Nikki Giovanni calls the Poetry Crisis Line

Read “The Laws of Motion” by Nikki Giovanni here.

Transcript:

Jerry (counselor): Poetry Crisis Line, what is your emergency?
Nikki Giovanni: The laws of science teach us a pound of gold weighs as much as a pound of flour
Jerry: Like When Galileo dropped them off the Leaning Tower?
Nikki: …though if dropped from any undefined height in their natural state one would reach bottom and one would fly away.
Jerry: Is that how that experiment went?
Nikki: Laws of motion tell us an inert object is more difficult to propel than an object heading the wrong direction is to turn around.
Jerry: Like a car or like a tennis ball? And you do think we can still turn it around?

Poets Answer an Age-Old Question (part 6)

Happy birthday to Theodore Roethke, who would have turned 112 on Monday, had it not been Memorial Day. Uh, I mean, had it not been for his untimely death in 1963. Except that, you know, a timely death would have caught up with him by now.

 

Poets answer an age-old question
Why did the chicken cross the road?

Theodore Roethke:
I cross the road, but take the crossing slow,
But don’t ask why—for now I do not know.
(I learn by going where I have to go.)