Pundits, poets and perspective

 I’ve been trying to follow what the pundits are saying about Kamala Harris and her chances of becoming President. But I keep thinking of some lines by Nicholas Goodly, a young poet from Atlanta: 

If we planted a tree for every word

against women, the ground

would lose sight of the sun.

 

One in three black girls learn

to swim by being chased away from

the shallow end of a brown community pool.

 

I prefer poets to pundits. They are often better guides to uncharted territory.

• Source: The lines are from Nicholas Goodly’s poem “R&B Facts” in This Is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets, edited by Kwame Alexander; New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2024.