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On The Pulse Of Morning
"On the Pulse of Morning" is a poem by writer and poet Maya Angelou that she read at the first inauguration of President Bill Clinton on January 20, 1993. With her public recitation, Angelou became the second poet in history to read a poem at a presidential inauguration, and the first African American and woman. (Robert Frost was the first inaugural poet, at the 1961 inauguration of John F. Kennedy.) Angelou's audio recording of the poem won the 1994 Grammy Award in the "Best Spoken Word" category, resulting in more fame and recognition for her previous works, and broadening her appeal. The poem's themes are change, inclusion, responsibility, and role of both the President and the citizenry in establishing economic security. Its symbols, references to contemporary issues, and personification of nature has inspired critics to compare "On the Pulse of Morning" with Frost's inaugural poem and with Clinton's inaugural address. It has been called Angelou's "autobiographical poem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Angelou At Clinton Inauguration
Maya Angelou ( ; born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou's series of seven autobiographies focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, ''I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'' (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim. She became a poet and writer after a string of odd jobs during her young adulthood. These included fry cook, sex worker, nightclub performer, ''Porgy and Bess'' cast member, Southern Christian Leadership Conference coordinator, and correspondent in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa. Angelou was also an actress, writer, director, and producer o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elizabeth Alexander (poet)
Elizabeth Alexander (born May 30, 1962) is an American poet, writer, and literary scholar who has served as the president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation since 2018. Previously, Alexander was a professor for 15 years at Yale University, where she taught poetry and chaired the African American studies department. In 2015, she was appointed director of creativity and free expression at the Ford Foundation. She then joined the faculty of Columbia University in 2016, as the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor in the Humanities in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. In 2022, ''Time'' named Alexander one of 100 Most Influential People in World. Early life and education Alexander was born in Harlem, New York City, and grew up in Washington, D.C. She is the daughter of former United States Secretary of the Army and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chairman Clifford Alexander Jr. and Adele Logan Alexander, a professor of African-American women's history at George ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Efua Sutherland
Efua Theodora Sutherland (born 27 June 1924 – 2 January 1996) was a Ghanaian playwright, director, dramatist, children's author, poet, educationalist, researcher, child advocate, and cultural activist. Her works include the plays ''Foriwa'' (1962), ''Edufa'' (1967), and ''The Marriage of Anansewa'' (1975). She founded the Ghana Drama Studio, the Ghana Society of Writers, the Ghana Experimental Theatre, and a community project called the Kodzidan (Story House). As Ghana's earliest playwright-director, she was an influential figure in the development of modern Ghanaian theatre, and helped to introduce the study of African performance traditions at university level. She was also a pioneering African publisher, establishing the company Afram Publications in Accra in the 1970s. She was a cultural advocate for children from the early 1950s until her death, and played a role in developing educational curricula, literature, theatre and film for and about Ghanaian children. Her 1960 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kwesi Brew
Osborne Henry Kwesi Brew (27 May 1928 – 30 July 2007) was a Ghanaian poet and diplomat. Biography Brew was born in Cape Coast, Ghana, to a Fante family in 1928. He was brought up by a British guardian—education officer, K. J. Dickens—after his parents died. He was one of the first graduates from the University College of the Gold Coast in 1951. While still a student, Brew participated in college literary activities and experimented with prose, poetry, and drama. After graduation he won a British Council poetry competition in Accra, and his poems appeared in the Ghanaian literary journal ''Okyeame'', as well as several important African anthologies. ''Shadows of Laughter'' (1968), a collection of his best early poems, reveals a thematic interest unusual for a Ghanaian poet: the value of the individual compared with that of society as a whole. In poems such as "The Executioner's Dream", which views with something like horror some of the rituals of traditional Ghanaian socie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Weldon Johnson
James Weldon Johnson (June 17, 1871June 26, 1938) was an American writer and civil rights activist. He was married to civil rights activist Grace Nail Johnson. Johnson was a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he started working in 1917. In 1920, he was chosen as executive secretary of the organization, effectively the operating officer. He served in that position from 1920 to 1930. Johnson established his reputation as a writer, and was known during the Harlem Renaissance for his poems, novel and anthologies collecting both poems and spirituals of Black culture. He wrote the lyrics for "Lift Every Voice and Sing", which later became known as the Black National Anthem, the music being written by his younger brother, composer J. Rosamond Johnson. Johnson was appointed under President Theodore Roosevelt as U.S. consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua for most of the period from 1906 to 1913. In 1934, he was the first African American pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spiritual (music)
Spirituals (also known as Negro spirituals, African American spirituals, Black spirituals, or spiritual music) is a genre of Christian music that is associated with African Americans, which merged varied African cultural influences with the experiences of being held in bondage in slavery, at first during the transatlantic slave trade and for centuries afterwards, through the domestic slave trade. Spirituals encompass the "sing songs", work songs, and plantation songs that evolved into the blues and gospel songs in church. In the nineteenth century, the word "spirituals" referred to all these subcategories of folk songs. While they were often rooted in biblical stories, they also described the extreme hardships endured by African Americans who were enslaved from the 17th century until the 1860s, the emancipation altering mainly the nature (but not continuation) of slavery for many. Many new derivative music genres such as the blues emerged from the spirituals songcraft. Prior ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Negro Speaks Of Rivers
