Crowns And Halos

Lamont B. Steptoe

Whirlwind Press

   It is hard not to get caught up in the simple language or the rhythm of Lamont Steptoe’s poetry. This is truly any man’s poetry as if Steptoe had conjured the spirit of old Walt Whitman himself, from across the river from his Philadelphia home. This book also shows Steptoe’s range as it jumps from subject to subject. From growing up in the ghetto’s of Pittsburgh, Lamont’s fond memories of his mother, to being a father himself, to traveling poems, to poems about writers, there are political poems, right down to the most essential element about being a poet truth and beauty. Lamont Steptoe is a poet that can find beauty in the ugliest of places and translate that to the page for you, the reader to take in. Any poet that has not read Lamont Steptoe’s work I would highly recommend that you do.

A Long Movie Of Shadows

   Lamont Steptoe is an American poet, in it’s purest form. He writes what he knows and what he sees. He writes from memory. He writes with beauty and raw emotion that is rare to find in poets these days. Reading this book by Steptoe is a rare but thrilling look into that. It is very easy to get lost in the poems, the language, the rhythm. At the same time they are written in a very simple language as poems should be written, for the people. These poems take you through the life of Lamont Steptoe. From a young poor black kid growing up in the streets of Pittsburgh, through the jungles of Vietnam, to who is now a successful poet living in Philadelphia. A poet that swears to his mama, someday everyone will know our names. Well done Lamont, well done.

This is a recent interview between Lamont and I.-MDG

MDG: You say the Black Church made you a poet. Would you like to elaborate on that?

L.B.S.: I said that it was in the Black Church that I was first called a poet!  One is born a poet and must come to that realization at sometime in his or her life on the planet.  For some, the discover it when they find themselves on the battlefield.  For others, it is when a friend or loved one dies and they turn to poetry to express the pain they feel.  For me it was growing poor, Black and impoverished in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with the threat of my community about to be “urban renewed” by the powers that be.  I was a studious child, an introverted child who was self conscious of my dark complexion, my small stature and my shyness.  I turned to writing at ten to deal with these issues.  It was in such a mood that I wrote about a piece about the impending destruction of our church and community.  It was a lament.  I read it to several grownups in the church and they got word back to the minister, Rev. Augustus C. Sumpter.  He announced from the pulpit one Sunday morning that we had “a poet  in our midst!”  Sitting beside my mother, when I heard him say it, a little light went on and suddenly I knew why I was so weird.  It explained everything.  Up until then I had not called myself a poet but when he said it, I knew that that was what I was.  The experienced empowered me to be who I was born to be.  Finally, even though the church was a Methodist church, Rev. Sumpter was a fire and brimstone preacher!  We “got happy” in our church.  Folks hollered, screamed, spoke in tongues and danced when the “spirit” hit ‘em.  This experience for me at so young an age, would  later shape my own performative  style of delivering my work.  Folks should find the anthology Bum Rush the Page edited by Tony Medina and Luis Reyes Rivera and read my poem in there entitled “In Black Churches.”

MDG: What do you think defines an outside writer?

LBS: Well, I would think it would be a writer who is not afraid to utter the truth!  It would be a writer who is not writing for fame and glory but rather for truth and beauty and to transform the world with this power for the better.  In essence, it is a writer who is the voice of the voiceless and who is willing to suffer or even to die for that truth.

MDG: Tell us about Whirlwind Press.

LBS: Whirlwind Press is something that I established to publish the work of writers who might otherwise have difficulty getting published but who have a vital message to get out and are able to come up with the money to publish their own work.  It is used primarily to publish a lot of my own work but I have published such writers as South African poet, Dennis Brutus, Askia M. Toure, Seneca Turner, Jr. , Beatrice Joyner, Justin Vitiello, Aaren Yeatts Perry, and Keith Gilyard. It’s an underground press and has no offices, no website but exists just the same.

MDG: You were a Veteran of Vietnam.  Do you feel that influences your poems?

