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Who Look at Me
A poem exploring the condition, feelings, and ideas of blacks in a white society illustrated by reproductions of paintings depicting the life of blacks in America throughout history.
91 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1969
1 person is currently reading
151 people want to read
About the author
June Jordan
73 books450 followersJune Millicent Jordan (July 9, 1936 – June 14, 2002) was a Caribbean-American poet and activist.
Jordan received numerous honors and awards, including a 1969-70 Rockefeller grant for creative writing, a Yaddo Fellowship in 1979, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1982, and the Achievement Award for International Reporting from the National Association of Black Journalists in 1984. Jordan also won the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Writers Award from 1995 to 1998 as well as the Ground Breakers-Dream Makers Award from The Woman's Foundation in 1994.
She was included in Who's Who in America from 1984 until her death. She received the Chancellor's Distinguished Lectureship from UC Berkeley and the PEN Center USA West Freedom to Write Award (1991).
(from Wikipedia)
Jordan received numerous honors and awards, including a 1969-70 Rockefeller grant for creative writing, a Yaddo Fellowship in 1979, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1982, and the Achievement Award for International Reporting from the National Association of Black Journalists in 1984. Jordan also won the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Writers Award from 1995 to 1998 as well as the Ground Breakers-Dream Makers Award from The Woman's Foundation in 1994.
She was included in Who's Who in America from 1984 until her death. She received the Chancellor's Distinguished Lectureship from UC Berkeley and the PEN Center USA West Freedom to Write Award (1991).
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 25, 2008
I recently became interested by June Jordan by coming upon one of her poems that just hit home with me. When researching her books I was shocked to find that she wrote a children's book, which is "Who Look at Me." After reading this book, I still find it hard to believe she wrote this with children in mind. I think it's a wonderful children's book; it's just so amazing that it's hard to imagine someone actually respects children as such high functionalizing beings that they'd conceptualize this as a children's book and not an adult one.
The book is aproximately 80 pages and is a conversation between 27 paintings of African Americans and June Jordan's reactions to the paintings. Her reactions are written in her poetry. June Jordan is very interested in race rights, so this is included in the book which is a loose, abstract history of black rights. The message of the book is you must see yourself in someone else to love them; and when one ignores someone else due to their race, one loses the ability to see one's self in them and love them, depriving them of such a fundemental part of human life. While she says this can be of course applied to anyone who is secondary in society (You can apply this to anyone who isn't "looked" at in society-- women, gays, handicapped, etc,) she most understands it in race and applies it as so.
The message is beautiful; the images chosen capitvating. I did not enjoy them all, but some of them really hit home. There was a nice variety of traditional and modern pieces and while I did not like each piece you could tell them each had talent and skill.
And now we come to the actual poetry, the expressive part of the message.
June Jordan makes me embarressed to say I am someone who uses the english language. Her poetry is not beautiful in that it does not feel beautiful: it is rough and loud. It makes me want to scream. It repeats itself. If it was an animal or a person it would pace, it would pound on the walls of a locked room and throw a chair through a window. She has a beautiful rythem in her poetry, and a beautiful sense of rhyme both at the ends of each line and on the inside of each line (I aoplogize, I forget what the exact term for that is called.) Her poetry makes me sob and brings out my humanity.
June Jordan makes me speechless.
Also, I read this book once, and didn't feel I understood it fully; this book feels like you can reread it reread it and must to understand the author's message and to continue to do so and grow in your understanding of your personal relationship with the question:
WHO LOOK AT ME?
The book is aproximately 80 pages and is a conversation between 27 paintings of African Americans and June Jordan's reactions to the paintings. Her reactions are written in her poetry. June Jordan is very interested in race rights, so this is included in the book which is a loose, abstract history of black rights. The message of the book is you must see yourself in someone else to love them; and when one ignores someone else due to their race, one loses the ability to see one's self in them and love them, depriving them of such a fundemental part of human life. While she says this can be of course applied to anyone who is secondary in society (You can apply this to anyone who isn't "looked" at in society-- women, gays, handicapped, etc,) she most understands it in race and applies it as so.
