Gladwin Emmanuel

What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices? —Robert Hayden

Happy Birthday to Louise Glück, beloved poet & friend, born on Earth Day, gone but never forgotten! 🎂♥️⚘🦋

Mahmoud Darwish recites 'Earth Poem', 1986

Humans are the only creatures that need to be told not to destroy their own home. May every day be Earth Day.

Anthony Quinn, April 21, 1915 – June 3, 2001. Zorba the Greek 1964 directed by Michael Cacoyannis With Alan Bates

"So far I have done only one or two poems that give any indication of what I might become. Besides, one must be in possession of the TOTALITY of one's mind, something I have never acheived. -Antonin Artaud to Madame Toulouse Artaud had it hard, and wrote through it.

How do you find peace ✨

Two bodies, face to face At times two waves And the night is an ocean Octavio Paz

Between the language of the universe And the universe of language There is a bridge, a link: poetry. And the poet, says Baudelaire, is the translator. Octavio Paz

the thing is, to make art, to fall in love, to do anything really worth doing, you have to risk embarrassment, humiliation, heartbreak. to do anything you have to risk being. and that's being in front of—or more scary, with—others.

O maybe no one really does care. Maybe it is humiliating to 
attempt anything. I sincerely don’t know why poetry can be mortifying but tattoos can be cool. I think everyone wants to make something touchable, but most of us don’t out of fear of being laughable. —Jenny Zhang

"(You never know what troubled little girl needs a book)" Nikki Giovanni's wonderful poems celebrating libraries and librarians themarginalian.org/2015/12/11/nik…

Every day our society presents you with the wrong battles, designed to waste your energy so you don't fight the right ones.

I met a woman long ago Her hair, the black that black can go Are you a teacher of the heart? Soft she answered, no I met a girl across the sea Her hair, the gold that gold could be Are you a teacher of the heart? Yes, but not for thee Leonard Cohen, 1934-2016

“Dentro de nós há uma coisa que não tem nome, essa coisa e o que somos”. José Saramago, escritor.

"I’m not anti-Semitic at all, but I am anti-Zionist. I don’t believe they have the right, after 3,000 years, to reclaim the land with western bombs and guns on biblical injunction.” - James Baldwin

If you're out there writing poems—in a shadowy room, on the night shift, on your lunch break, beside your napping child, anywhere—you're keeping the human soul alive. You're doing the work we all need. And I absolutely love you.