CLEAR ALL
Alicia Menendez sits down with Amanda Gorman, who at twenty-one years old is already a published author, the first National Youth Poet Laureate, and founder of an initiative in her hometown of Los Angeles that promotes literacy.
“If you turn your back to the blues and deny your dependence on them,” Ellen Meloy wrote in her timeless meditation on water as a portal to transcendence, “you might lose your place in the world, your actions would become small, your soul disengaged.”
This work illuminates today's Black experience through the voices of transformative and powerful African American poets. Included in this volume are the poems of 43 African American wordsmiths, including Pulitzer Prize-winning poets Rita Dove, Natasha Tretheway, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Tracy K. Smith.
How do metaphors help us better understand the world? And, what makes a good metaphor? Explore these questions with writers like Langston Hughes and Carl Sandburg, who have mastered the art of bringing a scene or emotion to life. Lesson by Jane Hirshfield, animation by Ben Pearce
We recently spoke with Sherman Alexie by phone to hear his thoughts on inspiration, and the role it plays in his creative practice.
In this captivating reading, legendary poet, activist and scholar Sonia Sanchez explores the most important question of the 21st century: What does it mean to be human?
1