Hello. This week I am just going to write about several female poets and their poetry. This is in continuation of National Poetry Month. Female poets have contributed much in the way of their writings and have caused others to follow in their footsteps.
LUCILLE CLIFTON is author of several award-winning collections of poetry and is a two-time nominee for the Pulitzer Prize.
Lucille was born in Depew, NY and was educated at Howard University and Fredonia Stte Teachers' College. In addition to her career as a sales clerk, literature assistant, visiting writer, and poet-in-residence, Clifton has raised six children and published more than 20 books of poetry, fiction and children's literature. She was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, received the Juniper prize in 1980 and was named Maryand's official poet laurete. She says of herwork: "I m a black woman poet and I sound like one."
New Bones
we will wear
new bones again
we will leave
these raining days
break out through
another month
into sun and honey time
world buzz over us like bees,
we be splendid in new ones
other people think they know
how long life is
how strong life is
we know.
Miss Rosie
When I watch you
wrapped up like garbage
sitting, surrounded by the smell
of too old potato peels
or
when I watch you
in your own man's shoes
with the little toe cut out
sitting, waiting for your mind
like next week's grocery
I say
when I watch you
you wet brown bag of a woman
who used to be the best looking gal
in Georgia
used to be called the Georgia Rose
I stand up
through your destruction
I stand up
To My Last Period
well girl, goodbye
after thirty-eight years
thirty-eight years and you
never arrived
splendid in your red dress
without trouble for me
somewhere, somehow
now it is done
and i feel just like the grandmother who,
after the hussy has gone
sit holding her photograph
and sighing,
wasn't shebeautiful? wasn't she beautiful?Next poet is: GWENDOLYN BROOKS: Gwendolyn was born in Topeka, Kansas and grew up in Chicago. A graduate of Wilson Junior College, she has taught poetry at colleges and universities all over the country. In 1950, she was ther first African Amerivan to win the Pulitzer Prize. She was named poet laureate of Illinois in 1968 and was appointed poetry consultant to the Library of Congress in 1985, the first African American to hold the position. "My aim," she once said, :is to write poems that will somehow successfully call...all black people in pulpits...black people in mines, on farms, on thrones." Among her reently published books are Black (1987) and The Near-Johannesburg Boy 1986.
The Sonnet-Ballad by Gwendolyn Brooks
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
They took my lover's tallness off to war,
Left me lamenting, Now I cannot guess
What can I use an empty heart- cup for.
He won't be coming back here anymore.
Some day the war will end, but oh I knew
When he went walking grandly out that door
That my sweet love would have to be untrue.
Would have to be untrue. Would have to court our
Coquettish death, whose impudent and strange
Possessive arms and beauty of a sort
Can make a hard man hesitate- and change
And he will be the one to stammer, "Yes."
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
NIKKI GIOVANNI has recently publidhed an illustrated 'love poem' entitled Knoxville, Tenessee for her grandmother, Louvenia Watson. She is also the author of The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovani. She is also the author of The Selected poems of Nikki Giovanni(1996), the children's book The Genie in the Jar and other works. The 1996 winner of the Langston Hughes Award, Dr. Giovanni is a member of the National Advisory Board of the Underground Railroad Freedom Center. In April 2002, she was awarded the first Rosa L. Parks Woman of Courage Awaed.
AGE
we tend to fear old age as some sort of disorder
that can be cured with the proper dose of aspirin
or perhaps a bit of Ben-Gay for the shoulders
it does of course pay to advertise
one hates the idea of the first gray hair
a shortness of breath, devastating blows to the ego
indications we are doing what comes natually
it's almost laughable
that we detest aging
when we first became aware we want it
little girls of four or five push
with eyes shining brightly at gran or mommy
the lie that they are seven or eight
little girls at ten worry
that a friend has gotten her monthly
and she has not
little girls of twelve
cn be socially crushed
by lack of nobs on their chests
little boys of fourteen want
to think they want a woman
the little penis that simply won't erect
is shattering to their idea of manhood
if perhaps they get a little peach fuzz
on their faces they may survive
adolescence proving there may indeed be life
after high school
the children begin to play older
without kowing the price is weariness
age teaches us that our virtues
are either virtuous or our vices
foul
age doesn't matter really
what frightens is mortality
it dawns upon us that we can die
at some point it occurs as we surely shall
it is not death we fear
but the loss of youth
not the youth of our teens
where most of the thinking took place
somewhere between the navel and the knee
but the youth of our thirties whose career
decisions were going well
and we were respected for our abilities
or the youth of our forties
where our decisions proved if not right
then not wrong either
and the house after all is half paid
it may simply be that work
is so indelibly tied
to age that the loss
of work brings the depression
of impending death
there are so many too many
who have never worked
and therefore for whom death
is a consant companion
as lack of marriage
lower divorce rates
lack of life
presents death
the unwillingness to try
is worse than any failure
in youth our ignorance gives us couage
with age our courage gives us hope
with hope we learn that man is more
than the sum of what he does
we also are what we wish we did
and age teaches us
that even that does not matter.
Nikki G. is powerful...I did not have much background information, I have her website address but I could not get to it once I started this blog. next week, I will feature another one of her poems with a bio from birth. also Maya Angelou and Rita Dove....stay tuned!
