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The Essential June Jordan
The definitive introduction to the work of 'the bravest of us . . . the universal poet' (Alice Walker)
For the poet and activist June Jordan, neither poetry nor activism could easily be disentangled from the other. Her storied career came to chronicle a living, breathing history of the struggles that defined the USA in the latter half of the twentieth century; and her poetry, accordingly, put its dazzling stylistic range to use in exploring issues of gender, race, immigration, representation and much else besides.
Here, above all, are sinuous, lashing and passionate lines, virtuosic in their musicality and always bearing the stamp of Jordan's irrepressible personality. Here are poems of suffusing light and profound anger: poems moved as much by political animus as by a deep love for the observation of human life in all its foibles, eccentricities, strengths and weaknesses.
With a foreword by Pulitzer Prize winner Jericho Brown, The Essential June Jordan allows new readers to discover - and old fans to rediscover - the vital work of this endlessly surprising poet who, in the words of Adrienne Rich, believed that 'genuine, up-from-the-bottom revolution must include art, laughter, sensual pleasure, and the widest possible human referentiality.'
For the poet and activist June Jordan, neither poetry nor activism could easily be disentangled from the other. Her storied career came to chronicle a living, breathing history of the struggles that defined the USA in the latter half of the twentieth century; and her poetry, accordingly, put its dazzling stylistic range to use in exploring issues of gender, race, immigration, representation and much else besides.
Here, above all, are sinuous, lashing and passionate lines, virtuosic in their musicality and always bearing the stamp of Jordan's irrepressible personality. Here are poems of suffusing light and profound anger: poems moved as much by political animus as by a deep love for the observation of human life in all its foibles, eccentricities, strengths and weaknesses.
With a foreword by Pulitzer Prize winner Jericho Brown, The Essential June Jordan allows new readers to discover - and old fans to rediscover - the vital work of this endlessly surprising poet who, in the words of Adrienne Rich, believed that 'genuine, up-from-the-bottom revolution must include art, laughter, sensual pleasure, and the widest possible human referentiality.'
272 pages, Paperback
First published May 4, 2021
76 people are currently reading
3435 people want to read
About the author
June Jordan
72 books442 followersJune Millicent Jordan (July 9, 1936 – June 14, 2002) was a Caribbean-American poet and activist.
Jordan received numerous honors and awards, including a 1969-70 Rockefeller grant for creative writing, a Yaddo Fellowship in 1979, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1982, and the Achievement Award for International Reporting from the National Association of Black Journalists in 1984. Jordan also won the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Writers Award from 1995 to 1998 as well as the Ground Breakers-Dream Makers Award from The Woman's Foundation in 1994.
She was included in Who's Who in America from 1984 until her death. She received the Chancellor's Distinguished Lectureship from UC Berkeley and the PEN Center USA West Freedom to Write Award (1991).
(from Wikipedia)
Jordan received numerous honors and awards, including a 1969-70 Rockefeller grant for creative writing, a Yaddo Fellowship in 1979, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1982, and the Achievement Award for International Reporting from the National Association of Black Journalists in 1984. Jordan also won the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Writers Award from 1995 to 1998 as well as the Ground Breakers-Dream Makers Award from The Woman's Foundation in 1994.
She was included in Who's Who in America from 1984 until her death. She received the Chancellor's Distinguished Lectureship from UC Berkeley and the PEN Center USA West Freedom to Write Award (1991).
(from Wikipedia)
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April 2, 2023
‘Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.’
-June Jordan
‘She is among the bravest of us, the most outraged,’ Alice Walker wrote of June Jordan, ‘she feels for all of us. She is the universal poet.’ Dubbed ‘the Poet of the People’, June Jordan is a very essential poet and it is wonderful to have these Essential Poems lovingly selected by Jan Heller Levia and Christoph Keller. As an incredible added bonus this collection includes an essay on Jordan by one of my absolute favorite living poets, Pulitzer Prize winner Jericho Brown, which is such a heartfelt tribute to this amazing writer. As Brown states, June Jordan was a love poet at heart who saw the necessity to boldly and bravely speak out against the multitudes of injustices around her. Her works explore issues of intersectionality in gender, race and sexuality and are a powerful cry for justice and love.
