One of my favorite poetry books is called From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002. It's a great book because, as the editor Ishmael Reed likes to point out in his introduction, "It is book one of an ambitious project whose aim is to introduce the teachers, the students, and the general reader to a sampling of work by a variety of writers..." The main purpose of this book, which I am trying to summarize here from in the introduction, is that there are so many writers, great writers out there, that many of us have never even heard of, due to the heavily biased and incomplete teachings in our schools and workshops. This book has introduced so many new writers to me that I would have otherwise never found out about, and has been a great influence on me. It also, like it's title suggests, contains writings from a great many different genres, which is what first drew my attention (besides the fact that you can find Carl Sandberg's name next to Tupac Shakur's...). It is truly a great book of poetry - if you don't have it, I suggest getting it. Here is one of my favorite poems from this book (unfortunately, some restrictions apply - a lot of my favorite poems in this book are either very long, or riddled with structural incongruities, making it very difficult to write out...maybe someday I'll try, but for now, this is one that I can post for you):
Love Is Not a Word
by Eugene B. Redmond
Do not ensnarl me in a sphere of nouns
Nor cage me in a lair of adjectives:
My need is no funeral song for freedom --
My heat is not electronic:
Do not calibrate my sun with thermometers
Nor pierce my "secret parts" with telescopes:
My cause is not a tableau of codes --
My cry is not stereophonic:
Do not titillate the totem of my thought
Nor advertise, on open market, my privacy:
My rampant passion is not a freak for laboratories --
My pain is not catatonic:
Do not ring me with monotonous vows
Nor sting me with laconic lectures, with commands:
My need is not a force to fence in --
My itch is not metronomic:
Do not label me with foreign lore
Do not place this epiphany in frames
Do not lock my indivisible rhythm in names
Do not color-in my pageless, endless book
Do not describe my dialog with trees
Nor transcribe what the moon whispers
Do not record the voice in my eyes:
Yet look look look look, and
Don't dismiss me as a synonym for love.
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