Shane McCrae
She gave it with her living hand to me a copy of
The Master Letters with her living hand to me
Thick with a thickness they now     I can't say     how many re-
printings later new     copies have lost the paper
They're printed on is thinner     now but it itself was new
She gave it to me new she must have had it since
The book was new to her she must have     kept it in her castle
She signed it     in the Little Castle that was where we were

Together she     you must have kept it in your castle for
Twenty years Master how     long had you lived in the castle
Before I for a single afternoon     came where are you
To ask     I think     the castle followed you     your whole life
And now you've taken the castle     to wherever you have gone
Master of now     gone from now
she must have kept that
Copy for twenty years before     she with her living hand
Gave it to me     a paperback     still glossy with

The printing date 4/97 still     glossy beneath
The gloss or Master was it     printed on the gloss
As we are we who     walk on Earth are     printed on the gloss
And liable to smudge and     disappear if touched

I ask you where are you to ask     I might have     called you after
I heard     but first I'll tell the story     we were under
ground waiting for a train my daughter and     I waiting for
An A or D     to ride it down     to Union Square when

I heard a woman go     under the train     the sound must
Have been the train     crushing her body but the sound sounded
Like a piece of paper tearing that was     what it sounded
Like     then screaming and the screaming was the sound
I turned to     Master then I turned my daughter’s face away
I might have called you after     I might have said It sounded
Like paper Master where are you to ask     do you know now to
Whom she was Master     the woman beneath the train

You must have kept it     in your little castle not for     me in
Particular     but for whoever would be there calling
You when your love was called     to cross the bridge from hand to hand
The book would for a moment make as it was given
And I was there     I called you and you     with your living hand
Took the book down from the shelf     beside the sprig of heather
From the Brontës’ moors     and handed it to me     a sprig that looked
Alive still     of green heather     from across the sea
from the book CAIN NAMED THE ANIMAL / Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Black-and-white image of a young Ruth Stone
"Ruth Stone’s Vast Library of the Female Mind"

"In the first footage of the poet Ruth Stone with her family that we see in the documentary 'Ruth Stone’s Vast Library of the Female Mind,' she is a nonagenarian, sitting in the living room of her Vermont home with her three grown granddaughters. One of them recites the first line of one of her poems, and then all four spontaneously recite the rest of it—all 15 lines—together, from memory, relishing every word. It’s an amazing thing."

via NJ ARTS
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Amaud Jamaul Johnson's handwritten copy of "A Lovely Love"
What Sparks Poetry: 
Amaud Jamaul Johnson on Gwendolyn Brooks's "A Lovely Love"

"I was twenty and an undergraduate at Howard University, taking Dr. Jon Woodson’s Survey of African American Poetry. He was suspicious of labels and spent the first weeks of class arguing against his own course title. His first lecture began with a summary dismissal of Maya Angelou, who a year earlier was Bill Clinton’s Inaugural Poet. He would hand out poems with the authors’ names blacked out, and ask: “What makes this a Black poem, or is this good or bad?” We had to defend our answers. Our shortcomings were immediately evident. This is how I was introduced to Gwendolyn Brooks’s 'A Lovely Love.'"
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