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The first function of poetry is to tell the truth, to learn how to do that, to find out what you really feel and what you really think
June Jordan
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June Jordan
Age: 65 †
Born: 1936
Born: July 9
Died: 2002
Died: June 14
Essayist
Lgbtiq+ Rights Activist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Harlem
New York
June Millicent Jordan
Firsts
First
Feel
Function
Feels
Poetry
Really
Learn
Think
Tell
Thinking
Truth
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More quotes by June Jordan
My father was both the person who gave me reason to learn how to fight and the one who taught me the basics of fighting. He would tell me that if it was a big fight, it would probably be uneven, it wouldn't be fair
June Jordan
I wrote those poems for myself, as a way of being a soldier here in this country. I didn't know the poems would travel. I didn't go to Lebanon until two years ago, but people told me that many Arabs had memorized these poems and translated them into Arabic.
June Jordan
That a little child will lead us back to the child we will always be, vulnerable and wanting and hurting for love and for beauty.
June Jordan
The purpose of polite behavior is never virtuous. Deceit, surrender, and concealment these are not virtues. The goal of the mannerly is comfort, per se.
June Jordan
There are two ways to worry words. One is hoping for the greatest possible beauty in what is created. The other is to tell the truth.
June Jordan
One of the reasons I came to Berkeley was because I saw so many students of all different colors speaking so many different languages and ferociously presenting all these different views. I thought, this is the 21st century and I want to be here!
June Jordan
I am the history of the rejection of who I am
June Jordan
To rescue our children we will have to let them save us from the power we embody: we will have to trust the very difference that they forever personify.
June Jordan
Americans have begun to understand that trouble does not start somewhere on the other side of town. It seems to originate inside the absolute middle of the homemade cherry pie.
June Jordan
I think I have come to a place where I'm able to feel more comfortable about being honest.
June Jordan
To tell the truth is to become beautiful.
June Jordan
What's important about poetry in the context of leadership is that most of the time, power has to do with dominance. But poetry is never about dominance. Poetry is powerful but it cannot even aspire to dominate anyone. It means making a connection. That's what it means.
June Jordan
The music of language became extremely important to me, and obvious to me. By the time I was seven I was writing myself. I was a poet
June Jordan
Like running trying to live a good life has to hurt a little bit, or we're not running hard enough, not really trying.
June Jordan
If we even tolerate any oppression of gay and lesbian Americans, if we join those who would intrude upon the choices of our hearts, then who among us shall be free?
June Jordan
We are the ones we've been waiting for.
June Jordan
Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.
June Jordan
It means to educate myself incessantly about the world around me.
June Jordan
A democratic state is not proven by the welfare of the strong but by the welfare of the weak.
June Jordan
If any of us hopes to survive, she must meet the extremity of the American female condition with immediate and political response. The thoroughly destructive and indefensible subjugation of the majority of Americans cannot continue except at the peril of the entire body politic.
June Jordan
