Poet's Corner: Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea (We're Going to Mars) by Nikki Giovanni

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

For Black History Month, I am reading This is Honey: an Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets edited by Kwame Alexander. This is the first poem in this anthology. This is the first stanza. It is a long poem and the formatting (which I can't do here) is important.

Here is the whole poem formatted properly: https://issues.org/quilting-the-black-eyed-pea-going-to-mars-poem-giovanni/

Here is a video of her reading it aloud in 1994: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMKSSlaqTLE

Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea by Nikki Giovanni

We're going to Mars

for the same reason Marco Polo rocketed to China,

for the same reason Columbus trimmed his sails on a dream of spices,

for the very same reason Shackelford was enchanted with penguins,

for the reason we fall in love.

It's the only adventure.

Comments

[sweettartheart]

That is amazing. Thank you for sharing it.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

So glad you liked it 😁