To Tell The Truth Is To Become

As A Poet And Writer, I Deeply Love And I Deeply Hate Words.

Good Poetry And Successful Revolution Change Our Lives. And You Cannot Compose A Good Poem Or Wage A Revolution Without Changing Consciousness Unless You Attack The Language That You Share With Your Enemies And Invent A Language That You Share With Your Allies.

Our Children Will Not Survive Our Habits Of Thinking, Our Failures Of The Spirit, Our Wreck Of The Universe Into Which We Bring New Life As Blithely As We Do. Mostly, Our Children Will Resemble Our Own Misery And Spite And Anger, Because We Give Them No Choice About It. In The Name Of Motherhood And Fatherhood And Education And Good Manners, We Threaten And Suffocate And Bind And Ensnare And Bribe And Trick Children Into Wholesale Emulation Of Our Ways.

As A Poet And Writer, I Deeply Love And I Deeply Hate Words. I Love The Infinite Evidence And Change And Requirements And Possibilities Of Language; Every Human Use Of Words That Is Joyful, Or Honest Or New, Because Experience Is New... But As A Black Poet And Writer, I Hate Words That Cancel My Name And My History And The Freedom Of My Future: I Hate The Words That Condemn And Refuse The Language Of My People In America.

Poetry Is A Political Act Because It Involves Telling The Truth.