Inspirational Shorts - Poetry Corner - Ntozake Shange - Mood Indigo

Inspirational Shorts

Welcome to Inspirational Shorts in todays recording we look at the poet/writer Ntozake Shange.  

Ntozake Shange was an American playwright and poet. she addressed issues relating to race and Black power in much of her work. She is best known for her Obie Award-winning play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf. She also penned novels including Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo (1982), Liliane (1994), and Betsey Brown (1985)   Her father was an Air Force surgeon and her mother a psychiatric social worker. Cultural icons such as Dizzie Gillepsie, Miles Davis, and W.E.B. DuBois were regular guests in the Williams home. more HERE

Listen to the Podcast HERE

She is one of my favorite writers and today we look at her poem Mood Indigo.  I encourage you to look at some of her other work, and you can find additional links to books on Amazon

Mood Indigo - 

it hasnt always been this way

ellington was not a street

robeson no mere memory

du bois walked up my father’s stairs

hummed some tune over me

sleeping in the company of men

who changed the world

 

it wasnt always like this

why ray barretto used to be a side-man

& dizzy’s hair was not always grey

i remember            i was there

i listened in the company of men

politics as necessary as collards

music even in our dreams

 

our house was filled with all kinda folks

our windows were not cement or steel

our doors opened like our daddy’s arms

held us safe & loved

children growing in the company of men

old southern men & young slick ones

sonny til was not a boy

the clovers no rag-tag orphans

our crooners/ we belonged to a whole world

nkrumah was no foreigner

virgil aikens was not the only fighter

 

it hasnt always been this way

ellington was not a street

BY NTOZAKE SHANGE

Check out Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo