Tag: poetry review

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: STEPHANIE WELLEN LEVINE

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HOPE, TRUTH, FEAR, AND MY SPIRITUAL QUEST. YES!
By Stephanie Wellen Levine


Yes, I’m on a quest for truth, but only IF.
IF there’s a story behind the stories I see, I want to know.
A line of meaning running behind them.
A beam of concern.
Something.

The man in the grimy wheelchair begging for money by the Harvard Square subway
Pushing himself right up to people with his one leg, as if to ask:
Could YOU hold a job if you had a sawed-off leg
And eyes that watered from the slightest hint of sun?

The woman staring at her cappuccino at Crema Café
Laughing at the creamy heart added by the barista.
She touches the heart with her pinky
So lightly, making sure she doesn’t ruin it
And then takes out a book called On Losing a Child.

Even the little girl in the T-shirt covered with clowns
On the first warm day of the season
Running through the sprinkler in front of her house
Again and again
Happy at first, screaming: “This is so fun!”
Each time the water sprays her face.
And then looking around
Scanning her yard, then the street
As if to ask: “Isn’t there more?”

Well, isn’t there?
That’s my question —
Hokey, grandiose, absurd, and unanswerable.
Or maybe answerable.
But do I want the answer?

Um, wow. I swear I’m not making this up.
I just saved this document and the title shocked me.
I didn’t choose it; I was being careless.
The title is yes.
Just plain yes.
Not the first several words of line one
Like it usually is when I’m careless about saving.
Just yes, no “if.”
No “but only.”

A happier, simpler person might rejoice now.
Isn’t there more?
Yes. Yes!
I got my answer, the one I wanted
In the guise of a word processing glitch.

Before this happened, I was going to say
That “yes” is the only answer I can handle.
The only one I seek.

“Yes” carries many possibilities.
God, like in the Torah.
Or an organizing energy uncapturable by any existing religion.
Or the dazzling power of individual and collective consciousness
Creating the world as we know it
Like some physicists believe
And some New Age types.

Or all of the above
Or something else entirely.
Or, or, or.

On one level, the details don’t matter
As long as “yes” is unmistakable.
As long as there’s something beyond the people in the street
Hurrying to their destinations while checking their phones
Not thinking, not once, that one day they won’t be well enough to hurry
And another day, later on, no one in any street, anywhere,
Will remember them
Or care whether they reached their appointments on time
Or even that someone cried after reading their poem.

Now, let me add a caveat, since I’m self-centered like that.
The details of “yes” don’t matter
As long as they include immortality for my consciousness
And the consciousness of everyone I love.
(And I love everyone who isn’t mean.)
I’m just not a “self pales in the face of the all” kind of soul.

But what if the true answer is “no”
Like many of the most brilliant minds insist?
No, there’s nothing mystical, or magical, or godlike, or transcendently loving.
Nothing beyond what we ourselves can do for each other, and for the earth.
The beauty of one soul reaching out to another
Doing their work, growing their passions
And then their time is up
And it’s time for a new generation.

No, there’s nothing “beyond”
No side door in the sky
No world hiding within the air
No time beyond the clock’s harsh tick
No heart beyond our smashed and battered hearts.

What if all my diligent searching brought me there
To “no”?
Would I want to realize that?
To remove all doubt?
If the actual, capital “T” truth is “no,”
Do I want to know?

NO.
No, no, no.
Some would say: Yes! Yes, of course!
Let me seize every moment with the fullness of infinity.
If that’s all I have, let me know, and savor all I can, now.
Because now is the prize, and that’s OK.
Now is good.

For me, now is only good if it carries at least a hope of then, or after.
Something else, something beyond.
Just plain now is horrifying.
It’s the man in the café rubbing his face until it bleeds
Because he’s nervous.
Because now is everything and nothing.

So why do I search?
What is my quest
If I want no part of a real possibility?

Why am I not one of those who leap and sing
At every piece of evidence,
Who embrace all those pride-filled spiritual leaders
High-fiving them and joining their circles?
Why am I the one who sits in the corner
Stewing, questioning, finding holes in all their answers
Alienating myself from all the peaceful souls?

I want the truth that I want
But I want it to actually be the truth.
I want to cross-examine and put it through a million paces
And then I want to smile. And know.