‘These poems
they are things that I do
in the dark / reaching for you
whoever you are
and
are you ready?’
Born in Harlem, New York in 1936, June Jordan began writing poems at the age of 7. While attending Barnard College she began to really reflect on her culture and identity, feeling overwhelmed by the whiteness of academia and finding her own self erased as she explains in her book Civil Wars:
June left the school without graduating and turned her attention to ensuring women—especially Black women—would be seen and heard in the arts. While teaching at Berkley she would found the Poetry for the People program to inspire and encourage artistic explorations of intersectionality.
‘And who will join this standing up
and the ones who stood without sweet company
will sing and sing
back into the mountains and
if necessary
even under the sea:
we are the ones we have been waiting for.’
Jordan’s poetry is a sharp knife to the heart of injustice. ‘I am the history of the rejection of who I am,’ she wrotes, and she used this history to become a critical voice against that rejection and repression. These are poems about being proud to be oneself, to be proud to be Black, to be proud to be a woman, to be proud to be gay (Jordan herself was openly bisexual), and a plea to create a world where we can be proud to belong in it. ‘Help me / turn the face of history / to your face,’ she writes and her poems often bluntly address the violence and oppression all around her, particularly in poems speaking out against police brutality and political violence such as the horrors inflicted upon Palestinians.
‘Tell me something
what you think would happen if
everytime they kill a black boy
then we kill a cop
everytime they kill a black man
then we kill a cop
You think the accident rate would lower
subsequently?’
These are incredible poems of Black liberation. One of her most famous, Poem about My Rights begins with a discussion on the difficulty for a woman to talk a walk outside alone and quickly becomes an impassioned look at the difficulties to exist anywhere as a Black woman. ‘I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name / My name is my own my own my own,’ she writes towards the end of the poem, proudly reclaiming herself from a world that wishes to strip her of her identity and culture, a world that kills people such as herself in thirsts for power over others.
But, as Jericho Brown puts it in his essay, June Jordan has love at the heart of all her work. ‘I am a stranger,’ she writes, ‘learning to love the strangers around me.’ Adrienne Rich wrote of June that she ‘continually delineates the conditions of survival,’ and in much of her work the answer to survival is love. Pain, oppression and other crimes against others is an absence of love.
’I wanted them to know it’s not cheap
Or disgusting to love a Black
Revolutionary and
As a matter of fact
I wanted them to know you’d
Better love a Black revolutionary before she
Gets the idea
That you don’t.’
The poetry world lost a giant when Jordan passed in 2002, but her voice and spirit lives eternal. She spoke up for the rights of so many and truly represented the Poetry of the People. She was also very focused on retaining Black english in her works, showing the beautiful versatility of language and the beauty of the Black community. This collection is an extraordinary volume to visit the highlights of her career and includes four never before printed poems. Essential indeed.
5/5
‘it is this time
that matters
it is this history
I care about
the one we make together
-June Jordan
‘She is among the bravest of us, the most outraged,’ Alice Walker wrote of June Jordan, ‘she feels for all of us. She is the universal poet.’ Dubbed ‘the Poet of the People’, June Jordan is a very essential poet and it is wonderful to have these Essential Poems lovingly selected by Jan Heller Levia and Christoph Keller. As an incredible added bonus this collection includes an essay on Jordan by one of my absolute favorite living poets, Pulitzer Prize winner Jericho Brown, which is such a heartfelt tribute to this amazing writer. As Brown states, June Jordan was a love poet at heart who saw the necessity to boldly and bravely speak out against the multitudes of injustices around her. Her works explore issues of intersectionality in gender, race and sexuality and are a powerful cry for justice and love.
‘These poems
they are things that I do
in the dark / reaching for you
whoever you are
and
are you ready?’
Born in Harlem, New York in 1936, June Jordan began writing poems at the age of 7. While attending Barnard College she began to really reflect on her culture and identity, feeling overwhelmed by the whiteness of academia and finding her own self erased as she explains in her book Civil Wars:
’No one ever presented me with a single Black author, poet, historian, personage, or idea for that matter. Nor was I ever assigned a single woman to study as a thinker, or writer, or poet, or life force. Nothing that I learned, here, lessened my feeling of pain or confusion and bitterness as related to my origins: my street, my family, my friends. Nothing showed me how I might try to alter the political and economic realities underlying our Black condition in white America.’
