FOR APRIL 2022 POETRY MONTH: Anna Świrszczyńska, the Polish Sylvia Plath--and Plath

 

 

Anna Świrszczyńska (aka Anna Swir) (1909–1984) was a Polish poet whose poems are about her experiences during World War II, motherhood, the female body, and sensuality. (Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II)  I read about her way back in the 80s when I was researching Polish poets and also found that sometimes she was referred to as the Polish Sylvia Plath, or Polish Plath. I did then read Anna's poetry in the years that Sylvia's poetry was still fresh in my mind, and I did see the resemblance. 

Both had the WWII experience,  both had the horrors and bleakness of the war, both wrote of women's concerns and women's liberation in a time when people sought liberation from the war and Nazi Germany. Finding another Plath, I was absolutely fascinated.

In the meantime, before I had encountered Świrszczyńska, I did try to sound like Plath as so many young female poets tried. Many young female poets want to emulate Plath or at least try thrir hand at her type of poetry, and I wanted not to emulate Plath per say but to emulate her poetry. I must be clear and emphasize that I meant to master her poetic style, not to emulate her mental illness. Plath was known for her immaculate slant rhyme and line breaks, together producing a sort of sea-wave-crashing-upon-rock rocking rhythm, repetitively unsettling to the point of then eventually unnerving; and, all the while, her words yet flowed strongly and unceasingly as naturally as the waters of the sea-storm, unabashed by any feelings of discomfiting the audience. The impact struck me as brilliant insofar as craft. I felt persuaded or compelled to try the same. I too sought that discomfiture--not always, but often, to various degrees in various poems and short stories. Such was as follows: 

     bleakness:

1. the quality or state of being bare and inhospitable.

   "the bleakness of that destroyed landscape"

   • the quality or state of cold and miserable weather.

     "the bleakness of winter"
   • the quality or state of being hopeless, discouraging, or unlikely to have a favorable outcome.

     "this story is marked by unrelenting bleakness"

 (Retrieved from https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=bleakness)

A professor one day spoke of poems being of warm fire and/or cold fire. It was in that moment that I suddenly realized what I had been doing and rather liked the idea of being near warm fire much more than cold fire. I decided to pitch (get rid of) my Plath-like sales pitch (and wrote a poem about that later) and seek the warmth I once knew and generated in many of the poems of my high school and earlier college days like in my first couple workshops before encountering Plath. However, we do all ger sarcastic or bleak or moody or or or whatever sometimes. But I don't want to live there. 

Plath and Anne Seton and Adrienne Rich were friends. The three would meet for lunch or coffee and discuss suicide notes. Two out of three ended up following through and committing suicide--how bleak is that?!?! Pulitzer prize-winning Anne Sexton committed suicide at age 45. She was a confessional poet and one of the best-known writers in America in her time. From what I heard of Plath in my youth, she killed herself by sticking her head in an oven when she found out that her husband Ted Hughes had had an affair. And oh the poems of Ted Hughes, how I loved them, so I was so disappointed upon hearing this. No one is ever worth killing yourself over. Not in my (poetry) book! All three of these poets were feminists and felt oppressed.I think of how J.K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter wrote while on welfare in a laundry closet with kids at home. I wish I could beat those odds, but even if I can't, I cannot see killing myself, especially over another person. So in these three female poets, as in many poets, there is a strong lesson for today's girls and teenagers who feel bullied or stuck in a relationship that feels unfair to them. I just hope that teen girls and young adult women and poets do not want to identify with this.

Regarding that period of my life, many people would ask me if the things I wrote of in poems and in short stories actually ever happened. They happened, but not completely, and not always to me. Sometimes I would take a word of a phrase I heard and run with it into a poem, such as from a conversation I overheard at a bar or an image I saw while walking down the street and imagining the image. Sometimes one moment of a story would happen and then I would run with that into a short story and embellish it until the cows came home.

