April
Considering the Poetry of Culture
Most months KMA puts out a news page focused on a specific culture or group, but this month we are taking a brief departure to consider poetry. We think it is fitting since KMA specializes in multicultural communication and Poetry is a way cultures have defined themselves throughout time.
According to Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature, “Poetry is an ancient mode of expression; it was often used by non-literate societies who formulated poetic expressions of religious, historical, and cultural significance and transmitted these to the next generation in hymns, incantations, and narrative poems.
Something of this early association with the cultural tradition of the tribe has persisted in later theories of poetic inspiration and poetic privilege, though from the time of the Romantics the autonomous creative imagination has been regarded as the source of poetic energy and the guarantee of poetic authenticity. Some modern poets, such as the Surrealists, would claim that the poetic faculty is a mode of access to individual and collective unconscious experience.”
For April, National Poetry Month, we asked our team of cultural experts what poems speak to them and this is what we heard back:
Kate Wildrick
Kate Wildrick, principal developer and facilitator of KMA’s generational program
Kate’s submission: “Generational Lost”
“Generational Lost is a poem about generational perceptions and changing times. I love the way it challenges us to consider what brings us together during uncertain times and look at our experience from a new perspective.”
Luis Vazquez
Luis Vazquez, presenter and facilitator of KMA’s Hispanic-Latino cultural program
Luis’s submission: “Prayer of the Farm Workers’ Struggle” by Cesar Chavez
“I was celebrating Cesar Chavez this week and this is the prayer that we talked about among my friends. We believe that it is just as true now as it was then in the struggle to be free, to learn to work with those that dislike us and to have the courage of those that came before us.”
Prayer of the Farm Workers' Struggle
Show me the suffering of the most miserable;
So I will know my people's plight.
Free me to pray for others;
For you are present in every person.
Help me to take responsibility for my own life;
So that I can be free at last.
Grant me courage to serve others;
For in service there is true life.
Give me honesty and patience;
So that I can work with other workers.
Bring forth song and celebration;
So that the spirit will be alive among us.
Let the spirit flourish and grow;
So we will never tire of the struggle.
Let us remember those who have died for justice;
For they have given us life.
Help us love even those who hate us;
So we can change the world.
Written by Cesar E. Chavez, UFW Founder (1927-1993)
Tatyana Fertelmeyster
Tatyana Fertelmeyster, principal developer and facilitator of the Russian-American program for KMA
Tatyana’s submission: “Russia cannot be understood with the mind alone...”
“It comes from a Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev (1803-1873), who was one of most famous representative of the philosophy of Russianspecial mission in the world. This philosophy is very much alive and well.”
Russia cannot be understood with the mind alone...
Russia cannot be understood with the mind alone,
No ordinary yardstick can span her greatness:
She stands alone, unique —
In Russia, one can only believe.
Jean Mavrelis
Jean’s submission: “The Crazy Woman” by Gwendolyn Brooks
The Crazy Woman
I shall not sing a May song.
A May song should be gay.
I'll wait until November
And sing a song of gray.
I'll wait until November
That is the time for me.
I'll go out in the frosty dark
And sing most terribly.
And all the little people
Will stare at me and say,
"That is the Crazy Woman
Who would not sing in May."
Lobna “Luby” Ismail
Luby’s submission: “If we all loved each other” written by her son Zakaria when he was in 6th grade.
If we all loved each other
Wouldn’t it be a lovely sight?
Red and yellow, black and white
If we did not care what religion one had
The world wouldn’t be cruel
And no one would be sad
If we replaced hatred with love and
Joined our hands together
Everyone would be happy and that
Day would be remembered forever
If there were no guns and knives
There would be happiness from
Door to Door
If people would not judge one by
What one is instead by whom one is
It would be more amazing than the
Invention of light
If there was peace among the world
Wouldn’t that be a lovely sight?
Zakaria Ismail Kronemer- 2004 6th grade
Kenneth Addison
Kenneth Addison, lead facilitator of the African American program for Kochman Mavrelis Associates
Ken’s submission: “A Dream Deferred” By Langston Hughes
A Dream Deferred
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Marin Webster Denning
Marin Webster Denning, a principal developer and facilitator of the American Indian program for KMA
Marin’s submission: “Grandmother” by Ray A. Young Bear
“It’s like I live in these different worlds, the one of my childhood where the world around me is what sustains and heals as taught to me by my grandparents. Earth itself and the smell or sight of a plant reminds me about what I need to teach. And I wonder if my hands actually smell like the roots that helped me when I young, or the anti-bacterial soap I have to wash with every moment after I shake hands with a co-worker...”
“Grandmother”
If I were to see
her shape from a mile away
I'd know so quickly
that it would be her.
The purple scarf
and the plastic shopping bag.
If I felt
hands on my head
I'd know that those
were her hands
warm and damp
with the smell
of roots.
If I heard
a voice
coming from
a rock
I'd know
and her words
would flow inside me
like the light
of someone
stirring ashes
from a sleeping fire
at night.
By Ray A. Young Bear
From: “Remnants of the First Earth”
Rita Wuebbeler
Rita’s submission: “Letters to a Young Poet” By Rainer Maria Rilke “
I like the Rilke piece so much because he talks about the importance of asking questions, of "loving" them and having patience. For me asking inspiring questions is much harder than answering them... and therein lies the mastery and the mystery of human communication.”
“Letters to a Young Poet”
…I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
Books
Corporate Tribalism: White Men/White Women and Cultural Diversity at Work
"Their arguments about the connection between the cultures of racial, gender, and ethnic groups and the conflicts that can surface between and among members of them are thought-provoking. "
—R. Roosevelt Thomas, author of Building on the Promise of Diversity
Black and White Styles in Conflict
“Goes a long way toward showing a lay audience the value, integrity, and aesthetic sensibility of black culture, and moreover the conflicts which arise when its values are treated as deviant versions of majority ones.”
—Marjorie Harness Goodwin, American Ethnologist
