Marcel Fable Price is a storyteller and poet. He was the youngest, the first person without a college degree, and the first person of color to hold the title of Poet Laureate in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Through deeply personal, brilliant, and colorful writing he invites his audience (readers and listeners) to reimagine what healing and masculinity look like.
Price once worked with Randy Flood, co-founder and Director of the Men’s Resource Center, as a co-facilitator for its Altogether Boys program. The program is designed to provide middle-school boys with emotional, social, and self-esteem skills as they grow into adulthood. It was a role Price’s life experience made him uniquely qualified to fill. The two men reconnected to collaborate on an encounter group for young men while Price was serving as director of the Diatribe, an organization he co-founded. Unfortunately, those plans were set aside and Price and Flood parted ways.
Respect and Reconciliation
In a way that illustrates the capacity to reconcile, to grow, and to change, Flood says “[Price] accepted my invitation to be a guest today after we had a long discussion on the phone about what happened in his life to suddenly derail our collaborative work together. Our conversation mirrored the metaphorical theme of his book [New American Monarch]: ‘the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly to discuss human growth. The beauty of becoming ourselves often includes phases of tragedy, struggle, and triumphs.'”
The conversation weaves itself through Price’s experiences of self-discovery with the language of his poetry. It’s a thoughtful and deeply moving look into how we inhibit others from fulfilling their potential as joyful human beings and deny ourselves permission to grow and evolve in compassion and understanding. Price’s poem, “Collateral Damage” provides the launching point.
Collateral Damage
Too many of us were infants born
of hurricanes. Failed to realize
destruction; our wind
blowing recklessly
onto passersby. Failed
to grasp that being raised
by natural disasters
doesn’t give us
the right to be
someone
else’s
torn-
ado.
Marcel Fable Price
Revealing the Inner Lives of Men
Listen to the full podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. This is the third in a three-part series featuring authors who move beyond the page to reveal a bit of the inner lives of men. The first in the series is Dr. Ronald Levant, author of The Problem with Men. Dr. Levant is widely recognized as one of the key people responsible for creating the field of psychology of Men and Masculinities. The second is with Doug Crandell, author of The All-American Industrial Motel a memoir that helps underscore how men’s physical, emotional, and mental health suffer when the only metric by which they measure their masculinity is that which measures the amount of pain and discomfort their bodies can endure.
An Opportunity for Metamorphosis
Each interview in this series focused on reimagining: what it means to be a father and parent; how we see humanity; what emotional healing for men looks like; and how we raise our boys. The Men’s Resource Center offers a wealth of counseling, consultation, and therapy services and programs to help men reimagine and rebuild their lives. From men’s support groups to individual sessions and group workshops, we provide opportunities for young and adult men to grow in emotional intelligence and achieve wellness and balance in their lives. For more information, contact us online or call us at 616-456-1178.
Also, feel free to contact us if you have questions about this segment, ideas for a topic, or would like to be a guest on the Revealing Men podcast.
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