The message is beautiful; the images chosen capitvating. I did not enjoy them all, but some of them really hit home. There was a nice variety of traditional and modern pieces and while I did not like each piece you could tell them each had talent and skill.
And now we come to the actual poetry, the expressive part of the message.
June Jordan makes me embarressed to say I am someone who uses the english language. Her poetry is not beautiful in that it does not feel beautiful: it is rough and loud. It makes me want to scream. It repeats itself. If it was an animal or a person it would pace, it would pound on the walls of a locked room and throw a chair through a window. She has a beautiful rythem in her poetry, and a beautiful sense of rhyme both at the ends of each line and on the inside of each line (I aoplogize, I forget what the exact term for that is called.) Her poetry makes me sob and brings out my humanity.
June Jordan makes me speechless.
Also, I read this book once, and didn't feel I understood it fully; this book feels like you can reread it reread it and must to understand the author's message and to continue to do so and grow in your understanding of your personal relationship with the question:
WHO LOOK AT ME?
June 16, 2015
Amazing poet June Jordan composed a long poem to accompany paintings of African Americans (selected by Milton Meltzer). A staggeringly beautiful work. Why is it not more celebrated?
February 13, 2021
amazing and powerful poems with illustrations! I didn't expect such a small collection to be so informative, touching, profound and emancipating!
Look:
"Although the world forgets me
I will say yes
AND NO"
"I am
impossible to explain
remote from old and new
interpretations
and yet
not exactly"
the longing for identity, the pain, the thousand words contained in three verses as well as an illustration, a painting, an impression
are very soul-searching
Look:
"Although the world forgets me
I will say yes
AND NO"
"I am
impossible to explain
remote from old and new
interpretations
and yet
not exactly"
the longing for identity, the pain, the thousand words contained in three verses as well as an illustration, a painting, an impression
are very soul-searching
November 13, 2024
Coursework research wooooooooo
February 20, 2024
there is no one quite like june jordan.
January 26, 2022
Who Look at Me
Who would paint a people
black or white?
*
For my own I have held
where nothing showed me how
where finally I left alone
to trace another destination
*
A white stare splits the air
by blindness on the subway
in department stores
The Elevator
(the unswerving ride
where man ignores the brother
by his side)
A white stare obliterates
the nerve-wrung wrist from work
the breaking ankle or
the turning glory
of a spine
*
Is that how we look to you
a partial nothing clearly real?
who see a solid clarity
of feature
size and shape of some
one head
an unmistakable nose
the fact of afternoon
as darkening
his candle eyes
Older men with swollen neck
(when they finally sit down
who will stand up
for them?)
I cannot remember nor imagine pretty
people treat me
like a doublejointed stick
[...]
Who would paint a people
black or white?
*
For my own I have held
where nothing showed me how
where finally I left alone
to trace another destination
*
A white stare splits the air
by blindness on the subway
in department stores
The Elevator
(the unswerving ride
where man ignores the brother
by his side)
A white stare obliterates
the nerve-wrung wrist from work
the breaking ankle or
the turning glory
of a spine
*
Is that how we look to you
a partial nothing clearly real?
who see a solid clarity
of feature
size and shape of some
one head
an unmistakable nose
the fact of afternoon
as darkening
his candle eyes
Older men with swollen neck
(when they finally sit down
who will stand up
for them?)
I cannot remember nor imagine pretty
people treat me
like a doublejointed stick
[...]
July 23, 2025
Demands multiple readings. Black womens approach to cultural nationalism tends to be more fruitful and affectively powerful. This is a more poetic, more probing, and more holistic (by that I mean that description doesn’t find its finish line at uplift) take on what Langston did with Decarava. Will read again and again and again. The illustration reproductions are incredible. So happy I found this.
September 16, 2024
great early long-poem, the final breathless stanzas in particular, but has a few ever-brief moments where I'd say Jordan stumbles; indicative of things to come, with room for future maturity and sequentiality.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews