Category Archives: Poetry

Maya Angelou Redux

Posted on April 4, 2023 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

On this, Maya Angelou’s birthday, I thought I would repost a blog, “Maya Angelous: A Muse for All.” On this Day of Love, also known as Valentine’s Day, I want to uplift an author and one of her books, I … Continue reading →

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The Nineteen Sixties

Posted on June 7, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

I have written elsewhere about the “Decisive Decade,” a phrase coined by Samuel Yette, about the 1960s.  I found this poem, “SOS,” by Imamu Amiri Baraka, in The Black Poets, edited by Dudley Randall, in the section about poetry of … Continue reading →

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National Superhero Day

Posted on April 28, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Today is National Superhero Day. Over the years I’ve written a series of poems about “heroes.” In my last collection, “The Black Blood of Poetry,” which I am shopping around, is this poem: In Search of a Black Hero Coming … Continue reading →

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National Poetry Month

Posted on April 3, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

April is National Poetry Month. Purchase and read one of my three books of poetry. My first, award-winning book, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass: Co-winner of the Edwin Mellen Poetry Prize . . . this poem is … Continue reading →

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The Prison Portal

Posted on March 23, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Poets are on a quest to find a word that is worth a thousand pictures.  I don’t know if there’s a poetry gene, but there’s connective tissue joining poets.  Even before I know a writer is a poet – a … Continue reading →

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I’m Driving as Fast as I Can

Posted on March 22, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Bell Gayle Chevigny is another woman I met through my work with PEN America Center’s Prison Writing Program (PWP).  She is also the editor of Doing Time: 25 Years of Prison Writing, an anthology of some of the best writing … Continue reading →

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Poets Are Revolutionaries: Drop Poetry, Not Bombs!

Posted on March 21, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Poets, at heart, are revolutionaries.  In addition to being incurable romantics, they are idealists.  Even in their poetry, they seek the ideal.  They are always in search of the ideal. I also met Susan Rosenberg through my work with PEN … Continue reading →

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Poets, Prison Writing, and Pantoums

Posted on March 20, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Poets feel deeply, oftentimes too deeply. Sometimes they’re overwhelmed by their feelings. Poets are incurable Romantics. They love Love. They’re always on a quest to find Love. Poets are human, deeply human, as human as can be, with all the … Continue reading →

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Portrait of an Artist as a Woman

Posted on March 19, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Artists have an antenna, a radar of sorts, where we can detect another artist in our midst.  It’s a look in and from their eyes, as if they aren’t there, while at the same time being everywhere.  I know, because … Continue reading →

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My Pandora

Posted on March 15, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Hope remains! (Disclaimer: Ladies, women, womenfolk, and girls, I know that a man wrote the myth about Pandora, blaming women, as the writer of the Hebrew Bible also blamed a woman, Eve, for all the evils let loose in the … Continue reading →

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