I Said to Poetry

by Alice Walker

I said to Poetry:"I'm finished
with you."
Having to almost die
before some wierd light
comes creeping through
is no fun.
"No thank you, Creation,
no muse need apply.
Im out for good times--
at the very least,
some painless convention."

Poetry laid back
and played dead
until this morning.
I wasn't sad or anything,
only restless.

Poetry said: "You remember
the desert, and how glad you were
that you have an eye
to see it with? You remember
that, if ever so slightly?"
I said: "I didn't hear that.
Besides, it's five o'clock in the a.m.
I'm not getting up
in the dark
to talk to you."

Poetry said: "But think about
the time you saw the moon
over that small canyon
that you liked so much better
than the grand one--and how
suprised you were
that the moonlight was green
and you still had
one good eye
to see it with

Think of that!"

"I'll join the church!" I said,
huffily, turning my face to the wall.
"I'll learn how to pray again!"

"Let me ask you," said Poetry.
"When you pray, what do you think
you'll see?"

Poetry had me.

"There's no paper
in this room," I said.
"And that new pen I bought
makes a funny noise."

"Bullshit," said Poetry.
"Bullshit," said I.

"For in the end, freedom
is a personal and lonely
battle; and one faces down
fears of today so that those
of tomorrow might be engaged."

"Expect nothing. Live
frugally on surprise."

Alice Walker

Alice Walker

Poet, essayist, and novelist Alice Walker was born in 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia. Alice Walker, best known perhaps as the author of The Color Purple, was the eighth child of Georgia sharecroppers. After a childhood accident blinded her in one eye, she went on to become valedictorian of her local school, and attend Spelman College and Sarah Lawrence College on scholarships, graduating in 1965.

he married in 1967 (and divorced in 1976); her first book of poems came out in 1968 and her first novel just after her daughter's birth in 1970.

 Her early poems, novels and short stories dealt with themes familiar to readers of her later works: rape, violence, isolation, troubled relationships, multi-generational perspectives, sexism and racism.

Her books of poetry include “Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems,” (1965-1990) “Complete” (Harcourt, 1991); “Horses Make the Landscape More Beautiful” (1984); “Goodnight, Willie Lee, I'll See You in the Morning” (1979); “Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems” (1973); and “Once: Poems” (1968). Among her novels and short story collections are “The Way Forward is with a Broken Heart” (Random House, 2000); “By the Light of My Father's Smile” (1998); “Possessing the Secret of Joy” (1992); “The Temple of My Familiar” (1989); “To Hell With Dying” (1988); “The Color Purple” (1982), which won the Pulitzer Prize and American Book Award; and “You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down” (1981). Her collections of proseinclude “Dreads: Sacred Rites of the Natural Hair Revolution” (Artisan, 1999. With Francesco Mastalia and Alfonse Pagano); “Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer's Activism” (1997); “The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult; Living by the Word: Selected Writings,” 1973-87 (1988); and “In Search of Our Mother's Gardens: Womanist Prose” (1983).

Her books have been translated into more than two dozen languages. Alice Walker has won numerous awards and honors including the Lillian Smith Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rosenthal Award from the National Institute of Arts & Letters, and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute, a Merrill Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.