No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.  – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

As classes begin today, we welcome back students, faculty and staff to the University by sharing the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and a poem by Marilyn Nelson.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, the daughter of a Tuskegee Airman, Marilyn Nelson is an accomplished and award-winning poet, children’s book author, and translator of over fourteen books of poetry. A professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut and Connecticut’s poet laureate from 2001 to 2006, Marilyn Nelson has won two Pushcart Prizes, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and the 2012 Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America.  In 2013, she was elected as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.  Today she is listed among the faculty of the  Cave Canem Foundation for young African American poets.  Marilyn Nelson’s literary manuscripts, letters, photographs and publications are being preserved and made accessible at the University of Connecticut in Archives and Special Collections.

Worth by Marilyn Nelson

Source: Poetry Magazine, September 2005, p. 403 and available online at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/186/5#!/20607120.