Afaa M. Weaver's place in American Letters is unprecedented and unique.  African American culture, especially the literary arts, are bound to the English language and the codes and concepts of the Western World, though the English language contains a system of meaning that often poses a series of conflicts surrounding the meaning of our skin.  The balancing of the predicament requires a measure of craft, conviction, discipline, and dedication shown towards the unarticulated or undocumented elements of African American culture.  However, even with these things, the binary division that dominates the Western way of viewing the world remains. 

Afaa is unique in that he possess a third rail of education, which influences his work. His study and proficiency in the Chinese language and Taiji are exposure to an alternative education system complete with symbolism, mythology, conceptual terrain, and practice.  It is the last which may explain the profound nature of his work.  For poetry after all is practice.  Practice is the work of the poet, the repetitive, the encounter with the supposedly mundane, the exploration of the things that are right under us.  Taiji, too is like that, requiring the practitioner to investigate the relationship they have with their own body and how something as simple as posture and energy relate to the body.  To speak of such things within the course of the American tradition as an African American would seem close to bootleg preacher, Father Divinism, or Elijah Muhammad; yet, from the context of Chinese Civilization with it's millennia of cultural records, systems, and practices, we find the revelatory packaged in a simplicity that resonates in profound ways. 

It must also be said Afaa is a worker, which again, especially in this age, stands in contrast with many of those guardians of the Canon and literary tradition. Work like Taiji requires the body and breath interact in ways that are different from the traditional writer.  Indeed, if one imagines his practice of Taiji for over forty years, combined with his fifteen years as a factory in his home city of Baltimore, and his illustrious literary career which includes the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award in 2014, eleven books and a variety of publications an honors, one might imagine he were older than he is.

At the heart of his work is a simple reconciliation of various traditions.  He sounds American and African American literature, folk wisdom, simple family knowledge, Taiji, Chinese spiritual cultural, Chinese Literature, and the spirit of the worker.  One must read him cautiously to find the difficult.  It is indeed possible to read him, especially his later work, and understand every word; but still imagine you have missed something.  This effect is no doubt a result of his matriculation in African American Free Black Spaces and Chinese education systems.  You will find in his work a blending of his Chinese Taoism and Black Biblical tradition, a rare connection extended from his practice that is unparalleled in American Arts and letters.

It is the later work that I have found more intoxicating.  His Plum Flower Trilogy, which includes the The Plum Flower Dance, The Government of Nature, and The City of Eternal Spring exhibit an extraordinary bandwidth for engaging ranges of the human experience reconciled by the crafts and concepts of the traditions he has matriculated in. The themes of family, race, sexual abuse, folklore tradition, Chinese culture, Taiji, combine with the meditation on work, the sanctity of prayer, and the stillness and clarity of meditation.  

Though his work has been lauded it will take decades to understand the range and depth of his artistry.  In many ways he walks through life, like his poetry, in a deceptive simplicity.  In this way, the influence of China must be definitive, though as his work suggests, he leads us towards seeing that same deceptive simplicity in our lives and the lives of our ancestors.  For African Americans the profound gesture is an important part of our future.  For his work teaches we have always possessed such, but the question is where has it been written and so well preserved.