tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562628659590502042011-08-18T09:22:31.357-07:00Shia Shabazz, Blog EditorTorchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730093319122887021noreply@blogger.comBlogger81100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-856262865959050204.post-71364276720719546612011-01-15T11:25:00.001-08:002011-01-15T11:25:39.264-08:00

In this moment, I imagine (I am) an Olympic [torch] relay runner. I am gangly, stalwart, muscles warmed by months, if not years, of training and witnessing. Face forward, palms, heart upward, open to the horizon as the brilliantly blazing torch is passed. I have read "Zora" under Metta Sama’s direction, and I am grateful to have been entertained by it and learned and grown from her eloquence and

Torchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730093319122887021noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-856262865959050204.post-91861681936350489682010-10-23T05:42:00.000-07:002010-10-23T08:29:15.302-07:00

Antoinette: I am so pleased with how forthcoming you are answering this question. I had been hesitant to ask it, knowing that this is a topic you have most likely been asked to speak on over and over. We are in a unique time in this country’s history as it pertains to race. Some are touting this as the post racial/racialism age, yet racism seems to be mutating into new and more challenging

Mettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15773571977285990643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-856262865959050204.post-1116195628184295442010-09-12T10:23:00.000-07:002010-10-19T20:47:49.050-07:00

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Mettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15773571977285990643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-856262865959050204.post-42568955947722096522010-03-10T19:57:00.000-08:002010-03-11T10:54:18.018-08:00

14 February 2010Last night my heart threatened to leave me--threatened to find the quickest route out of me, thumped against my chest in a silly attempt to loosen itself from the veins and arteries that bound it to me. My heart doesn’t know me like this: the woman who buries herself under covers, silent & tear-filled, nearly suffocating herself along with her grief. It wanted no part of it. The

Torchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730093319122887021noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-856262865959050204.post-83435250974368318292009-10-22T08:23:00.000-07:002009-12-09T13:06:32.781-08:00

Once again I find myself sitting in a hardbottomed hardbacked chair staring into a scene I can transform to idyllic. There are flowers pushing closer and closer to the sun, a neighbor’s orange cat with a sweet white stripe and cinnamon bun eyes gazes longingly at me; a stray black cat with eyes like grapes trots along the fence. It’s warm enough this autumn day to have all of the windows open,

Mettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15773571977285990643noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-856262865959050204.post-47613208625294209392009-09-24T07:21:00.000-07:002009-12-09T13:07:24.654-08:00

Dearest Readers:This month's post is an excerpt from a longer piece that I wrote, in which I examined the absence of community/spoken word artists in academic settings. I wanted to get a handle on, for example, why educators in the 21st century still felt the need to isolate non-Canonical authors and to create "specialty classes" to teach non-Canonical authors. Why, I wondered, aren't, say,

Mettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15773571977285990643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-856262865959050204.post-28089119220073249112009-08-09T17:06:00.000-07:002009-12-09T13:24:17.730-08:00

DéLana Dameron’s debut poetry collection How God Ends Us (University of South Carolina Press, 2009) rests on my lap. It is raining and the trees intermittently shake the rain from their branches. I’m thinking back on the first conversation I had with DéLana, an energetic discussion of poetics. I hadn’t read any of her poems, but by the time the chat had come to end, I’d already proposed an

Mettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15773571977285990643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-856262865959050204.post-69172801015870573062009-07-11T11:33:00.000-07:002009-07-11T15:32:32.380-07:00

“Poems do not have a monopoly on poetry.” –T. S. EllisA friend recently asked me to define “poet” for her. I quickly quipped: “Someone who takes the time to write a poem and see it all the way through.” I didn’t take much time to respond to her question, because poet seems less speculative, less query-forced than “poetry” and, to some extent, “poem”. What is “poetry”? What is a poetics?When

Torchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07730093319122887021noreply@blogger.com3