Sealey Challenge Spotlight: Black Women Poets

As the month of August creeps by, another poetry book to finish. This week I wanted to feature poetry by Black woman poets.

Call us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman

Amanda Gorman is one of my favorite poets. Her beautifully written verse captures my imagination. I believe she is most well known for her poem “The Hill We Climb,” which she read at former President Biden’s inauguration. Amanda Gorman’s poems played on audiobook are a good choice, as you capture her beautiful oration of her poetry as you listen. My favorite poem from this collection was Every Day We Are Learning.

Every Day We Are Learning

Every day we are learning

how to live with essence, not ease.

How to move with haste, never hate.

How to leave this pain this is beyond us

Behind us.

Just like a skill or any art,

We cannot possess hope without

practicing it.

It is the most fundamental craft we

demand of ourselves.

Collected Poems (1974-2004) by Rita Dove

Rita Dove is an established poet. Her decades of experience teaching, mentoring, and writing shine through her well-crafted verses. She is most well-known for winning the Pulitzer Prize for Thomas and Beulah, a collection about the lives of her grandparents. My favorite poem from this collection was Horse and Tree.

Horse and Tree 

Everybody who’s anybody longs to be a tree–

or ride one, hair blown to froth.

That’s why horses were invented, and saddles

tooled with singular starts.

 

This is why we braid their harsh manes

as if they were children. why children

might fear a carousel at first for the way

It insists that life is round. No,

 

we reply, there is music and then it stops;

the beautiful is always rising and falling.

We call and the children sing back one more time.

In the tree the luminous sap ascends.