"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" is a poem by American writer Langston Hughes. Hughes wrote the poem when he was 17 years old and was crossing the Mississippi River on the way to visit his father in Mexico. The poem was first published the following year in ''The Crisis'' magazine, in June 1921, starting Hughes's literary career. "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" uses rivers as a metaphor for Hughes's life and the broader African-American experience. It has been reprinted often and is considered one of Hughes's most famous and signature works. Background Langston Hughes was born in 1902, in Missouri. He attended high school in Cleveland, Ohio, where he first began writing. He graduated from Central High School in 1917. Several years after graduating high school, Hughes decided to travel to Mexico City and live with his father, whom he did not know well. He left in 1920.Socarides, Alexandra (August 1, 2013).The Poems (We Think) We Know: 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers' by Langston Hughes. ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. An early innovator of jazz poetry, Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. Growing up in the Midwest, Hughes became a prolific writer at an early age. He moved to New York City as a young man, where he made his career. He studied at Columbia University in New York City. Although he dropped out, he gained notice from New York publishers, first in '' The Crisis'' magazine and then from book publishers, subsequently becoming known in the Harlem creative community. His first poetry collection, ''The Weary Blues'', was published in 1926. Hughes eventually graduated from Lincoln University. In addition to poetry, Hughes wrote plays and published short story collections, novels, and several nonfiction works. From 1942 to 1962, as the civil rights movement gained traction, Hughes wrote an in-depth week ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Song Of Myself
"Song of Myself" is a poem by Walt Whitman (18191892) that is included in his work ''Leaves of Grass''. It has been credited as "representing the core of Whitman's poetic vision."Greenspan, Ezra, ed. ''Walt Whitman’s "Song of Myself": A Sourcebook and Critical Edition''. New York: Routledge, 2005. Print. Publication history The poem was first published without sections as the first of twelve untitled poems in the first (1855) edition of ''Leaves of Grass''. The first edition was published by Whitman at his own expense. In the second (1856) edition, Whitman used the title "Poem of Walt Whitman, an American," which was shortened to "Walt Whitman" for the third (1860) edition. The poem was divided into fifty-two numbered sections for the fourth (1867) edition and finally took on the title "Song of Myself" in the last edition (1891–2). The number of sections is generally thought to mirror the number of weeks in the year. Reception Following its 1855 publication, "Song of Myself" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walt Whitman
Walter Whitman Jr. (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist; he also wrote two novels. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature and world literature. Whitman incorporated both transcendentalism and literary realism, realism in his writings and is often called the father of free verse. His work was controversial in his time, particularly his 1855 poetry collection ''Leaves of Grass'', which was described by some as obscene for its overt sensuality. Whitman was born in Huntington, New York, Huntington on Long Island and lived in Brooklyn as a child and through much of his career. At age 11, he left formal schooling to go to work. He worked as a journalist, a teacher, and a government clerk. Whitman's major poetry collection, ''Leaves of Grass'', first published in 1855, was financed with his own money and became well known. The work was an attempt to reach out to the common person with an American epi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde ( ; born Audrey Geraldine Lorde; February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was an American writer, professor, philosopher, Intersectional feminism, intersectional feminist, poet and civil rights activist. She was a self-described "Black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, poet" who dedicated her life and talents to confronting different forms of injustice, as she believed there could be "no hierarchy of oppressions" among "those who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children." As a poet, she is well known for technical mastery and emotional expression, as well as her poems that express anger and outrage at civil and social injustices she observed throughout her life. She was the recipient of national and international awards and the founding member of ''Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press''. As a spoken word artist, her delivery has been called powerful, melodic, and intense by the Poetry Foundation. Her poems and prose largely de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harry Thomason
Harry Zell Thomason (born November 30, 1940) is an American film and television producer and director, best known for the television series ''Designing Women''. Thomason and his wife, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, are close friends of President Bill Clinton and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and played a major role in President Clinton's election campaigns. Biography Harry Z. Thomason was born in Hampton, Arkansas, the son of a Southern Baptist deacon. He was a Little Rock, Arkansas, high school science teacher and football coach. He married and divorced Judy Crump, with whom he has a daughter, Stacy. In 1983, Thomason and his second wife, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, were married and formed Mozark Productions, the vehicle for several successful television series, including ''Designing Women'', ''Hearts Afire'', and ''Evening Shade''. In 2007, they began production on the HBO series ''12 Miles of Bad Road'', starring Lily Tomlin. Thomason was a close friend of Bill Cli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
