AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Democracy Now!, as we turn now to one of the most important American poets of the late 20th century, a powerful essayist, teacher, community leader, political activist, June Jordan. She died on Friday at her home in San Francisco. She had been battling breast cancer for nearly a decade.

June Jordan burst onto the literary and political scene in the late 1960s on the wings of the civil rights and antiwar movements. Poetry for her was a political act. She used it to shine a fierce light on racism, sexism, homophobia, apartheid, poverty and U.S. foreign policy. June Jordan is the most published African American writer in U.S. history. She wrote more than 25 major works, including 10 collections of poetry, five books of essays, two plays, a novel, eight children’s books. Author Toni Morrison once summed up her career as “40 years of tireless activism, coupled with and fueled by flawless art.”

Today, we are going to play several of June Jordan’s poems, and later in the week we’ll have discussions about her life and her work. This is June Jordan.

JUNE JORDAN: Most people search all
of their lives
for someplace to belong to
as you said
but I look instead
into the eyes of anyone
who talks to me

I search for a face
to believe and belong to
a loosening mask
with a voice
ears
and a consciousness
breathing through
a nose
I can see

Day to day
it’s the only way
I like to travel
noticing the colors of a cheek
the curvature of brow
and the public declarations
of two lips

Okay!
I did not say male
or female
I did not say Serbian
or Tutsi
I said
what tilts my head
into the opposite of fear
or dread
is anyone
who talks to me

A face
to claim or question
my next step away
or else towards

fifteen anemones
dilated well beyond apologies
for such an open centerpiece
that soft
forever begs for bees

one morning
and the birdsong and the dew-
struck honeysuckle blending
invitations to dislodge
my fingers tangling with my sunlit
lover’s hair

A face
to spur or interdict
my mesmerized approach
or else
my agonized reproach

to strangulations of the soul
that bring a mother
to disown
her children
leaving them alone to feed
on bone and dust …

I search a face
a loosening mask
with voice
ears
and a consciousness
breathing through
a nose
that I can see

I search a face
for obstacles to genocide
I search beyond the dead
and
driven by imperfect visions
of the living
yes and no
I come and go
back to the eyes
of anyone
who talks to me

AMY GOODMAN: June Jordan, reading her “Poem to a Young Poet,” from her collection Kissing God Goodbye. Again, June Jordan died on Friday at her home in San Francisco. She also taught writing and African American studies at universities across the country, most recently the University of California, Berkeley. In 1991, she founded Poetry for the People, a popular undergraduate program at Berkeley that blends the study of poetry with political empowerment.

We’re going to play another poem of June Jordan’s that she read, but first we wanted to play an excerpt of an interview that she did with David Barsamian just weeks before September 11th. It was August 2001. She was very sick with breast cancer. David Barsamian was talking to her about the Intifada and the Middle East. This is the late June Jordan.

JUNE JORDAN: I think a question that we need to raise that hasn’t so far, anyway, been dealt with is the question of moral authority. I think that — I wish that folks working with the Palestinian Authority and PLO would really kind of focus on this: How do you establish moral authority in international consciousness? What will be the means to that end? And you could start with Gandhi. You could come through back to King and so forth. And I think there could be some useful precedent for the establishment of moral authority, which will then lead to some kind of leverage on behalf of folks who are clearly very unequal — I mean completely unequal — in what’s described as a conflict but really is more like a final solution, I think, underway vis-à-vis the Palestinian people. And I’m wondering how that moral authority could be pursued. And I think — I wish a lot of folks would begin thinking about this. I have just a few thoughts myself.

I’ve been thinking that, for example, let’s say, if I were Arafat — God help me, but if I were, I think I would try to establish a deadline, set up a deadline and stick to it. For example, maybe, say, five days from today, that there must be an international observation kind of a corps at every point that I say we need one, we need such a corps, inside the Occupied Territories, and not dominated by Americans, of course, or representatives of the U.S.A., and that failing that deadline, if that doesn’t happen in five days, then I will do this, that and the other thing. But I think he needs to — and I think one thing that would be really helpful is for him to set out a deadline of that sort for the introduction of a really neutral — way more neutral than right now.

AMY GOODMAN: June Jordan, just an excerpt of an interview that we’ll play more of later in the week. And we’re going to end this segment with June Jordan reading from her poem “Talking Back [of] Miss Valentine Jones: Poem # one.”

JUNE JORDAN: well I wanted to braid my hair
bathe and bedeck my
self so fine
so fully aforethought for
your pleasure
see:
I wanted to travel and read
and runaround fantastic
into war and peace:
I wanted to
surf
dive
fly
climb
conquer
and be conquered
THEN
I wanted to pickup the phone
and find you asking me
if I might possibly be alone
some night
(so I could answer cool
as the jewels I would wear
on bareskin for you
digmedaddy delectation:)
”WHEN
you comin ova?”
But I had to remember to write down
margarine on the list
and shoepolish and a can of
sliced pineapple in casea company
and a quarta skim milk cause Teresa’s
gaining weight and don’ nobody groove on
that much
girl
and next I hadta sort for darks and lights before
the laundry hit the water which I had
to kinda keep an eye on be-
cause if the big hose jumps the sink again that
Mrs. Thompson gointa come upstairs
and brain me with a mop don’ smell too
nice even though she hang
it headfirst out the winda
and I had to check
on William like to
burn hisself to death with fever
boy so thin be
callin all day “Momma! Sing to me?”
“Ma! Am I gone die?” and me not
wake enough to sit beside him longer than
to wipeaway the sweat or change the sheets/
his shirt and feed him orange
juice before I fall out of sleep and
Sweet My Jesus ain but one can
left
and we not thru the afternoon
and now
you (temporarily) shownup with a thing
you says’ a poem and you
call it
“Will The Real Miss Black America Standup?”

guilty po’ mouth
about duty beauties of my
headrag
boozeup doozies about
never mind
cause love is blind

well
I can’t use it

and the very next bodacious Blackman
call me queen
because my life ain shit
because (in any case) he ain been here to share it
with me
(dish for dish and do for do and
dream for dream)
I’m gone scream him out my house
be-
cause what I wanted was
to braid my hair/bathe and bedeck my
self so fully be-
cause what I wanted was
your love
not pity
be-
cause what I wanted was
your love
your love

AMY GOODMAN: June Jordan, reading her poem “Talking Back [of] Miss Valentine Jones: Poem # one.” She died on Friday, June 14th, 2002, at her home in San Francisco. She died of breast cancer. We’ll have more on her later this week.

You are listening to Democracy Now! When we come back, we’re going to look at domestic terrorism. We’re going to look at domestic violence against women in the United States and a precedent-setting lawsuit that is going to court today in California. Stay with us.