The first spring-like weekend here has meant picking up trash from the shore and scraping the farmhouse for painting and carrying rowboats and walking with friends and seeing family and writing on my laptop outside on the sunny porch in the wind. After a winter spent quietly holed up by the woodstove, two days outside working has me so tired I’m falling over.
Thank you for keeping everything going on around us in context. However, as an octogenarian I think that I can say there seem to be no limits to the evil the Trump supporters and and those complicit with them by silence are capable of accomplishing. This group have over time hi-jacked our courts up to the Supreme Court. Sam Alito, Clarence Thomas and Gorsuch, Barrett and Kavanaugh are willing to weaponize freedom of religion and with a Roberts/Alito states rights view that existed prior to the voting rights act of 1965 are enabling discrimination of the LGBTQ community and undermining the right to vote of people of color and citizens in urban centers of red states. They want a return to a rule by whites only straight citizens.
Something about the clean outdoor air. You more than Deserve a good rest! Thanks for the photo, and all your letters and commentary. You are the news and sanity with which I start every morning.
As the country gets closer to its defining moments your letters are as cut diamonds. I cannot imagine another writer portraying America with more clarity. Thank you, HCR.
God Could Not Make Her a Poet
Cornelius Eady - 1954-
'Thomas Jefferson said this, more or less,
After he read the musings of the clever African
Phillis Wheatley, a sensation of both the Colonies
'Born on January 7, 1954, Cornelius Eady was raised in Rochester, New York. He attended Monroe Community College and Empire State College.'
'He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Hardheaded Weather (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2008); Brutal Imagination (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2001), which was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award in Poetry; The Gathering of My Name (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1991), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; and Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (Ommation Press, 1986), which was chosen by Louise Glück, Charles Simic, and Philip Booth for the 1985 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets.'
'In 1996, Eady and the poet Toi Derricotte founded Cave Canem, a nonprofit organization serving Black poets of various backgrounds and acting as a safe space for intellectual engagement and critical debate. Along with Derricotte, he also edited Gathering Ground (University of Michigan Press, 2006). In 2016, she and Eady accepted the National Book Foundation’s Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community on behalf of Cave Canem.'
'He has collaborated with jazz composer Deidre Murray in the production of several works of musical theater, including You Don’t Miss Your Water; Running Man, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1999; Fangs, and Brutal Imagination, which received Newsday’s Oppenheimer Award in 2002.'
'About his work, the poet June Jordan has said, “Cornelius Eady leads and then cuts a line like no one else: following the laughter and the compassionate pith of a dauntless imagination, these poems beeline or zig-zag always to the jugular, the dramatic and unarguable revelation of the heart.”
'Eady is currently a professor in the MFA program at SUNY Stony Brook Southampton (Academy of American Poets)
Enjoy your evening and your sleep. Thank you again for sharing your insights and your history lessons. Really appreciate that you’re posting earlier in the evening.
I value your photos & messages almost as much as your acute analyses & historical perspective. Thank you for your devotion to illuminating the struggle for democracy that we are in. Charmaine H.
Thank you for all you do, you deserve a restful night! Despite the mess the world often seems to be in, I'm rejoicing tonight that my birth country showed some sense by electing Macron, and avoiding someone like Le Pen, who fits right in with Putin and Trump...the world is better for her defeat!
Such a simple forest, compared with our tropical rainforest tangle - big tree came down last night, narrowly missing our bat cage! Maybe our natural tangle makes it easier to appreciate our increasingly difficult cultural tangles.
Enjoy a nite of solitude and thank you for your informative commentaries and opinions. They provide great help in understanding the issues of the day. I look forward to your posts…
Thank you for your tireless work
You have been a steady and calm voice in a turbulent ocean for several years. I appreciate and am grateful. Thank you, be well.
