Yusef Komunyaka
Her smile, a place where minnows swim. —Yusef Komunyaka, from “Landscape for the Disappeared,” Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 1993)
Category: African-American Culture
Yusef Komunyakaa
Her eyelids were painted blue. When she closed her eyes the sea rolled in like ten thousand fiery chariots, leaving behind silence above and below a thousand years old. — Yusef Komunyakaa, from “Omens,” Poetry Apr 2012, Vol. 200 Issue 1, p15
James Baldwin
Societies never know it, but the war of an artist with his society is a lover’s war, and he does, at his best, what lovers do, which is to reveal the beloved to himself and, with that revelation, to make freedom real. — James Baldwin, “The Creative Process,” Creative America. (The National Cultural Center /… Continue reading James Baldwin
Safia Elhillo
i press my body to a man that i find beautiful & sway to a song that knows us i live forever with my feet in my grandmother’s lap & i live forever by the water with the sun spilled over me remember me this way & when they come for me play the song… Continue reading Safia Elhillo
Audre Lorde
Don’t wait for inspiration. Remember. Do not wait for inspiration. You don’t need to be inspired, to write a poem. You need to reach down and touch the thing that’s boiling inside of you and make it somehow useful. –Audre Lorde, A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde (1995) Directed by… Continue reading Audre Lorde
James Baldwin
So what can we really do for each other except—just love each other and be each other’s witness? And haven’t we got the right to hope—for more? So that we can really stretch into whoever we really are? Don’t you think so? —James Baldwin, Another Country (Dial Press, 1962)
Sonia Sanchez
How hard must the wind blow to open our hearts? — Sonia Sanchez, Morning Haiku (Beacon Press, 2010)
