JAMES CAGNEY
Oakland native James Cagney is a fixture on the Bay Area poetry scene. His first collection, 2018’s “Black Steel Magnolias in the Hour of Chaos Theory,” examines the complexities of family and intimacy for an adopted person. Cagney was told he was adopted when he was 19. The pandemic has been a time of deep introspection and “memory exorcism” for Cagney. After spending what felt like a month in bed, the 52-year-old says he used the quarantine to write a 15-minute poem about a haunting childhood memory.
“It was an energizing thing for me,” he says. “Emptying my head and heart.”
Online workshops, readings and manuscript editing for Nomadic Press have kept him busy this fall. The Oakland-based publisher will release Cagney’s next collection, “A Martian: The Saint of Loneliness,” in 2021. He calls it “the best I can do as a poet.”
“It deals with loneliness and my experience being a Black male in this country,” he says. In “The Mask,” another poem written during the pandemic, Cagney recalls what he saw out the window the day he was furloughed:
“On my final day of work in San Francisco,
I slammed glass after glass of merlot while watching a cruise ship slowly drift into the turquoise bay / Cloudless sky / The ship a poisoned cake lit with electric candles.”
If the pandemic has taught Cagney — and the country — one thing, it is patience, he says. “For the first time, every hand on deck in America has to work together for a common goal,” he says. “It’s difficult to wait when you don’t know what you’re waiting for. We must be patient and wait in love.”