“BALDWIN: It isn’t even a question of keeping yourself happy. It’s a question of keeping yourself in some kind of clear relationship, more or less, to the force which feeds you. Some days you’re happy, some days you ain’t. But somehow we have to deal with that on the simplest level. Bear in mind that this person facing you is a person like you. They’re going to go home and do whatever they do just like you. They’re as alone as you are.
GIOVANNI: Because that becomes a responsibility, doesn’t it?
BALDWIN: Well, it’s called love, you know.
GIOVANNI: We agree. Love is a tremendous responsibility.
BALDWIN: It’s the only one to take, there isn’t any other.”]
once a snowflake fell on my brow and i loved it so much and i kissed it and it was happy and called its cousins and brothers and a web of snow engulfed me then i reached to love them all and i squeezed them and they became a spring rain and i stood perfectly still and was a flower
laura karetzky night hawks (2022) \ sylvia plath collected poems: “event”(via@derangedrhythms) \ edward hopper new york office (1962) \ carlos drummond de andrade centres of cataclysm: celebrating fifty years of modern poetry in translation: “seven-sided poem” (tr. richard zenith) \ ivana vostrakova loneliness \ dylan thomas the collected poems of dylan thomas: the new centenary edition: “no man believes” \ michalina garus from the window \ nikki giovanni the collected poetry, 1968-1998
maybe there is something about the seventh of June: Gwen, Prince and me … or maybe people just have to be born at some time … and there are only three hundred sixty-five days or three sixty-six every four years or so …
– Nikki Giovanni, from ‘Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea’(2002)
Nikki Giovanni,Re:Creation, Broadside Press, Detroit, MI, 1970 [Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY]. Photocover by Chester Higgins, Jr.; Designed by Ray Prather, Jr.
Happy 73rd Birthday to the One and the ONLY Aretha Franklin!! This photo (by Walter Iooss) was taken in the year I was born in the city I was born: Newark, NJ in 1969. I was honored (thrilled!) when the legendary poet Nikki Giovanni granted me permission to share an excerpt of her 1970 poem, ‘Poem for Aretha" in my book and I’d like to share a bit of it for you here in tribute to Ms. Franklin:
“she is undoubtedly the one person who put everyone on notice she revived johnny ace and remembered lil green aretha sings "I say a little prayer” and dionne doesn’t want to hear it anymore aretha sings “money won’t change you” but james can’t sing “respect” the advent of Aretha pulled ray charles from marlboro country and back into the blues made nancy wilson try one more time forced dionne to make a choice (she opted for the movies) and diana ross had to get an afro wig pushed every Black singer into Blackness and negro entertainers into negroness you couldn’t jive when she said "you make me feel”
“Style has a profound meaning to Black Americans. If we can’t drive, we will invent walks and the world will envy the dexterity of our feet. If we can’t have ham, we will boil chitterlings; if we are given rotten peaches, we will make cobblers; if given scraps, we will make quilts; take away our drums, and we will clap our hands. We prove the human spirit will prevail. We will take what we have to make what we need. We need confidence in our knowledge of who we are.”
![Nikki Giovanni, For Gwendolyn Brooks [September 23, 1969], in Re:Creation, Broadside Press, Detroit,](https://64.media.tumblr.com/6d2e85b7f3c2e5f2359911e4e155fc09/9bec1b3269e128bc-3a/s1280x1920/c768c2ae363ac6e376a4dffa30bcfab5cfd80a32.png "Nikki Giovanni, For Gwendolyn Brooks [September 23, 1969], in Re:Creation, Broadside Press, Detroit,")
