Understanding
Last year the Just Write virtual writing group wrote their way through Black History Month by connecting with the words, values, and lives of Black poets. I curated the poems with an eye toward poems that would connect us as humans (Week 1) and help us understand America’s complicated history (Week 2).
This invitation to write began with the power of Sankofa and then shared five poems by four poets:
- Declaration by Tracy K. Smith
- Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden
- Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes
- Reapers by Jean Toomer
- Storm Ending by Jean Toomer
“Declaration” challenges the reader and writer on so many levels, but I am continually struck by using found poetry as a way for those who have been left out of a text to carve out their own space and message. Hayden’s poem is a powerful text exploring a complex and important person. Frederick Douglas’s life and message continues to play an essential role in America’s still unfolding story. “Let America Be America Again” just destroys me as a yet unrealized hope.
How do these poems challenge your understanding of America and our history? What is your declaration? What is your American story? What is your hope?
Image: bagaball, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
