Dear Friends,
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Today's Meditation portrays Yolanda Wisher celebrating the wisdom figures in her life and continuing to revisit them and learn from their life stories and life wisdom.
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In the spirit of our philosophy of co-creating community and our awareness that the Spirit speaks through each of us, we invite you to share your meditations with us as well. We truly believe that it is God's economy of abundance: when we share our blessings, our thoughts, our feelings, we are all made richer.
We hope and pray that you find peace, healing, hope and the infusion of joy in your life!
With our love and care,
Ron and Jean
MEDITATION 529: "No More Grandma Poems" Yolanda Wisher
November 29, 2021
no more grandma poems
Yolanda Wisher
they said
forget your grandma
these american letters
don’t need no more
grandma poems
but i said
the grandmas are
our first poetic forms
the first haiku
was a grandma
& so too
the first sonnet
the first blues
the first praise song
therefore
every poem
is a grandmother
a womb that has ended
& is still expanding
a daughter that is
rhetorically aging
& retroactively living
every poem
is your grandma
& you miss her
wouldn’t mind
seeing her again
even just
for a moment
in the realm of spirit
in the realm
of possibilities
where poems
share blood
& spit & exist
on chromosomal
planes of particularity
where poems
are strangers
turned sistren
not easily shook
or forgotten
Copyright © 2021 by Yolanda Wisher. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 29, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
“In a workshop I attended many years ago, someone complained eloquently about people writing too many ‘grandma poems.’ For a long time, their testimony had me hiding my grandma poems—like big, comfy underwear—from the public, even from myself. This poem is a proud acceptance of my unabashed adoration for all grandmothers, but especially Christine Johnson, my great-grandmother with whom I spent many days of my first decade. She is the reason I write poems. The world wouldn’t turn without grandmas like her, who are everything.”
—Yolanda Wisher
Yolanda Wisher is the author of Monk Eats an Afro (Hanging Loose Press, 2014). The recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem and the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, she was the 1999 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and the Poet Laureate of Philadelphia from 2016 to 2017, where she currently lives.