Careful to the very end what you deny, dismiss & cut away.

Grow until you die, but before you do, leave your final kiss: Lay mint or orange eucalyptus garland, double tuck these lips. Keep yourself rooted in the sun, rain, and darkly camphored air. Pass on what the great winemakers know: The juice is not made in the vats but in the vineyard. Hey! Watch your language! Two and a Quarter is not the same as Deuce and a Quarter. Chew eight times before you swallow the lyrics and lamentations of James Brown, Abbey Lincoln, Al Green, Curtis Mayfield, and Aretha. Look up the word southing before you use it in a sentence. Be diamondback terrapin, the only animal that can outrun a hurricane. The event is free and open to the public.Be camera, black-eyed aperture. Copies of The Thinking Men can be found on the first floor of the east tower of Old Main, where a small portion of the original building is visible behind a glass panel, called “Builders Niche,” a memorial to the slaves and free black men.įinney will read and discuss her poetry on Wednesday, Feb. 'It is 1963 and I am a Black girl / in the South. THE WORLD IS ROUND opens all of my doors and windows and airs me out with a cold and truthful wind'Walter Mosley. Finney said she believes the enslaved workers realized that someday people who looked like them would attend the college. Every now and then, I find myself in a room with a stage and there she is, reading poems, pulling me out pf myself and bringing me home. Chair of Southern Letters and Literature at the University of South Carolina.įinney’s poem The Thinking Men was written for and dedicated to the slaves and free black men who built Main Building on Wofford College’s campus. Finney taught for 20 years at the University of Kentucky, and since 2013, she has held the Harold Bennet, Jr. In her career as a poet, Finney has received several awards for her work including the PEN American Open Book Award for her book Rice in 1997, the Benjamin Franklin Award First Place in Poetry for The World Is Round in 2004, and the National Book Award for Poetry in 2011 for collection Head Off & Split. In 2002, Finney was inducted into the Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent in Chicago, Ill. Finney has authored four books of poetry: On Wings Made of Gauze (1985) Rice (1995) The World Is Round (2003) and Head Off & Split (2011), which received. Finney Jr., a former South Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice, and Frances Davenport Finney, an elementary school teacher. Nikky Finney, born in Conway, S.C., and raised in Sumter, is the daughter of Ernest A.

The world is round nikky finney