Poetry of the Moment: Langston Hughes

Quoted by a Howard University professor on the local NBC news this morning:
from "Let America Be America Again"

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

In honor of National Poetry Month...

Poem Composed of Statements Made by George W. Bush in July 2002
by H.L. Hix

Poetry makes the Sunday news (W.C. Williams would be pleased.)

"Poetry has shown me the way to feel again and again, how to contain my feeling, how to be able to feel in that complicated human way, when you feel more than one way at once, ways that seem contradictory but which are true, both at the same time."

-- the (fairly) new poet laureate, Donald Hall, reading from his first poem completed as the U.S. laureate (talk about pressure), and speaking on This Week with George Stephanopoulos