Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems

by James Baldwin

had met James Baldwin by way of his “Sweet Lorraine,” a seventeen-hundred-and-seventy-six-word loving manifesto to his friend and comrade, the playwright Lorraine Hansberry.

From the beginning of his life to the very end, I believe Baldwin saw himself more poet than anything else: The way he cared about language. The way he believed language should work.

I don’t know if one ever gets to be what one wants to be. You just have to play it by ear, and pray for rain.

Well. Niggers don’t own nothing, got no flag, even our names are hand-me-downs and you don’t change that by calling yourself X:

Time is not money. Time is time.

My progress report concerning my journey to the palace of wisdom is discouraging. I lack certain indispensable aptitudes. Furthermore, it appears that I packed the wrong things.

I packed for the journey in great haste. I have never had any time to spare. I left behind me all that I could not carry.