Author: Publisher:
ISBN: 9781937057688
Category : Children's poetry, American
Languages : en
Pages : 287
Book Description
The Poetry Friday Anthology
Author: Publisher:
ISBN: 9781937057688
Category : Children's poetry, American
Languages : en
Pages : 287
Book Description
My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter
Author: Aja MonetPublisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1608467686
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 167
Book Description
I am 27 and have never killed a man but I know the face of death as if heirloom my country memorizes murder as lullaby —from “For Fahd” Textured with the sights and sounds of growing up in East New York in the nineties, to school on the South Side of Chicago, all the way to the olive groves of Palestine, My Mother Is a Freedom Fighter is Aja Monet’s ode to mothers, daughters, and sisters—the tiny gods who fight to change the world. Complemented by striking cover art from Carrie Mae Weems, these stunning poems tackle racism, sexism, genocide, displacement, heartbreak, and grief, but also love, motherhood, spirituality, and Black joy. Praise for Aja Monet: ““[Monet] is the true definition of an artist.” —Harry Belafonte ““In Paris, she walked out onto the stage, opened her mouth and spoke. At the first utterance I heard that rare something that said this is special and knew immediately that Aja Monet was one of the Ones who will mark the sound of the ages. She brings depth of voice to the voiceless, and through her we sing a powerful song.” —Carrie Mae Weems Of Cuban-Jamaican descent, Aja Monet is an internationally established poet, performer, singer, songwriter, educator, and human rights advocate. Monet is also the youngest person to win the legendary Nuyorican Poet’s Café Grand Slam title.
Why Poetry
Author: Matthew ZapruderPublisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062343092
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 177
Book Description
An impassioned call for a return to reading poetry and an incisive argument for poetry’s accessibility to all readers, by critically acclaimed poet Matthew Zapruder In Why Poetry, award-winning poet Matthew Zapruder takes on what it is that poetry—and poetry alone—can do. Zapruder argues that the way we have been taught to read poetry is the very thing that prevents us from enjoying it. In lively, lilting prose, he shows us how that misunderstanding interferes with our direct experience of poetry and creates the sense of confusion or inadequacy that many of us feel when faced with it. Zapruder explores what poems are, and how we can read them, so that we can, as Whitman wrote, “possess the origin of all poems,” without the aid of any teacher or expert. Most important, he asks how reading poetry can help us to lead our lives with greater meaning and purpose. Anchored in poetic analysis and steered through Zapruder’s personal experience of coming to the form, Why Poetry is engaging and conversational, even as it makes a passionate argument for the necessity of poetry in an age when information is constantly being mistaken for knowledge. While he provides a simple reading method for approaching poems and illuminates concepts like associative movement, metaphor, and negative capability, Zapruder explicitly confronts the obstacles that readers face when they encounter poetry to show us that poetry can be read, and enjoyed, by anyone.
A Little White Shadow
Author: Mary RueflePublisher: Wave Books
ISBN: 1933517034
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 50
Book Description
An exquisite art book of gentle and elegant found poetry.
The Other Side of Paradise
Author: Staceyann ChinPublisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439159378
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Book Description
Staceyann Chin has appeared on television and radio discussing issues of race and sexuality, but it is her extraordinary voice that launched her career as a performer, poet, and activist—here, she shares her unforgettable story of triumph against all odds in this brave and fiercely candid memoir. No one knew Staceyann's mother was pregnant until a dangerously small baby was born on the floor of her grandmother's house in Lottery, Jamaica on Christmas Day. Staceyann's mother did not want her and her father was not present—no one, except her grandmother, thought Staceyann would survive. It was her grandmother who nurtured and protected and provided for Staceyann and her older brother in the early years. But when the three were separated, Staceyann was thrust, alone, into an unfamiliar and dysfunctional home in Paradise, Jamaica. There, she faced far greater troubles than absent parents. So, armed with a fierce determination and exceptional intelligence, she discovered a way to break out of this harshly unforgiving world. Staceyann Chin, acclaimed and iconic performance artist, now brings her extraordinary talents to the page in a brave, lyrical, and fiercely candid memoir about growing up in Jamaica. She plumbs tender and unsettling memories as she writes about drifting from one home to the next, coming out as a lesbian, and finding the man she believes to be her father and ultimately her voice. Hers is an unforgettable story told with grace, humor, and courage.
Dread Poetry and Freedom
Author: David AustinPublisher: Between the Lines
ISBN: 177113402X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 311
Book Description
Since the 1970s, poet Linton Kwesi Johnson has been putting pen to paper to refute W.H. Auden’s claim that “poetry makes nothing happen.” For Johnson, only the second living poet to have been published in the Penguin Modern Classics series, writing has always been “a political act” and poetry “a cultural weapon.” In Dread Poetry and Freedom David Austin explores the themes of poetry, political consciousness, and social transformation through the prism of Johnson’s work. Drawing from the Bible, reggae and Rastafari, and surrealism, socialism, and feminism, and in dialogue with Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon, C.L.R. James and Walter Rodney, W.E.B. Du Bois and the poetry of d’bi young anitafrika, Johnson’s work becomes a crucial point of reflection on the meaning of freedom in this masterful and rich study.
WHEREAS
Author: Layli Long SoldierPublisher: Graywolf Press
ISBN: 1555979610
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 121
Book Description
The astonishing, powerful debut by the winner of a 2016 Whiting Writers' Award WHEREAS her birth signaled the responsibility as mother to teach what it is to be Lakota therein the question: What did I know about being Lakota? Signaled panic, blood rush my embarrassment. What did I know of our language but pieces? Would I teach her to be pieces? Until a friend comforted, Don’t worry, you and your daughter will learn together. Today she stood sunlight on her shoulders lean and straight to share a song in Diné, her father’s language. To sing she motions simultaneously with her hands; I watch her be in multiple musics. —from “WHEREAS Statements” WHEREAS confronts the coercive language of the United States government in its responses, treaties, and apologies to Native American peoples and tribes, and reflects that language in its officiousness and duplicity back on its perpetrators. Through a virtuosic array of short lyrics, prose poems, longer narrative sequences, resolutions, and disclaimers, Layli Long Soldier has created a brilliantly innovative text to examine histories, landscapes, her own writing, and her predicament inside national affiliations. “I am,” she writes, “a citizen of the United States and an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, meaning I am a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation—and in this dual citizenship I must work, I must eat, I must art, I must mother, I must friend, I must listen, I must observe, constantly I must live.” This strident, plaintive book introduces a major new voice in contemporary literature.
Hour of Freedom
Author: Publisher: Wordsong
ISBN: 9781590780213
Category : American poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
A collection of poems providing a look at the United States, from colonial times to the present.
The Surrender Tree
Author: Margarita EnglePublisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780805086744
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 184
Book Description
Cuba has fought three wars for independence, and still she is not free. This history in verse creates a lyrical portrait of Cuba.
If You Were the Moon
Author: Laura Purdie SalasPublisher: Millbrook Press (Tm)
ISBN: 146778009X
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 36
Book Description
"If you were the moon, what would you do? You'd spin like a twilight ballerina and play dodgeball with space rocks. Find out more in this lyrical list poem accompanied by ... illustrations"--