I look to poetry to ease the pain I feel at the ransacking of my country's democratic principles -- and the destruction of our White House. I didn't automatically go to the poets and writers of the 1920s and 1930s, that era of uprisings in the writing world. I didn't go to the 1960s and 1970s, my time as a young man trying to understand why an America I worshipped was murdering people in Southeast Asia in my name. I sometimes send my readers to that past. But I came across Maya Angelou's poem "Still I Rise" on the Poetry Foundation's web site. It speaks to this time, when fascists are in charge of the three branches of our government. I'd say read it and weep, but if you ain't weeping already, I have no words.
But Maya Angelou does:
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