THE POEM, FILM, SONG, PAINTING SERIES

Issue No. 10

by Meri Utkovska

Monday, December16, 2024

Issue No. 10 of the series includes works by African-American poet Nikki Giovanni, Japanese director and filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, Japanese composer Fumio Hayasaka, and Indian artist and painter S. H. Raza.

Poet Nikki Giovanni is smiling while looking away from the camera. She is pictured from the neck up in a black and white photograph.

POEM

Dreams

By Nikki Giovanni

in my younger years
before i learned
black people aren’t
suppose to dream
i wanted to be
a raelet
and say “dr o wn d in my youn tears”
or “tal kin bout tal kin bout”
or marjorie hendricks and grind
all up against the mic
and scream
“baaaaaby nightandday
baaaaaby nightandday”
then as i grew and matured
i became more sensible
and decided i would
settle down
and just become
a sweet inspiration

Copyright Credit: Nikki Giovanni, “Dreams” from Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black Judgment.

Source: The Collected Poems of Nikki Giovanni (2003)

FILM

A closeup of a woman laying in a flower field with white flowers. She is seen from the chest up, lying diagonally, with her hand covering her face, in a black and white shot from Kurosawa's cult film Seven Samurai.

Seven Samurai (1954)

Akira Kurosawa’s all-time epic film Seven Samurai (Shichinin no samurai) is a
three-hour-plus story of a sixteen-century farming village whose inhabitants hire the
seven warriors to help them ward off groups of invading bandits. These attacks leave the village in a state of chaos - its crops are pillaged, the women are abducted and the men killed. Offering only board and three meals a day as their payment. the villagers have to hire wandering, masterless samurai (ronin).

‘Find hungry samurai!’ wisely advises the village elder, played by Kokuten Kodo, when they try to find warriors in a nearby provincial town.

With absolutely legendary performances by Takashi Shimura and Toshiro Mifune, a
masterful cinematography by Asakazu Nakai, and an enchantingly beautiful score by
composer Fumio Hayasaka, Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai remains one of the greatest
films ever made.