Today's Thoughtful Thursday poems are to be read aloud and discussed with your sons. "To PJ" by Sonia Sanchez is a sweet little ode to a two year old that is fun to read aloud, and a good example of how poets play with spelling and grammar in their work. "Michael" by Gwendolyn Brooks is a good poem to [...]
March and April are Spring Break months, and since we at GCP are Spring Breaking as we write, today's Thoughtful Thursday offerings are about vacations. In "Vacation", Rita Dove, who in 1987 became the second African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry and served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1993–1995, [...]
An interesting hodgepodge of poetry for today's Thoughtful Thursday. March being Women's History Month, we at GCP want to pay tribute to women, in all of their facets and all of their glory. So we will start with Maya Angelou's classic "Phenomenal Women", and then move onto poems perhaps not so immediately recognizable, but that pack a punch: "For [...]
Today's Thoughtful Thursday features Maya Angelou, the esteemed poet and author. Here are two of her poems which commemorate memorable occasions. The first, "On the Pulse of Morning", was written for and delivered by Angelou at the 1993 inauguration of Bill Clinton. This is followed by the "The Million Man March" poem which she read to the throngs of [...]
In honor of the "My Brother's Keeper" initiative launched today by President Barack Obama and these being the final days of Black History Month, today's Thoughtful Thursday offerings are inspirational poems for and about our boys. The first, a Langston Hughes classic, "I, Too Sing America", reminds them that we all deserve a seat at the table. "Black Boys [...]
Today's Thoughtful Thursday offerings are inspired by "Beastly Boys and Ghastly Girls", a book of humorous poetry about naughty, ill-mannered, even cruel, boys and girls. (It is a great book; hard to find, but worth picking it up if you can locate one.) Most of the poems below are from Shel Silverstein (the author of "The Giving Tree"), who [...]
Today being the day before Valentine's Day, we can't help but devote this Thoughtful Thursday to thoughts of love. Here are two Nikki Giovanni poems which speak of love: one of a love to which we all can relate, and the other of "grown folks" love that we'd all be lucky to have. Enjoy, and have a Happy Valentine's [...]
With Black History Month underway, and the Winter Olympics about to begin, today's Thoughtful Thursday offerings speak to the spirit of America. Here are two poems, one from W.E.B. DuBois and the other from Elizabeth Alexander. DuBois suggests alternative lyrics to a familiar American anthem, and Alexander ushers in our first Black president with a hope-filled view of America's [...]
In anticipation of Super Bowl Sunday, GCP went on the hunt for inspirational quotes from some of the Super Bowl players. We found some great quotes from two Seattle Seahawks, Russell Wilson and Richard Sherman. Apologies to the Denver Broncos fans, but these two players have made more than their share of inspirational quotes recently. As we noted in [...]
Today's Thoughtful Thursday is dedicated to Amiri Baraka, the celebrated poet, writer, teacher and political activist who helped forge the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Baraka died on Jan. 9, 2014 at the age of 79. Baraka was born Everett LeRoi Jones in 1934 in Newark, New Jersey. In 1968 he became a Muslim, changing his [...]