#clint smith

tracy k. smith: my favorite poet! i'd recommend reading her collection life on mars. it's one of my favorite collections ever and a great beginnner. it's a lovely elegy for her father. it's a very intimate collection grappling with humanity's relative insignificance, mortality, love, illness, and religion as she writes through her grief. she also weaves in lots of pop culture references.

sonia sanchez: an all time great. i think this article serves as a great introduction to her work.

mary oliver: one of my favorite collections ever is devotions. a lot of her poems focus on nature and spirituality.

june jordan: i think this article is good starting point. her work is about race, gender, sexuality, and capitalism. and she prioritized writing in, celebrating, and representing AAVE in her work.

pablo neruda: i'd recommend reading the essential neruda. it's bilingual, so it includes both the original Spanish text alongside English translations.

joy harjo: i'd start with how we became human. she explores the foundations of humanity and what it can mean to be indigenous.

patricia smith: i am begging you to watch videos of her perform her poetry. she is such a phenomenal spoken word performer. i'd recommend reading incendiary art. it's centered around emmett till and is a response to the increasing violence against Black people in America. it has a particular focus mothers' grief as well. it is phenomenal and very well and cleverly crafted.

seamus heaney: i'd start with either his first collection called death of a naturalist or 100 poems, which is a posthumous collection put together by his family. the majority of his poetry focuses on rural Northern Ireland, political violence, and memory.

clint smith: i'd start with the collection counting descent. it's a coming of age collection about Black identity, lineage, and community. he also has several great ted talks.

if you don't already know about the poetry foundation, i really recommend checking it out! it's free, and they've got such a wide collection of poems, articles, essays, learning prompts, etc, which you can search through by topic and themes.

For the Hardest Days

Clint Smith

Some evenings, after days when the world feels like it has poured all of its despair onto me, when I am awash with burdens that rests atop my body like a burlap of jostling shadows, I find a place to watch the sun set. I dig my feet into a soil that has rebirthed itself a million times over. I listen to the sound of leaves as they decide whether or not it is time to descend from their branches. It is hard to describe the comfort one feels in sitting with something you trust will always be there, something you can count on to remain familiar when all else seems awry. How remarkable it is to know that so many have watched the same sun set before you. How the wind can carry pollen and drop it somewhere it has never been. How the leaves have always become the soil that then become the leaves again. How maybe we are not so different from the leaves. How maybe we are also always being reborn to be something more than we once were. How maybe that's what waking up each morning is. A reminder that we are born of the same atoms as every plant and bird and mountain and ocean around us.

From Counting Descent Write Bloody Publishing, 2016.

Hope you get to sit with something that you can count on to remain familiar this week, and share if you feel like it:

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@artsyunderstudy @cutestkilla @shrekgogurt @you-remind-me-of-the-babe @ivelovedhimthroughworse

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@alexalexinii @whatevertheweather @roomwithanopenfire @drowninginships @cosmicalart