Mid-week Giggle

OK. So, my good friend, Queen Zenobia, forwarded me an e-mail that contained this very cute joke. I am sharing it with you today in the hope that it brings a smile to your face and helps you through the rest of your week.

Three boys are in the school yard bragging about
their fathers.
The first boy says, 'My Dad scribbles a few words
on a piece of paper, he calls it a poem,
they give him $50.'
The second boy says, 'That's nothing. My Dad
scribbles a few words on a piece of paper,
he calls it a song, they give him $100.'
The third boy says, 'I got you both beat. My Dad
scribbles a few words on a piece of paper,
he calls it a sermon, and it takes eight people to
collect all the money!'

30 Days of Poets—Day 13

Al Young, Poet Laureate of California Emeritus, was born May 31, 1939 in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  He grew up there in the rural South as well as in the urban sprawl of Detroit.  Young graduated with honors from U.C. Berkeley after holding a variety of odd jobs:  folksinger, lab aide, disk jockey, medical photographer, clerk typist, employment counselor.  He is married an has one son, Michael.

Young has taught poetry, creative writing and American literature at a laundry list of colleges and universities.  He has also served on the faculty of Cave Canem's summer workshop retreats for African American poets.

Young's honors include Wallace Stegner, Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, the PEN-Library of Congress Award for Short Fiction, the PEN-USA Award for Non-Fiction, two American Book Awards, two Pushcart Prizes, two New York Times Notable Book of the year citations, an Arts Council Silicon Valley Fellowship, the Stephen Henderson Achievement Award for Poetry, Radio Pacifica’s KPFA Peace Prize, the Glenna Luschei Distinguished Poetry Fellowship, and the Richard Wright Award for Excellence in Literature.

Young lists some of his influences as Black culture and popular speech and music.  He loves jazz and the months of April and October.

Please enjoy the following Al Young poem:

UP JUMPED SPRING
for Nana

What's most fantastical almost always goes
unrecorded and unsorted. Take spring.
Take today. Take dancing dreamlike; coffee
your night, creameries your dream factories.
Take walking as a dream, the dearest, sincerest
means of conveyance: a dance. Take leave
of the notion that this nation's or any other's earth
can still be the same earth our ancestors walked.
Chemistry strains to connect our hemispheres.
The right and left sidelines our brain forms
in the rain this new world braves-acid jazz.
The timeless taste her tongue leaves in your mouth,
stirred with unmeasured sugars, greens the day
the way sweet sunlight oxygenates, ignites
all nights, all daytimes, and you-this jumps.
Sheer voltage leaps, but nothing keeps or stays.
Sequence your afternoon as dance. Drink spring.
Holding her hard against you, picture the screenplay.
Take time to remember to get her spells together.
Up jumps the goddess gratified, and up jumped spring.

30 Days of Poets—Day 12

Ishmael Reed, poet, novelist, essayist, teacher, anthologist, publisher, and cultural activist, was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on February 22, 1938.  Though born in Chattanooga, Reed grew up in Buffalo, New York.

Reed has taught at the University of California at Berkeley since the late 1960s, He also has held visiting appointments at many other academic institutions, including Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth, Washington University in St. Louis, and SUNY Buffalo.

Reed is known for his satirical works challenging American political culture, and highlighting political and cultural oppression.  Reed's work has often sought to represent neglected African and African-American perspectives, his energy and advocacy have centered more broadly on neglected peoples and perspectives, irrespective of their cultural origins.

Reed's published works include ten novels, six collections of poetry, eight collections of essays, one farce, one libretto, a sampler collection, two travelogues and six plays.  He has also edited thirteen anthologies.  In the poetry anthology, From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900–2002, Reed endorses a very open, inclusive definition of American poetry as a great mix of work that should include work found in the traditional canon as work by immigrants, hip hop artists, and Native Americans.

In addition to winning several awards for his writing, two of his books have been nominated for National Book Awards, and a book of poetry, Conjure, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Here is one of my favorite Ishmael Reed poems:

beware : do not read this poem

by Ishmael Reed

tonite, thriller was
abt an ol woman, so vain she
surrounded herself w /
many mirrors
it got so bad that finally she
locked herself indoors & her
whole life became the
mirrors
one day the villagers broke
into her house , but she was too
swift for them . she disappeared
into a mirror
each tenant who bought the house
after that , lost a loved one to
the ol woman in the mirror :
first a little girl
then a young woman
then the young woman/s husband
the hunger of this poem is legendary
it has taken in many victims
back off from this poem
it has drawn in yr feet
back off from this poem
it has drawn in yr legs
back off from this poem
it is a greedy mirror
you are into this poem . from
the waist down
nobody can hear you can they ?
this poem has had you up to here
belch
this poem aint got no manners
you cant call out frm this poem
relax now & go w / this poem
move & roll on to this poem
do not resist this poem
this poem has yr eyes
this poem has his head
this poem has his arms
this poem has his fingers
this poem has his fingertips
this poem is the reader & the
reader this poem
statistic : the us bureau of missing persons re-
ports that in 1968 over 100,000 people
disappeared leaving no solid clues
nor trace only
a space in the lives of their friends

30 Days of Poets—Day 11

Lucille Clifton was born Thelma Lucille Sayles in Depew, New York, on June 27, 1936.

Her first book of poems, Good Times, was rated one of the best books of the year by the New York Times in 1969.

Clifton received numerous awards and honors in her lifetime, including: an Emmy Award from the American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Creative Writing Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1970 and 1973, a grant from the Academy of American Poets, a 1984 Coretta Scott King Award for her children's book, Everett Anderson's Good-bye, the first author to have two books of poetry named finalists for one year's Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and from 1999 to 2005, she served on the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets.

Clifton has served as Poet Laureate for the State of Maryland and Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary's College of Maryland.

After a long battle with cancer, Lucille Clifton died on February 13, 2010, at the age of 73.

The following poem by Lucille Clifton initially made me smile and even laugh, but upon a second and even third reading, it made me deeply contemplate the how men and women view themselves and each other...and our roles in the universe. Enjoy!


wishes for sons
by Lucille Clifton


i wish them cramps.
i wish them a strange town
and the last tampon.
I wish them no 7-11.

i wish them one week early
and wearing a white skirt.
i wish them one week late.

later i wish them hot flashes
and clots like you
wouldn't believe. let the
flashes come when they
meet someone special.
let the clots come
when they want to.

let them think they have accepted
arrogance in the universe,
then bring them to gynecologists
not unlike themselves.