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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"How Do We Find the Words for Our Grief?"
"In English there is no name for someone who survives their child. In Sanskrit, one of the oldest languages, there is a word—vilomah—for a person who has experienced this loss. (The words widow and widower also derive from Sanskrit.) I find it curious that, in so many languages, one of the most terrible things that can happen to a parent is beyond language, to the extent that it cannot be named."
via THE YALE REVIEW |
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