate him? Do you think she’ll understand? I hope so, because I am coming home. There is no place else to go that will be worth so much effort and love. « 

4/5 stars.