LBS: Does it ever!  How could it not influence what I do for the rest of my life.  I still suffer from my service in Vietnam.  I battle with PTSD everyday of my life.  I still have nightmares, bouts of uncontrollable rage, depression and sleeplessness.  Yes, it influences my work because I lost friends there and I don’t want to ever forget Vietnam or my time there or the friends that I loved there.  Everything I do in my life is a celebration of thankfulness for being allowed to survive that experience.  All the moments of my life since 1970 are a feast of grace and a blessing.  My mothers’ prayers are what brought me home.  It was nothing I did or didn’t do there that saved me.  My salvation was out of my hands.  I was marked for death but higher powers had other plans for my life.  How can I not be grateful for such a blessing?  So I carry that grace and thankfulness into all that I do creatively and will continue to do so until my final breath. 

MDG: I know as a poet you have a great reverence for the past.  How important is the past in preserving our culture now?

LBS: Who was it that said “If we do not learn from the past, we are destined to repeat it?”  America is in denial of its bloody and genocidal past!  It is folks like me and Amiri Baraka, Sona Sanchez, Askia Toure, Samuel Allen, Everett Hoagland, Marvin X, Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, Tony Medina, Aaren Yeatts Perry, Etheridge Knight, Pedro Pietri, Miguel Algarin, Ishmael Reed, Steve Cannon, Al Young, Jayne Cortez, Sterling Plumpp, Haki Madhubuti, Mari Evans, Nikki Giovanni, Lucille Clifton, Raymond Patterson, Eugene B. Redmond, Joy Harjo, Simon Ortiz, Amina Baraka, Nzadi Keita, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Essex Hemphill, Pat Parker, that keep the empires feet to the flames of truth!  We can never allow this country to forget how it came into being, the millions that were slaughtered to give us Burger Kings and McDonalds, Taco Bells and cell phones, Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts!  Those of us who are descendents of slaves and native peoples within this country have a duty to the ancestors to keep these memories alive, a duty to keep pressing for reparations for crimes committed and treaties broken.  Until the past formation of American history if not modern history is fully realized, we as a country and as a global community will continue to walk in circles in a miasma of ignorance and delusion.  We cannot go forward without going back, we cannot go back without going forward.

MDG: I know your daughter Lamer that writes poetry.  What advice would you give her as a poet?

LBS: Yes, my daughter grew up literally at the feet of poetry!  She has it in her blood but more importantly she has the gift bestowed by powers higher than I.  She must make her own peace with it.  She must be tested in the heat of its fires just as I have been but most of all she must see and recognize that profound love dwelling within her that calls out for her to stand up for truth and beauty and to transform the world in the time of her time for the good of all humanity.  I say and have said to her many, many times, “Always stand up for truth.  Always fight for freedom!”

MDG: You have known some great literary figures.  Who is the greatest one you have known?

LBS: Why me of course!  (smile)  Just kidding!  Yes, I have been blessed to know Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, Margaret Walker Alexander, Amiri Baraka, Amina Baraka, Samuel Allen, Sonia Sanchez, Raymond Patterson, June Jordan, Allen Ginsberg, Etheridge Knight, William Stafford, Margaret Randall, Ishmael Reed, Haki Madhubuti, Sterling Plumpp, Dennis Brutus, Dorothy West, Derek Walcott, Walter Mosley, Askia Toure, Anne Waldman, Yusef Komunyakaa, Michael Harper, Tony Medina, Miguel Algarin, Trinidad Sanchez, Pedro Pietri, Piri Thomas, the list goes on…  James Baldwin said, “No man (or woman) can be judged in the time of their time and any such judgment rendered cannot be trusted.”  So really only those writers whose history has ended can be accessed.  Of those who are deceased certainly, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, Margaret Walker Alexander, Dorothy West, Allen Ginsberg, Raymond Patterson, Etheridge Knight, Trinidad Sanchez, Jr., Pedro Pietri, are the ones that most come to mind when I think of their generosity to me personally.  I learned something from all of them!  Of them all however, Gwendolyn Brooks and James Baldwin are in the forefront of my consciousness for having personally influenced my by individual poems and writings that became part of the warp and woof of my essence.  That I actually touched their flesh, carried on conversations with them, had them acknowledge me personally and give me something to live by is still miraculous to me and still seems like a dream!  How did this po’ Black kid with so many odds against him go from that dreamy and introverted child too sensitive for his own good to someone who could be called a colleague (this is what Gwendolyn Brooks called me) of these literary and historical giants!  And yes, Etheridge Knight is in this pantheon as well!  One thing I had the opportunity to do that Etheridge never did and that was to personally meet and hang out with Jimmy Baldwin.  I carry the spirits of these giants within me and I thank them for believing in me and for showing me the way to endure the long distance run for truth and beauty and redemption.

