American Poetry Museum

NPM Daily: Thomas Sayers Ellis

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 05:30:07 -0400

Thomas Sayers Ellis co-founded The Dark Room Collective (in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1988); and received his M.F.A. from Brown University. He is the author of Skin, Inc. (Graywolf Press, 2010) and The Maverick Room (Graywolf Press, 2005), which won the John C. Zacharis First Book…

theferocity: “This guy wept / and told us / he wanted to touch...

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 01:04:08 -0500

theferocity:

“This guy wept / and told us / he wanted to touch / the earth / with the fury / of a falling star.”

apoetreflects: A poem is read by the poet, who then becomes That poem himself For a little while, ...

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 23:18:54 -0500

apoetreflects:

A poem is read by the poet, who then becomes
That poem himself
For a little while,
caught in its glistening tentacles.
The waters of deep remembering
Wash over him, clouds build up
As do the shadowy pools
under the evergreens.
Later, the winds of forgetfulness
Blow in from a thousand miles away
And the poet starts to write.
This is the way the day moves,
and the sparks from its wheels.

—Charles Wright, from “Buffalo Yoga” in Buffalo Yoga (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2004)

blackpoemusic: June Jordan, Alice Walker, Lucille Clifton,...

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 23:12:34 -0500

blackpoemusic:

June Jordan, Alice Walker, Lucille Clifton, Audre Lorde
At Phillis Wheatley Poetry Fest, 1979

Nikky Finney’s 2011 National Book Award in Poetry...

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 02:10:09 -0500

Nikky Finney’s 2011 National Book Award in Poetry acceptance speech

TedxNashvlle - Tyehimba Jess - Syncopated Sonnets (by TEDxTalks)

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 01:50:20 -0500

TedxNashvlle - Tyehimba Jess - Syncopated Sonnets (by TEDxTalks)

auntada: The Warren family pose on their front porch in Fort...

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 22:04:56 -0500

auntada:

The Warren family pose on their front porch in Fort Worth, Texas. L to R, top, William, a Pullman porter, his wife Carrie and children, Alma, Alton, Elnora.

ca. 1930

Fort Worth, Texas

Shades of L.A.: African American Community

Shortly after the Civil War, the Pullman Company hired African-American men to staff its Pullman sleeping cars. These men became known and widely respected as Pullman porters. While the pay was low and porters often suffered abuse from racist passengers, being a Pullman porter was once considered one of the best jobs a black man could obtain. Over the 100 years they served the railroads, Pullman Porters contributed to the development of the black middle class in America, established the first African American labor organization and played a significant role in the Civil Rights Movement.

Notable Pullman Porters include A. Philip Randolph, Matthew Henson, Claude McKay, Benjamin Mays, Oscar Micheaux and Gordon Parks.

Song for Billie Holiday

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 22:04:34 -0500

What can purge my heart
Of the song
And the sadnes?
What can purge my heart
But the song
Of the sadness?
What can purge my heart
Of the sadness
Of the song?

Do not speak of sorrow
With dust in her hair,
Or bits of dust in eyes
A chance of wind blows there.
The sorrow that I speak of
I dusted with despair

Voice of muted trumpet,
Cold brass in warm air
Bitter television blurred
By sound that shimmers―
Where?

~Langston Hughes

womenwhokickass: (12# Australia) Oodgeroo Noonuccal: Why she...

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 22:00:13 -0500

womenwhokickass:

(12# Australia) Oodgeroo Noonuccal: Why she kicks ass

She was an Australian poet, political activist, artist, educator,and a campaigner for Aboriginal rights. She was best known for her poetry, and was the first Aboriginal Australian to publish a book of verse.

She was Queensland state secretary of the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI), and was involved in a number of other political organisations.

She was a key figure in the campaign for the reform of the Australian constitution to allow Aboriginal people full citizenship, lobbying Prime Minister Robert Menzies in 1965, and his successor Harold Holt in 1966.

At one deputation in 1963, she taught Robert Menzies a lesson in the realities of Aboriginal life. After offering the deputation an alcoholic drink, he was startled to learn that in Queensland he could be jailed for doing the same thing.

She wrote many books, beginning with We Are Going (1964), the first book to be published by an Aboriginal woman. This was extraordinarily successful, selling out in several editions, and setting Oodgeroo well on the way to be Australia’s highest-selling poet alongside C. J. Dennis.

In 1972 she bought a property on North Stradbroke Island (also known as Minjerribah) which she called Moongalba (‘sitting-down place’), and established the Noonuccal-Nughie Education and Cultural Centre.

