January 26, 2015
Claudia Rankine’s Citizen
Claudia Rankine’s Citizen is a book deeply embedded in the body, in the body before race, as in the body unable to escape either itself or its color. Race ignites […]
January 25, 2015
Let’s Play Two!
The recent death of Ernie Banks, at age 83, got me thinking about life spans: what we hope for, what we’ll accept. Banks lived a famously full life: he was […]
January 21, 2015
Talking PBS NewsHour Live Video Blues
When President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress in September of 2009, I wrote about it for this blog. The speech has faded, of course, from national memory; only […]
January 15, 2015
Catching Up on Bestsellers
As a kid, I never read novels, graphic or otherwise. My brother read comic books, choose-your-adventure stories, Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, an assortment of Afrocentric tomes from Black Arts Plus, down […]
January 8, 2015
Who Has the Loudest Voice?
All literature offends someone. To offend our fixed ideas, even our most sacred truths, is one of the ways in which writers compel us to think, to question, and to […]
December 26, 2014
Poetry, Power, and Panache
“Me, we,” wrote Muhammad Ali, in what may be the shortest poem ever composed (or at least the shortest poem ever delivered as part of a Harvard commencement address). It’s […]
December 11, 2014
Martyr Stories, Past and Present
Some of the most popular stories in medieval Europe were tales of saints and martyrs. Many of the hagiographies were essentially martyr stories as well, seeing as most early Christians were […]
October 31, 2014
Boo
It’s Halloween; let’s light the cauldron. Shakespeare’s weird sisters, when making their hell-broth, tossed in “Eye of newt and toe of frog, / Wool of bat and tongue of dog”—and, […]
October 25, 2014
100 Berrymans
Imagine 100 different John Berrymans, in 100 different replays of the past century. They’re all born on October 25, 1914—in McAlester, in Modesto, in Madison, in Montgomery. Some are privileged, […]
September 15, 2014
Finish What You Start
One self improvement I decided on recently is to finish what I start. I vowed this while on a treadmill at the gym, glancing from television screen to television screen, […]
September 5, 2014
Political Poetry
Should poets speak truth to power? Is it their role to court censorship, to call out social injustices, to commentate, to dare reveal political iniquity for what it is […]
September 2, 2014
The Dutiful Mob, Reconsidered
It’s the day after Labor Day, which means—at many college campuses, including the one where I teach—that fall classes are starting. In constructing the syllabus for my poetry workshop, I’ve […]