In defiant spirit of life's struggles, and yes, sounding a lot like cold-fire Plath, Anna Świrszczyńska wrote,

You will not tame this sea
either by humility or rapture.
But you can laugh
in its face.

From, The Sea and the Man, Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan

I hope to do another write-up on Plath, but the days and time for National Poetry Month blogs are running out fast with there being other work I have to do.  

I write this blog mostly for my granddaughter to read some day.

I am keeping a sort of journal online. 

If anyone else happens to read it, great. If not, so be it.

I need to blog less to get some other writing projects done. I always think that blogging will just be a quick warm-up before I go type my other articles, but it does not always work out that way. I think I will definitely stop posting this blog on my FB page so much.  

"Diving Into the Wreck" for Poetry Month ( A Poem by Adrienne Rich)

 

 

(Photo by M. Bencivengo, at Vermilion Lighthouse and Maritime Museum at Lake Erie)

 

One of my favorite old-time all-time poets and one of my favorite poems. However, I do not quite resonate with lines of seeing the thing itself and not the story or the myth of the thing itself, because I love mythology and folklore and for me it is the metaphor that leads to really seeing the thing itself. With the symbolic life, the mind reads and speaks in metaphors. Yet, I love this poem; as much as she says it is not the story or the myth but the thing itself, I think she is telling a story nonetheless and mentions the myth of the mermaid in taking a dive. She cannot seem to help but be a poet of story and the metaphor of myth even as she is looking for the actual "thing itself." I love the imagery in this poem and its description of going down into the deep. It also reminds me of depth psych, as I once posted on my old depth psych website.

 

But then there is how in the modern era the word myth is often used to mean anything/whatever is false in a popular cultural sense, like "Oh, that's not true: that's just a myth." And in that sense person could be looking for the truth to something in looking for "the thing itself." Perhaps this is also timely in a time when, in the news or on the streets, so many people are talking about people ignoring or denying the science of things.

 

Here is the link to Rich reading the poem:

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c03sWpt62vw

 

 

 

 

What I Would Normally Be Writing in my Private Journal but am Blogging About Here

 

Dear Diary, 

On March 31, I filmed my first episode for my new YouTube Channel on music, but the lighting was terrible and I couldn't get it to post on YouTube anyway. I posted it on FB and wish I hadn't. I will be recording it all over again with better lighting. 

 Then when I was ready to post it to YouTube the screen on my phone froze overnight. So much for being on time before April Fool's Day for my first You Tube music episode.

The next day I recorded myself reading a story for April Fools Day on, yes, April 1. But my phone cam  timed out every 10 minutes. It was okay at first because reading the story only took 10 minutes, but then when I wanted to talk about the story (and did) it timed out at another ten minutes which I tried to then turn into "Part II." So then I was going to tape "Part III." But one of the "Parts"--whether it was part I or Part II I did not bother to check did not save in my phone. So I deleted all of it to redo another time. 

The story was Bastianelo, a folktale from Italy. I wrote a paper on it once at school and it is one of my favorites. I did a library presentation on this tale just a couple weeks ago and the library's equipment would not forward the Power Point I devised along with the voice recording so it did not go on the library's You Tube channel like usual when I do these events which is why I wanted to add Bastianelo to my You Tube channel. 

So then I began to feel akin to Jung the Psychologist's friend Pauli the Physicist. I will include a link about " The Paulo Effect" below: 

A teacher of mine once exclaimed to me when I said I had computer problems, " You always have computer problems!" and it was (is) true--I do always have computer problems. When most people have tech problems when Mercury is in Retrograde (and laugh or moan and groan about it), things are harder on me when Mercury is Direct (Normal) than when it is Retrograde because I was born Mercury Retrograde. So when Mercury is in Retrograde things go more with my natural way. Once I found out I have the exact same birthday as Neil Gaiman (the same day of the month and year) I did not mind being born Mercury Retro (Rx). I feel akin to his writings, also, along with Pauli's The Pauli Effect. 