I’ll take the “yes” I received today as a hint.
Not proof. That would be crazy.
But a hint. A piece of hope.
It’s not the first I’ve received.
All those slices of hope add up to something.
Not proof, not peace, not joy
But a real thing
As real as, say, your memory of the wind against your face
On a warm night, at a barbecue, while your aunt told you tales
Of her first year at college.

Was the wind actually cool like you remember it?
Was your aunt really eating a chicken thigh and laughing about her roommate
While you battled a bee that came dangerously close to your plate?
Maybe. Maybe not.
Regardless, there’s truth in the overall flavor your mind creates
As it conjures the scene.

Hope is like that.
It carries a kind of truth.
Not provable. Not logical.
But sane and even precious.

Hope is the wind that carries my dreams
Even in the harshest weather.



Today’s poem previously appeared in Hevria, and appears here today with permission from the poet.


Stephanie Wellen Levine is the author of Mystics, Mavericks, And Merrymakers: An Intimate Journey Among Hasidic Girls: winner of the Moment Magazine Emerging Writer Book Award. She contributes regularly to the online magazines Hevria and The Wisdom Daily. Stephanie brings lifelong passion to her current book project, which explores her spiritual quest. She teaches at Tufts University and lives in Cambridge, MA, but she misses NYC more and more.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem is an honest inquisition, probing into the depths of existence while admitting there is only so much we are willing to know, to learn, to hear. I am particularly taken in by the vignette stanzas early in the poem, the vivid little moments that so clearly illustrate how human it is to wonder, in life, whether there is more than this. The poet’s inquiry is urgent, insistent; “Isn’t there more?”

Want more Stephanie Wellen Levine?
Buy Mystics, Mavericks, and Merrymakers: An Intimate Journey among Hasidic Girls from Amazon
Hevria
The Wisdom Daily
Facebook

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: JANET R. KIRCHHEIMER

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Janet

THE NATURE OF THINGS
By Janet R. Kirchheimer


I was eleven the spring my father singed his eyebrows off
while burning down pear trees.

Anne Carson says dirt is a minor thing.
This is not true.

Perhaps she has not seen a string bean pushing
its way up through the dirt.

The Rabbis say that Adam gave names to all the animals,
but do not say who named the trees.

These are some of the plant names I love:
Joseph’s coat, Persian shield, Silver shrub, African mallow.

Once in January, my father woke me at four o’clock in the morning
to help cover the parsley in our garden with blankets.

Frost was on the ground.
Stars, so bright at that time of the year, lit the garden.

In June, I call home to ask my father about the gladiolas.
He says some are coming, some are going.

The Talmud says occasionally rain falls because of the merit
of one man, the merit of one blade of grass, of one field.



Today’s poem was was previously published by the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, and appears here today with permission from the poet.


Janet R. Kirchheimer is the author of How to Spot One of Us. She is currently producing a documentary, “After,” about poetry of the Holocaust then and now, and is a teaching fellow at Clal-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.

Editor’s Note: Unearth the humble offerings of today’s poem and discover what grows from its rich soil. What love, what relationship, what sage advice about life. This is a poem as intimate as tending one’s own garden, and as universal as studying scripture. How wise, how simple, how sage. How lovely today’s poem, with all its offerings.

Want to read more by and about Janet R. Kirchheimer?
Buy How to Spot One of Us on Amazon
Writing Without Paper
Best American Poetry
CLAL
Collegeville Institute

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: THE HEART OF A WOMAN

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We_Can_Do_It!
THE HEART OF A WOMAN
By Georgia Douglas Johnson

The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,
As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,
Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam
In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.

The heart of a woman falls back with the night,
And enters some alien cage in its plight,
And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars
While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars.


(Today’s poem is in the public domain, belongs to the masses, and appears here today accordingly.)


Editor’s Note: No matter who you voted for in the primaries nor who you plan to vote for come November, there is no denying that this was an historic week in American history.

In this vein, I dedicate today’s poem–written by a black woman in a white age–to Michelle Obama, a black woman running the White House who reminded us this week that: “I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves. And I watch my daughters, two beautiful, intelligent black young women, playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.” And I dedicate this poem to the fact that, for the first time in American history, a woman has been nominated by a major party to run for President of the United States of America.

