Yeah.

You knew it was coming.

I memorized this when I was nine. Last year, I taught it to a 9-year-old girl who was a student in a tutoring program with which I was involved, and she taught it to her friends. I like the idea of little girls learning this poem.

What she said.

SOMETIMES I tremble like a storm-swept flower,
And seek to hide my tortured soul from thee.
Bowing my head in deep humility
Before the silent thunder of thy power.
Sometimes I flee before thy blazing light,
As from the specter of pursuing death;
Intimidated lest thy mighty breath,
Windways, will sweep me into utter night.
For oh, I fear they will be swallowed up–
The loves which are to me of vital worth,
My passion and my pleasure in the earth–
And lost forever in thy magic cup!
I fear, I fear my truly human heart
Will perish on the altar-stone of art!

To be in love
Is to touch with a lighter hand.
In yourself you stretch, you are well.
You look at things
Through his eyes.
A cardinal is red.
A sky is blue.
Suddenly you know he knows too.
He is not there but
You know you are tasting together
The winter, or a light spring weather.
His hand to take your hand is
overmuch.
Too much too bear.
You cannot look in his eyes
Because your pulse must not say
What must not be said.
When he
Shuts a door-
Is not there_
Your arms are water.
And you are free
With a ghastly freedom.
You are the beautiful half
Of a golden hurt.
You remember and covet his mouth
To touch, to whisper on.
Oh when to declare
Is certain Death!
Oh when to apprize
Is to mesmerize,
To see fall down, the Column of Gold,
Into the commonest ash.

The man himself reads one of his most famous poems, “I, Too.”

Since April is National Poetry Month, I’ve been trying to spend more time reading and thinking about poems and poets — no mean feat, since I tend to grow much more frustrated with poetry than I do with other forms — because I think my own sense of rhythm in writing will be improved by the study.

When I was younger, I loathed Paul Laurence Dunbar’s dialect poems, for some of the same reasons I loathe Tyler Perry productions today: If they were the only exposure someone had to black art, I thought they’d be a poor representation of who and what we are.

With all the references to “co’n pones,” “mammy” and “pappy” in Dunbar’s work, I could hardly read them without cringing.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve mellowed a bit on this issue.

Take Dunbar’s “Little Brown Baby,” for example:

(more…)

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• The Day that Black History Met American History
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• Did I mention that memoirist Barack Obama is now president of the United States, and that I was present for his inauguration? I’m sorry. It must’ve slipped my mind :)