Bookplanet: Adrienne Rich on June Jordan

'June Jordan’s work embraced a half century in which she dwelt as poet, intellectual, and activist—also as teacher, observer, and recorder. In a sense unusual among 20th-century poets of the United States, she believed in and lived the urgency of the word—along with action—to resist abuses of power and violations of dignity in and beyond her society. To read Jordan today is to read her in a time when reflections of human solidarity, trust, compassion, and respect are in danger of disappearing from our public landscape; when what glares out from public discourse is division—not the great racial and class divides that have afflicted us since colonization, but oppositions marked as “cultural”: modernity vs. regression, fundamentalist faith vs. secular reason. Without denying our cruel separations, Jordan went for human commonality, the opportunities for beholding and being seen by one another.' Read on. Big fat quotes from June Jordan, too.