Any (reasonable) reservations you (or I) may have about Hillary Clinton and our two-party system aside, this is a moment to pause and marvel, to appreciate what we have accomplished and to believe that this can–and should–be just the beginning of progressive progress. This is a moment to celebrate that the heart of a woman need not try “to forget it has dreamed of the stars,” for it need not break, break, break “on the sheltering bars.”

Georgia Douglas Johnson: A member of the Harlem Renaissance, Georgia Douglas Johnson wrote plays, a syndicated newspaper column, and four collections of poetry: The Heart of a Woman (1918), Bronze (1922), An Autumn Love Cycle (1928), and Share My World (1962). (Annotated biography courtesy of The Poetry Foundation.)

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: BLACK LIVES MATTER POETRY

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“It is not necessary that you believe that the officer who choked Eric Garner set out that day to destroy a body. All you need to understand is that the officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy, and they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.” ― Ta-Nehisi Coates



Editor’s Note: Every word I have attempted to write here has been wholly inadequate. I can only offer you poetry written by those who have lived an experience that I have only witnessed from the sidelines, in abject horror.


BLACK LIVES MATTER POETRY:

“Standing In Courage” by Jacinta V. White

“The All Black Penguin Speaks” by Roger Bonair-Agard

“Black Woman” by Georgia Douglas Johnson

#BlackPoetsSpeakOut

Black Lives Matter: A Roundup of Worthy Reads – The Poetry Foundaton

10 Artists of the Black Lives Matter Movement – Sojourners

Poets for Ferguson

Black Lives Matter – Renee Mitchell Speaks

‘Black Lives Matter’: A Poem by Nikkita Oliver

Anthony McPherson – “All Lives Matter: 1800s Edition”

Black Lives Matter/Freddie Gray Poem



SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: TWO MERMAID POEMS

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Editor’s Note: In response to last week’s feature, Saturday Poetry Series favorites Erin Lyndal Martin and Elana Bell introduced me to two more fabulous mermaid poems. These poems have been swimming through my mind all week, and are too fantastic not to share. Get a taste here, then follow the links below to read each of these stunning poems in full.



from FABLE OF THE MERMAID AND THE DRUNKS
By Pablo Neruda, Translated by Paul Weinfield

But having come from the river, she understood nothing
She was a mermaid and was lost
Their insults flowed down her perfect, smooth flesh
Their filth enveloped her golden breasts
But not knowing tears, she did not weep tears


(Read the complete poem as translated by Paul Weinfield.)



from LATE SUNDAY MORNING
By Elana Bell

I kiss

the puckered lips, taste
ocean breath and remember

myself, slippery and long
under sun-slanted depths, swaying

to the whine of boats overhead.
I did not need you then, my scales

shining in their pristine sea.


(Read the entire poem in Winter Tangerine.)



Want to read more?
“Sunday Morning” in Winter Tangerine
“Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks” as translated by Paul Weinfeild
“Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks” in English and Spanish via Susan’s Place
“Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks” on youtube, as read by Ethan Hawke



Today’s selections appear via Fair Use.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: TWO SUMMER POEMS

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"England - English Summer Woods" courtesy of Jacopo Werther via Creative Commons: http://bit.ly/1qRZ81t
“England – English Summer Woods” courtesy of Jacopo Werther via Creative Commons: http://bit.ly/1qRZ81t


LILY-BELL AND THISTLEDOWN SONG
By Louisa May Alcott

Awake! Awake! for the earliest gleam 

Of golden sunlight shines 

On the rippling waves, that brightly flow 

Beneath the flowering vines. 

Awake! Awake! for the low, sweet chant 

Of the wild-birds’ morning hymn
Comes floating by on the fragrant air, 

Through the forest cool and dim; 

Then spread each wing, 

And work, and sing, 

Through the long, bright sunny hours; 

O’er the pleasant earth 

We journey forth, 

For a day among the flowers.

Awake! Awake! for the summer wind 

Hath bidden the blossoms unclose, 

Hath opened the violet’s soft blue eye, 

And awakened the sleeping rose. 

And lightly they wave on their slender stems 

Fragrant, and fresh, and fair, 

Waiting for us, as we singing come 

To gather our honey-dew there. 

