{"id":329,"date":"2014-02-13T00:00:51","date_gmt":"2014-02-13T00:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/mission-and-identity\/?p=329"},"modified":"2019-09-18T16:51:20","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T20:51:20","slug":"delicate-and-lovely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/2014\/02\/13\/delicate-and-lovely\/","title":{"rendered":"delicate and lovely"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a 1970 article published in the Black Academy Review,<\/em> Dudley Randall wrote of the African American people: \u201cWe are a nation of twenty-two million souls, larger than Athens in the Age of Pericles or England in the age of Elizabeth. There is no reason why we should not create and support a literature which will be to our own nation what those literatures were to theirs” (47).<\/p>\n

As universal as Randall\u2019s vision of an African American literature was, however, it was never prescriptive. \u201cA poet is not a jukebox,\u201d he asserts in his poem by the same title, \u201cA poet writes about what he feels, what agitates his heart and sets his pen in motion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sometimes what agitated Randall\u2019s heart was political, as in his most famous poem, the “Ballad of Birmingham,” which was about bombing deaths of four little girls in a Birmingham church during the civil rights movement.<\/p>\n

Other times, his pen was moved by love. In honor of Valentine\u2019s day, here are two such poems, \u201cdelicate and lovely.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rosemary Weatherston
\nDirector, Dudley Randall Center for Print Culture<\/p>\n

\u201cThe brightness moved us softly\u201d<\/p>\n

Light flowed between black branches and new snow
\ninto the shaded room and touched your eyes.
\nYour slow lids made another soft sun rise
\nupon your face, and as that morning glow
\nspread in your cheeks and blushed upon your lips,
\nthe brightness moved us softly to a kiss.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Profile on the Pillow\u201d<\/p>\n

After our fierce loving
\nin the brief time we found to be together,
\nyou lay in the half light
\nexhausted, rich,
\nwith your face turned sideways on the pillow
\nand I traced the exquisite
\nline of your profile, dark against the white,<\/p>\n

delicate and lovely as a child’s.
\nPerhaps
\nyou will cease to love me.
\nor we may be consumed in the holocaust,<\/p>\n

but I keep, against the ice and the fire,
\nthe memory of your profile on the pillow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a 1970 article published in the Black Academy Review, Dudley Randall wrote of the African American people: \u201cWe are a nation of twenty-two million souls, larger than Athens in the Age of Pericles or England in the age of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11641],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":331,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329\/revisions\/331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}