Jul 01

Amplify Black Poets, Day 28

My America (For Hugh Downs)

by Nikki Giovanni

Not a bad country…neither the best nor the worst…just a place
we call home…and we open the door…to the tired and the
poor…to the huddled masses yearning…to be free…to those
in need…because we need…to be needed

Not a bad country…but adolescently indifferent…with time
running out…on our innocence

Not a bad country…but attention must be paid…to how the
bounty came to be ours…to all the people…who make up the
people…that we are

A thought here and there…a “maybe this could have been done
differently”…the patience that is required of those who aspire
to be…if not the best…then at least better

Not a bad country in fact…most likely…the best possible
hope…of human beings…to exemplify differences that:
can share prosperity…can tolerate choices…can respect
individuals…can teach us all…to love

from QUILTING THE BLACK-EYED PEA, HarperCollins © 2002

Most Poetry will post a poem by a Black poet each day through the month of June.

Jul 01

Amplify Black Poets, Day 27

It Was Summer Now and the Colored People Came Out Into the Sunshine

by Morgan Parker

They descend from the boat two by two. The gap in Angela Davis’s teeth speaks to the gap in James Baldwin’s teeth. The gap in James Baldwin’s teeth speaks to the gap in Malcolm X’s Teeth. The gap in Malcolm X’s teeth speaks to the gap in Malcolm X’s teeth. The gap in Condoleezza Rice’s teeth doesn’t speak. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard kisses the Band Aid on Nelly’s cheek. Frederick Douglass’s side part kisses Nikki Giovanni’s Thug Life tattoo. The choir is led by Whoopi Goldberg’s eyebrows. The choir is led by Will Smith’s flat top. The choir loses its way. The choir never returns home. The choir sings funeral instead of wedding, sings funeral instead of allegedly, sings funeral instead of help, sings Black instead of grace, sings Black as knucklebone, mercy, junebug, sea air. It is time for war.

Copyright © 2018 by Morgan Parker. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 2, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.

Most Poetry will post a poem by a Black poet each day through the month of June.

Summer Poetry Workshop Series

We All Belong Here:  Poems of Kindness and Connection
How can we be kind, or make connections with each other, even when to be compassionate is inconvenient, uncomfortable, or even dangerous?  Using poems from Healing the Divide (edited by James Crews) and others as prompts, and our own drafts as examples, this workshop will explore how shared poetry can counteract exclusions, encourage equity, and give us strength to carry on in troubling times.

Gary Thomas will facilitate this workshop on Saturday, July 18 from 1:00-2:30 on Zoom. We will send out a Zoom invitation earlier that week as an email blast and on our Facebook page.

Poetry Book Club

Our MoSt Summer Book Club is back on Wednesday, July 15, 2020 at 6:30, and you don’t even have to drive to the library because it is a Zoom meeting!

We’ll be discussing Natasha Tretheway’s Pulitzer Prize winning collection, Native Guard. There are copies available to borrow at the Modesto Public Library. If you’d like one, please email Vicki, our most wonderful librarian contact, at vsalinas@stanlibrary.org.

Through elegiac verse that honors her mother and tells of her own fraught childhood, Natasha Trethewey confronts the racial legacy of her native Deep South — where one of the first black regiments, the Louisiana Native Guards, was called into service during the Civil War. Trethewey’s resonant and beguiling collection is a haunting conversation between personal experience and national history. (from the Houghton Mifflin website)

We’ll send out the Zoom invite via Mailchimp and our Facebook page later this month, so stay tuned!

Second Tuesday @ Barkin’ Dog – On Zoom!

We will be holding our Second Tuesday poetry reading series on July 14th, 2020, via Zoom. We hope you’ll join us. Please see the flyer above for more information on our featured poets, Connie Post and Michael Meyerhofer.

Live links for reading here:
For the open mic: https://padlet.com/beratliss/j0ynareusug2u61c
For the Zoom reading: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/99196095308