Then spread each wing, 

And work, and sing, 

Through the long, bright sunny hours; 

O’er the pleasant earth 

We journey forth, 

For a day among the flowers.


SUMMER RAIN
By Fannie Isabel Sherrick

Oh, what is so pure as the glad summer rain,
That falls on the grass where the sunlight has lain?
And what is so fair as the flowers that lie
All bathed in the tears of the soft summer sky?

The blue of the heavens is dimmed by the rain
That wears away sorrow and washes out pain;
But we know that the flowers we cherish would die
Were it not for the tears of the cloud-laden sky.

The rose is the sweeter when kissed by the rain,
And hearts are the dearer where sorrow has lain;
The sky is the fairer that rain-clouds have swept,
And no eyes are so bright as the eyes that have wept.

Oh, they are so happy, these flowers that die,
They laugh in the sunshine, oh, why cannot I?
They droop in the shadow, they smile in the sun,
Yet they die in the winter when summer is done.

The lily is lovely, and fragrant her breath,
But the beauty she wears is the emblem of death;
The rain is so fair as it falls on the flowers,
But the clouds are the shadows of sunnier hours.

Why laugh in the sunshine, why smile in the rain?
The world is a shadow and life is a pain;
Why live in the summer, why dream in the sun,
To die in the winter, when summer is done?

Oh, there is the truth that each life underlies,
That baffles the poets and sages so wise;
Ah! there is the bitter that lies in the sweet
As we gather the roses that bloom at our feet.

Oh, flowers forgive me, I’m willful to-day,
Oh, take back the lesson you gave me I pray;
For I slept in the sunshine, I woke in the rain
And it banished forever my sorrow and pain.


(Today’s poems are in the public domain, belong to the masses, and appear here today accordingly.)


Louisa May Alcott: (1832-1888) was an American novelist and poet best known as the author of the novel Little Women (1868). Raised by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May and Amos Bronson Alcott in New England, she grew up among many of the well-known intellectuals of her day. (Annotated biography of Louisa May Alcott courtesy of Wikipedia, with edits.)

Fannie Isabel Sherrick: (Lived circa mid-to-late 19th c.) was a native of St. Louis. Much of her early life was spent in California and Colorado, where many of her best productions in verse were written. Her collected poems were published in 1888, in a volume entitled Star Dust. Poor health caused her–at least temporarily–to give up literary endeavors. (Annotated biography of Fannie Isabel Sherrick courtesy of Evenings with Colorado Poets: an Anthology of Colorado Verse, with edits.)

Editor’s Note: Technically summer is not for another month yet, but here in New York the sun is shining, and Memorial Day weekend is the official start of our summer season, so “O’er the pleasant earth 
/ We journey forth, 
/ For a day among the flowers.” And, while summer rain was not a common occurrence in California–from whence I came–here in New York the sky opens up to quench the grasses, the flowers, the rivers and streams, all summer long: “Oh, what is so pure as the glad summer rain, / That falls on the grass where the sunlight has lain? / And what is so fair as the flowers that lie / All bathed in the tears of the soft summer sky?”

Want to read more summer poetry?
The Poetry Foundation

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: KELLY HANSEN MAHER

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CO-SLEEPING
By Kelly Hansen Maher


Accepting the rise and fall of boxcars heaving
across the city, our industrial neighborhood.
Old neighborhood, in which immigrants,
studying for citizenship exams,
named the streets in the order of the presidents.
Trains make their slow move uphill, Fillmore,
Pierce, Buchanan, measuring each breath taken,
the newborn on my chest. Her small head
in the dark room, nose and mouth open,
sleeping. We stir; we are steady as train yards, lids
flutter. I hear insects at the open windows, the out
and in of her breath, my husband’s
deep twitching, the dog’s snore. Our bed
smells of human milk, which is lean
of fat and protein so that she will wake frequently
and want me. She has this one country.
I’m on an incline, never fully prone,
kept my word, kept her head
above the blankets, on the pillow of my arm,
kept her face to the air of the room all spring, all
summer. It’s before dawn when the birds…
the light in the room doesn’t change, but the trains
have stopped rolling over the narrow
bridges… birds must know… the pale yellow
beyond the yard… what first birds? chickadees
or sparrow, or thrush? I have small dreams
all night, it’s a covenant to keep her
breathing. Her new system in delicate
crating at the rail of my clavicle,
she’ll track with me, start again after stopping.
I don’t miss depth, tuned from sleep, Lincoln,
Johnson, Ulysses, anything could happen
to her in that other room
without me, and god help me,
there will be no more death in this house.



Today’s poem was was previously published in the Blue Mesa Review and appears in the collection Tremolo (Tinderbox Editions, 2016, copyright Kelly Hansen Maher). It appears here today with permission from the poet.


Kelly Hansen Maher is originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota but now lives in Grinnell, Iowa. She is the author one book of poetry, Tremolo (Tinderbox Editions, 2016), and is currently working on a second collection, as well as a book of memoir/essays. Her poems have been published by the New Orleans Review, Briar Cliff Review, and others journals. She teaches creative writing courses with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.

Editor’s Note: With its evocative imagery and haunting ending, today’s poem is motherhood poetry that resonates, that stays with the reader. There are truths here all mothers of infants know: “I have small dreams / all night, it’s a covenant to keep her / breathing.” Time is measured like breath. Breath is the promise that life will go on, one breath at a time. Sound functions on the level of the line, the scene, the moment, propelling the poem forward, pacing the reader to go on expectantly, breath slow, aware and uncertain.

Want to read more by and about Kelly Hansen Maher?
Kelly Hansen Maher’s Official Website
Buy Tremolo from Tinderbox Editions
New Orleans Review
Midway Journal
Tinderbox Poetry Journal

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: MOTHERHOOD POETRY

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"Arab Motherhood" by Georges Sabbagh, c. 1920. Public domain image.
“Arab Motherhood” by Georges Sabbagh, c. 1920. Public domain image.


Editor’s Note: In honor of Mother’s Day, I have gathered together some of my favorite poems that I’ve featured on this series over the years that consider motherhood from a plethora of perspectives, for motherhood is such a multi-faceted experience. From the perspective of the child: memories of mothers, good mothers, bad mothers, absent mothers, mothers we have lost. From the perspective of the mother, of the would-be-mother, of the once-was mother: pregnancy and childbirth, love and fear of and for our children, the kind of mother we are or are not, the kind of mother we want to be, the children we never had, the children we have lost.

Today’s selection is in honor of motherhood itself and its many faces, in honor of that imperative person without whom none of us would exist and who–for better or worse–so deeply affects who we come to be.

Today’s post is dedicated to my own mother, who has always been one of my most dedicated readers and faithful supporters, who has shaped my being from zygote through womanhood, and whose legacy as mother takes on its newest incarnation on this, my first Mother’s Day as a mother.


Mother, I’m trying
to write
a poem to you—

which is how most
poems to mothers must
begin—or, What I’ve wanted
to say, Mother…but we
as children of mothers,
even when mothers ourselves,

cannot bear our poems
to them.

–Erin Belieu,
“Another Poem for Mothers”



MOTHERHOOD POETRY
FROM THE SATURDAY POETRY SERIES ARCHIVES:

“Elegy for a Mother, Still Living” by Elana Bell

“Cultiver Son Potager / Growing Vegetables” by Dara Barnat; translated by Sabine Huynh

“Prayers Like Shoes” by Ruth Forman

“We Speak of August” by Valentina Gnup

State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies by Alexis Rhone Fancher

“A Poem for Women Who Don’t Want Children” by Chanel Brenner

“Baby” by Jaimie Gusman

“Psalm to Be Read While My Daughter Considers Mary” by Nicole Rollender

Hemisphere by Ellen Hagan

“Labor Pantoum” by Leslie Contreras Schwartz

“Depression” by Terri Kirby Erickson

“Dinner for the Dying” by Jen Lambert

Decency by Marcela Sulak

Little Spells by Jennifer K. Sweeney

“The Invention of Amniocentesis” by Jen Karetnick

“The Sadness of Young Mothers” by Richard D’Abate

“Mom’s Cocks” by Jenna Le

“The Balance” by Danusha Laméris

“The Committee Weighs In” by Andrea Cohen

“Mother-In-Law” by Nicole Stellon O’Donnell

“Change of Address” by Ruth Deborah Rey



Want to read more Mother’s Day poems?
Mother’s Day poetry from the Academy of American Poets
Poetry about mothers from the Academy of American Poets

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: NAN COHEN

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nan cohen

A NEWBORN GIRL AT PASSOVER
By Nan Cohen


Consider one apricot in a basket of them.
It is very much like all the other apricots–
an individual already, skin and seed.