Oodgeroo won several literary awards, including the Mary Gilmore Medal (1970), the Jessie Litchfield Award (1975), and the Fellowship of Australian Writers’ Award.She was awarded an MBE in 1970, returning it in 1987 to protest the Australian Bicentenary celebrations, and to make a political statement at the condition of her people.

In 1974, she was aboard a British Airways flight that was hijacked by militants campaigning for Palestinian liberation. The hijackers shot a crew member and a passenger and forced the plane to fly to several different African destinations. During her three days in captivity, she used a blunt pencil and an airline sickbag from the seat pocket to write two poems, ‘Commonplace’ and ‘Yusuf (Hijacker)’.

"Before dawn, across the whole road as I pass I feel spiderwebs. Within people’s voices, under their..."

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 21:56:33 -0500

“

Before dawn, across the whole road
as I pass I feel spiderwebs.

Within people’s voices, under their words or
woven into the pauses, I hear a hidden sound.

One thin green light flashes over a smooth sea
just as the sun goes down.

What roses lie on the altar of evening
I inhale carefully, to keep more of.

Tasting all these and letting them have
their ways to waken me, I shiver and resolve:

In my life, I will more than live.

”

- William Stafford, “Reminders” (via litverve)

Beauty.

(via readingthedistrict)

torrid-wind: Langston Hughes - photo by Gordon Parks

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 21:45:39 -0500

torrid-wind:

Langston Hughes - photo by Gordon Parks

fuckyeahbookarts: Book that Came Across the Atlantic Ocean in...

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 21:42:46 -0500

fuckyeahbookarts:

Book that Came Across the Atlantic Ocean in 1847, along with my Ancestors (by Delina)

“Several of my ancestors practiced their handwriting, letters and numbers in this book of poetry written about 1827. The book is pretty crumbly, but I love having it. I can picture the long voyage with boredom setting in and not much to write on or write with, for that matter. My file name says clover, but I am thinking it is a shamrock pressed in the pages.

The book was given to me by an eccentric uncle of mine in about 1978 or so, when my children and I lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The book face page said it was written at the Dawn of the Reformation in Ireland. I checked around, and was told that would be about 1827. So the book was about 150 years old when I got it, and about 20 years old when children wrote in it. There were two children who belonged to my direct lineage, and then five of their first cousins with them, who had been orphaned. Imagine taking 7 children across the ocean on about a 3 month voyage. My direct ancestors are the couple that brought the 7 children over from Ireland, via Liverpool, England, to New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, and then up the Mississippi River to the area of Rockport and Preemption, Mercer County, Illinois, USA.. They were very brave or very desperate or both.”

That is indeed a shamrock, the symbol of Ireland :)

Tanka

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 21:34:14 -0500

dancinghathor:

i kneel down like a

collector of jewels before

you. i am singing

one long necklace of love my

mouth a sapphire of grapes.

- sonia sanchez

Poet Jericho Brown and a close “reading” of Paul...

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 21:27:45 -0500

Poet Jericho Brown and a close “reading” of Paul Simon’s latest album, “So Beautiful or So What”

thnkrtv: Beautiful piece of fan art from talented multimedia...

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 14:04:42 -0500

thnkrtv:

Beautiful piece of fan art from talented multimedia artist Seon Thompson of Copy Book Page (http://www.facebook.com/copybookpage) inspired by our PRODIGIES episode on Kelvin Doe, an engineering whiz living in Sierra Leone who scours the trash bins for spare parts, which he uses to build batteries, generators and transmitters. Completely self-taught, Kelvin has created his own radio station where he broadcasts news and plays music under the moniker, DJ Focus. You can watch the episode by clicking the image.

dynamicafrica: Images from Moroccan artist Hassan Hajjaj’s...

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 20:07:58 -0400

dynamicafrica:

Images from Moroccan artist Hassan Hajjaj’s rockstar portrait series

Read more here

(images via danceswithfaeriesunderthemooon)

blackcontemporaryart: Faith Ringgold Who’s Bad?, 1988

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 20:03:36 -0400

blackcontemporaryart:

Faith Ringgold Who’s Bad?, 1988

twirlmart: oldroze: Portrait StudyThéodore GéricaultFrench,...