June left the school without graduating and turned her attention to ensuring women—especially Black women—would be seen and heard in the arts. While teaching at Berkley she would found the Poetry for the People program to inspire and encourage artistic explorations of intersectionality.
‘And who will join this standing up
and the ones who stood without sweet company
will sing and sing
back into the mountains and
if necessary
even under the sea:
we are the ones we have been waiting for.’
Jordan’s poetry is a sharp knife to the heart of injustice. ‘I am the history of the rejection of who I am,’ she wrotes, and she used this history to become a critical voice against that rejection and repression. These are poems about being proud to be oneself, to be proud to be Black, to be proud to be a woman, to be proud to be gay (Jordan herself was openly bisexual), and a plea to create a world where we can be proud to belong in it. ‘Help me / turn the face of history / to your face,’ she writes and her poems often bluntly address the violence and oppression all around her, particularly in poems speaking out against police brutality and political violence such as the horrors inflicted upon Palestinians.
‘Tell me something
what you think would happen if
everytime they kill a black boy
then we kill a cop
everytime they kill a black man
then we kill a cop
You think the accident rate would lower
subsequently?’
These are incredible poems of Black liberation. One of her most famous, Poem about My Rights begins with a discussion on the difficulty for a woman to talk a walk outside alone and quickly becomes an impassioned look at the difficulties to exist anywhere as a Black woman. ‘I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name / My name is my own my own my own,’ she writes towards the end of the poem, proudly reclaiming herself from a world that wishes to strip her of her identity and culture, a world that kills people such as herself in thirsts for power over others.
But, as Jericho Brown puts it in his essay, June Jordan has love at the heart of all her work. ‘I am a stranger,’ she writes, ‘learning to love the strangers around me.’ Adrienne Rich wrote of June that she ‘continually delineates the conditions of survival,’ and in much of her work the answer to survival is love. Pain, oppression and other crimes against others is an absence of love.
’I wanted them to know it’s not cheap
Or disgusting to love a Black
Revolutionary and
As a matter of fact
I wanted them to know you’d
Better love a Black revolutionary before she
Gets the idea
That you don’t.’
The poetry world lost a giant when Jordan passed in 2002, but her voice and spirit lives eternal. She spoke up for the rights of so many and truly represented the Poetry of the People. She was also very focused on retaining Black english in her works, showing the beautiful versatility of language and the beauty of the Black community. This collection is an extraordinary volume to visit the highlights of her career and includes four never before printed poems. Essential indeed.
5/5
‘it is this time
that matters
it is this history
I care about
the one we make together
July 15, 2022
Poem about my rights
Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear
my head about this poem about why I can’t
go out without changing my clothes my shoes
my body posture my gender identity my age
my status as a woman alone in the evening/
alone on the streets/alone not being the point/
the point being that I can’t do what I want
to do with my own body because I am the wrong
sex the wrong age the wrong skin and
suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/
or far into the woods and I wanted to go
there by myself thinking about God/or thinking
about children or thinking about the world/all of it
disclosed by the stars and the silence:
I could not go and I could not think and I could not
stay there
alone
as I need to be
alone because I can’t do what I want to do with my own
body and
who in the hell set things up
like this
and in France they say if the guy penetrates
but does not ejaculate then he did not rape me
and if after stabbing him if after screams if
after begging the bastard and if even after smashing
a hammer to his head if even after that if he
and his buddies fuck me after that
then I consented and there was
no rape because finally you understand finally
they fucked me over because I was wrong I was
wrong again to be me being me where I was/wrong
to be who I am
[…]
Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear
my head about this poem about why I can’t
go out without changing my clothes my shoes
my body posture my gender identity my age
my status as a woman alone in the evening/
alone on the streets/alone not being the point/
the point being that I can’t do what I want
to do with my own body because I am the wrong
sex the wrong age the wrong skin and
suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/
or far into the woods and I wanted to go
there by myself thinking about God/or thinking
about children or thinking about the world/all of it
disclosed by the stars and the silence:
I could not go and I could not think and I could not
stay there
alone
as I need to be
alone because I can’t do what I want to do with my own
body and
who in the hell set things up
like this
and in France they say if the guy penetrates
but does not ejaculate then he did not rape me
and if after stabbing him if after screams if
after begging the bastard and if even after smashing
a hammer to his head if even after that if he
and his buddies fuck me after that
then I consented and there was
no rape because finally you understand finally
they fucked me over because I was wrong I was
wrong again to be me being me where I was/wrong
to be who I am
[…]
Read
February 27, 2022A few years ago I wrote about how much in love I was with June Jordan's essay collection, Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays. I strongly recommend that collection and this one.
