Poet Praise: Nikki Giovanni

Introducing Living Legend:

Nikki Giovanni

If you don’t understand yourself you don’t understand anybody else.

*Preview an excerpt from one of my favorite poems by Nikki:

Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day

Don’t look now
I’m fading away
Into the gray of my mornings
Or the blues of every night

Is it that my nails
keep breaking
Or maybe the corn
on my second little piggy
Things keep popping out
on my face
or
of my life

It seems no matter how
I try I become more difficult
to hold
I am not an easy woman
to want

They have asked
the psychiatrists     psychologists     politicians and
social workers
What this decade will be
known for
There is no doubt          it is
loneliness…

 

Click here to read the poem in it’s entirety.

Click here to learn more about Nikki Giovanni at the Poetry Foundation.

Worthy Words (Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close)

Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I am not living.

Novel:  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Arthur:  Jonathan Safran Foer

*The first time I read this quote it gave me chills, literally – such a profound statement.  Have you ever felt like this?  If so, share your thoughts.

Monthly Mantra – April 2017

 

I am not what has happened to me, I am what I choose to be!
-Carl Jung

This month, my best me will learn from the past but not allow it to dictate my present or future.

#Live in the Present.

Monthly Mantra #3 – March 2017

My best me sees obstacles as opportunities for personal growth, because you get out of life what you put into it.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.  Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
James 1:2-4 (NIV)

#Self Improvement

Poet Praise: James Weldon Johnson

In Honor of Black History Month

Harlem Renaissance Poet:  James Weldon Johnson
(1871-1938)

 

You are young, gifted, and black we must begin to tell our young…

Excerpt from his poem, Art vs. Trade.

…Life as an Octopus with but this creed,

That all the world was made to serve his greed;

Trade has spread out his mighty myriad claw,

And drawn into his foul polluted maw,…

Click here to read the poem in it’s entirety.

Poet Praise: Anne Spencer

In Honor of Black History Month

Harlem Renaissance Poet:  Anne Spencer (1882-1975)

Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard.

Excerpt from her poem, Translation.

…Our deeper content was never spoken,

But each knew all the other said.

He told me how calm his soul was laid

By the lack of anvil and strife…

Click here to read the poem in it’s entirety.