Wendy Taylor

Happy MLK Day.

Honest. Decent. Principled. A Lifetime of Selfless Service.

#ThankYouJimmyCarter 🙏

President Jimmy Carter has passed away at the age of 100. He was a symbol of what is best about America: kindness, compassion, duty and service. He will be missed, most of all by those who long for a return of that kind of country, led by a man with such strength of character.

Holy Smokes. The only thing better than reading a Jorie Graham poem is reading Jorie Graham on the subject of poetry:

"A poem is an undergoing—you step into its river at one point in time, in one state of existence, and you exit it in an altogether other."

Nikki Giovanni, Poet Who Wrote of Black Joy, Dies at 81 As a writer, she tackled race, gender, sex, politics and love. She was also a public intellectual who appeared on television and toured the country.

Nikki Giovanni 💔

www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/o...

Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin. This piece is crucial.

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –

Emily Dickinson, There's a certain Slant of light, (320)

Ph. Josef Koudelka

YOU CAN LISTEN TO @robert.thecure.com IN CONVERSATION WITH DANIELLE PERRY THIS SUNDAY ON SUNDAY MUSIC CLUB FROM 8PM VIA ABSOLUTERADIO.CO.UK (@absoluteradio.bsky.social)

Knoxville, Tennessee by Nikki Giovanni I always like summer best you can eat fresh corn from daddy's garden and okra and greens and cabbage and lots of barbecue and buttermilk and homemade ice-cream at the church picnic and listen to gospel music outside at the church homecoming and you go to the mountains with your grandmother and go barefooted and be warm all the time not only when you go to bed and sleep

Grateful for Nikki Giovanni, all she brought to poetry, her students, the Black Arts Movement & for quite a while now, Virginia. All she will continue to bring. Love & history & place & a precise physicality of the personal.

Rest in power & poems.

Powell's 2024 Book Preview: The First Quarter If you know anything about the booksellers at Powell's Books, you know we love books and you know we love getting excited about books.

We're a bookstore. We're absolutely going to start the year with a hype train for upcoming releases. 
🚃📚📚📚📚✨
That's right. It's time for booksellers to go absolutely feral about upcoming titles with the Powell's 2024 Book Preview.
www.powells.com/post/lists/p...

THIS is my Sentiment

If you’re afraid that books might change someone’s thinking, you’re not afraid of books, you’re afraid of thinking.

Meditations in an Emergency by Cameron Awkward-Rich I wake up & it breaks my heart. I draw the blinds & the thrill of rain breaks my heart. I go outside. I ride the train, walk among the buildings, men in Monday suits. The flight of doves, the city of tents beneath the underpass, the huddled mass, old women hawking roses, & children all of them, break my heart. There's a dream I have in which I love the world. I run from end to end like fingers through her hair. There are no borders, only wind. Like you, I was born. Like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming. Hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid heart.

Cameron Awkward-Rich, "Meditations in an Emergency"

"Like you, I was born. Like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming."

Destroy the myth that libraries are no longer relevant. If you use your library, please share. Picture of library aisle filled with books.

@goodwilllibrarian.bsky.social

Thanks W.S. Merwin /Listen with the night falling we are saying thank you/we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings/we are running out of the glass rooms/with our mouths full of food to look at the sky/and say thank you/we are standing by the water thanking it/standing by the windows looking out/in our directions//back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging/after funerals we are saying thank you/after the news of the dead/whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you//over telephones we are saying thank you/in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators/remembering wars and the police at the door/and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you/in the banks we are saying thank you/in the faces of the officials and the rich/and of all who will never change/we go on saying thank you thank you [Last stanza in the next post]

W.S. Merwin, "Thanks"

y'all, to borrow/amend from the great David Lynch: if I could explain the poems, I wouldn't need to write them.

All I Ever Am The Cure · Songs Of A Lost World · Song · 2024

The Cure 🖤

I’m finding the community here far more engaging and respectful, while still wickedly funny. Happy to be migrating to these friendlier skies.

📸 Kurt Cobain and his cat (1989). Photographer unknown.⁠

Ada Limon showing how its done

Obligations 2 By Layli Long Soldier As we embrace resist the future the present the past we work we struggle we begin we fail ​ to understand to find to unbraid to accept to question the grief the grief the grief the grief we shift we wield we bury​ into light as ash across our faces

been thinking of this Layli Long Soldier poem every single day

The secret ambition of all lyric poetry is to stop time.

—Charles Simic

With all the new thousands showing up here every day, re-upping every so often this Starter Pack of poets I made. Work in progress, mostly pulling from folks on my own bookshelves.

go.bsky.app/TjXjvd8