Introduction to Every Atom by project curator Brian Clements
if ever there were leaves of grass they would be the captured and enslaved…bought and sold…planted and sown…made to be something they were not…yet growing and blossoming…and finding a way…to recreate themselves
if ever there was a song of myself…it was the song sung by the old ladies…watching their children being snatched away…watching their sons be hanged…watching their lovers be whipped…finding a way to offer a prayer…to a god they had not known
the first American poet stirred not words but love…pulling fat from hog intestines…keeping worn pieces of cloth to make a quilt…learning a language…to go out to the campsite…to sing for that balm in Gilead…to rest in the everlasting arms
whitman heard those in the printing room…in the fields…in the hospitals…in the moans of the wounded and dying
but he was not our first poet
those women who had to recreate themselves…and therefore create this country…were
they were not uneducated…they were not ignorant…they were not afraid…they were simply without degrees…But they were first
Nikki Giovanni is a seven-time NAACP Image Award winner, a Grammy nominee and National Book Award finalist, and author of three New York Times and Los Angeles Times best sellers, among many other titles. She is University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech University.
Cover art by Cecelia Hotzler