Poetry offers so much emotional and physical history. And comfort. I read this collection in my continued effort to delve into the contributions of Black women academicians to the literary world. I wasn't prepared for how it would offer healing:
Only our hearts will argue hard
against the small lights letting in the news
and who can choose between the worst possibility
and the last
between the winners of wars against the bombing
and the last
(from: "Roman Poem Number Thirteen")
I love repetition done well in poetry. The beat, the way it forces you to consider a sound, a phrase, some meaning. There I was, reading into midnight, unable to sleep, when I was suddenly reminded,
What about moonlight
What about moonlight
as Jordan makes pain palpable in "Poem to Take Back the Night." To think, she wrote with all that heavy.
Some of the poems are of the kind of lazy love where one imagines the cackle of a wood-burning fire, a picnic blanket and basket, a bottle of wine, and the night sound of the sky as an open window:
Maybe you thought I would forget
about the sunrise
how the moon stayed in the morning
time a lower lip
your partly open partly spoken
mouth
(from, "After All Is Said and Done")
She writes about the night often. The night as figurative and literal connotation. Sometimes there is romance at night, in other instances there is contemplation, or there is simply the random night walk to the kitchen to
think about evaporated milk homemade vanilla ice cream
cherry pie hot from the oven with Something Like Vermont
(from, "Free Flight")
She writes about everyday life experiences and by doing so, she shows us how cruelty has also become a daily occurrence for most. Some in our world choose to ignore it, because it does not affect them (or so they think), while others are faced with daily reminders of cruelty:
So one of them a policeman a long
time ago but I remember it he kicked
in the teeth of Jeffrey Underwood who
lived on my block and who had been the best
(from, "Poem from Taped Testimony in the Tradition of Bernhard Goetz")
I scribbled through the margins of my copy and truly enjoyed that each poem has a footnote with the name and year of the chapbook it was pulled from. June Jordan wrote and published widely, more than twenty-five volumes of poetry, fiction, and essays. She also wrote lyrics, this you can tell by reading her poetry. She wrote the librettos for the operas Bang Bang Uber Alles and I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky. As professor of African American Studies at the University of California Berkeley, she created Poetry for the People, the sort of much-needed community collaboration that had not previously existed. Whenever I visit her works, I'm saddened that we lost this giant to breast cancer in 2002.
Poetry offers so much emotional and physical history. And comfort. I read this collection in my continued effort to delve into the contributions of Black women academicians to the literary world. I wasn't prepared for how it would offer healing:
Only our hearts will argue hard
against the small lights letting in the news
and who can choose between the worst possibility
and the last
between the winners of wars against the bombing
and the last
(from: "Roman Poem Number Thirteen")
I love repetition done well in poetry. The beat, the way it forces you to consider a sound, a phrase, some meaning. There I was, reading into midnight, unable to sleep, when I was suddenly reminded,
What about moonlight
What about moonlight
as Jordan makes pain palpable in "Poem to Take Back the Night." To think, she wrote with all that heavy.
