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The reality of a serious writer is a reality of many voices, some of them belonging to the writer, some of them belonging to the world of readers at l...more

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The Civil Rights Act of 1964 laid the foundation for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but it also addressed nearly every other aspect of daily life in a...more

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A poet is a verb that blossoms light in gardens of dawn, or sometimes midnight.

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What hell condemned, let heaven now heal.

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And now we step to the rhythm of miracles.--from The Light, That Never Dies

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The words ‘I Love You’ kill, and resurrect millions, in less than a second.

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History is a hermaphrodite with many distinguished lovers. We are neither mysteries nor strangers but the living breath of revelation made flesh by th...more

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Beneath the armor of skin/and/bone/and/mindmost of our colors are amazingly the same.

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Time (again, Time) like the soul, wears many faces, many bodies and climates and attitudes. The past is one face, the present a second and the future ...more

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Everywhere we shine death and life burn into something new…

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How many fears came between us?Earthquakes, diseases, wars where hellrained smoldering pus from skies made of winged death.Horror tore this world asun...more

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The leaders and followers of the Harlem Renaissance were every bit as intent on using Black culture to help make the United States a more functional d...more

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Dreams dress us carefully in the colors of power and faith.

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Just above our terror, the stars painted this storyin perfect silver calligraphy. And our souls, too oftenabused by ignorance, covered our eyes with m...more

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Many Americans first fell in love with the poetry of the thirteenth century teacher and spiritual leader Jelalludin Rumi during the early 1990s when t...more