Now think of this day. One you will probably forget.
The next breath you take, a long drink of air.
Holiday or not, it doesn’t matter.

A child is born and doesn’t know what day it is.
The particular joy in my heart she cannot imagine.
The taste of apricots is in store for her.



Today’s poem was was first published on the Academy of American Poets website and appears here today with permission from the poet and publisher.


Nan Cohen is the author of Rope Bridge, a collection of poems. Her work has appeared in Gulf Coast, The New Republic, Ploughshares, Poetry International, and Tikkun, among other magazines and anthologies. She is the recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, and a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. A high school teacher and English department chair in Los Angeles, she is also the Poetry Director of the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference.

Editor’s Note: Simple, yet revelatory. A personal experience that belongs to one and to many. The day you will likely not remember. The apricot that is like all the others–unique. “The particular joy in my heart she cannot imagine.” The way that line bowls you over. How unadorned it is, yet how stunning. This poem. This poem. This poem.

Want to read more by and about Nan Cohen?
Rope Bridge
Nan Cohen’s Blog
“The Fear of the Dark” (with audio) at Slate
“Storm” at The New Republic
“Girder” at Verse Daily

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: GEORGE MOSES HORTON ON LIBERTY AND SLAVERY

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George-moses-horton_at_aalbc
ON LIBERTY AND SLAVERY
By George Moses Horton

Alas! and am I born for this,
To wear this slavish chain?
Deprived of all created bliss,
Through hardship, toil, and pain!

How long have I in bondage lain,
And languished to be free!
Alas! and must I still complain–
Deprived of liberty.

Oh, Heaven! and is there no relief
This side the silent grave–
To soothe the pain–to quell the grief
And anguish of a slave?

Come, Liberty, thou cheerful sound,
Roll through my ravished ears!
Come, let my grief in joys be drowned,
And drive away my fears.

Say unto foul oppression, Cease:
Ye tyrants rage no more,
And let the joyful trump of peace,
Now bid the vassal soar.

Soar on the pinions of that dove
Which long has cooed for thee,
And breathed her notes from Afric’s grove,
The sound of Liberty.

Oh, Liberty! thou golden prize,
So often sought by blood–
We crave thy sacred sun to rise,
The gift of nature’s God!

Bid Slavery hide her haggard face,
And barbarism fly:
I scorn to see the sad disgrace
In which enslaved I lie.

Dear Liberty! upon thy breast,
I languish to respire;
And like the Swan upon her nest,
I’d to thy smiles retire.

Oh, blest asylum–heavenly balm!
Unto thy boughs I flee–
And in thy shades the storm shall calm,
With songs of Liberty!


(Today’s poem is in the public domain, belongs to the masses, and appears here today accordingly.)


George Moses Horton: (1798–1883) Born a slave on William Horton’s tobacco plantation, George Moses Horton taught himself to read. Around 1815 he began composing poems in his head, saying them aloud and “selling” them to an increasingly large crowd of buyers at the weekly Chapel Hill farmers market. Students at the nearby University of North Carolina bought his love poems and lent him books. As his fame spread, he gained the attention of Caroline Lee Whiting Hentz, a novelist and professor’s wife who transcribed his poetry and helped publish it in her hometown newspaper. With her assistance, Horton published his first collection of poetry, The Hope of Liberty (1829), becoming the first African American man to publish a book in the South—and one of the first to publicly protest his slavery in poetry. (Annotated biography of George Moses Horton courtesy of The Poetry Foundation.)

Editor’s Note: As Passover is coming up this week, I have been thinking about slavery and freedom. About histories of bondage and those who are still wandering in search of sustainable freedom today. As we remember our own slavery this Passover and celebrate our own redemption, may these words from another Moses help us to also remember the experiences of those who have likewise suffered, and to advocate for those who are wandering the world today in search of life and liberty.

Want to read more by and about George Moses Horton?
The Poetry Foundation
UNC Documenting the American South
Academy of American Poets