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De Amerikaanse dichteres en schrijfster Elizabeth Alexander werd geboren op 30 mei 1962 in New York. Zie ook mijn blog van 30 mei 2008 en ook mijn blog van 30 mei 2009.xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Blues
I am lazy, the laziest
girl in the world. I sleep during
the day when I want to, 'til
my face is creased and swollen,
'til my lips are dry and hot. I
eat as I please: cookies and milk
after lunch, butter and sour cream
on my baked potato, foods that
slothful people eat, that turn
yellow and opaque beneath the skin.
Sometimes come dinnertime Sunday
I am still in my nightgown, the one
with the lace trim listing because
I have not mended it. Many days
I do not exercise, only
consider it, then rub my curdy
belly and lie down. Even
my poems are lazy. I use
syllabics instead of iambs,
prefer slant to the gong of full rhyme,
write briefly while others go
for pages. And yesterday,
for example, I did not work at all!
I got in my car and I drove
to factory outlet stores, purchased
stockings and panties and socks
with my father's money.
To think, in childhood I missed only
one day of school per year. I went
to ballet class four days a week
at four-forty-five and on
Saturdays, beginning always
with plie, ending with curtsy.
To think, I knew only industry,
the industry of my race
and of immigrants, the radio
tuned always to the station
that said, Line up your summer
job months in advance. Work hard
and do not shame your family,
who worked hard to give you what you have.
There is no sin but sloth. Burn
to a wick and keep moving.
I avoided sleep for years,
up at night replaying
evening news stories about
nearby jailbreaks, fat people
who ate fried chicken and woke up
dead. In sleep I am looking
for poems in the shape of open
V's of birds flying in formation,
or open arms saying, I forgive you, all.
Elizabeth Alexander (New York, 30 mei 1962)
De Afro-Amerikaanse dichter Countee Cullen werd geboren als Countee LeRoy Porter op 30 mei 1903. Zie ook mijn blog van 30 mei 2007 en ook mijn blog van 30 mei 2008 en ook mijn blog van 30 mei 2009.
Yet Do I Marvel
I doubt not God is good, well-meaning,
kind,
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors
Him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured
Tantalus Is baited by the fickle fruit,
declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
Countee Cullen (30 mei 1903 9 januari 1946)
De Amerikaanse schrijver en essayist Randolph Bourne werd geboren op 30 mei 1886 in Bloomfield, New Jersey. Hij studeerde aan de Columbia University. Tijdens WO I stonden twee groepen van progressieve intellectuelen tegenover elkaar. De twee facties die ontstonden waren de pro-oorlog factie, geleid door de educatieve theoreticus John Dewey en de anti-oorlogsbeweging factie, waarvan zowel Bourne en andere beroemde progressieven als Jane Addams deel uitmaakten. Bourne was een leerling van Dewey in Columbia, maar hij was het oneens met het idee Dewey's van het gebruik van de oorlog als een instrument om de democratie te verspreiden. Hij vond dat Dewey zijn democratische idealen verraden had door zich uitsluitend te richten op de facade van een democratische regering in plaats van op de ideeën achter de democratie, waarvan Dewey ooit beweerd had die te respecteren. Bourne werd sterk beïnvloed door Horace Kallens essay "Democracy Versus the Melting-Pot," uit 1915 en voerde, net als Kallen, dat Amerikanisme niet geassocieerd mocht worden met Anglo-Saxisme. In zijn artikel uit 1916 "Trans-National America," voerde Bourne aangevoerd aan dat de VS allochtone culturen moest verwelkomen in een "kosmopolitisch Amerika, " in plaats van gedwongen te assimileren aan de anglofiele cultuur.
Uit: The State
To most Americans of the classes which consider themselves significant the war brought a sense of the sanctity of the State which, if they had had time to think about it, would have seemed a sudden and surprising alteration in their habits of thought. In times of peace, we usually ignore the State in favour of partisan political controversies, or personal struggles for office, or the pursuit of party policies. It is the Government rather than the State with which the politically minded are concerned. The State is reduced to a shadowy emblem which comes to consciousness only on occasions of patriotic holiday.
Government is obviously composed of common and unsanctified men, and is thus a legitimate object of criticism and even contempt. If your own party is in power, things may be assumed to be moving safely enough; but if the opposition is in, then clearly all safety and honor have fled the State. Yet you do not put it to yourself in quite that way. What you think is only that there are rascals to be turned out of a very practical machinery of offices and functions which you take for granted. When we say that Americans are lawless, we usually mean that they are less conscious than other peoples of the august majesty of the institution of the State as it stands behind the objective government of men and laws which we see.
Randolph Bourne (30 mei 1886 22 december 1918)
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 30e mei ook mijn vorige twee blogs van vandaag.
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