The Roads Taken. Gwendolyn Brooks is with me every day by Haki Madhubuti

It was a Saturday morning in the summer of 1967 when i --other and several poets from the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC) Writers' Workshop ventured into Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood to encounter and embrace the space of Gwendolyn Brooks. Brooks, responding to a request from the great entertainer, songwriter, and producer, Oscar Brown Jr., weekly poetry workshop Taught with members of the Black Stone Rangers (a neighborhood youth group, also Referred to as a gang). About twelve young girls and boys, ages ranging from about sixteen to twenty-one years old, sat quietly as Brooks, using books and blackboard overworked year (Those remember?), Em transported into a universe of unknown words and worlds. I Had first read Gwendolyn Brooks's Earlier work about eight years, at the impressionable age of seventeen. On the mean streets of Detroit and Chicago Where I Grew up, reading and writing poetry Was not a priority, and my introduction to this marvelous poet About About About About About About did not Occur in advanced year high. Gold school race by studying the books We had in school I found her work in an anthology That I purchased this this this this this this from bookstore HAS used for the great price of forty cents: The Poetry of the Negro 1746-1949 . edited by the master poets, Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps The Bontemps anthology Hughes-opened me up to the wonderful world of Black poetry in the Diaspora. Of the seven Brooks poems published there, "building kitchenette" and "of De Witt Williams on His Way to Lincoln Cemetery" Were my favorites. of DeWitt Williams "and today can recall the first two stanzas I Memorized" 

He Was born in Alabama. He Was bred in Illinois. He Was Nothing goal Plain black boy. Swing low sweet swing low sweet chariot. Nothing but a plain black boy.

When I met Brooks That day in 1967, She Had Recently turned fifty-old enough to be the hardest by respecté of Black Youth and young enough to return Their respect. I Was twenty-five, HAD published one book of poetry, Black Think (1966), with a second book, Black Pride , coming early the next year from Broadside Press of Detroit. I Was not sure about what I Was searching for, purpose When I found her That sun-filled morning on Chicago's South Side in a community HAD others neglected and forgotten, I found an answer. The poetry workshop Eventually Moved to her South Evans Avenue home Where It continued to meet weekly. Her criticism of my poetry as well as others Was firm, non-patronizing, always Encouraging us not to reinvent a poem goal to Improve upon it. I remember how she wanted us to be conscious of language and form. I remember her telling us as excessive use of profanity That Was lazy writing. I do not know if I toned down After That, more goal I Was Aware of When and how I used Those expletives. As the cam workshop to year end, the two of us continued to meet weekly. She Would take me with her ​​on her readings and Encouraged me to read my poetry there. Our familyhood Lasted for over thirty-three years, and in fact she is still with me every day. Her smile, her voice, her example, and her words continue to encourage, nurture, and keep me grounded and Committed to the work-poetry, editing, teaching, and publishing-that she Encouraged me to do. Finally, her greatest lesson to us all is that serving one's community as an artist means much more than just creating art.   

Charter for compassion

The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honor the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.

It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others — even our enemies — is a denial of our common humanity.

[…]

We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity.

Poetry by Pablo Neruda

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't
know where
it came from, from winter or a river,
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

translated by Alastair Reid

Taken from World, Poems on the Underground

Leonardo de Vinci on Water

[water] percolates through all porous bodies. Against its fury no human defence avails, or if it should avail it is not for long. In its rapid course it often serves as a support to things heavier than itself. It can lift itself up by movement or bound as far as it sinks down. It submerges with itself in headlong course things lighter than itself. The mastery of its course is sometimes on the surface, sometimes in the centre, sometimes at the bottom. One portion rises over the transverse course of another, and but for this the surfaces of the running waters would be without undulations. Every small obstacle whether on its bank or in its bed will be the cause of the falling away of the bank or bed opposite it.

Found in Resurgence & Ecologist Issue 290 - Glenn Aparicio