By Dave Dahl

SPRINGFIELD – The power of a poem, says Illinois’ poet laureate, can get her out of bed to clean her room. At least that’s how she reacted one morning to the memory of Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” — the one about “promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.”

And Angela Jackson, named Illinois’ fifth poet laureate last year, idolizes the third person to hold that title – another Black woman, Gwendolyn Brooks.

“She used language the way Billie Holliday sang,” Jackson told a virtual audience through Southern Illinois University’s Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, “and that is what I model my work after, too. Every note meant something. Every word meant something.”

And Jackson, born in Mississippi and education at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, says young Amanda Gorman has put poetry on many people’s radar, giving Jackson’s job a boost.

Dave Dahl can be reached at [email protected]