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Blog Entry 159 of 194 Dial 'T' for Tabitha
I'm a bicycling poet who lived in Parker for several years and worked at YourHub.com, covering Parker and Franktown for two years.

I am studying poetry at CSU in the Master of Fine Arts program ...

I hope you can post a comment or two and that you will enjoy my blogs.

Who posts something online without wanting a response?

... Thanks for the read.

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Blog Url: http://denver.yourhub.com/~MusingsOfTabithaDial

Thank you, Nikki Giovanni - who I write for

Contributed by: Tabitha Dial/YourHub.com   on 4/22/2007

One of the countless wonderful things about reading poetry is that you can read several books at a time, bouncing from poet to poet to poet and back again. I'll often enjoy something from at least two books of poetry in one sitting.

One of the poets at my disposal for this random practice is Nikki Giovanni, a personal favorite. She also happens to be the University Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Tech, who, I imagine, will soon have a collection of poetry focusing on last Monday's tragic events.

Acolytes is a book of poems and prose poems that are almost like essays. A Higher Level of Poetry is one prose poem I wanted to share and reflect on here (excerpt by Giovanni):

There is really only one thing to say to young writers:

Know who you are writing for and to ...

Because knowing who you want to be proud of you can make all the difference in the world.

Not at all that I don't want others to read my poems or essays. I really would like everyone to read or to hear me but I cannot really know what that will mean so I'll just stick to what I do know.

I want my Grandmother and her friends to look at my work and be pleased. I want the women who endured slavery and the black laws and all the dreams down the drain because their husbands were riddled with bullets and their sons were lynched and they knew they had to stand because if they didn't stand than all that death was in vain. So I know only one thing:

It is important to know who
You want to be proud of you.

And then you can know that you have done all you can do. And you can be proud of your work.

________________________________________________________
This jostled around my inner bard and invited it to tango, so, with much thanks to Nikki Giovanni, I want to tell you (and the list is long)--

I write for/to the earth and the sky and the city and Colorado and I write in response to the words and music and art that jolts me into a new way of experiencing myself and my senses. I've written for/to poets who have never met me, like David Lehman and Naomi Shihab Nye and for places I've traveled to and do not want to forget (Germany and England and Chicago and Hawaii, but I must revisit the first and the last because I haven't dug up the words I want to!).

And I write for/to the group of poets who circle around my kitchen table every Monday -- Steve and Ron and Kathy and Tameca and friends who lend their eye to my work from a distance-- Julie and Yael. And I write for/to my boyfriend Alex and sometimes for his parents and for my mother and father and for my brother and for the teachers and women I have learned from, in and out of classrooms and music lessons.

Lately, I have written for/to the expanse of slam poetry, more precisely the Denver Slam Team, particularly Jen Rinaldi, Katie Wirsing and Paulie Lipman.

Sometimes I write for/to people who know more pain, more heartache than I can imagine.

I suppose I write as a messenger of my life and I do not want to miss too many of the details.

Who do you write for? Share your story.



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Showing 1-2 of 2 comments
Submitted By: Robin Nolet
posted on 4/25/2007 @ 11:08:39 PM
Rated Blog Entry
My mom loves to read what I write, which is fun for me. However, when I write fiction, I sometimes need to put her out of my mind-the idea of mom reading some things...makes them hard to write. Mom and I are always polar opposites in the political realm, and so I know she will often not agree with me there...but she is always encouraging. Mom's are great that way...a good thing to think about as Mother's Day approaches.
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Submitted By: Karin Malchow
posted on 4/23/2007 @ 10:09:17 AM
Rated Blog Entry
I went to a Nikki Giovanni reading/lecture at Mizzou in 1976. My roommate introduced me to her work. We thought she was writing for us, too, but it was apparent the rest of the audience didn't think so.
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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Tabitha Dial

Denver , CO

Tabitha Dial has posted 194 blog entries and 816 comments since joining on 9/14/2005. Tabitha Dial's average blog rating is 4.96.
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