The body is a machine in some ways and in some ways my body machination works "backwards." I was born with limited shoulder rotation and now in my older age I feel like I have overextended my shoulders all my life, even though I was in ballet until I was about 16 and then in karate all through my 20s and had no idea back then that my bodily "clock" was somehow backwards. However, backwards is not quite the right word. It is more of a looking back, a life lived in retrospect. Everything I see on any given day almost always brings back the whole flood of memories of similar associative things. It is a bit like living as a Sensory Type in Jung's Typology, though I do not test as such and test as intuitive instead. 

It would be interesting for someone to do a study on Mercury Retrograde in accordance with Jung's theories of Intuitive "vs." Sensory and also a study of the types of people who stop clocks and make computers or lab equipment crash. 

Please know that nothing say is intended to be in stone even when it sounds like it, and that I say some of this perhaps tongue-in-cheek even if it is true. Things in my opinion can always be two things at once, and I am not even a Gemini!

But I sure have digressed here. 

Getting back, I have all kinds of plans for April for this blog. I hope I fulfill my plans. On the other hand, I have so many other projects in the mixing board that I would surprise myself if I do. Starting the You Tube channel was perhaps the wrong time since I am supposed to be publishing some books I have have in progress throughout the rest of Spring and the Summer. I could have, for instance, spent the last hour typing one of my book manuscripts, but I am so nervous about typesetting that I have put doing it for about a year now. I let days then weeks then months then a year go by. I hope this is the last time I ever say it,m but the pandemic had some things to do with putting things off. Yeah, I had Covid when it first appeared on the scene as some family members were working in medical fields and I was always at the nursing home to see my mom where I guess some outbreaks happened, etc. Remember back when we were all so paranoid when we were told to disinfect our grocery wrappings/packaging when we got home? That kept me busy like the rest of you. Then I was tired for a very very long time after even getting over Covid. I guess you can call it long Covid. I still feel exhausted about every couple days. I have a couple good days and then I have to rest a couple days. That's the new story of my life, P.C.., Post Covid. 

But I digressed for sure again.

And that is all. Plans. I will have to add the follow-through soon, maybe next week, as I am off chasing Mercury into the otherworldly sunset that travels away from earth to the sun instead of the other way around. But that is another story, alas!

For Real,

Mary Ann

At the End of Women's History Month: Women in the Arts I Admire

 

George Sand--A writer who was Chopin's lover and muse. Dressed in men's clothing to show that she was equal to men at a time when women writer's were not taken as seriously otherwise as men--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ahElxN-bE8

Virginia Woolf--https://www.britannica.com/biography/Virginia-Woolf

Charlotte Bronte--https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charlotte-Bronte

Emily Bronte--https://www.britannica.com/biography/Emily-Bronte

Mary Shelley--https://www.biography.com/writer/mary-shelley

Louisa May Alcott--https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louisa-May-Alcott and 

                                  https://louisamayalcott.org/ 

Willa Cather--https://www.britannica.com/biography/Willa-Cather

Giovanna Garzoni--Amazingly lovely still life paintings, my favorite being the Lemons with Bees--

Georgia O'Keefe--https://www.okeeffemuseum.org/about-georgia-okeeffe/

*Nota Bene on Limoni (è plurale per una limone):  I love lemons in art, I love the Dutch still life paintings, and I was just today fortunate to find this academic paper on this subject matter: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=12935&context=etd    

**Nota: I thank Facebook and Story Tender Donna May for introducing me to the painting I cited above, which I saw for the first time in one of her writing prompts on her prompt  cite. I love writing prompts and used to use prompts in my tEnglish Composition classes. I would often suggest to my students that they choose a quote or an image and then write about it, and usually I gave them quotes to choose from or an image. Yet even teachers and professional writers (I wrote for A & E in newspapers and did win a couple poetry and fiction awards back in the day for which I even got payed!) can benefit from prompts sometimes. 

