"Fraternal Light: On Painting While Black is a lyric evocation of the life and work of the great African American artist Beauford Delaney. These poems pay homage to Delaney's resilience and ingenuity in the face of profound adversity. Although his work never garnered the acclaim it deserves-but is finally receiving-Delaney was well known and highly respected in African American cultural circles, among bohemian writers and artists based in Greenwich Village from the 1930s to the early 1950s, and in Parisian avant-garde and ...
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"Fraternal Light: On Painting While Black is a lyric evocation of the life and work of the great African American artist Beauford Delaney. These poems pay homage to Delaney's resilience and ingenuity in the face of profound adversity. Although his work never garnered the acclaim it deserves-but is finally receiving-Delaney was well known and highly respected in African American cultural circles, among bohemian writers and artists based in Greenwich Village from the 1930s to the early 1950s, and in Parisian avant-garde and expatriate enclaves from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s. Delaney's paintings and personal history elicited a powerful emotional response from Arlene Keizer, who has crafted a diasporic ceremony of remembrance for this Black, gay male visionary. Fraternal Light offers back an answering complexity to Delaney's life and work. One form of art calls out; another answers. Keizer's poems make the contours and challenges of Delaney's life visible, which is especially urgent in a world still frequently hostile or indifferent to Black creative brilliance"--
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