"Randell Jenkins was born on June 21, 1970. He didnt come into the world alone. He was born with a twin brother, Rondell Jenkins and with Sickle Cell. Throughout his life, Randells heart was impressed by this deadly blood disease as he expresses it in the poem Sickle Cell and Not Your Fault. Randells two sisters and younger brother had succumb to this Dark Knight and this affected him in so many ways, as he expresses it in several of his poems.
The inspiration for my poetry is God. God has given me many blessings, and among these, God has blessed me with a unique understanding of life. Most of us, if not all of us, go through life seeing things that we don’t understand happen. I was like that as well. However, one day I came to understand life. I came to understand why things happened to me in the past. I came to understand why things are happening to me now, and I came to understand what to expect in the future. A person gets hit by a car and survives. Or a person skydives from ten thousand feet, their parachute doesn’t open, and yet they survive. People are quick to say that that person was lucky. They weren’t lucky. Luck had nothing to do with it. They survived because they were saved by God. I too have a story like that to tell. On November 3, 1984, I was walking home on the shoulder of a road when I was hit from behind by a car. I suffered seven fractures to my left leg, four fractures to my pelvis, and a closed head injury. I spent three weeks in a coma, four weeks connected to a life-support machine, seven months in the hospital, and two and a half years in rehabilitation. I eventually came out of coma, and I recovered to a point where I could live a normal life, although I lost my sense of smell due to my brain damage. I did this because I was saved by God, not because I was lucky. That experience gave me a greater appreciation of life and an incredible desire to seek a relationship with God. I have achieved both, and both have been inspirational in the poems I have written. I hope that you will enjoy them. God bless you.
Colette Adesua Nemedia-Kuponiyi is an equipped minister of God with two lovely sons, a woman whom the voice of God means everything. Her expressions are derived from impressions made upon her heart by the Holy Spirit and expressed outwardly on paper, hence the name expressions. We, as people of God, also know that whatever the Holy Spirit teaches or impresses is always beneficial to learning and growth and more especially life.
In today's increasingly electronic world, we say our personality traits are "hard-wired" and we "replay" our memories. But we use a different metaphor when we speak of someone "reading" another's mind or a desire to "turn over a new leaf"—these phrases refer to the "book of the self," an idea that dates from the beginnings of Western culture. Eric Jager traces the history and psychology of the self-as-text concept from antiquity to the modern day. He focuses especially on the Middle Ages, when the metaphor of a "book of the heart" modeled on the manuscript codex attained its most vivid expressions in literature and art. For instance, medieval saints' legends tell of martyrs whose hearts recorded divine inscriptions; lyrics and romances feature lovers whose hearts are inscribed with their passion; paintings depict hearts as books; and medieval scribes even produced manuscript codices shaped like hearts. "The Book of the Heart provides a fresh perspective on the influence of the book as artifact on our language and culture. Reading this book broadens our appreciation of the relationship between things and ideas."—Henry Petroski, author of The Book on the Bookshelf
First impressions are everything. They dictate whether something stands out, how we engage with it, whether we buy it, and how strongly we feel. In Judge This, the reader travels through a day in the life of renowned designer Chip Kidd as he takes in first impressions of all kinds. We follow this visual journey with Kidd as he encounters and engages with everyday design, breaking down the good, the bad, the absurd and the brilliant as only a designer can. From the design of the paper you read in the morning to the subway ticket machine to the books you browse to the smartphone you use to the packaging for the chocolate bar you buy as an afternoon treat, Kidd will reveal the hidden secrets behind each of the design choices, with a healthy dose of humour, expertise and judgment