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 20:03:30 -0400

twirlmart:

oldroze:

Portrait Study
Théodore Géricault
French, about 1818 - 1819
Oil on canvas

This portrait was made as a study for Théodore Géricault’s most famous painting, The Raft of the Medusa, made in 1819 and now in the Louvre. In a clear case of ineptitude, the ship named Medusa foundered in the sea off the coast of Africa* in 1816. A raft with 140 passengers drifted for thirteen days before being rescued; only fifteen people survived. In preparation for his disturbing and controversial painting of the incident, Géricault made many studies from life, like this one, to achieve a sense of realism and specificity.

The sitter wears a shirt similar to those worn by the survivors of the Medusa. Géricault captured the man’s character with great sympathy and spontaneity; his watery eyes do not focus on anything outside the canvas but appear to express an internal torment. Shades of brown, gray, and beige blend together to imitate his dark complexion. Dabs of white and beige paint are used to indicate reflective light in his eyes and on the tip of his nose, his bottom lip, and his chin.

*It was off the coast of Mauritania, a country in north-west Africa.

: Five poems from the April open reading period, pt I

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 20:03:26 -0400

: Five poems from the April open reading period, pt I:

wavepoetry:

To everyone who submitted to our open reading period this April, thank you so much for sending your poems to us. It was a real honor to read all of your work. We received over 750 submissions, from all over the U.S. and the world, and the Editorial Board took most of the summer and into the early…

Supreme Court Appears Divided on Copyright Case Affecting Libraries and Publishers

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 19:57:23 -0400

Supreme Court Appears Divided on Copyright Case Affecting Libraries and Publishers:

infoneer-pulse:

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Monday morning in a key copyright-infringement case, with justices asking pointed questions about the resale and reuse of protected works. Many of the questions homed in on possible consequences for individual buyers as well as libraries and other institutions, but did not suggest which way the court was leaning.

The outcome of the lawsuit, Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons (No. 11-697), has significant implications for publishers, academic libraries, and almost anyone who resells, lends, or displays copyrighted material made and bought outside the United States. The case centers on a dispute over textbooks produced by Wiley for foreign markets but imported to the United States and resold without the publisher’s permission.

Supap Kirtsaeng, a Thai national, came to study at Cornell University in 1997. As a student there and at the University of California, Mr. Kirtsaeng had family members and friends at home buy and send him textbooks, which he turned around and resold here. Wiley sued him in 2008 for copyright infringement. In his defense, Mr. Kirtsaeng invoked the first-sale doctrine. That pillar of U.S. copyright law holds that someone who buys a copyrighted work has the right to use or resell it without asking for permission. (Used bookstores operate on this principle, for instance.)

As Hurricane Sandy bore down on this city—whipping up wind and rain outside the court, one of the few parts of the federal government that was open—the justices heard arguments from both sides about whether the first-sale doctrine applies to foreign-made books and other works controlled by U.S. rights holders. The lawyers debated interpretations of Section 109 of the 1976 Copyright Act, which says the first-sale doctrine applies to copyrighted goods “lawfully made under this title.”

» via The Chronicle of Higher Education (Subscription may be required for some content)

American Poetry Museum

NPM Daily: Thomas Sayers Ellis

theferocity: “This guy wept / and told us / he wanted to touch...

apoetreflects: A poem is read by the poet, who then becomes That poem himself For a little while, ...

blackpoemusic: June Jordan, Alice Walker, Lucille Clifton,...

Nikky Finney’s 2011 National Book Award in Poetry...

Nikky Finney’s 2011 National Book Award in Poetry acceptance speech

TedxNashvlle - Tyehimba Jess - Syncopated Sonnets (by TEDxTalks)

auntada: The Warren family pose on their front porch in Fort...

Song for Billie Holiday

womenwhokickass: (12# Australia) Oodgeroo Noonuccal: Why she...

"Before dawn, across the whole road as I pass I feel spiderwebs. Within people’s voices, under their..."

torrid-wind: Langston Hughes - photo by Gordon Parks

fuckyeahbookarts: Book that Came Across the Atlantic Ocean in...

Book that Came Across the Atlantic Ocean in 1847, along with my Ancestors (by Delina)

Tanka

Poet Jericho Brown and a close “reading” of Paul...

thnkrtv: Beautiful piece of fan art from talented multimedia...

dynamicafrica: Images from Moroccan artist Hassan Hajjaj’s...

blackcontemporaryart: Faith Ringgold Who’s Bad?, 1988

twirlmart: oldroze: Portrait StudyThéodore GéricaultFrench,...

: Five poems from the April open reading period, pt I

Supreme Court Appears Divided on Copyright Case Affecting Libraries and Publishers