Today's Thoughtful Thursday is dedicated to the award winning poet Kevin Young (b.1970). Kevin, whose work has been featured in many Thoughtful Thursdays, is the poetry editor of the New Yorker and the director of New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Prior to that he was the Atticus Haygood Professor of Creative Writing and [...]
Alexander Twilight, Middlebury College, Class of 1823 Today, in honor of the last few days of Black History Month, we celebrate the earliest Black graduates from U.S. white colleges. Imagine, almost 200 years ago, young Alexander Twilight was poised to graduate from Middlebury College in 1823, making him the first Black college graduate from a White institution. To [...]
In today's Thoughtful Thursday we will hear from two wise women poets: Anne Spencer and Audre Lorde. Anne Spencer(1882-1975) was a Harlem Renaissance poet and civil rights activist. Though she lived in Lynchburg Virginia her whole life, she maintained close friendships with many Harlem Renaissance writers, including James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, and W.E.B. Du Bois, and her home [...]
As we continue the celebration of poetry during Black History month, for today's Thoughtful Thursday we offer selections from four of our great poets. First we have "Frederick Douglass" by the renowned Robert Hayden (1913-1980), the first African American poet to hold the position of Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, which later came to be known [...]
It is Black History Month! We all know what this means: Lots of tributes to Dr. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and a host of other Black civil rights leaders, entertainers and athletes will be floating around our children at school this month. While we at GCP believe our sons and daughters and their classmates should know about these [...]
Happy Belated Birthday to Dr. King! While we as a nation will officially celebrate on Monday, we should not forget (or let our children forget) that January 15th was his actual birthday. Today's Thoughtful Thursday will break from our normal poetry/inspirational quotes offering to ask: How are you planning to commemorate Dr. King's holiday? Here are an assortment of [...]
Merry Christmas to you and yours from GCP!! Hoping you and your family had a great Christmas Day. Be sure to spend some time after the Christmas rush enjoying one another's company!!
In less than a week Christmas will be here! In celebration, today's Thoughtful Thursday brings some of our favorite Christmas poetry. First we have the glorious "Christmas Carol" from Paul Laurence Dunbar, followed by the delightful "[little tree]" by e.e. cummings. We end with the traditional crowd favorite, "Twas the Night Before Christmas", which, depending upon which scholars you [...]
On this Thoughtful Thursday, as temperatures drop below freezing in the North East, our thoughts turn to poems about the chill of winter. And so it is time to revisit an old GCP favorite, "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden. While its title and some of its vibrant imagery evoke winter's chill, at the core of the poem is a [...]
With Thanksgiving a few days away, everyone is gearing up for family gatherings and good eating. Whether there are just a few of you or you are having a family reunion around the table, it is important to enjoy the time together for this holiday meal. Here are some Do's and Don'ts to help make sure the holiday is [...]