Some of the poems are of the kind of lazy love where one imagines the cackle of a wood-burning fire, a picnic blanket and basket, a bottle of wine, and the night sound of the sky as an open window:
Maybe you thought I would forget
about the sunrise
how the moon stayed in the morning
time a lower lip
your partly open partly spoken
mouth
(from, "After All Is Said and Done")
She writes about the night often. The night as figurative and literal connotation. Sometimes there is romance at night, in other instances there is contemplation, or there is simply the random night walk to the kitchen to
think about evaporated milk homemade vanilla ice cream
cherry pie hot from the oven with Something Like Vermont
(from, "Free Flight")
She writes about everyday life experiences and by doing so, she shows us how cruelty has also become a daily occurrence for most. Some in our world choose to ignore it, because it does not affect them (or so they think), while others are faced with daily reminders of cruelty:
So one of them a policeman a long
time ago but I remember it he kicked
in the teeth of Jeffrey Underwood who
lived on my block and who had been the best
(from, "Poem from Taped Testimony in the Tradition of Bernhard Goetz")
I scribbled through the margins of my copy and truly enjoyed that each poem has a footnote with the name and year of the chapbook it was pulled from. June Jordan wrote and published widely, more than twenty-five volumes of poetry, fiction, and essays. She also wrote lyrics, this you can tell by reading her poetry. She wrote the librettos for the operas Bang Bang Uber Alles and I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky. As professor of African American Studies at the University of California Berkeley, she created Poetry for the People, the sort of much-needed community collaboration that had not previously existed. Whenever I visit her works, I'm saddened that we lost this giant to breast cancer in 2002.
August 1, 2021
This stunning, and indeed essential, collection captures the essence of June Jordan's work, from her first collection, published in 1969, to the posthumous collection Directed by Desire, published in 2005 (Jordan died from breast cancer in 2002). It serves as my introduction to this poet's work and I am awed. Swept away.
A friend of mine who raised six daughters and
who never wrote what she regards as serious
until she
was fifty-three
tells me there is no silence peculiar
to the female
Jordan gives voice to the silent. Victims of genocide and war, including Black lives right here at home, to children, women, the poor, and yet her voice carries uplift, humor, hope and light, transcending but never turning away from despair.
From 1980's Passion comes the lines
Tell me something
what you think would happen if
everytime they kill a black boy
then we kill a cop
everytime they kill a black man
then we kill a cop
an incendiary scream for justice. She was profoundly affected by injustice all over the world, calling out the CIA for supporting corrupt regimes in Central America, for the travesty of the Vietnam War, for the genocide unleashed in the former Yugoslavia.
And yet her most moving work explores the essential loneliness of the human condition and our longing to connect:
Most people search all
of their live
for someplace to belong to
as you said
but I look instead
into the eyes of anyone
who talks to me
Poem for a Young Poet, Kissing God goodbye 1997
Her work is living, breathing proof that the personal is political and the political, subversive. And art is the greatest act of resistance.
A boat in the water
Not so big
Sails full
Or buckling
Or drenched
Or furled up tight and tied
To a torn-up masthead
A boat in the water
Not so big
A boat
Still in the water
Racial Profile #3, from Directed by Desire, 2005
A friend of mine who raised six daughters and
who never wrote what she regards as serious
until she
was fifty-three
tells me there is no silence peculiar
to the female
Jordan gives voice to the silent. Victims of genocide and war, including Black lives right here at home, to children, women, the poor, and yet her voice carries uplift, humor, hope and light, transcending but never turning away from despair.
From 1980's Passion comes the lines
Tell me something
what you think would happen if
everytime they kill a black boy
then we kill a cop
everytime they kill a black man
then we kill a cop
an incendiary scream for justice. She was profoundly affected by injustice all over the world, calling out the CIA for supporting corrupt regimes in Central America, for the travesty of the Vietnam War, for the genocide unleashed in the former Yugoslavia.
And yet her most moving work explores the essential loneliness of the human condition and our longing to connect:
Most people search all
of their live
for someplace to belong to
as you said
but I look instead
into the eyes of anyone
who talks to me
Poem for a Young Poet, Kissing God goodbye 1997
Her work is living, breathing proof that the personal is political and the political, subversive. And art is the greatest act of resistance.
A boat in the water
Not so big
Sails full
Or buckling
Or drenched
Or furled up tight and tied
To a torn-up masthead
A boat in the water
Not so big
A boat
Still in the water
Racial Profile #3, from Directed by Desire, 2005
January 25, 2022
I read a lot of poetry and I have not been absolutely grabbed by a book of poetry like this one maybe ever. I first learned of Jordan because of Mariame Kaba’s eulogy for her. I had no idea she was a movement leader, let alone the extent of her politics until reading this book. Jordan was not only a political thinker but a love poet. She wrote:
“If love and sex were easier
we would choose something else
to suffer”
My favorites were “These Poems,” “Poem About My Rights,” “Last Poem for a Little While,”
“A Short Note to My Very Critical and Well-Beloved Friends and Comrades,” and “I Must Become a Menace to my Enemies.”
