WORDS OF WISDOM

Poetry can do a lot of things to people. I mean it can improve your imagination. It can take you to new places. It can give you this incredible form of verbal pleasure.


~Billy Collins

WORDS OF WISDOM

The brain is wider than the sky.

~Emily Dickinson, Poet (1830-1886)

WRITING IS A PROCESS

Writing is more than just writing. It's research, editing, character crafting, more writing, rewrites, and putting it all together. Taking all the notes I may have and crafting a poem or short shorting is a challenge in itself.

There's the thought of finding a publisher or self publishing. There may be editing and rewrites if the book or piece of writing is accepted. I admit that I love the process a lot. My thought is that if one person enjoy a piece of writing then I have succeeded.

I remember something the late writer V. C. Andrews said and I'm paraphrasing "I did not put out something that is boring to me. If it's boring to me then it will be born to my readers." That is sage advice to all writers.

POEM

A NOTE TO ROETHKE
by Eric Pankey

Overnight, a circle
Of mushrooms
Appears: black-gilled,

Their caps pocked,
Frog-bellied white,
Their annuli torn,

Ragged foreskins,
Abominable, obscene,
Ill- omened.

BOOK REVIEW

TITLE: Up From Slavery- The Autobiography of Booker T. Washington

PUBLISHER: Carol Publishing Company, NY

RATING: 9

This was one book on my bucket list. I have read about Booker T. Washington but not at at great length. Having read this book about his life, to me, he is a great American and captures the spirit of what America is all about. In spite of his rough beginning as a slave, Mister Washington never lost his drive to better himself. And that he did.

My father used to tell me about Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) when I was in my early teens. I wasn't keen on the idea of going to college in the South. Having read this book, I can see why he wanted me to. I love that Mister Washington pushed to his student needed both hands on knowledge and book knowledge. The students built a number of the buildings  at the Institute. I'm sure many of his students learned valuable lessons personal responsibility. Sure need more Booker T. Washingtons today.

The selflessness of this humble man is something to be admired. He was concerned about the southern white man as much as the people of own race. Few men get the respect that Mister Washington received. With all the offers and honors bestowed upon him, Tuskegee was his first love, his ministry you could say.

Up From Slavery is one book I would read to school children, high school students, and adults. I have never rated a book this high but this is one I would tell everyone, regardless of race, to read.

WORDS OF WISDOM

I want to be the best advocate and promoter for poetry that I can be.



~Natasha Trethewey

POEM

THE RETURN
by Georgia Douglas Johnson

Again we meet-a flashing glance,
And then, to scabbard, goes the lance,
While thoughts troop on in cavalcade,
Adown the wide aisles time has made.

Back in the glow of yesterday,
With tender troth you rode away
The sheen of rainbows in our eyes,
That swept the rims of other skies.

And now a writhing worm am I,
Between a doomed love's lensing eye,
Let me, but stagger, far from sight,
To hide my anguish in the night. 

WORDS OF WISDOM

It means to educate myself incessantly about the world around me.





~June Jordan, Writer (1936-2002)

ESSAY

Essays are one of my favorite forms of writing. I find  presenting an argument and counterargument is a challenging process. Along with much research the process is what I enjoy the most. The types of essays I'm familiar with  are the formal and informal types.  Styles of essays are broad in scope so one cannot find one definition to  define it. 

In college I enjoyed writing essays where compared to true and false answers or multiple choice on tests. Many of my favorite authors we're essayists. Below is a short list of some of them.

Kingsley Amis.                          Margaret Atwood

James Baldwin.                         Virginia Woolf

Edgar Allan Poe.                       Oscar Wilde

David Sedaris.                           Angela Morales

Joyce Carol Oates.                    Arthur Miller

Susan Sontag.                            June Jordan

C. S. Lewis.                               Arundhati Roy

POEM

Stanzas In Meditation


by Gertrude Stein



Full well I know that she is there
Much as she will she can be there
But which I know which I know when
Which is my way to be there then
Which she will know as I know here
That it is now that it is there
That rain is there and it is here
That it is here and they are there
They have been here to leave it now
But how foolish to ask them if they like it
Most certainly they like it because they like what they have
But they might easily like something else.