Morphological Confetti

Richard Wright Mr. Wright did some of his best writing early in the morning. He got up around 6:00 A.M. Sometimes, it was earlier during the summer months. He only needed a bottle of ink, a fountain pen, and his legal yellow pad when he climbed to the top of a hill in Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn. On that hill, he would fill page after page as he occasionally glanced down on the brownstones and tenement houses near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Brownstones near Ft. Greene Note: A place to write is very important to me. I find it difficult to write where I live at that moment. It's too suburban and much too bland a scene. I love the comfort and safety of the neighborhood but it dosen't lend much to inspiration. So, there are times when I use my imagination and I travel to places in order to get started. What about you? Do you require a place or do you develop this place in your mind?

I was tagged by  Geoffrey  to name 25 who have influenced my writing. There are some you might find surprising, but I thought of it carefully (with the help of my bookshelf) and came up with the following: 1. Richard Wright 2. Paul Laurence Dunbar 3. Ishmael Reed 4. James Baldwin 5. Jean Toomer 6. Langston Hughes 7. Ernest J. Gaines (pictured above) 8. Fydor Dostoevsky 9. August Wilson (Playwright) 10. Octavia Butler 11. Toni Morrison 12. Zora Neale Hurston 13. John Henrik Clarke 14. Sterling Brown 15. Irwin Shaw 16. John Donne 17. William Shakespeare 18. Oscar Brown Jr (Singer/Songwriter) 19. Edwin Torres 20. Clifton L. Taulbert 21. Curtis Mayfield 22. William Faulkner 23. Bill Withers (Singer/Songwriter) 24. Joseph A Walker (Playwright) 25. Kahlil Gibran Honorable Mention: Jesus Christ (Holy Spirit) who is with me everytime I pick up the pen. (Note: The names are in no particular order. Also, some of the names are song writers.) Now, I'll have to tag 25 bloggers. Here's my l...

"The great danger," Richard told Sartre, "in the world today is that the very feeling and conception of what is a human being might well be lost." Richard Wright to Jean-Paul Sartre, In Richard Wright - By Constance Webb

I am nobody: A red sinking autumn sun Took my name away. Haiku By: Richard Wright (Author of Native Son) Photo Source: http://historymatters.gmu.ed/ Washington (southwest section), D.C. Two African American boys

Haiku # 1 Faint recollections Sipping sweet mountain berries Amid nuptial bliss This is my first attempt at Haiku (correct syllabic form: 5-7-5). I was initially inspired by writer,  RICHARD WRIGHT  after learning that he wrote over 4,000 in the year before his death. Today, I was inspired by Sage-Petals after visiting her page. If you know Haiku I would love your honest feedback.

 (1908-1960) " Our too-young and too-new America, lusty because it is lonely, aggressive because it is afraid, insists upon seeing the world in terms of good and bad, the holy and the evil, the high and the low, the white and the black: or America is frightened of fact, of history, of processes, of necessity. It hugs the easy way of damning those whom it cannot understand, of excluding those who look different, and it salves its conscience with a self-draped cloak of righteousness. Am I damning my native land? No; for I, too, share these faults of character! And I really do not think that America, adolescent and cocksure, a stranger to suffering and travail, an enemy of passion and sacrifice, is ready to probe into it's most fundamental beliefs."    ~ Richard Wright, Black Boy -1945 I love this picture of Mr. Wright -- he looks very cool. By the way, the above quote really expresses how I feel. Richard Wright is one of my favorite writers of all time. His often polemi...

"Their constant outward-looking, their mania for radios, cars and a thousand other trinkets made them dream and fix their eyes upon the trash of life, made it impossible for them to learn a language which could have taught them to speak of what was in their or others' hearts. The words of their souls were the syllables of popular songs."  ~ Richard Wright, Black Boy ( American Hunger )   I thought of this passage from Richard Wright as I observed our young people as I was riding the bus this morning. They all had their headphones blasting into their ears the sounds of the Top Ten from 106 & Park. They were oblivious to all that was around them and I imagined that their only goal was to get through this day without a teacher "sweating" them or asking them a question. (Thank God) I am not talking about all of them because there are some bright young people in the classroom that are going to do well in life. However, an overwhelming number are slipping into...

I want to write I want to write I want to write the songs of my people. I want to hear them singing melodies in the dark. I want to catch the last floating strains from their sob-torn Throats. I want to frame their dreams into words; their souls into Notes. I want to catch their sunshine laughter in a bowl; Fling dark hands to a darker sky And fill them full of stars Then crush and mix such lights till they become A mirrored pool of brilliance in the dawn. By: Margaret Abigail Walker Alexander (1915-1998) It was a beautiful spring day in 1989 on the campus of Savannah State College in Savannah, Georgia. I was an enthusiastic 22-year-old freshman. My major was English with a minor in parties and freshman girls (Yeah, I was something else back then). I was strolling the yard one fine day in April when I noticed a small crowd gathering outside of the Fine Arts Building. The program had just started and the host of the event introduced a poet and a novelist by the name of Margaret Walker....