A little while ago, I had a blog post called “I Heart Uppity (Part One)” and if you followed the comments thread, you noticed I had a rather emotional (at least to me) exchange with a brother I called “Dwayne.” He was disturbed about my saying that I would never date a man who’d been […]
Hey Y’all: I totally forgot to include that the NEA in Poetry deadline is March 4! That’s next Thursday! And you need to go to the website RIGHT NOW. I mean right this minute, because they have some strange, annoying online submissions thing that takes a few days for you to enroll. I tried it […]
Hey Good People, I’m trying to come back slowly here, and thank y’all so much for your patience. I just appreciate all y’all so much. The end of the month deadlines always get me going, whether I want to or not. You know how I feel about paying those bills. I’ve got few pieces of […]
I didn’t expect to be talking again to y’all so soon after my sweet poet-friend, Lucille Clifton passed, but something happened, and I wanted to share it with y’all. Please give me a minute to go around the barnyard with my story, because it takes me a minute to tell something from beginning to end. […]
My good friend, mentor, second mother, and Black Poetry Mother Ms. Lucille Clifton died yesterday. To say I am devastated is an understatement, but I did not want to do my grieving in public. I don’t want to chastise other folks who are doing their grieving in public, but that’s not my way. Then I […]
It’s Valentine’s Day weekend, so allow me a sweet roll call of the folks in my life who have pushed, pulled, and cajoled me to where I am today: Hank Lazer, Afaa Michael Weaver, Lucille Clifton, Maggie Anderson, Sonia Sanchez, Elizabeth Alexander , David Lynn—and that distinguished gentleman on the left? That’s The Man, the […]
Y’all, the Poetry Society of America is now the talk of the Colored People Poets of America today. Apparently, writer Fred Viebahn, the husband of poet Rita Dove, has sent an email of protest to the Poetry Society of America’s director, Alice Quinn about their gallery of baby pictures of poets. There are no African […]
Y’all, I’m so sorry, but there will be no podcast today with Mitchell L. H. Douglas. Some nasty computer virus has got his poor computer all sick and so he can’t connect with the podcast sight, Talkshoe.com this evening. BUT WE WILL BE RESCHEDULING HIS “You Gotta Read This” PODCAST! Mitchell will be our only […]
I’ve got a special place in my heart for Alice Walker. My mother, Trellie James Jeffers, was her seventh grade teacher back in the day in Eatonton, Georgia at Butler-Baker High School. Miss Alice even wrote my mama a poem back then, though she wasn’t my mama then, of course. And she didn’t have the […]
Ok, I’m happy the Saints won the Super Bowl, but I don’t follow football. Wait a minute–don’t y’all start boo-ing me, pretty please! I just can’t understand the game. I tried, but the rules go over my head. And my last man said he was going to explain but we broke up before he could. […]