It is important to mention the editors did a fabulous job in this massive undertaking, both in order and opening and closing the text. I gave this book as a gift to so many friends this solstice season. Can not recommend this book more for poetry lovers and organizing folks. I will be rereading this one for a long time.
March 23, 2022
what an incredible poet and what an incredible woman ! breathtaking, goosebumps inducing, she just knew exactly what she was doing at all times.
i really loved that this collection grouped poems not chronologically but in smaller, themed selections from across her body of work. I thought that was a really wonderful way to explore her (yes i’m gonna use this word) oeuvre 😛
i really loved that this collection grouped poems not chronologically but in smaller, themed selections from across her body of work. I thought that was a really wonderful way to explore her (yes i’m gonna use this word) oeuvre 😛
Read
March 7, 2022❤️🩹
November 3, 2021
Inspired poetry in these pages.
I got this book out the library so I had to rush through it slightly before it was due back. It would be better savoured being dipped in and out of I'm thinking.
June Jordan tackles some difficult issues here, race, rape, prejudice. You can feel her passion scorching the pages.
Poetry as resistance.
I got this book out the library so I had to rush through it slightly before it was due back. It would be better savoured being dipped in and out of I'm thinking.
June Jordan tackles some difficult issues here, race, rape, prejudice. You can feel her passion scorching the pages.
Poetry as resistance.
November 3, 2023
There are no words to do this collection justice. Completely transcendent
January 27, 2025
many special poems
August 19, 2024
This was honestly a little hard to get through because June Jordan's style is so unique (a lot of alliteration, a lot of wordplay, repetition) but a beautiful collection nonetheless. It is difficult to write poetry that so brazenly states its purpose while also being technically good and this collection was both!
While I was reading this, I came across the article "Moving Towards Life" by Marina Magloire in the LA Review. The article explores Jordan's falling out with Audre Lorde and to some degree with Adrienne Rich over the issue of zionism and Palestine and hypothesizes that "Jordan is lesser known nationally and internationally than Lorde, and it seems to me that her decades of unwavering support for the Palestinian people is partly responsible." It's a great article to get to know more about Jordan and her contemporaries. It is also helpful to situate ourselves in the moment we are living in today with the divisiveness of the movement with the looming election in the US.
I mention the article to provide context to my reading of the book. I am lucky that I discovered her work last year and it is evident why it took this long as opposed to some of the other revolutionary writers/scholars/activists of her time because her writing is radical in the true sense of the word and hence not as popular in the mainstream. The afterword by Jericho Brown is also a great addition. Jordan really was a love poet writing in the midst of a world on fire.
While I was reading this, I came across the article "Moving Towards Life" by Marina Magloire in the LA Review. The article explores Jordan's falling out with Audre Lorde and to some degree with Adrienne Rich over the issue of zionism and Palestine and hypothesizes that "Jordan is lesser known nationally and internationally than Lorde, and it seems to me that her decades of unwavering support for the Palestinian people is partly responsible." It's a great article to get to know more about Jordan and her contemporaries. It is also helpful to situate ourselves in the moment we are living in today with the divisiveness of the movement with the looming election in the US.
I mention the article to provide context to my reading of the book. I am lucky that I discovered her work last year and it is evident why it took this long as opposed to some of the other revolutionary writers/scholars/activists of her time because her writing is radical in the true sense of the word and hence not as popular in the mainstream. The afterword by Jericho Brown is also a great addition. Jordan really was a love poet writing in the midst of a world on fire.
August 8, 2021
A magnificent collection, beautifully presented. June Jordan's poetry remains as fresh and urgent as today: spare and powerful, prophetic in its reading of the American character, defiant in its impulse to speak the truth, generous and loving as a pair of open arms. Cheers to the editors for their innovative choices that keep this volume unpredictable and full of revelations. Like June Jordan's life, this book is a wondrous journey over too soon.
July 15, 2021
This volume of verse written over several decades, until 2001, includes the author's comments about racist police brutality, violence against women, and the opportunity for global solidarity among marginalized people. She shows the world in both pleasance and trauma, with a powerful voice of the time-honored movement for justice.
