Today I had the honor of joining fellow poets laureate Genea Brice and Johanna Ely in speaking about some incredible women poets for the AAUW’s Voices of Change: American Women Poets who have Made a Difference. I spoke about and read one poem each from Alicia Ostriker and Emma Lazarus. The poems I read appear in The Imaginary Lover and Dover Thrift’s The Poems of Emma Lazarus, Volume One. I’d encourage you to buy their books on Amazon as well as Esther Schorr’s excellent biography on Emma.
Thank you to the AAUW for including me, and the Benicia Herald, the Times Herald, Benicia Patch, KUIC, Visit Vallejo, Visit Benicia, and Benicia Literary Arts for helping to spread the word.
As I was researching a poem started coming to me. I performed this alongside “Headline Antidote” at the Benicia Library for the event.
What A Gift You Have Given Me!
Research is a journey,
a wandering through history
in every direction
making connections,
stumbling onto discoveries,
perhaps,
long left to the dustbin of memory,
a respite from all worry
that briefly sets us free
to travel through time,
nourishing our minds
with the biographies
of those souls
who dared
turn dream to reality,
once again breathing life
into their stories,
their voices echoing
like loudspeakers
in the arena
with prophetic messages
yet to be realized
thundering forth
that we might carry them forward
towards a new generation,
for the world we must build
sits upon the foundation
of those dreamers
who broke ground
before us.