 

~~I hope to post more women in art in history soon--

yet stay tuned for women poets in April in just a couple days.

and for the folk tale Bastianelo, an Italian tale about fools 

for 

April Fool's Day!

But I hope to get these things done and thus hope I am not fooling anyone here!  

April Showers Bring May (Lemon) Flowers,

Mary Ann 

 

WOMEN-POETRY-HISTORY Months

Dear Reader,

We are now at the last couple days of Women's History Month and will soon move into April, National Poetry Month

I did not blog in this blog in March for Women's History Month. So many vines that twist here and there like vignettes in history or poetry and literature that the enormity of it all can leave me with the difficult task of choosing which women in history to include in my blog. As for this purpose, I skipped all the potential blogs for March even while thinking about certain historical figures every day as like many other would-be writers I went about cleaning my house, cooking dinner, re-cleaning the kitchen, doing the laundry, and mopping and rinsing floors. I rinse them because I do not want cleaner residue on the floors that my grandchild or my daughter's and grandchild's dog might get on their hands and feet and paws. I enjoy taking time out for family. But then after that I have a hard time getting back to work.

With poetry month coming up, I want to focus on some women poets in April who are also historical figures in their own right of poetic license in which they lived or live. 

In a sense, I like to think that we are all historical, as we all make our own history. But these women poets who are published and many of them quite famous go down in history, so in April I will often combine these themes of WOMEN-POETRY-HISTORY. 

During February's Black History Month tributes, I did not blog about some of my favorite women poets who were or are Black American poets. I did mention in one February blog that I would blog about Lucille Clifton, Nikki Giovanni, and Maya Angelou this April. I am not going to include any writings of them here--this blog is merely my announcement of my intent. 

Also, not every poet or poem I will discuss in April will be written by a woman. I have one blog planned for April that isn't even poetry at all, but does illustrate poetry in motion or the poetry in life, I like to say poetic life. 

Even in my preamble introduction to this blog, when I say "the artistic life" or living artistically, I do not mean it has to be done with money to afford the grandiosity of lots of beautiful art sculptures or paintings all around you. Sure those things can be very nice, and what is pleasing to the eye can create a life of aesthetic pleasures; however, with little money to buy art or with little money to have the most grand library at home, there is still a way to live life as an art.* I used my imagination to envision the room I wanted, which was to me an artistic process. I did some artistic cooking--or at least it felt that way, the ginger chicken then leftover chicken salad for the soul. I wrote in my dream journal. I did my work at the library surrounded by the huge history of books. I drank my coffee thinking about art, about how a delicious cup of coffee can be delicious as poetry and vice versa. I took my granddaughter to the library. I read some stories about fairies from around the world and looked at fairy art. I met with friends. I finished reading a book of poems by Nikki Giovanni. I went for walks to the lake and enjoyed the poetic romance of the beauty in nature, sometimes by myself and sometimes with my daughter and granddaughter. What is art to you? To you, what in life makes for art, or living artfully?

I thought this thought, about the poetry in life which is not a new thought by any means yet one that is still important to so many people-- as soon as I began to read the book, Tuesdays with Morrie (the title uses the lower case t and so this is not a typo!) in this last month. The subtitle reads rather poetically and summarizes in the most brief possible way what the book is about, then the reader gathers that the book looks at life in that way that is poetic: "an old man, a young man, and life's greatest lessons." I learned some lessons from this book I will discuss later.

Every book I read and every poem I read teaches a lesson. I never feel too old to learn. You can even learn old lessons in new ways as you age. I learned a great lesson in my 20s when I heard and saw Maya Angelou recite her poems live in an auditorium where I had an aisle seat at Bowling Green State University, many years ago. She was close enough to me that I could almost physically feel the power in her voice touch me and my being. She gave her poetry reading by heart--she knew all her poems by heart, from the heart and to my heart and the hearts of those in the audience who felt a resonance with her. I can still visualize her facial expressions during the reading also, full of convictions. It is worth mention that just as many men were there as women. She is a women poet but not just for women.

Please do not be dismayed that after speaking of Women's History Month and women poets that above I write immediately about a book by a man about a man. I will write more about the author, Mitch Albom, who relays the rhythms in life, this next month, possibly prior to blogging about particular poets, particular women poets, and particular poems. Maybe I will do that tomorrow. I have been spending Tuesdays on Tuesdays with Morrie for the last month or so and wrote down many of my thoughts while reading it. I read it before years ago but felt drawn to reading it again upon finding a table at the library that featured books all with the word Tuesday in their titles. 

What is art to you? To you, what in life makes for art? What are some things you like to do that fulfill you artistically in life? 

(Photo by Kit)

 May the Muses be with you, 

Mary Ann 

*I moved into a new home during Covid isolation times and the back room I had for mt office was rather dull looking when I moved in. There were dull looking curtains on the windows that didn't even quite fit the windows and my desk was in an awkward spot because my computer battery broke down from old age and the only way to use it was to keep it plugged in to the wall which limited my usable space. By now the computer is fixed, the battery has been replaced, and the furniture has been moved around to have more of the office/studio space I have wanted. I got the old curtains down and washed them to give to charity because now that they are cleaned they might look nice somewhere else.But the floors still need to be built back up and replaced because there are some problems also with the flooring in this back office room. 

A Simple Children's Chinese New Year Party Plan

 

 

 A slightly different version of this (my) article appeared in  local newspaper about 15 years ago as a simple and fun community interest story. I wanted to save this article here in this blog so decided to include it here today even though the Chinese New Year celebration time has passed by now. I did a Year of the Tiger and Chinese New Year presentation at a local library back in February for the Chinese New Year 2022 about the folklore of this holiday and we did pass out fortune cookies after reading the story of "The Race for the Chinese New Year," a legend from China about the new year animals. However, the forlklore program I do at the library is for adults to learn about folklore they share with the children in their lives or the folklore they like to read and hear about themselves.

Nota: 2022 is the Year of the Tiger. (Photo below is of a dragon.)

 Have a happy Chinese New Year party! 

By Mary Ann Bencivengo

(This was the headline in the paper.)

     If you need a second chance to affirm your New Year’s resolutions, the Chinese New Year comes just in time, on February 18.  Or, you can break the monotony of the winter chill and throw a Chinese New Year party for your kids. If you don’t have kids, adults might like this idea too—just omit from its itinerary the children’s activities.

     Ideas here are loose ones. You can alter any of them for age appropriation.

     Have your child construct a guest list for a luncheon of 3-5, to serve, along with herself, 4-6.

     Have your child choose an entrée from a Chinese menu. Hint: If your child has never tried Chinese food before and is a fussy eater: most kids love sweet and sour chicken. It is

sliced and fried like familiar chicken bites or chicken fingers. If no one has allaergies to shellfish, try a bag of shrimp chips--they are are a nice change from potato chips and yet resemble them, so kids are likely to try them. You can usually get these in grocery stores. Buy fortune cookies. A big bowl of them makes a fun centerpiece for the table. 

     Red is the traditional color for décor for Chinese table settings and the Chinese New Year because it is vibrant.  Placemats at Chinese restaurants are always red and always display the Chinese Zodiac, which is fun reading and conversation material for the party. Make sure you ask for them when you pick up your take-out.

    On the placemat, the kids will see illustrations of various animals marked with various years under them. The Chinese Zodiac runs in 12-year cycles, each year being named after a certain animal. If a child was born in 1994 she was born in the Year of the Dog.

If a child was born in 1998, he was born in the Year of the Tiger. Certain qualities are attributed to each animal. If born in the Year of the Dog the person is said to be loyal and honest but sometimes stubborn. If born in the Year of the Tiger the person is supposedly assertive, sometimes aggressive, and courageous yet sensitive. Kids can have fun saying that they like dogs or are like a tiger.

