Amaud Jamaul Johnson: Please, Pleas, Please: The Poetics of Apologies, Petitions, and Appeals (July 2020)

When in a state of powerlessness, when you have completely broken trust or lost faith, what resources are available? Johnson’s lecture draws upon poetry by Williams, Roethke, Komuyakaa, Hayes, and others as well as music by James Brown, the Supremes, Janis Joplin, and more in this moving, wide-ranging exploration of “the impulse to right, or rewrite, past wrongs through art.”