My Dear Friends:
In celebration of International Women's Day, I would like to share with you a set of selected poems on how women have navigated their multi-faceted lives when faced with challenges and trying circumstances.
A woman has many faces as she goes through her life. It's like we need more than one hair-do. We have many, many changes in the evolution of our lives. We have, we learn, and we grow; we view life differently, and life views us differently.
-- Sharon Stone
Selected Poems:
child wife mother
I’ve been many things
poet teacher
one who sits all afternoon
gum leaves filtering the light
Kathy Kituai
blooming faces
mother's water sprinkler
spouts a rainbow
dewdrops on the tip of a leaf
the ballerina holds her pose
Chen-ou Liu
stacked stones
the steps I must climb
to my goddess self
Jackie Chou
a police phalanx
moves backward
a black woman
Jack Galmitz
training corps
marking time with style
blue mink stockings
bomber jacket, skirt
we made love not war
Martha Magenta
My Country,
I will build you again,
If need be,
with bricks
made from my life
Simin Behbahani
though now old
a woman is still a woman
as a breeze
to a summer bamboo screen
come to visit me
Fumi Saito
on the scale
my bathed and steaming body
this night of snow
Nobuko Katsura
the tattered banner
not one woman less
not one more death
flapping in evening chill ...
a long scream cuts to silence
Chen-ou Liu
To conclude today's Special feature post, I would like to invite you to watch and reflect on a free documentary, Joan Baez: I Am A Noise
Nearing the end of a 60-year musical career, legendary folk singer and activist Joan Baez reflects on her life on and off the stage - from her lifelong emotional struggles to her civil rights work with Martin Luther King, Jr. and a heartbreaking romance with a young Bob Dylan.
Three of my favourite Joan Baez quotes:
Instead of getting hard ourselves and trying to compete, women should try and give their best qualities to men - bring them softness, teach them how to cry.
That's all nonviolence is - organized love
Action is the antidote to despair
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