Michael S. Harper: An Interview with Michael Antonucci

On January 26, John Zheng wrote to Michael Antonucci, a student who studied with Michael S. Harper and a scholar who has done extensive research on Harper's work, asking for an interview on Michael S. Harper by email. The interview was conducted with one question each time, and after Zheng received Antonucci's response, he sent out the next question. This interview with Antonucci on Michael S. Harper was conducted by John Zheng by email over the span of four months from January 30, 2016 to May 31, 2016. On May 7, 2016, Michael S. Harper died.Zheng: Dr. Antonucci, I want to begin by asking what drew you to Michael Harper or how did you choose him as your major research?Antonucci: Michael Harper's poetry brings configurations, in form and content, that are singular. His work pushes its readers and, personally, I like where it takes me. I also see Harper's verse as doing important work within and against expectations about poetry, that often go unspoken, whether we're discussing Black poets, American letters or World literature. I can remember someone remarking that Harper's poems were like puzzles. I've known Professor Harper to channel Sterling A. Brown and say: "Let the exercise be the doing." His poetry holds to that. Studying with him-having his instruction as an under- graduate, concerned with history, geography, to say nothing of blues and Black music-certainly helped draw me into the work, not only with respect to its subject matter or its place within Black letters, but into its shape and texture. This aspect of his poetry has kept my attention.Zheng: It's interesting that Harper's poems were like puzzles. You studied poetry with him and have been doing research on his poetry, so can you use a poem of his to talk about this characteristic?Antonucci: Herman Beavers' essay on reading "Here Where Coltrane Is," a beautiful and dynamic poem from Harper's History Is Your Own Heartbeat (1971), connects Harper's use and application of the "mode" in his work with the approach to modal jazz that John Coltrane and Miles Davis pursued and produced in the late 1950s. Professor Beavers builds on a quote from an interview with Miles that jazz critic Ben Ratliff includes in his book on Coltrane. Speaking of modal jazz, Miles says "When you go this way you can go on forever. You don't have to worry about changes and you can do more with the line. It becomes a challenge to see how melodically inventive you can be." Harper's verse transposes Miles Davis' statement into verse form. Beaver's essay explores these possibilities in its discussion of "Here Where Coltrane Is."But Harper's sense of approaching the poem, the phrase, the statement as a mode or modalities offers some insight into the poet, his work and the projects they undertake. It allows a reading of Harper's "puzzling" or difficult verse, throughout the three or four distinct phases of his career. Professor Beavers' essay performs this type of modal reading, using a poem from the initial phase of the poet's career. I want to think that going forward readers will be able to discuss verse from the next stage of Professor Harper's poetic development, that "second" or "early-middle phase," in a similar way. Reading a poem like "Bristol: Bicentenary Remembrances of Trade," for example, we can solve the puzzle if you will and see the modes interlocking, generating possibilities that Miles describes, except that they resolving poetically.On another count, I've described "Bicentenary Remembrances" as a mediation on "two-ness." Sketching or mapping a field of Du Boisian "double consciousness," the poet identifies a particular geographic space-a Black Atlantic triangle, really-connecting the Soweto Townships in South Africa, Bristol, Rhode Island, and Bristol, England. The poem moves across a series of temporal and spatial boundaries and finds a way to address the Transatlantic Slave Trade, which Du Bois famously wrote about, conditions experienced by Black people in urban spaces on three continents, and the transformative power of African/Afro-rooted artistic expression. …