We are only a week away from Thanksgiving, so today's Thoughtful Thursday offers up a hodgepodge of poems celebrating the food, festivities and fun of this holiday. We start with Elizabeth Alexander's "Butter", a delightful ode to the spread which makes everything taste better. Bet you can't read this without getting hungry! Next is the moving and soulful "Perhaps [...]
GCP has been off the grid for a few weeks but we just had to pop back in today to say Run, Don't Walk, to see the great new movie HARRIET which is opening in theaters nationwide tomorrow, November 1!!! We saw it when it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, and it is an exciting and inspirational film [...]
Our boys and girl are back in school! Today's Thoughtful Thursday offers some inspirational words and poems to celebrate the start of their new school year. The poem "Workshop" by Billy Collins (b. 1941) presents a delightfully irreverent analysis of itself within the poem and will appeal to all who spent time analyzing poetry in high school English. In [...]
In early August 2019 we lost Toni Morrison, the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. In today's Thoughtful Thursday we celebrate this gifted author by sharing some of her inspirational quotes. Share these with your children and enjoy. On Writing –If you find a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written [...]
Politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose, former New York governor Mario Cuomo once said. But we are didn't hear much poetry during this week's Democratic Presidential Candidate's debates. So for today's Thoughtful Thursday we offer a few political poems. We start with "America" from Claude McKay (1889-1948), a bittersweet ode to our nation. From Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) [...]
Hope all you GCP dads had a terrific Father's Day! In your honor, today's Thoughtful Thursday presents three poems which pay tribute to fathers. First, a sentimental, heart-warming salute to hard working Dads everywhere in "Only a Dad" by Edgar Guest (1881-1959). Then, a GCP favorite, "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden (1913-1980), which also recognizes a father's daily [...]
In celebration of Pride Month, today's Thoughtful Thursday features works by LBGTQ poets. Some of these poets have been featured in many Thoughtful Thursdays, like June Jordan (1936-2002) and Audrey Lorde (1934-1992), and others, like E. Ethelbert Miller (b. 1950) and Blas Falconer, are new to these pages. The voice of the other, the ones less heard, is strong [...]
I always encouraged (required, actually) my children’s friends to call me Mrs. Lewis, and I insisted that my children call most adults Mr. or Mrs./Ms. as well. If the parents were really good friends, they became “Aunt” and “Uncle” to our kids, and we were the same to theirs. But that was the only exception. Once my children started [...]
New month, new celebration: did you know that May is National Mental Health Awareness Month? Yep, since 1949 May has been designated Mental Health Month in the U.S. to raise awareness about the importance of mental health and to erase the stigma associated with mental health disorders. And a good thing, too, since we as a people (especially we [...]
On our last Thoughtful Thursday in Women's History Month we celebrate the work of three wonderful poets: the wonderfully accomplished and prolific June Jordan (1936–2002); the brilliant British poet and activist Warsan Shire (b.1988), who is most widely known as the poet whose work was featured in Beyonce's visual album Lemonade; and the young talented poet and writer Alexandra [...]