June Jordan Poems

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June Jordan
June Jordan was born in Harlem to Jamaican immigrant parents. Her father, Granville, was a postal clerk, and her mother, Mildred, was a part-time nurse. When Jordan was five, the family moved to Bedford-Stuyvesant. In 1953, Jordan enrolled at Barnard College. There she met a Columbia University student, Michael Meyer. They married in 1955, and had a son, Christopher. The couple divorced in 1966. [edit] Career Jordan's first published book, Who Look at Me, appeared in 1969, was a collection of poems for children. 27 more books followed in her lifetime, one (Some of Us Did Not Die, Collected and New Essays) was in press when she died. Two more have been published posthumously: Directed By Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan (2005) and a re-issue of the 1970 poetry collection, SoulScript, edited by Jordan. Her autobiographical Soldier: A Poet's Childhood came out in 2000. She was also an essayist, columnist for The Progressive, novelist, biographer, and librettist for the musical/opera I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, composed by John Adams and produced by Peter Sellars.

on a new year's eve
 
 
Infinity doesn't interest me

not altogether
anymore

I crawl and kneel and... [read poem]
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