The hurricane does not roar in pentameter

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"In order to live in the political frame of feminism there  maybe concrete actions that you have to take"

won’t you celebrate with me what i have shaped into a kind of life? i had no model. born in babylon both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself? i made it up here on this bridge between starshine and clay, my one hand holding tight my other hand; come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed." -

For the white person who wants to know how to be my friend

I don’t know whether or not human beings were meant to be worshipped as icons, celebrities or spiritual authorities. But Muhammad Ali is for millions if not billions around the world surely one of them. Often, media writers have a way of propping someone up just to later pull them the further down; or to celebrate as a way of forgetting some lesser aspect, more complex, harder to pinpoint. Anaïs Duplan’s ferocious new poem forges another path: one where we remember in successive lines the integrity of Ali’s accomplishments. Ali, perhaps the greatest athlete of all time; Ali, the leaping-wit poet serene before a microphone; Ali, outspokenly against the forces of war and anti-blackness. Unstoppable. By Duplan honoring these seemingly unrelated Ali quotes, the poem is able to honor a great man’s selves so rarely held in tandem. What’s to quarrel with?

NURUDDIN FARAH, ON REJECTION LETTERS. KEEP WRITING, POC! IF THEY REJECTED FARAH THEY DON’T KNOW SHIT.

"A pink rose reaches out to the sun." -

So tell me, Mr. Farah, why should I read your books?” (laughter) Well, what’s the answer? NF: I said that if he read my books he would find a worldview that he couldn’t find in a book by a German, a Swiss, a Nigerian, an Arab and so on and so forth. He said, “What if I am not interested in discovering another worldview, because I am content with mine?” I responded that no matter how happy one is with one’s worldview, the truth is that our world—as Swiss, as American, as Somali—is incomplete without the additional worlds that will be brought to bear on that world, to make it richer and more fulfilling.

For those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns looking inward and outward at once before and after seeking a now that can breed futures like bread in our children’s mouths so their dreams will not reflect the death of ours; For those of us who were imprinted with fear like a faint line in the center of our foreheads learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk for by this weapon this illusion of some safety to be found the heavy-footed hoped to silence us For all of us this instant and this triumph We were never meant to survive. And when the sun rises we are afraid it might not remain when the sun sets we are afraid it might not rise in the morning when our stomachs are full we are afraid of indigestion when our stomachs are empty we are afraid we may never eat again when we are loved we are afraid love will vanish when we are alone we are afraid love will never return and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid. So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.

Fakhir, a 15-year old boy from Koreme, had originally been in the execution line-up at Koreme, but a soldier took him out, presumably because he looked too young. Fakhir was fortunate to look younger than his age, because other teenage boys his age perished at Koreme, and others disappeared in the fort at Dohuk. In Salmia, however, an officer, a first lieutenant, asked for his identification card. Fakhir's mother produced it, and when the officer saw his date of birth -1973- he said, "Why are you here?" you're too old to be here." According to Fakhir, his mother tried to "tell the soldier I was too young, I was too small. She understood what they would have done with me. I didn't know. I thought they would take me to do hard labor until it was time to join the army. I didn't know. The officer took Fakhir by the arm and walked him to the post at the main gate of the Salaman security fort. At the main gate, Fakhir said, was an old man who had not been taken directly to the camps with the others. The old man said, "Don't take this boy, do him a good deed, Saddam didn't say you have to take this one." The officer hesitated, and the old man continued, "Saddam won't see if you don't take him. Saddam's not watching. Do good in the sight of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful. The officer let go of Fakhir, shook him roughly and said, "Don't let me see you again. I was kind to you this once, but I won't be kind the next time." The old man told Fakhir to go hide with his mother and stay out of sight.

My poetry has been concerned, for a long time now, with the attempt to reconstruct, in verse, in metric and in rhythms, the nature of the culture of the people of the Caribbean. This involves not only discovering what I would call "new poetic forms" -- a breakaway from the English pentameter -- but also, and more importantly, discovering the nature of our folk culture, the myths, the legends, the speech rhythms, the way we express ourselves in words, the way we express ourselves in song. That has been my concern for about ten years and is increasingly so. One has to develop technical resources of a very complex nature and at the same time one has to get an increasing knowledge of who our people are, where they come from and the nature of their soul.

If you do not write poems about your family your not writing poetry you can write about roses about lonely poles you can write about abstractions, you can write about pyramids in a strange way, but that intimacy that connection between yourself and your roots, and when i say roots, i mean organic roots, family roots, unless you can do that the poetry cannot grow, because it is your relatives who must be given a face, the same way you begin to find words for your imagination that imagination must encompass your own relatives, your own  family your own community eventually your own nation

So have they not traveled through the earth and have hearts by which to reason and ears by which to hear? Truly, it is not their eyes that are blinded but their hearts which are within their breasts