bless you. O! ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth!" His words had the impact of a revolutionary Moses exhorting his people to a holy crusade. The liberal use of Ye's, Thou's, and Hath's in his pamphlets do not appear in his later writings such as The Age of Reason, from which originated the charge of atheism. After the war Paine was alternately well-achieved and a fugitive in both England and France. At one point he was imprisoned and condemned to death by the French who had earlier given him the key to the Bastille to be carried to General Washington. James Monroe interceded for him and he returned to the United States in 1802. There he found himself forgotten or rejected for his atheistic views. After,a lengthy illness, death claimed Thomas Paine in 1809; his funeral was attended by only six people, two of whom were thought to be black servants. His remains were returned to England, his native soil, and buried in a grave unknown to this day. Bradley, Sculley; Richmond Beatty; E. Hudson Long, Ed. The American Tradition in Literature. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, Inc., 1967; pp. 281-312. SUMMERTIME I by Julie Crimin Summertime ease waves at the sunbaked beach, their bodies a warm, adobe brown, their faces a dot-to-dot puzzle of sun-splashed freckles, their eyes reflecting sunshine bouncing off rolling waves We sit, old, white, longing for their sun-filled lives. Timidly, We walk toward the blue, crashing curls, leaving soft barefoot prints in sparkling sand, letting tides lap salty tongues on our crimson toes, picking up a King Rock Shell and listening to its calm, rolling sound, watching a wave break close, too close Wet, We return to our dry blankets and lie, clutching our shells. AUTUMN BY POCO by Julie LaVine Take a bite. Crisp wine-sap apple air. Spack-crackle fur Poco brings in news of autumn Triumphant Tail like a flag Whiskers electric on end shocked with glory She is no summer lounger no snow bunny no sprung chicken She is the crish-crash-swing of slow leaf fall The bouyant burst of blue Skies The sparkle and zang of infinite autumns Hey, fish-breath! And there she goes: skittering madly across waxed floors diving beneath the sofa beating the evening paper senseless Ah,me. Fat cat full of sass. With the sting of autumn. There is no nicer madness. DAYBREAK by Don Valenzuela Mountains Are Jagged Glass Slashing the skin of sky As Golden Blood Gushes Over The Velvet Flesh of Dawn. 10 A STUDY OF JAMES BALDWIN'S USE OF RHYTHM by Pamela Carlisle Although many critics write of the sensitivity, vivid imagery and sincerity of Baldwin's prose, few have explored the effortless musical rhythm underlying his work that lends it that special quality, unique to his style. In contrast to the regular rhythm of the conventional poetic line and the repetition of identical metrical feet, the rhythm of prose is much less regular and more expansive, incorporating large intonational patterns and stress groups.1 A study of Baldwin's first novel, Go Tell It On The Mountain, gives one a prime example of the artistry of the writer in mastering this technique. An examination of the musical roots of the Black American enlightens one in understanding the facility with which Baldwin applies his native heritage to his literary work. The reader experiences a journey though poetical prose that stirs the soul to delve into the depths of its existence. Born in 1924, in Harlem, New York and the eldest of nine children, Baldwin has emerged from a position in American society where opportunities for success were most limited. In general, the features of a low income life condition include limited alternatives, helplessness, deprivation and insecurity.2 However, being a determined young man, it was not long before Baldwin discovered the life-line of the city library as a means to his salvation. It was through education that he escaped from the distinctive themes of fatalism and orientation to the present inherent to his environment.3 Nevertheless, it was precisely this same environment from which he undoubtedly drew his rich experience in rhythm and music. He was the son of a lay preacher in the Holiness-Pentecostal sect and at the age of fourteen he was ordained a preacher of that church.4 It is in his first novel that he beautifully and passionately explores the place of the church, particularly the store-front church, as a sanctuary for the Negro in a hostile white world. Apparently disillusioned with his own country, Baldwin traveled to Europe on a self-seeking adventure and, there, found a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in essence, of tragedy.5 He feels that America does not look objectively at its history and essential nature, but is blinded by a system of myths, many racial, with no relationship to reality; he becomes a measuring device for the nation's social conscience.6 Only a study of the development of Black Music can bring a true appreciation of Baldwin's composition. "Black Music" is credited with being the principal achievement of the Negro American, possibly of America itself, for being the most abstract of the arts, it does not lend itself to the kinds of curbs and repressions Negroes have been subject to in the other spheres of American life.7 There is a primitive intensity and strong rhythmic interest in all music of Negro origin and this has been transported unscathed to many countries outside Africa, bringing with it also a delicacy of balance and perfect physical co-ordination resulting from ages of practice.8 Even the musical phenomenon of the twentieth century, jazz, was indeed centuries in the making, stemming from the original culture of the African, adding to it, improvisation and freedom. Built upon a strong and constant pulse, the rhythm is allowed to incorporate syncopation, the off-balance effect, resulting as a stress falling in an unexpected place.9 This form of spiritual release and physical exercise leads to a high degree of co-ordination. It is through the use of percussion, primarily, that the nature of the rhythm is established. One has no difficulty in relating the ancestral practice of the "beat keeping" drum with the later use of the tambourine in revival meetings. Singing became one of the few expressions allowed to the Negro in this county, and it was through this medium that he could draw upon his unconscious well of racial experience and memory. Everyone took an active part in religious worship. The pastor would chant, and the people would answer with cries and shouts; there would be improvisations and elaborations of rhythm and melody and a new song was born. It was the spiritual! An outstanding example of both individual and collective creativity, it became fluid with spontaneity.10 Lyrics of spirituals are recognized as pure poetry. For these people, the spirituals held the promise of heavenly joy for those oppressed on earth, and taken as a whole, they contain a record and a revelation of the deeper thoughts and experiences of the Negro in this country for the last three hundred years!11 Following upon the spirituals, was the development of jazz and "blues." Le Roi Jones says of jazz that it "was collected among the numerous skeletons the middle class black man kept locked in the closet of his psyche along with watermelons and gin, and whose rattling caused him no end of misery and self hatred."12 It is in essence, racial memory, with its evident abstract design and it describes a plane of evolution through various worlds. Rhythm and blues is part of the national genius of the Black Man and of the black nation. It is the direct expression of urban and rural Black America.13 It was through their churches that the Black Americans held on to their musical roots. As Frazier states The masses of Negroes may increasingly criticize their church and their ministers, but they cannot escape from their heritage. They may develop a more secular outlook on life and complain that the church and the ministers are not sufficiently concerned with the problems of the Negro race, yet they find in their religious heritage an opportunity to satisfy their deepest emotional yearnings.14 Church related music is the oldest and most common jazz form and Black religious music has always had an element of protest in it.15 Consequently, it is not surprizing that Baldwin should find himself so comfortable in the realm of rhythm and sound in his prose compositions. In the very title, Go Tell It On The Mountain, he has chosen the medium of the spiritual to lay the foundation for his work. Throughout the story one can feel the rhythm and intensity of the spiritual. 11