“where does politics end and your love poems begin? sometimes, they are both the same thing sometimes, they have to be the same thing.” - Ijeoma Umebinyuo, your love poems need politics to survive
I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED GENOCIDE TO STOP I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AND REACTION I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED MUSIC OUT THE WINDOWS I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED NOBODY THIRST AND NOBODY NOBODY COLD I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED I WANTED JUSTICE UNDER MY NOSE - June Jordan, Directed by Desire
“i want to love, but my hair smells of war and running and running.” - Warsan Shire, Conversations About Home
Love is profoundly political. Our deepest revolution will come when we understand this truth. Only love can give us the strength to go forward in the midst of heartbreak and misery. Only love can give us the power to reconcile, to redeem, the power to renew weary spirits and save lost souls. The transformative power of love is the foundation of all meaningful social change. Without love our lives are without meaning. Love is the heart of the matter. When all else has fallen away, love sustains. - bell hooks, Salvation: Black People and Love
[Arabic text, then] When are we going to see each other, she asks / After a year and a war, I say / When is the war going to end, she asks When we see each other, I say. - Mahmoud Darwish
Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare. - Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light
We work too hard We’re too tired to fall in love. Therefore we must overthrow the government. We work too hard We’re too tired to overthrow the government. Therefore we must fall in love. - Rod Smith
“All this time I told myself we were born from war—but I was wrong, Ma. We were born from beauty. Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence — but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it.” - Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
Yes, many poems in this book have to do with civic strife. But the story circles around the life of two newlyweds, the moments of small joys in a young marriage. It is a book of motherhood and fatherhood; it is a book of private happiness. I am a love poet, or a poet in love with the world. It is just who I am. If the world is falling apart, I have to say the truth. But I don’t stop being in love with that world. - Ilya Kaminsky, “Still Dancing: An Interview with Ilya Kaminsky”
Somewhere, for the sake of his children, a man writes what he has seen / Somewhere, for the sake of his children, a man will not write what he has seen. - Anne Michaels, “Somewhere Night is Falling”
areudirty
snowghoul
theartofmadeline
dededos
