June Jordan
June Jordan
June Millicent Jordanwas a Caribbean-American bisexual poet and activist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth9 July 1936
CountryUnited States of America
writing important language
The music of language became extremely important to me, and obvious to me. By the time I was seven I was writing myself. I was a poet
powerful mean poetry
What's important about poetry in the context of leadership is that most of the time, power has to do with dominance. But poetry is never about dominance. Poetry is powerful but it cannot even aspire to dominate anyone. It means making a connection. That's what it means.
late
I am working never to be late again.
expectations atmosphere revolution
Revolution always unfolds inside an atmosphere of rising expectations.
determination self blood
... the histories of Blacks and Jews in bondage and out of bondage, have been blood histories pursued through our kindred searchings for self-determination. Let this blood be a stain of honor that we share. Let us not now become enemies to ourselves and to each other.
legacy energy moral
The neglected legacy of the Sixties is just this: unabashed moral certitude, and the purity -- the incredibly outgoing energy -- of righteous rage.
education mean world
It means to educate myself incessantly about the world around me.
love-is goes-on our-love
We survive our love because we go on loving.
friendship mother young
But, based on my friendship with Evie as young mothers, I started going on freedom rides in 1966.
father hero tyrants
My father was very intense, passionate and over-the-top. He was my hero and my tyrant.
father commitment thinking
As I think about anyone or anything -- whether history or literature or my father or political organizations or a poem or a film -- as I seek to evaluate the potentiality, the life-supportive commitment and possibilities of anyone or any thing, the decisive question is always where is the love?
yield needs genius
The thing about genius is it will never yield to circumstances. Genius regards what's given as the beginning of its need to find or devise something else.
communication men media
There is a man who exists as one of the most popular objects of leadership, legislation, and quasi-literature in the history of all men. . . . This man, that object of attention, attack, and vast activity, cannot make himself be heard, let alone understood. He has never been listened to. . . . That man is Black and alive in white America where the media of communication do not allow the delivery of his own voice, his own desires, his own rage.
CORE was committed to nonviolence, but I was not.