All Clark Gable had to do
was sit where Hattie sat
the night she won her Oscar^®. He
might not’ve thought of that:
but how the angels would have chimed
and cheered the noble cause
of basic decency, and broken
out in wild applause.
 
Benny Goodman would not sleep
where his Brothers could not stay.
He paved the American way before
it was the American Way.
For the color of music’s the color of God:
the color of his quartet!
So I hold no truck with movie stars,
but I play the clarinet.

*****

James B. Nicola writes: “Hattie McDaniel was the first American woman of African ancestry to win an acting Oscar. It was for Gone with the Wind, Best Picture of 1939, which starred Clark Gable, the #1 movie star at the time, known as the ‘King of Hollywood’. McDaniel was not allowed to sit with her fellow nominees. Her acceptance speech, nonetheless, overflowed with grace and gratitude.

“Benny Goodman, clarinet player and band leader, was so popular he was known as the ‘King of Swing’. His quartet included two players of African ancestry. When on tour, Goodman, true to his name, only booked overnight accommodations that accommodated all four of his players. The film The Green Book gave us a good look at these hotel policies in America. It won the Oscar for Best Picture of 2018.”

James B. Nicola’s poetry has appeared internationally in Acumen, erbacce, Cannon’s  Mouth, Recusant, Snakeskin, The South, Orbis, and Poetry Wales (UK);  Innisfree and  Interpreter’s House (Ireland); Poetry Salzburg (Austria), mgversion2>datura (France);  Gradiva (Italy); EgoPHobia (Romania); the Istanbul Review (Turkey); Sand and The Transnational (Germany), in the latter of which his work appears in German translation;  Harvests of the New Millennium (India); Kathmandu Tribune (Nepal); and Samjoko (Korea). His eight full-length collections (2014-2023) include most recently Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, Turns & Twists, and Natural Tendencies. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice magazine award.

‘Pair of Kings’ has just been published in Rat’s Ass Review.

Photo: “jazz ill Benny Goodman 1955” by janwillemsen is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.