August 7, 2021
This is a fine selection of strong poems from one of our best poets. You can learn a lot about the lives of people who are in some way different from you by reading the poetry they write. I recommend starting with this book.
August 7, 2021
She said it all. She said it perfectly. Raise a glass. Take a bow. This is art. This is life. This IS poetry. Thank you Poetry Foundation for this gift.
December 12, 2022
June Jordan is my favorite poet, and this collection just cemented that. I really wish more people would read her incredible work!
July 1, 2025
I learned about June Jordan from "Survival Is a Promise," a book about Audre Lorde by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Jordan caught my attention, because the book detailed the conflict within Lorde's friend group (between Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, and June Jordan) concerning Israel and Palestine in the 1980s. I was curious to learn more about how discourse concerning those two nations has changed over the years, and I just so happened to find "The Essential June Jordan" at my public library.
This collection begins with an introduction that emphasizes, among other things, the relevance of Jordan's work, despite the years that have passed since she wrote her poems. I read that, yet I was still surprised by the poignancy of her writing. You could easily convince someone that her poems were written last week and were inspired by modern events. This is upsetting, because it makes it seem like any progress over the decades has been irrelevant. Nevertheless, there is something inspiring and downright galvanizing about hearing Jordan's conviction and the powerful and succinct way that she expresses herself through poetry.
June Jordan easily ranks among my favorite poets now, and I would highly recommend her work to others.
This collection begins with an introduction that emphasizes, among other things, the relevance of Jordan's work, despite the years that have passed since she wrote her poems. I read that, yet I was still surprised by the poignancy of her writing. You could easily convince someone that her poems were written last week and were inspired by modern events. This is upsetting, because it makes it seem like any progress over the decades has been irrelevant. Nevertheless, there is something inspiring and downright galvanizing about hearing Jordan's conviction and the powerful and succinct way that she expresses herself through poetry.
June Jordan easily ranks among my favorite poets now, and I would highly recommend her work to others.
November 22, 2024
3.5 stars rounded up
It's really hard to quantify these sorts of assembled collections but there were some really standout pieces in this. I will certainly keep my eyes peeled for June Jordan books in the used bookshops.
Favourites
"I Must Become a Menace to my Enemies"
"Poem About My Rights"
"The Bombing of Baghdad"
"Poem About Police Violence"
"Poem From Taped Testimony in the Tradition of Bernhard Goetz"
"Manifesto of the Rubber Gloves"
"Kissing God Goodbye"
and
These Poems
These poems
they are things that I do
in the dark
reaching for you
whoever you are
and
are you ready?
These words
they are stones in the water
running away
These skeletal lines
they are desperate arms for my longing and love.
I am a stranger
learning to worship the strangers
around me
whoever you are
whoever I may become.
It's really hard to quantify these sorts of assembled collections but there were some really standout pieces in this. I will certainly keep my eyes peeled for June Jordan books in the used bookshops.
Favourites
"I Must Become a Menace to my Enemies"
"Poem About My Rights"
"The Bombing of Baghdad"
"Poem About Police Violence"
"Poem From Taped Testimony in the Tradition of Bernhard Goetz"
"Manifesto of the Rubber Gloves"
"Kissing God Goodbye"
and
These Poems
These poems
they are things that I do
in the dark
reaching for you
whoever you are
and
are you ready?
These words
they are stones in the water
running away
These skeletal lines
they are desperate arms for my longing and love.
I am a stranger
learning to worship the strangers
around me
whoever you are
whoever I may become.
October 25, 2024
Overrompeld. Indringende poëzie, politieke thema’s die na vijftig jaar nog even actueel en pijnlijk zijn. Soms onvoorstelbaar hoe ver weg en dicht bij de politieke conflicten zijn.
(Wil je eens een willekeurig gedicht googlen? Mijn tips:
- Poem about my rights
- Democracy Poem #1
- It’s hard to keep a clean shirt clean
- Owed to Eminem
- I must become a menace to my enemies )
(Wil je eens een willekeurig gedicht googlen? Mijn tips:
- Poem about my rights
- Democracy Poem #1
- It’s hard to keep a clean shirt clean
- Owed to Eminem
- I must become a menace to my enemies )
June 18, 2025
Essential reading. Excellent poetry.
