Self-determination has to mean that the leader is your individual gut, and heart, and mind or we're talking about power, again, and its rather well-known impurities. Who is really going to care whether you live or die and who is going to know the most intimate motivation for your laughter and your tears is the only person to be trusted to speak for you and to decide what you will or will not do.

To tell the truth is to become beautiful, to begin to love yourself, value yourself. And that's political, in its most profound way.

To begin is no more agony than opening your hand.

Self-determination has to mean that the leader is your individual gut, and heart, and mind or we're talking about power, again, and its rather well-known impurities. Who is really going to care whether you live or die and who is going to know the most intimate motivation for your laughter and your tears is the only person to be trusted to speak for you and to decide what you will or will not do.

What's important about poetry in the context of leadership is that most of the time, power has to do with dominance. But poetry is never about dominance. Poetry is powerful but it cannot even aspire to dominate anyone. It means making a connection. That's what it means.

The first function of poetry is to tell the truth, to learn how to do that, to find out what you really feel and what you really think

Body and soul, Black America reveals the extreme questions of contemporary life, questions of freedom and identity: How can I be who I am?