Ethereally lost in the world of words, Pinke Gordon Lane was a poet’s poet. She once said, her ideas, her reality, filled her with a drunken desire. I am learning about this desire with writing. Pinke was a master at writing poetry her way. She had a way with words that could make you feel drunk. She also wrote for herself, the kind of poetry she wanted to hear herself. Take for example one of her poem’s entitled ‘A quiet poem’ where she spoke of things often not quiet among blacks people, like pain. But rather than delving deeply into the pain, Pinke used words instead, like a soothing balm, to quiet the mind, the origin of pain. But it’s her poem, ‘To a woman poet I know,’ that I want to share to you all in praise of International Woman’s Day.

I deliberately choose to write my blog now, not because I didn’t have anything to say like the cliched Happy Woman’s Day, but because I wanted my words to move me as well. I am drawn to Pinke and her words because she first wrote for herself, the poem, or in my case, the stories, I have always wanted to read. If only more black women scholars wrote this book and I was given opportunities to understand as only we sisters know to speak, what to do when the devil knocked at my door. That my mind would wander is what Pinke’s poem states. It would wander but fall into it and wait for the truth. That my voice would not save me, is another thing Pinke stated. That I maybe lost, standing on the edge, even surrounded by terrible darkness as we help ourselves to make sense of where we find ourselves in academia. A space in need of light was the gift she offered. That and the need to dispel any personal and private hell black, lovely and lost women may be experiencing. Even when our voice cries our, with the silent air, dissolving us, our essence, our being, Pinke reminded me that my beauty and strength, my very existence, were all destined from the begin. She may have been writing to a woman poet. But Pinke was speaking to my soul. Keep knowing the beauty and strength of you. Pinke would want that.