Poetry has a kind of magic I think. It’s condensed. It’s intense. It helps us to see — and it’s short; well, condensed. So, but it helps us to see ordinary things in new ways so that they become extraordinary to us.
I think it also expresses feelings that maybe we weren’t able to articulate. So, it’s that moment of ah, yes, that’s exactly how I feel that poetry can do for you. And it has that music with the rhythm and the repetition and the literation and all of those kinds of magic tricks that poets know how to do that I think no other genre does for us. And I think children respond to poetry in ways that they may not respond to longer literature.
Well, the poetry for children within the African American children’s literature seems to me to be one of the genres that focuses particularly on self affirmation. One of the thematic threads I think that goes through African American children’s literature is this valuing of children, of saying to them we see you as beautiful, we see you as competent, we see you as worthy, and you should know that.
And one of the things I remember about a number of African American books of poetry is that so many of the titles are children’s names, you know. Even with — I was just thinking of Nikki Giovanni’s Nikki-Rosa. But Nathaniel’s [unint.] — I forgot the exact title for that one.
But many of the Danitra Brown, many, many of their poems have children’s names as the title or as part of the title. Gwendolyn Brooks’ Bronzeville Boys and Girls, I think every poem is a child’s name. So, it’s that celebration of children that is really one of the special things I think about the poetry.