MDG: Are there any that you wish you had known?

LBS: Yes, Langston Hughes!  Sterling Brown!  Claude McKay!  Richard Wright!  Nella Larson!  Wallace Thurman!  Jean Toomer!  Richard Bruce Nugent!  May Miller!  Larry Neal!  Henry Dumas!  Owen Dodson!  Edna St. Vincent Millay!  Nancy Cunard!  Robert Hayden!  Wilfred Owen! Edgar Lee Masters! Ezra Pound! Walt Whitman! Emily Dickinson! Paul Laurence Dunbar! Eleanor Wylie!

MDG: Most poets these days had some kind of mentor.  Who was your mentor and why?

LBS: The two poets in my life who shared over twenty years of communication and advice with me are the poets, Samuel Allen aka Paul Vesey and South African poet, Dennis Brutus.  Though I am out of touch with them now, what they gave me was invaluable in terms of literary advice and advice as a human being on the side of social justice.  Both men, when you read their work show an undying love for truth and justice and truth and beauty.  But they also exemplify great courage in the face of those forces arrayed against such a mission.  Their gentleness of spirit and sense of humor against overwhelming odds are real testaments to their deep spirituality and love of humanity.  The stories they told me of literary figures whose names are icons in the canon have proven invaluable to me as a person and as a poet.  Because of them, I gained a deeper sense of my place in the ongoing continuum of literary excellence and the importance of being an activist in the struggle to make the planet a more humane place to dwell.

MDG: You got into trouble in Nicaragua.  Do you want to talk about that?

LBS: Yes, I got in trouble for visiting Nicaragua during the Reagan administration while the war between the contras and Sandinistas was raging.  I got into trouble for what the U.S. State Department called “aiding and abetting the enemy.”  I was there with the poets, Anne Waldman, Thomas McGrath, Sonia Sanchez, Moe Seager to name a few, who had gone to commiserate with the poets of Nicaragua who had taken part in the revolution.  I was at the time wearing dreadlocks and while involved in a demonstration outside of the U.S. embassy, I announced that I was a Vietnam veteran and was in Nicaragua because I didn’t want to see it turned into the next Vietnam.  Because of those remarks, I was condemned by the State Department and my luggage was cut open at the airport by parties unknown.  Just to show that I had not been cowed, I returned the following year!

MDG: As a poet, you have received a lot of honors.  What is the greatest honor you received?

LBS: I imagine the greatest honor I have received recently is being inducted into the International Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent by the Gwendolyn Brooks Center at Chicago State University in October of 2006!  However, on par with that was receiving the American Book Award for my 2004 book A Long Movie of Shadows.  This was an incredible honor because it is an award given by writers to writers!  To be so honored by ones peers is truly wonderful!  I still find it hard to believe sometimes that I have received such an award.  The American Book Award while it carries no cash value is a tremendous honor in terms of prestige not only for being among the pantheon of writers who have been honored before me but also for the reasons mentioned above.  My most recent honor of course is the Pew Fellowship for the Arts which does have a cash value of fifty thousand dollars and is also very prestigious for those who’ve been so honored before you.  I am tremendously grateful for receiving this award as well.  I have been after it for fourteen years!  It is like a magical dream that it has finally been bestowed upon me and I shall remain forever grateful for he honor.  Each of the listed awards are special in their own right.  Each is meaningful and empowering to me.  I also received the Kuntu Workshop award in my hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania given at the University of Pittsburgh as a Life Achievement award for “writing for eternity.”  This too holds a very special place in my heart because it is beyond words to be honored in the place where it all began. 

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3 Poems By Lamont Steptoe

Jesus Christ
has gone AWOL (absent without leave)
and is rumored to be headed
to earth with a bible and a boom box
on a spacewave
piloted by Sun Ra