Thank you for keeping everything going on around us in context. However, as an octogenarian I think that I can say there seem to be no limits to the evil the Trump supporters and and those complicit with them by silence are capable of accomplishing. This group have over time hi-jacked our courts up to the Supreme Court. Sam Alito, Clarence Thomas and Gorsuch, Barrett and Kavanaugh are willing to weaponize freedom of religion and with a Roberts/Alito states rights view that existed prior to the voting rights act of 1965 are enabling discrimination of the LGBTQ community and undermining the right to vote of people of color and citizens in urban centers of red states. They want a return to a rule by whites only straight citizens.
Something about the clean outdoor air. You more than Deserve a good rest! Thanks for the photo, and all your letters and commentary. You are the news and sanity with which I start every morning.
As the country gets closer to its defining moments your letters are as cut diamonds. I cannot imagine another writer portraying America with more clarity. Thank you, HCR.
God Could Not Make Her a Poet
Cornelius Eady - 1954-
'Thomas Jefferson said this, more or less,
After he read the musings of the clever African
Phillis Wheatley, a sensation of both the Colonies
And England, a black patriot, though a slave.
Whatever a black hand can build, he knew,
Could only be guided by a master’s vision,
Like this room of the mansion he probably
Wrote his opinion in—what black mind could
Dream in these proportions? And gather
The slope of these Virginia hills so lovingly
To his window? God could give her words,
But the subtle turn? Like giving a gull
A sack of gold.'
Copyright © 2022 by Cornelius Eady. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 24, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
'Born on January 7, 1954, Cornelius Eady was raised in Rochester, New York. He attended Monroe Community College and Empire State College.'
'He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Hardheaded Weather (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2008); Brutal Imagination (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2001), which was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award in Poetry; The Gathering of My Name (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1991), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; and Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (Ommation Press, 1986), which was chosen by Louise Glück, Charles Simic, and Philip Booth for the 1985 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets.'
'In 1996, Eady and the poet Toi Derricotte founded Cave Canem, a nonprofit organization serving Black poets of various backgrounds and acting as a safe space for intellectual engagement and critical debate. Along with Derricotte, he also edited Gathering Ground (University of Michigan Press, 2006). In 2016, she and Eady accepted the National Book Foundation’s Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community on behalf of Cave Canem.'
'He has collaborated with jazz composer Deidre Murray in the production of several works of musical theater, including You Don’t Miss Your Water; Running Man, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1999; Fangs, and Brutal Imagination, which received Newsday’s Oppenheimer Award in 2002.'
'About his work, the poet June Jordan has said, “Cornelius Eady leads and then cuts a line like no one else: following the laughter and the compassionate pith of a dauntless imagination, these poems beeline or zig-zag always to the jugular, the dramatic and unarguable revelation of the heart.”
'Eady is currently a professor in the MFA program at SUNY Stony Brook Southampton (Academy of American Poets)
Beautiful. Rest. We’ll look for you tomorrow.
Enjoy your evening and your sleep. Thank you again for sharing your insights and your history lessons. Really appreciate that you’re posting earlier in the evening.
I value your photos & messages almost as much as your acute analyses & historical perspective. Thank you for your devotion to illuminating the struggle for democracy that we are in. Charmaine H.
Heather, you have been a beacon in the fog for me! Thank you!!!
Thank you for all you do, you deserve a restful night! Despite the mess the world often seems to be in, I'm rejoicing tonight that my birth country showed some sense by electing Macron, and avoiding someone like Le Pen, who fits right in with Putin and Trump...the world is better for her defeat!
Rest well! You are appreciated and loved!
Such a simple forest, compared with our tropical rainforest tangle - big tree came down last night, narrowly missing our bat cage! Maybe our natural tangle makes it easier to appreciate our increasingly difficult cultural tangles.
Enjoy a nite of solitude and thank you for your informative commentaries and opinions. They provide great help in understanding the issues of the day. I look forward to your posts…
Have a restful evening…you deserve it!
Sweet Dreams!
I hope you enjoyed your trip to my state. I love living on the coast- you’re East I’m West