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SEARCHING FOR THE LEGEND OF Q.R. HAND, JR.
In thinking about how to approach this column for Museletter, the word “legend” kept coming into my head. In my search for a precise meaning of the word, and whether it made sense to describe qr hand jr. as a legend, I learned an interesting thing or two about the history of the word.
Legend comes from the Latin adjective legenda, “for reading, to be read,” which referred only to written stories, not to traditional stories transmitted orally from generation to generation... but ever since the 15th century legend has been used to refer to traditional stories as well. Today a legend can also be “a person or achievement worthy of inspiring such a story...”
I searched for qr hand jr. on the Web, and found a reference to a poem by Lewis Jordan entitled “bothallandevery” dedicated to qr, but not the poem, and nothing on the man himself. I looked up Wordwind Chorus (the ensemble of performing writers of which qr hand jr. & Lewis Jordan are half -- Brian Auerbach & Reginald Lockett are the other two), and came up with past performance dates at festivals, book stores, jazz clubs... but not a site dedicated to the group. I went to Amazon.com, searching for books by the man, and came up with one entry: We Came to Play!: Writings on Basketball (Io, No. 54) by John Ross (Editor), Q.R. Hand Jr. (Editor), Spain Rodriguez (Illustrator) -- a book with pictures of a native American and three African American athletes on the cover. Interesting, but not exactly what I was searching for....
AN ORAL LEGEND AMONG POETS
You see, to me qr hand jr. is a poet who moves me with his words and the way his words sound when he comes around to an open mic and shares them with the rest of us. I ask myself “how is it possible that a man whom every poet I meet already seems to know, could be so absent from the World Wide Web, a place where we look for what we can’t find in the commercial media?” Part of the answer is the humble nature of this man, but another part is the stuff that legends are made of... you don’t have to take my word for it. Soon his work will be available to all those who seek. Taurean Horn Press is to publish a collection of his poetry spanning several decades, entitled Whose Really Blues. qr hand jr., an oral legend among poets, will fulfill the ancient meaning of the word when his words, having long served his community, travel new roads, to be read.
In many ways the story of his life is an aspect of the legend of his generation, his personal approach to poetry inextricable from his focus on the civil rights movement and social service. He was raised in Bedford Stuyvesant and later Central Harlem, in New York City, part of an upwardly mobile middle class family. He wasn’t particularly rebellious but he always felt he was “someplace else.” His life did not take focus until he became involved in the civil rights movement, and even then it took time “before some real poetry came out.” His early leanings toward Marxism, in search of “creating more freedom” later gave way to a world view that “given lots of people with lots of guns, there will be the same result no matter what the ideology.” He is now a self-described Strange Anarchistic Populistic New World Black. He came to California in 1969 because he “had to get out of New York.” Trying to get a handle on himself he ultimately became a community mental health worker in the Mission District of San Francisco, for Progress Foundation, which he considered to be “good work” until he retired.
I recently visited qr and his wife Pam in their newly moved-into home in the historic district of Vallejo. I confessed to him that sometimes I don’t really care what he is saying because he sounds so good when he’s saying it. Not surprisingly he told me that he is not a musician or composer, but he has been influenced by music perhaps more than literature. The rhythm of what he likes to hear informs his writing and carries over into performance.
He described his experience while still in New York of proximity with Amiri Baraka, and Umbra poets Norman Pritchard, David Henderson, Calvin Herndon and others, as one that took him time to get over “being floored.” He didn’t write at all between the mid-sixties and the mid-seventies, but eventually could be found sharing a sudden flood of writing in places such as the Coffee Gallery in North Beach and other reading spots of the time. Once again, a focus on civil rights and social movements helped him to find his voice. It was during this time that he came into contact with the people who would eventually become the members of Wordwind Chorus.
WORDWIND CHORUS
Now collaborating together for more than twenty years, qr hand jr., Reginald Lockett, Brian Auerbach and Lewis Jordan make up the group Wordwind Chorus. They have appeared at one time or another practically everywhere in the Bay area, and have recently put out a cd entitled we are of the saying, finally documenting the legend. We were recently treated to a performance by the group at Listen & Be Heard in Vallejo. I commented to qr that I rarely hear a group of poets who truly perform as a group and not just a collection of individuals. I was really moved by the way these four men came together and put so much energy and intelligence into the rendition of each other’s work. He replied by telling me that he could not recall any “unproductive clashes” between them: “...sometimes tough shit comes up, but we always worked our way through that.”
The mass media tries to create legends all the time, throwing the word around like a bouncing ball, and not always keeping track of where the ball finally lands. But in the end legendary people create themselves in their own personal search for truth. I asked qr why he likes to go to open mics, and he told me that forty years ago he would have laughed at anyone who told him he would do it, but he likes to perform and he enjoys other people. Other people enjoy qr hand jr., too. If you live in or come to the Bay area, check your local listings for qr and Wordwind Chorus. If you can’t wait, or you can’t get here, keep an eye out for his forthcoming book, or send an email to Brian Auerbach at wordwindchorus@earthlink.net, and ask him how you can get a copy of the CD.
NUMBERLESS
Following is a poem which he graciously gave me permission to publish here for your reading pleasure:
numberless are the sands on the sea shore
us folks are the peoples who look towards the sea
vision and memory past perfect futures are
strewn about our musics like sea weeds on the shore
our eyes hearts afired dancing on
limbs aghast and bedazzled caressing these sands
hand clappin spirits our souls are numberless
like bands of the spectra our hues are numberless
jump back brothers see our sisters prancing on the sea
their curves and spheres rounding off the edges of the sands
making sheets of molten glisten we are
evocations of this sweet liquid strumming on
these vibrant far reaches on our faith full shore
this ritual clamor we are on this shore
spelling out the seasons of reason numberless
beings grow gills sprout wings drunken on
the bottom of pink coral reef then leap the sea
sailing easy to afar to a star we are
stoned reflections of to view from there these sands
who do not know they are us not these sands
our foundations on these wheels of things rolling shore
surf washed waves yearn to roll in murmurs on these grits are
relentless too in change in forms numberless
pasteled in pale yellows mixed by the sea
wind sun our constant companions on
this sphere on this beach head here on
our minds and communal heart molds sands
into cities and ports to welcome from the sea
more ancestors to be to play on this shore
notes of universal hide seek time here is numberless
we’ve known not its name we are
the growth here we are the trees we are
the creatures here so it is said on
which cosmic bet no wages subsist numberless
are the names of this life on these sands
on the dream washed up on these shores
us folks are on the peoples who look towards the sea
looking towards the sea our songs are
the bread of the shore our spirits our spawn on
these quick sands we name our selves numberless
© 2003, qr hand jr.
Wishing each of you Peace and Poetry,