     They also can learn about human nature and characteristics--virtues and vices--this way in a way that is fun, since kids love legend and fables. It also bestows upon them the perfect opportunity to make resolutions to improve behavior—to be kind, to be trustworthy, to be ambitious. With this kind of material provided, they get also the opportunity to do it on their own instead of at a time when they are being scolded. This activity also provides them an exercise in how others perceive them.  Common remarks and jokes are “I like monkeying around!” or “Yeah, in school you are such a horse because you love to run so much during recess!” This, you hope, is all in good fun and quite often you will hear the kids give wonderful compliments to each other as well as joke around.

     If you like structure at your child’s parties, you can give them a blank placemat—in form of a piece of paper of placemat size--in addition to the other and have them illustrate their animal on it. They can do this while you brew Chinese decaf tea. Young children love this idea of brewing this tea, simply because it is exotic to them and Chinese. Then start the luncheon off with a tea party when it’s ready and the markers are put away, or surprise them with the activity after they eat.

     You can go to the library and check out a book on a Chinese story or Chinese fairy tales. For instance, did you know that the first Cinderella story originated in China?

     Download and print images of China from the internet that they can pass around.

     Teach the kids how to say hello and goodbye and “Happy New Year!” in Chinese.

     Then let them have a little free-time play, which is what children love when not in school.

     Not only is this party fun but is also a great way to introduce cultural awareness to your child. My first pair of chopsticks when I was a kid came from an order form on a cereal box I mailed in. I was mesmerized and thrilled to see the paper they were wrapped in with the strange or ornate décor and writing on it, on something that came from the other side of the world!  You can string Chinese paper lanterns and hang a New Year banner. You can somehow add a pig as central to the theme this year since this year is The Year of the Pig

     This party is especially fun for the littlest ones like toddler-age through kindergarten, but even pre-teens can enjoy hostessing their own event. After all, even adults sometimes like silly parties!  

    Other than resources already mentioned, you can get more materials for this party at Party America at [...this store is not there anymore at the location I gave]. There is a nice selection there for what you will need except for the food and the Zodiac placemats. Or you can try the Oriental Trading catalog.

     I also looked for piggy bank party favors so everyone could remember the pig all year and bank on good fortune but I didn’t find any. If you do, please let me know. I’ll try to bank on that for next year.

     Happy New Year again and may all your resolutions hold true!

 

 

For Black History Month (Continued from Last Month): A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry and Poems by Langston Hughes and Nikki Giovanni

Last month, for Black History Month, I blogged about some of my favorite films and books. Although it is no longer February, I am posting this one late, in early March. Until today it was still in my notebook, handwritten. I had hoped to get to more in February, but I will be adding some of the Black American poets I admire and enjoy in National Poetry Month in April. 

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry and "Harlem" by Langston Hughes

Last time I discussed the film Glory, followed by the book The Gold Cadillac, followed by the film Green Book. I wish to continue with the ever-famous classic A Raisin in the Sun, a play by Lorraine Hansberry, which in book form is preluded by the Langston Hughes poem often known as "a dream deferred" or "a raisin in the sun," yet its title is "Harlem." Yjr porem captures the theme of the book, about dreams deferrred when a Black American family wants to move out of their apartment and into a house but the house happens to be in an all-white neighborhood. The play was first produced in 1959, after the American Civil Rights Movement began in the mid-50s. 

Throughout this film, so much symbolism is given in little windows of time in different scenes, the most well-known or talked about symbol being the half-dead plant sitting in the one tuiny little window in the apartment that the motherwants to take with her and her family into a new house--where it and they can all thrive and not just merely and barely survive. 

