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May we enjoy the lives we have chosen

At what point does a heart give up? As if there’s a singular moment in time instead of a steady build-up weakening up to the day, the hour, the second…a slowing down of one’s life to that final time when the last breath is drawn. As if we’re not passing on each day, getting close and […]

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Sorcery, kingdom business and the Epic of Sundiata

This month I’ve burrowed into old epics: Gilgamesh, Sundiata, Genji, Beowulf, the Iliad, the Odyssey and so on, to reacquaint myself and figure out how these ancient literatures are sustained in contemporary writing. I had forgotten how funny and serious at the same time they are. For me, they’re the quintessence of “serious play.” I […]

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Kofi Awoonor

Kofi Awoonor: Dearly loved & missed. Tributes and more

Tributes and more tributes. I can’t help it when the best continue to die To read click this link and add to the thread.

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Seamus Heaney: We keep stumbling behind you, tripping, falling, not going away.

Seamus Heaney’s going to the next world made me think that the good poets are dying but that’s not entirely true. We are “followers” and will not go away from them, and they’re not really gone from us although it appears so. I was doing my MFA in creative writing at Syracuse University when he […]

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When I think of Chinua Achebe

  A lot has been said about Chinua Achebe and his commitment to African Literature, and I’m pleased that NorthEast Review asked me to add to the voices. Here’s my salute first published in NorthEast Review. Peace.

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All our love: Jayne Cortez

Jayne Cortez is much celebrated in life as she is dearly remembered. Was does not sound right. When I learned of her passing on yesterday, I alerted Frank Chipasula, because in our communication sometime we had talked about her. Frank is devastated, but like a true poet has chosen to mourn her with words of […]

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The Hobbit Read-a-Thon at Woodlawn.

Today I put on my community gloves and went for the Hobbit Read-a-Thon, a day-long, out-loud, nonstop reading of J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic, in Woodlawn, at the DISCO–The Desert Island Supply Co headquarters. I loved The Hobbit, which I read at a young stage, and was cast in a world of fantasy that I still appreciate […]

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Remembrance Day= Devotions

Because it is Remembrance Day, also known as Veterans Day, Poppy Day or Armistice Day, I’m not going to school but will take a moment of silence to remember all those who have died in the line of duty. I run to my hero, Thomas Sankara, perhaps the only military fellow I recognize as being […]

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Ray Bradbury Electric

The death of Ray is a hard one to take. I discovered him in our little library when I was a child, in a small village of Kabale, and started writing letters to him but never sent them because they were in my head. For me that was the beginning of liking fantasy as a […]

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A visit to Harriet Tubman’s grave

Had the real honor of visiting Harriet Tubman’s grave in Auburn, NY. Went with Prof. Arthur Flowers who’s always great at giving narratives you can’t find anywhere on the wiki. the real lived stuff, usually. So we arrived around noon and the sun was high and never seen skies so clear. Her grave is an […]

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