Yala Korwin, artist and poet, was born in Poland. She survived a labor camp in the heart of Germany, and having no place to return to after the end of WWII, she let the winds carry her to France, where she lived as a refugee for ten years. In 1956 she emigrated to the United States with her husband and young children. Her book To Tell the Story— Poems of the Holocaust was published in 1987 by the now defunct Holocaust Library.
-courtesy of thehypertext.com
Lady Freedom Among Us
BY Rita Dove
don't lower your eyes
or stare straight ahead to where
you think you ought to be going
don't mutter oh no
not another one
get a job fly a kite
go bury a bone
with her oldfashioned sandals
with her leaden skirts
with her stained cheeks and whiskers and
heaped up trinkets
she has risen among us in blunt reproach
she has fitted her hair under a hand-me-down cap
and spruced it up with feathers and stars
slung over her shoulder she bears
the rainbowed layers of charity and murmurs
all of you even the least of you
don't cross to the other side of the square
don't think another item to fit on a
tourist's agenda
consider her drenched gaze her shining brow
she who has brought mercy back into the streets
and will not retire politely to the potter's field
having assumed the thick skin of this town
its gritted exhaust its sunscorch and blear
she rests in her weathered plumage
bigboned resolute
don't think you can ever forget her
don't even try
she's not going to budge
no choice but to grant her space
crown her with sky
for she is one of the many
and she is each of us
© Rita Dove. From On the Bus With Rosa Parks (W.W. Norton & Company).
Amiri Who?
"Amiri Baraka, born in 1934, in Newark, New Jersey, USA, is the author of over 40 books of essays, poems, drama, and music history and criticism, a poet icon and revolutionary political activist who has recited poetry and lectured on cultural and political issues extensively in the USA, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe.
With influences on his work ranging from musical orishas such as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, and Sun Ra to the Cuban Revolution, Malcolm X and world revolutionary movements, Baraka is renowned as the founder of the Black Arts Movement in Harlem in the 1960s that became, though short-lived, the virtual blueprint for a new American theater aesthetics. The movement and his published and performance work, such as the signature study on African-American music, Blues People (1963) and the play Dutchman (1963) practically seeded 'the cultural corollary to black nationalism' of that revolutionary American milieu." (excerpt from http://www.amiribaraka.com)
February 17, 2010 06:30 PM
National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
50 East Freedom Way
Cincinnati, Ohio
In his seminal essay “On Black Art”, Dr. Maulana Karenga writes that “Black Art must be for the people, by the people and from the people. That is to say, it must be functional, collective and committing…. All art must be revolutionary and in being revolutionary it must be collective, committing, and functional.” In this presentation the Freedom Center will invite local artists to engage and artistically respond to our Without Sanctuary Thematic Framework of Looking Back, Bearing Witness and Keeping Watch.
I'm Not Lonely
BY Nikki Giovanni
I'm not lonely
sleeping all alone
you think I'm scared
but I'm a big girl
I don't cry or anything
I have a great
big bed to roll around
in and lots of space
and I don't dream
bad dreams like I used
to have that you
were leaving me
anymore
Now that you're gone
I don't dream
and no matter
what you think
I'm not lonely
sleeping
all alone
If this is peace, this dead and leaden thing,Black Woman
Then better far the hateful fret, the sting.
Better the wound forever seeking balm
Than this gray calm!
Is this pain's surcease? Better far the ache,
The long-drawn dreary day, the night's white wake,
Better the choking sigh, the sobbing breath
Than passion's death!
Don’t knock at the door, little child,
I cannot let you in,
You know not what a world this is
Of cruelty and sin.
Wait in the still eternity
Until I come to you,
The world is cruel, cruel, child,
I cannot let you in!
Don’t knock at my heart, little one,
I cannot bear the pain
Of turning deaf-ear to your call
Time and time again!
You do not know the monster men
Inhabiting the earth,
Be still, be still, my precious child,
I must not give you birth!
1
Brushes and paints are all I have
To speak the music in my soul—
While silently there laughs at me
A copper jar beside a pale green bowl.
2
How strange that grass should sing—
Grass is so still a thing ...
And strange the swift surprise of snow
So soft it falls and slow.
Romance
BY Claude McKay
To clasp you now and feel your head close-pressed,
Scented and warm against my beating breast;
To whisper soft and quivering your name,
And drink the passion burning in your frame;
To lie at full length, taut, with cheek to cheek,
And tease your mouth with kisses till you speak
Love words, mad words, dream words, sweet senseless words,
Melodious like notes of mating birds;
To hear you ask if I shall love always,
And myself answer: Till the end of days;
To feel your easeful sigh of happiness
When on your trembling lips I murmur: Yes;
It is so sweet. We know it is not true.
What matters it? The night must shed her dew.
We know it is not true, but it is sweet—
The poem with this music is complete.
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--
I, too, am America.
It wasn't published until many years later (1855) in Josiah Holland's History of Western Massachusetts. The Bar's Fight
BY Lucy Terry
Seventeen hundred forty-six
The Indians did in ambush lay
Some very valiant men to slay
The names of whom I'll not leave out
Samuel Allen like a hero fout
And though he was so brave and bold
His face no more shall we behold.
Eleazer Hawks was killed outright
Before he had time to fight
Before he did the Indians see
Was shot and killed immediately.
Oliver Amsden he was slain
Which caused his friends much grief and pain.
Samuel Amsden they found dead
Not many rods off from his head.
Adonijah Gillet we do hear
Did lose his life which was so dear.
John Saddler fled across the water
And so escaped the dreadful slaughter.
Eunice Allen see the Indians comeing
And hoped to save herself by running
And had not her petticoats stopt her
The awful creatures had not cotched her
And tommyhawked her on the head
And left her on the ground for dead.
Young Samuel Allen, Oh! lack a-day
Was taken and carried to Canada.
Novelist: Harriet Wilson, Our Nig (1859).
Poet: Lucy Terry, 1746, "Bar's Fight."
Poet (published): Phillis Wheatley, 1773, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.
Pulitzer Prize Winner: Gwendolyn Brooks, 1950, for her second book of poetry, Annie Allen.
Pulitzer Prize winner in Drama: Charles Gordone, 1970, for his play No Place To Be Somebody.
Nobel Prize for Literature winner: Toni Morrison, 1993
Poet Laureate: Robert Hayden, 1976–1978
Black female Poet Laureate: Rita Dove, 1993–1995.
