Today's Thoughtful Thursday features poems from two iconic African-American poets, Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Alice Walker. Dunbar's "By The Stream" cautions us to remember to look beyond the sparkle and glow of personality to determine the depth of character. Walker's "Before You Knew You Owned It" offers words of wisdom about managing expectations and guarding vulnerability. On the lighter [...]
It is graduation season, and speakers everywhere are polishing up their speeches and getting ready to share their wisdom and advice with the Class of 2015 and their families. Today's Thoughtful Thursday features quotes from past graduation speeches. Some are funny, some thought provoking, some inspirational. Enjoy, and Congrats to the graduates! "Think hard, always think hard, but don't [...]
Today's Thoughtful Thursday presents the work of award-winning poet Terrance Hayes. Born in 1971 in Columbia, South Carolina, Hayes received a BA from Coker College and an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh, and is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. "Lighthead", his collection of poems published in 2010, won a National Book Award, and Hayes received a [...]
Hard to believe we need protest poetry again this year, and we are only four months in. Today's Thoughtful Thursday salutes Haki Madhubuti, poet and member of the Black Arts Movement. Madhubuti's work with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) informs his activist poetics. As he [...]
Ten African-American poets contributed to the Migration Series Poetry Suite created in celebration of the Jacob Lawrence exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The works of a few of them are below. Enjoy. Thataway And the migrants kept coming —Jacob Lawrence Was walking. Was walking & then waiting for a train, the 12:40 to [...]
This week the world watched the video of Walter Scott being shot and killed by the South Carolina police officer who has since been charged with murder and fired from the force. This week our Thoughtful Thursday offering is focused on justice. L. Chris Stewart, the lawyer the Scott family hired once they learned of the video's existence, had [...]
After a wonderful Spring Break, is GCP back in action with this week's Thoughtful Thursday. Today we feature a classic Gwendolyn Brooks poem, "We Real Cool", written in 1960, and "The Golden Shovel", a poem written in response by Terrance Hayes in 2010. Hayes is a poet who considers themes of popular culture, race, music, and masculinity in his [...]
Could it be that here in NYC, where we have had crazy cold weather for what seems like forever, that Spring is in the air? The last couple of days with temperatures in the 50's has had us hoping that Spring is truly in the air. And so we offer a series of Spring poems: "Spring for Lovers" by [...]
GCP is back in the saddle after a wonderful trip to Miami, where among other things we sat on the beach and talked with a wonderful group of African American moms about parenting. (More on that in the next post.) At the end of the discussion one of the moderators read a poem which I hadn't heard in ages [...]
Happy Valentine's Day! In honor of this love-celebrating holiday, here are some love poems from Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), renowned poet, novelist and playwright of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A native of Dayton, Ohio, Dunbar's first poems were published in a Dayton newspaper when he was 14 years old. While much of Dunbar's more well known [...]