What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In our third series, The Poems of Others II, twenty-four poets pay homage to the poems that led them to write. Each Monday's delivery brings you the poem and an excerpt from the essay. 
Shane McCrae
Well I'm in Heaven now I reckon this
Is Heaven     what will I do     how will I live
I reckon this is Heaven and I'm alive
First      I suppose I got to find a house

First I suppose I got to find some land
To work first first    before I think about
A house I got      I reckon what I got
To do first      I suppose I got to find

A man who owns a farm and needs some help
More than the help he has     I reckon all
White folks got to do is die and wait

I reckon help     comes to them every day
Since they're in Heaven      and black folks die    I reckon money
I'll never see is waiting on me
from the book SOMETIMES I NEVER SUFFERED / Farrar, Straus and Giroux 
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Poet Carl Phillips Explores The Politics Of The Everyday

"Phillips, 60, talks about his evolving relationship with memory, and with the expectations that come with the role of an acclaimed, queer, black poet. He finds poems in everyday moments: cooking dinner, sharing an intimate moment with a partner, walking his dog Ben. 'I think [poems are] containers for things that we find ambiguous in life. Poems make us feel, briefly, that those conundrums of life have some fixidity. I think of it as giving shapelessness a form,' Phillips said. 'It’s a temporary stay against confusion.'"
 
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Resources for Supporting and Uplifting the Black Community

Campaign Zero: Campaign Zero aims to end police brutality by providing the public and government officials with urgent, research-based policy solutions.

Solutions Not Punishment Co.: This organization led by black trans and queer activists is devoted to "ending the mass crisis of passive genocide, incarceration, and criminalization of black trans women" with education programs, resources such as reports and media guidelines, and a fund that "provides direct financial support to trans folks navigating personal emergencies."

Unicorn Riot: This independent, educational, and decentralized media nonprofit works to identify the causes of social issues by sharing stories of people whose voices have been silenced.
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Poetry Daily stands with the Black community. 
We oppose racism, oppression, and police brutality.
We will continue to amplify diverse voices in the poetry world.
Black Lives Matter.
Cover of Sylvia Plath's Collected Poems
What Sparks Poetry:
Shane McCrae on Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus"


"Yes—I did feel as if the top of my head had been taken off. I was desperately goth at the time, and those lines were the gothiest thing I had ever heard. And hearing them re-configured my ideas about what a poem could be. No roses! No violets! That day, I wrote eight poems. Thankfully, I don’t remember any of them—except the very first one."
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