James, Lorenzo Thomas, Jayne Cortez, Amiri Baraka, Ahmos Zu-Bolton, and several others, Nielsen is privy to what the poet M. Through his recollections of an astonishing group of legendary intellectuals/artists like Russell Atkins, C.L.R. Ethelbert Miller, Nielsen gifts us with the life of the intellect that facilitates our understanding of the work and brings us to the point where we are made aware of the power of the lived literary experience that is informed by writing and teaching. With the right questions being asked by the incomparable E. Nielsen layers reminiscences of a Nebraska childhood and observations about contemporary family life with a cultural commentary that doesn’t tell us what to think, but instead causes us to question what we thought we already knew.Īldon Lynn Nielsen’s MemeWars reveals a world where deep listening, reading, and rumination place us on a journey that traverses the fertile ground of Black creativity. The detail here is engaging and important, but this is most fascinating and instructive as the account of the evolution of a sensibility and how it moved from “empty” to open and inclusive.Īs you begin Memewars, think of Ethelbert Miller’s leading questions as melodies, recognizable tunes, and Nielsen’s responses as harmolodic extensions, waxing nostalgic, and just as moving, just as important, playing all the changes on a prolific career and life in music and writing. As you would expect, these reflections treat his engagement with African-American literature from the Black Arts Movement to the growth of university departments of Black Studies and his role as an anthologist and critic in offering us both the texts of innovative Black writing and critical ways to approach it. Miller’s questions lead to considerations of Nielsen’s development as a poet, musician and scholar. Ethelbert Miller begins with a vivid recollection of that space, tumbleweeds and all, then moves on to Nielsen’s formative years in Washington, DC. This extended series of written interviews with E. Aldon Lynn Nielsen was born and spent his childhood in Grand Island, Nebraska, the place where The West begins, its outskirts the forward edge of The Big Empty.
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