In honor of National Poetry Month, we’re talking all things poetry for The Stacks Book Club. We’re joined again by author, performance artist, and poet Gabrielle Civil, and we’re discussing Ntozake Shange’s poetry collection, Wild Beauty. If you’re intimidated by poetry, you’ll love today’s episode. We talk about how to approach poetry, where to start, and if there is such thing as a “good” poem (or if that even matters). Plus a whole lot more. There a no spoilers today.

Purchase Wild Beauty on IndieBound or Amazon.

Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes. The Stacks participates in affiliate programs, and shopping through the links below helps support the show, at no cost to you.

• Wild Beauty by Ntozake Shange
• Ep. 55 The Art of Performance with Gabrielle Civil (The Stacks)
• Ask the Stacks — askingthestacks@gmail.com
• Join The Stacks Pack
• Ep 162: The best bad ending you’ll ever read–Traci Thomas (What Should I Read Next Podcast, Wondery)
• FREE Audible Trial
• For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange
• “Obie-Winning Actor Laurie Carlos Dies at 67” ( Ruthie Fierberg, Playbill.com)
• Jessica Hagedorn
• Nappy Edges by Ntozake Shange
• A Daughter’s Geography by Ntozake Shange
• Ridin’ the Moon in Texas by Ntozake Shange
• Experiments in Joy by Gabrielle Civil
• Attack of the Difficult Poems by Charles Bernstein
• Immortal Poems of the English Language by Oscar Williams
• Louis Untermeyer
• The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot
• Mother to Son by Langston Hughes
• Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart by Alice Walker
• Henri Matisse
• Swallow the Fish by Gabrielle Civil

• Carrie Mae Weems
• Barbara Chase-Riboud
• Sally Hemmings by Barbara Chase-Riboud
• Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom
• What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker by Damon Young
• A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
• If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
• If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2018)
• Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare
• Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare
• Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
• Replicas (Jeffrey Nachmanoff, 2019)
• What Work Is by Philip Levine
• How to Lose A Guy in Ten Days (Donald Petrie, 2003)
• VS podcast (Poetry Foundation)
• Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith
• [insert] Boy by Danez Smith
• Soft Science by Franny Choi
• Floating, Brilliant Gone by Fanny Choi
• Poetry Foundation–Poetry Subscription
• Ocean Vuong
• The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop edited by Kevin Coval, Quraysh Ali Lansana, and Nate Marshall
• The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic edited by Jamila Woods, Mahogany L. Browne, and Idrissa Simmonds
• Premonitions : The Kaya Anthology of New Asian North American Poetry by Walter Lew
• Tinder
• Narrative Muse
• The Color Purple (Steven Spielberg, 1985)
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• Tiffany Haddish
• Zoe Saldana
• Nina (Cynthia Mort, 2016)
• Center Stage (Nicholas Hytner, 2000)
• Debbie Allen
• Marsai Martin
• Little (Tina Gordon, 2019)
• Sweet Honey and the Rock
• Salt by Nayyirah Waheed
• nejma by Nayyirah Waheed

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