Civil Rights and Women's Rights both are examined in this play (which did later become a film), such as when the daughter contemplates having an abortion because of no money and cramped living conditions. room in the small apartment she and her husband and son share with her husband Walter's mother and his sister Beneatha. The name Beaneatha sounds like "Beneath ya," symbolizing the oppression of Black American women; yet, the Women's Rights Movement was happening for all women of all cultures and ethnicities at that time, too. Again there is the theme of survival or life being able to thrive in its environment.  

Beaneatha and Walter have had no financial way out, but when Walter's mother receives a life insurance check upon her husband's death, Walter who is currently tired and bitter of being a chauffer wants to invest it in a liquor store to create a family business. However, his mother wants to use it to buy a nice house for everyone.

Beaneatha meets a professor at college who teaches her to honor her African heritage. She learns she does not have to try too much to assimilate into the white American culture. Her boyfriend does not approve of her wearing traditionakl African garb to go out to the movies with her on a Friday night. 

This film looks at so many different conflicts all at once that it is richly textured. I used to use this book in my English Composition class as fulfillment of the requirement that students write about a play and/or film. As mentioned above there is so much symbolism in the play that it offers ample content about which to write in learning to analyze literature. Forever an opportunist, I was happy to have the opportunity with this book (film script published in book form) to introduce the study of poetry into the classroom. Here there is also the opportunity to not just talk about the play or talk about the poem but to synthesize them in thought, in critical thinking, and in writing. 

Here is a link to the poem Harlem, from the Poetry Foundation website: 

  "Harlem"   (Retrieved from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46548/harlem) 

A Brief Comment on Movements: Civil War, Civil Rights, and Symbols of Movement in These Stories

In these works, we have moved from the film Glory from the Civil War into films and books and poetry from the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s; these all have involved movement as a theme. We have the archetype of movement in these works and we have the literary and archetypal symbols of that movement as the images of the vehicles and in Glory the feet in movement and marching. In Glory the soldiers needed shoes so their feet would not blister, cut and bleed. In The Gold Cadillac we have the gold Cadillac quite obviously. In Green Book we have not just the Green Book about which hotels or motels a Black American is allowed by law to stay in but we have the Cadillac and the chauffer that drives him there and to all his places of performance (and a few other surprise places not on the schedule.)

Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou, Rita Dove, and Other Black American Woman Voices

I had read Nikki Giovanni years ago, back in high school and in my undergraduate years in college in a Creative Writing program. She is known as an American classic of a poet. She too was creating poems during the times of Civil Rights. For Black History Month of this year of 2022, I read her more recent collection titled Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea with the subtitle Poems and Not Quite Poems (and I liked how she did not capitalize the words in the subtitle). The book contains a poem by the same title as the title of this book, "Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea" (it is worth repeating): Quilting as an art. Quilting as a tradition. Quilting words together into poems and prose poems. On the inside of the dust cover, it mentions how her poems "first emerged during the Civil Rights Movement and Black Arts Movement of the 1960s." Yes, of course, how brilliant! I thought, to mention the Black Arts Movement! Arts depict life, so why would anyone leave the arts out of it and how impeccable it is to mention this! For now all I will say is I love this collection, for I love the dynamics of her voice. Her voice, even though different from Maya Angelou's is still like Angelou's in the sense of being dynamic. It is the dynamics here that I love, and also in that like Angelou she transcends race and culture by speaking universally to women's experience. Whether Black American or other American ethnicity, these poems have contents for most Everywoman.

(Photo by Jasmine Waheed on Unsplash)

National Poetry Month in April Coming Up with More About These and Other Poets

I am going to talk more about these poets mentioned above during April, National Poetry Month. During National Poetry Month, I plan to also discuss some song-poets here and there, or the music in poetry. 

Coming Soon in March, my YouTube Music and Arts Channel

Too, I will be launching my You Tube Channel on mostlyu music but also other fun arts for both children and adults, and all kinds of music, from Classical to old Folk to newer Rock Folk to Pop and Rock. I am very excited to offer these videos on music and fun things about music. More description to come.