Wake: Up to Poetry
"The act of poetry is a rebel act."
“How do you sew the night?”: A poem in memory of Maya Angelou
We at Wake Forest University Press join the rest of the university, and the rest of the world, in celebrating Maya Angelou’s life and mourning her passing.
In her memory, here is a poem that WFUP poet Michael Longley wrote a few years ago after seeing Shaker-designed quilts in New England.
The Design
Sometimes the quilts were white for weddings, the design
Made up of stitches and the shadows cast by stitches.
And the quilts for funerals? How do you sew the night?
–Michael Longley, from Collected Poems (2007)