{"id":1431,"date":"2017-01-11T16:37:08","date_gmt":"2017-01-11T21:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/?p=1431"},"modified":"2017-01-11T16:40:12","modified_gmt":"2017-01-11T21:40:12","slug":"poetry-all-around-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/?p=1431","title":{"rendered":"Poetry All Around Us"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I continue to pursue getting\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/?p=913\">more<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/?p=1334\">poetry<\/a>\u00a0in <a href=\"http:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/2016\/04\/21\/book-spine-poetry\/\">my<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/2017\/01\/11\/my-reading-plan-for-2017\/\">life<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This week, an\u00a0email from James Madison University highlighted the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jmu.edu\/furiousflower\/\">Furious Flower Poetry Center,<\/a>\u00a0introducing me to the nation&#8217;s first academic center devoted to African American poetry. \u00a0The center is dedicated to Gwendolyn Brooks and the name comes from \u00a0one of her\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jmu.edu\/furiousflower\/\">poems.<\/a>\u00a0 During this year&#8217;s National Poetry Month, they will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of Brooks&#8217; birth with special events and the awarding of the Gwendolyn Brooks Centennial Poetry Prize.<\/p>\n<p>But, even if you can&#8217;t get to campus in Harrisonburg, they have extensive online resources from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jmu.edu\/furiousflower\/readings.shtml\">archived live events<\/a>,\u00a0a <a href=\"https:\/\/ffpdb.cit.jmu.edu\/?_ga=1.22554623.518408380.1482278623\">database of African American poets<\/a> and an online journal called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jmu.edu\/fightandfiddle\/index.shtml\">The Fight &amp; the Fiddle<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>One of my favorite poems in middle school was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poems-and-poets\/poems\/detail\/58013\">Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note<\/a> by then LeRoi Jones. It was in a small paperback anthology of African American poetry that I probably got through the Scholastic book club.<\/p>\n<p>Jones is now poet Amari Baraka and he did a reading as part of the Furious Flower 1994 conference. He shows the power of performance for making poems come alive. Sound, words, meaning flow together and force a new perspective on the listener. And listening to poetry with the words in front of you is a very different experience as you must immerse yourself in the performance. You can&#8217;t multitask. Take 20 minutes and add poetry to your day:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mdid.lib.jmu.edu\/media\/get\/118408\/amiri_baraka_reading\/132674\/amiri_baraka_reading\/\">https:\/\/mdid.lib.jmu.edu\/media\/get\/118408\/amiri_baraka_reading\/132674\/amiri_baraka_reading\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I continue to pursue getting\u00a0more poetry\u00a0in my life. This week, an\u00a0email from James Madison University highlighted the Furious Flower Poetry Center,\u00a0introducing me to the nation&#8217;s first academic center devoted to African American poetry. \u00a0The center is dedicated to Gwendolyn Brooks and the name comes from \u00a0one of her\u00a0poems.\u00a0 During this year&#8217;s National Poetry Month, they &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/?p=1431\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Poetry All Around Us<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[39],"tags":[213],"class_list":["post-1431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","tag-passion"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4X3L0-n5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1431"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1434,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1431\/revisions\/1434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}