a song in the front yard, poem by Gwendolyn Brooks

a song in the front yard
by Gwendolyn Brooks

I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.
I want a peek at the back
Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.
A girl gets sick of a rose.

I want to go in the back yard now
And maybe down the alley,
To where the charity children play.
I want a good time today.

They do some wonderful things.
They have some wonderful fun.
My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine
How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.
My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae
Will grow up to be a bad woman.
That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late
(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).

But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.
And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,
And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace
And strut down the streets with paint on my face.

SOURCE:  “a song in the front yard” appears in Selected Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks, available at Amazon.com.

IMAGE: “My Little Butterfly” by Bob Salo. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gwendolyn Brooks (June 7, 1917 – December 3, 2000) was an American poet. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950 and was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968 and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985.

Poetry, poem by Nikki Giovanni

POETRY
By Nikki Giovanni

poetry is motion graceful
as a fawn
gentle as a teardrop
strong like the eye
finding peace in a crowded room
we poets tend to think
our words are golden
though emotion speaks too
loudly to be defined
by silence
sometimes after midnight or just before
the dawn
we sit typewriter in hand
pulling loneliness around us
forgetting our lovers or children
who are sleeping
ignoring the weary wariness
of our own logic
to compsoe a poem
no one understands it
it never says “love me” for poets are
beyond love
it never says “accept me” for poems seek not
acceptance but controversy
it only says “i am” and therefore
i concede that you are too
 
a poem is pure energy

horizontally contained 

between the mind 

of the poet and the ear of the reader

if it does not sing discard the ear 

for poetry is song

if it does not delight discard

the heart for poetry is joy 

if it does not inform then close 

off the brain for it is dead

if it cannot heed the insistent message

that life is precious
 

which is all we poets 

wrapped in our loneliness
 
are trying to say

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Yolande Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni, Jr.,(born June 7, 1943) is an American writer, commentator, activist, and educator. She is currently a distinguished professor of English at Virginia Tech.

PHOTO: Nikki Giovanni, 1980.

…and a happy June 7th birthday to Nikki Giovanni.

a song in the front yard, poem by Gwendolyn Brooks

a song in the front yard
By Gwendolyn Brooks

I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.
I want a peek at the back
Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.   
A girl gets sick of a rose.

I want to go in the back yard now   
And maybe down the alley,
To where the charity children play.   
I want a good time today.

They do some wonderful things.
They have some wonderful fun.
My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine
How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.   
My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae   
Will grow up to be a bad woman.
That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late
(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).

But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.
And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,
And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace   
And strut down the streets with paint on my face.

… “a song in the front yard” appears in Selected Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks, available at Amazon.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gwendolyn Brooks (June 7, 1917 – December 3, 2000) was an American poet. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950 and was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968 and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985.

Photo: Gwendolyn Brooks, 1950s.

…and a happy June 7th birthday to Gwendolyn Brooks!