![]() ![]() Recently, Taormina discovered that UNICEF hosts a Poems for Peace website featuring the poems of children in Ukraine and other areas of conflict. Even the heartbeat of the unborn child beats in an iambic rhythm,” she said. “Our holy books, our love songs, our anthems, our nursery rhymes and riddles are all in verse. Through SICA, Poems for Peace spread around the world – which didn’t surprise Taormina. The very next day, all kinds of marketing material arrived that would connect my efforts with Gilley’s – including a way that my audiences could connect with his big Elton John concert that would conclude his Peace Day celebrations that year.” (That concert took place in London in 2012.) Poems for Peace popped into my head, so I put that down. “‘What will you do for Peace Day?’ was his question. “I tell people Poems for Peace began as an idea that just popped into my head when I was reading about how Jeremy Gilley started Peace One Day in the U.K.,” the Village resident said. Taormina got the idea for Poems for Peace during a 2012 Peace Day celebration in Austin, Texas, in collaboration with the city’s arts community and the Subud International Cultural Association (SICA), an organization she volunteered for, she said.ĭuring that time, she became acquainted with British filmmaker Jeremy Gilley’s nonprofit Peace One Day. “What he could never forget has likely influenced my passion to work for peace,” she said. She also credits her father’s recollections of fighting in the Pacific region during World War II for her activism. She did her college thesis on the poetry of William Butler Yeats – “especially his imagery of self and soul.” Taormina has been a peace activist since the 1960s in San Francisco, she said. “It’s all about how we want to be treated and should treat others,” she said. So she included in the program Raggedy Ann creator Johnny Gruelle’s poem “Goodness, Kindness, Friendliness.” Glenn said she draws inspiration from Raggedy Ann books that she, her daughters and grand-daughters have read. “When someone walks down the street, give them a smile. “Peace for me goes back thinking about each one of us as a beautiful soul that needs to connect,” she said. Glenn has her own unique take on Peace Day. “David will read a line, and I will, as his conscience, tell him what he should be thinking.” Goldstein, 94, read the opening poem written by her, titled “Peace! Peace! Peace!”ĭearing and Glenn teamed up to read award-winning Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s “Think of Others.” The two guests were award-winning Iranian poet Rooja Mohassessy (“When Your Sky Runs Into Mine”) and California performance poet Emmanuel Williams, who added a dramatic flair to his reading. On tap were poems read by residents Barbara Goldstein, David Dearing, Lee MacMorris, Robbi Nestor, Sunita Saxena, Glenn and Taormina. “We put together an interesting mix of poems and music and concepts to make it festive,” Glenn said. I work at the language.Carol Glenn, president of the Old Pros theater group, organized this year’s program with Concerned Citizens member Latifah Taormina, an originator of the concept of deploying poetry for world peace. Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. ![]() Of course, there are those critics-New York critics as a rule-who say, Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer. It must look easy, but it takes me forever to get it to look so easy. In 1990, she told the Paris Review, “I try to pull the language into such a sharpness that it jumps off the page. Despite the fact that she excelled as a writer above all else, Angelou said that the craft did not come easily to her.Moreover, in 2013, Angelou’s memoir about her relationship with her mother, Mom & Me & Mom, debuted. The writer followed that effort up with Gather Together in My Name (1974), Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas (1976), The Heart of a Woman (1981), All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986) and A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002). Caged Bird was far from Angelou’s only memoir. ![]() That book made history, as it marked the first time an autobiography by an African-American woman became a best-seller in the United States. Angelou rose to fame after the publication of her 1969 memoir, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.
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