In the army, I often wrote letters for my fellow comrades for a price. They would tell me the story and I would put them in words. It was a good hustle for me to make a little extra money. I would write poems for their ladies or wives for special occasions. You know I liked doing it but I never did make copies to keep for myself. Now, the education system was a very pleasant experience until about the sixth grade for me when I learned that black people were slaves to white people in our social studies classes. That was a defining moment for my educational experience because of the way it was taught. It really threw me for a loop as I went home crying to my mother. But she explained to me that the truth, if you will seek, you will find, and that will make you free. But from then on, I lost some faith in the American education system. As I learned later in life, it was all based upon the theory of white supremacy. For the facts that lead to truth were purposely left out of the mix to deprive black people of their righteous place in history and robbed white people of their truth in history. The school system was one of the two major vehicles by which the white people claimed themselves as superior and the black people as inferior. The other was religion, and together as a double edge sword, they still continue to put enmity between the different peoples and cultures of the world. I did not give up on my learning experience and started to read other materials such as magazines, comics, and biographies of great men of color, especially sports figures. But the number one thing that I used to learn how to read better was the sports page of the L.A. Times. I would read that section from front page to back page every morning before school. But in school, poetry was my most favored reading. I liked the rythming of words as well as the message. I think it was related to another love of mine as a child and that was music and dancing. It didn’t take long for me memorize the lyrics of a song as we danced along, singing aloud, as if we were endowed, with a gift from heaven above, with that special kind of love. That was the ultimate fun as a young man growing up to meet the girls. To write little poems to your girlfriends was what I liked most. The poetry of greeting cards was my cup of tea after my education experience on our family festivities and celebrations. I would add my own poems to the cards on these occasions. The family and friends always seemed to like them so very much, always complimenting and encouraging me to write more. But I did not pursue poetry much as I continued my quest for facts in pursuit of truth. When my marriage ended in divorce in the early 1980s, it was music and poetry that brought joy and peace within. That’s when my writing of poetry increased and my perspective about other things expanded. As a single man again, it was very interesting living the single life. Now, I have been married for 18 years, living the family life called the American dream with grand children and all the wrappings and trappings that go with it. But I don’t mind one little bit because most of us should be graceful for the material life this land has produced despite its inequities. For the horizon does not look as favorable for our future generations that must cope with the mess we have left for them in the physical, mental, and spiritual planes of life.

First read by Maya Angelou at the 50th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, this wise and moving poem will inspire readers with its memorable message of hope for humanity.

A “raw and honest” (Los Angeles Review of Books) memoir from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States. In this transcendent memoir, grounded in tribal myth and ancestry, music and poetry, Joy Harjo details her journey to becoming a poet. Born in Oklahoma, the end place of the Trail of Tears, Harjo grew up learning to dodge an abusive stepfather by finding shelter in her imagination, a deep spiritual life, and connection with the natural world. Narrating the complexities of betrayal and love, Crazy Brave is a haunting, visionary memoir about family and the breaking apart necessary in finding a voice.

Perhaps you know them for their deer dances or for their rich Easter ceremonies, or perhaps only from the writings of anthropologists or of Carlos Castaneda. But now you can come to know the Yaqui Indians in a whole new way. Anita Endrezze, born in California of a Yaqui father and a European mother, has written a multilayered work that interweaves personal, mythical, and historical views of the Yaqui people. Throwing Fire at the Sun, Water at the Moon is a blend of ancient myths, poetry, journal extracts, short stories, and essays that tell her people's story from the early 1500s to the present, and her family's story over the past five generations. Reproductions of Endrezze's paintings add an additional dimension to her story and illuminate it with striking visual imagery. Endrezze has combed history and legend to gather stories of her immediate family and her mythical ancient family, the two converging in the spirit of storytelling. She tells Aztec and Yaqui creation stories, tales of witches and seductresses, with recurring motifs from both Yaqui and Chicano culture. She shows how Christianity has deeply infused Yaqui beliefs, sharing poems about the Flood and stories of a Yaqui Jesus. She re-creates the coming of the Spaniards through the works of such historical personages as AndrŽs PŽrez de Ribas. And finally she tells of those individuals who carry the Yaqui spirit into the present day. People like the Esperanza sisters, her grandmothers, and others balance characters like Coyote Woman and the Virgin of Guadalupe to show that Yaqui women are especially important as carriers of their culture. Greater than the sum of its parts, Endrezze's work is a new kind of family history that features a startling use of language to invoke a people and their past--a time capsule with a female soul. Written to enable her to understand more about her ancestors and to pass this understanding on to her own children, Throwing Fire at the Sun, Water at the Moon helps us gain insight not only into Yaqui culture but into ourselves as well.

A book of poetic essays written in English, Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet is full of religious inspirations. With the twelve illustrations drawn by the author himself, the book took more than eleven years to be formulated and perfected and is Gibran's best-known work. It represents the height of his literary career as he came to be noted as ‘the Bard of Washington Street.’ Captivating and vivified with feeling, The Prophet has been translated into forty languages throughout the world, and is considered the most widely read book of the twentieth century. Its first edition of 1300 copies sold out within a month.

This is David Whyte's fourth book of poetry

Rumi the Persian poet is widely acknowledged as being the greatest Sufi mystic of his age. He was the founder of the brotherhood of the Whirling Dervishes. This is a collection of his poetry.