July 23, 2025
4.5 - I loved this.
Some faves (because there are too many to list them all):
Poem about My Rights
Getting Down to Get Over
Moving towards Home
Meta-Rhetoric
Kissing God Goodbye
These Poems
Some faves (because there are too many to list them all):
Poem about My Rights
Getting Down to Get Over
Moving towards Home
Meta-Rhetoric
Kissing God Goodbye
These Poems
December 17, 2022
Absolutely magnificent.
July 26, 2025
a gorgeous collection, have wanted to read forever. I especially liked “Free Flight” and “Meta-Rhetoric”
November 15, 2022
didn’t love all of them but the ones i did i cackled and yelled. wrote several poems afterwards and the beginning quotation about poetry as a political craft will stay with me as i write. june has been firmly added to my shelves x
Read
February 19, 2024“These poems
they are the things that I do
in the dark
reaching for you
whoever you are
and
are you ready?”
they are the things that I do
in the dark
reaching for you
whoever you are
and
are you ready?”
September 22, 2024
I had never previously read June Jordan, but by the end of this book her voice was familiar to me. It nearly shouted off the page with conviction and anger. (To clarify, not all of the poems in this volume express anger.) I found myself nodding in agreement to many of the later poems. I wanted to link arms with her and follow her to the next protest. What a voice; what a witness.
October 25, 2021
A wonderful collection of poetry!
April 17, 2023
Favorites: I must become a menace to my enemies, poem about process and progress, notes on the peanut, calling on all silent minorities, for Alice Walker, these poems
January 16, 2022
An excellent masterclass of poetry from the late June Jordan. I love the vitality of the poems and how the poems felt as if it was written in 2022. It was so telling, yet brute with honesty. I also loved Pulitzer Prize winning Jericho Brown analysis of June Jordan, and how necessary Jordan is within telling the history of black poets.
September 15, 2024
If you are new to June Jordan's poetry, this is a great place to start. If you are familiar with her poetry, this is a great book to rediscover her powerful voice.
It can be intimidating to pick up a collected works from any poet. Oftentimes, these tomes are published posthumously and are filled with a lifetime of their work. What makes this collection so amazing is the innovative way the editors, Jan Heller Levi and Christoph Keller selected these poems. Inspired my Jordan's book, "Things I Do in the Dark" where she combined old and new poems, "The Essential June Jordan" are a "greatest hits" collection where both older and newer poems are placed alongside each other. The effect is incredible! Reading poems like "On the Black Family" (1974) next to "Racial Profile #3" (1978) shakes the reader awake to the injustices marginalized people still face today. Seeing "Song of the Law Abiding Citizen" (1985) next to "Letter to Local Police" (1980) and "Owed to Eminem"(2005) gave me goosebumps! I loved reading these poems and either remembering where I was when I first read them, or seeing an older poem that I had not read before and feeling awestruck by the power in Jordan's voice.
I praise Copper Canyon Press for honoring June Jordan's enduring legacy as a poet "fiercely dedicated to building a better world." I highly recommend this book.
It can be intimidating to pick up a collected works from any poet. Oftentimes, these tomes are published posthumously and are filled with a lifetime of their work. What makes this collection so amazing is the innovative way the editors, Jan Heller Levi and Christoph Keller selected these poems. Inspired my Jordan's book, "Things I Do in the Dark" where she combined old and new poems, "The Essential June Jordan" are a "greatest hits" collection where both older and newer poems are placed alongside each other. The effect is incredible! Reading poems like "On the Black Family" (1974) next to "Racial Profile #3" (1978) shakes the reader awake to the injustices marginalized people still face today. Seeing "Song of the Law Abiding Citizen" (1985) next to "Letter to Local Police" (1980) and "Owed to Eminem"(2005) gave me goosebumps! I loved reading these poems and either remembering where I was when I first read them, or seeing an older poem that I had not read before and feeling awestruck by the power in Jordan's voice.
I praise Copper Canyon Press for honoring June Jordan's enduring legacy as a poet "fiercely dedicated to building a better world." I highly recommend this book.
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