"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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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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