Masked Man, Black: Pandemic & Protest Poems

by Frank X. Walker

"We all wear masks. There are people with whom we can take our masks off and speak from the heart. Professor Walker is an expert in masks, or personas. And he well knows that sometimes masks let us speak deep truths about the world. He also knows masks sometimes protect us, sometimes keep us from ourselves, and sometimes cause us pain. Paul Dunbar, in "We Wear the Mask," asks of the world and of poetry, "Why should the world be over-wise, / In counting all our tears and sighs?" Yet, it seems that now, as then, the world pays too little attention to the tears and sighs about which Dunbar sings. We are so grateful that Walker has taken the time to sit with death and pain and heartbreak, to sit and tune his voice to sing these elegies, so that we can gather around him to sing through our tears with head held high. " -Jeremy Paden

Genres: Poetry

75 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2020

About the author

Multidisciplinary artist Frank X Walker is a native of Danville, KY, a graduate of the University of Kentucky, and completed an MFA in Writing at Spalding University in May 2003. He has lectured, conducted workshops, read poetry and exhibited at over 300 national conferences and universities including the Verbal Arts Centre in Derry, Northern Ireland; Santiago, Cuba; University of California at Berkeley; Notre Dame; Louisiana State University at Alexandria; University of Washington; Virginia Tech; Radford University; and Appalachian State University.
A founding member of the Affrilachian Poets, he is the editor of America! What's My Name? The "Other" Poets Unfurl the Flag (Wind Publications, 2007) and Eclipsing a Nappy New Millennium and the author of four poetry collections: When Winter Come: the Ascension of York (University Press of Kentucky, 2008); Black Box (Old Cove Press, 2005); Buffalo Dance: the Journey of York (University Press of Kentucky, 2003), winner of the 35th Annual Lillian Smith Book Award; and Affrilachia (Old Cove Press, 2000), a Kentucky Public Librarians' Choice Award nominee.
A Kentucky Arts Council Al Smith Fellowship recipient, Walker's poems have been converted into a stage production by the University of Kentucky Theatre department and widely anthologized in numerous collections; including The Appalachian Journal, Limestone, Roundtable, My Brothers Keeper, Spirit and Flame: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry and Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art. He is a former contributing writer and columnist for Ace Weekly and the first Kentucky writer to be featured on NPR's This I Believe.
Other new work appeared recently in Mischief, Caprice & Other Poetic Strategies (Red Hen Press), Tobacco (Kentucky Writers Coalition), Kentucky Christmas (University Press of Kentucky), Cornbread Nation III, Kudzu, The Kentucky Anthology: Two Hundred Years of Writing in the Bluegrass (University Press of Kentucky) and the Louisville Review.
He has appeared on television in PBS's GED Connection Series, Writing: Getting Ideas on Paper, in In Performance At the Governor's Mansion and in Living the Story: The Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky. He contributed to Writing Our Stories: An Anti-Violence Creative Writing Program Curriculum Guide developed by the Alabama Writer's Forum and the Alabama Department of Youth Services. He co-produced a video documentary, Coal Black Voices: the History of the Affrilachian Poets, which received the 2002-2003 Jesse Stuart Award presented by the Kentucky School Media Association, and produced a documentary exploring the effects of 9.11 on the arts community, KY2NYC: Art/life & 9.11. His visual art is in the private collections of Spike Lee, Opal Palmer Adisa, Morris FX Jeff, and Bill and Camille Cosby.
Articles about Frank and the Affrilachian Poets can be seen in Kentucky Monthly and Arts Across Kentucky.
Walker has served as founder/Executive Director of the Bluegrass Black Arts Consortium, the Program Coordinator of the University of Kentucky's King Cultural Center and the Assistant Director of Purdue University's Black Cultural Center. The University of Kentucky awarded Walker an honorary Doctorate of Humanities in 2001 for his collective community work and artistic achievements. Transylvania University awarded Walker an honorary Doctor of Letters degree in 2002.
He is the recipient of the 2006 Thomas D. Clark Literary Award for Excellence, Actors Theatre's Keeper of the Chronicle Award and a 2005 Recipient of a $75,000 Lannan Literary Fellowship in Poetry.
He has held board positions for the Kentucky Humanities Council, Appalshop and the Kentucky Writers Coalition as well as a government appointment to Cabinet for Education, Arts & Humanities and the Committee on Gifted Education. He has served as vice president of the Kentucky Center for the Arts and the executive director of Kentucky's Governor's School for the Ar

Reviews

[Chris Porter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I read that F. Walker wrote these in a different manner than his normal process for writing and editing poems. Essentially, there was less fuss than a poet and his/her editor might normally provide. If you are a regular reader of poetry and are able to accept this gambit, this collection will provide many revelations both personal and political. As a dad, I related to a lot of what I found in these lines. As a middle aged white guy, I learned a lot and felt the anger, sadness, and hope that permeates this collection. It was illuminating, unsettling, yet also comforting.

If you are one of those folks who might be disinclined to take this "seriously" because of the immediacy in which it was written and published, I guess I might ask that you examine what use art (of any kind) is supposed to serve. When people are dying because of the color of their skin or bc of a the gross failings of the political system, when the world is on fire (literally and figuratively), what sense does it make to sit on a poem and worry over it until it is "perfect?" I would argue that it makes no sense and that different times require different types of art, art that is produced in different ways. There's an immediacy to these poems that should be absorbed, understood, and accounted for by the reader. The "Wasteland" couldn't have been written in the bunkers of WWI.

Personally, I deeply appreciated the tone and format of this book. I appreciated the immediacy. I've been reading Mr. Walker's work since "Affrilachia" came out, and this is a wonderful addition to his work.

[Dane Ritter · Rating 5 out of 5]

A monument to the pandemic-era. X captures all the nuances of quiet (and not so quiet) quarantine life and juxtaposes those nuances with the explosive background of Summer 2020. These are poems years in the making, echoing back to the same themes espoused in X's first book of poetry. They are masterful and heartfelt -- exploring sex, love, hate, and race all within the same caesura, and blending the chaos of the year with momentarily peaceful instances. White readers (such as myself) should not seek to extend their own experiences into this collection, but let the voice of the oppressed rise in a crescendo. As X states in this book, "If you don't understand / this behavior / or these people / you don't understand / emotional or psychological trauma. / You don't understand / generational grief."

[Adrian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Vitriol of DJT. Not that it's not justified. Just that it was pretty heavy. It didn't speak to me the way that Frank X Walker's Medgar Evers poems did. Maybe because I have my own view of the pandemic and the racial justice protests since I lived through it. These poems didn't quite sync with my experience. But then I'm not black. So what can I say.

[Patricia Webbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite poet! I share his work with everyone that I know. Please pick one of his works and read it. I started with When Winter Come, The Ascension of York, and Buffalo Dance, The Journey of York, and I just haven't looked back. I've read 7 of his books so far and loved them all!

[Dan Ream · Rating 4 out of 5]

I rarely read poetry , but this was recommended and I enjoyed it.

[Isha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this poetry collection as a perfectly made snapshot of how many of us felt when the Covid pandemic began.

[Melissa Helton · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems are a snapshot of the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and its overlap with national protests for racial justice in the US. The poems address the pandemic and the protests separately and in tandem, showing the intersection of suffering due to much higher rates of Black people dying of COVID while also under threat of police violence and institutional racism. These poems address the issues on a national scale, but also on the personal level of the poet as a Black man, educator, husband, father, family and community member. A perfect example of the adage that "the personal is political."