Poetry can provide a space where personal experiences, difficult questions, and strong opinions can exist together without requiring simple answers. THINKING THEN by Josiah G. Littlejohn takes this approach through a collection that moves across race, religion, love, health, identity, personal experience, and politics. Rather than focusing on one subject, the book presents different areas of thought through separate sections, creating a broad picture of the experiences and ideas that have influenced the author’s perspective.
A Collection Built Around Different Experiences
The structure of Thinking Then is important to understanding the collection. The book is organized into sections including Fighter, Racial, Love, Religion, Destination, Different, List Poetry, and Political. Each section introduces a different aspect of the author’s thoughts and experiences, allowing the collection to move between personal reflection and broader social commentary.
This organization also reflects the complexity of identity. People are not defined by one characteristic or one experience. Family, relationships, culture, beliefs, health, personal history, and society can all influence the way someone understands themselves.
By moving between these subjects, Thinking Then creates a collection that feels broader than a conventional poetry book focused on one emotional theme. It becomes an exploration of how different parts of life can influence one another.
Exploring Race Through Personal Poetry
Race is one of the most prominent subjects in the collection. The Racial section includes poems such as “Black,” “Huh?,” “If,” “Just Us,” “Life,” “Me and Black,” “Revealed,” “Revolutionary,” “Say,” and “The Ethiopians.”
These poems approach racial identity through personal reflection rather than treating it only as an abstract social subject. The collection considers questions surrounding identity, belonging, relationships, history, and the experiences that can influence the way people understand race.
This is one of the strengths of poetry about race. Poetry allows an author to move between personal experience and larger questions without separating the two. A person’s understanding of race can be influenced by family, community, relationships, history, and individual experiences. These elements can become part of the same reflection.
In Thinking Then, the racial poems contribute to a broader examination of identity. The author is not simply discussing what race means in society. He is also examining what it means personally.
Religion and Personal Belief
Religion represents another major area of exploration. The Religion section includes “Hell,” “I Apologize,” “If It Ain’t Matter It Don’t Matter,” “New Direction,” “Religion,” and “Thing 1.”
The collection does not approach religion from one straightforward position. Instead, it examines belief through memory, questioning, disagreement, and personal experience.
This makes the religious material particularly interesting because religious identity can be complicated. A person’s beliefs may come from childhood, family, community, education, and personal experience. Over time, those beliefs can be questioned or reconsidered.
The poem “Religion” reflects on the author’s experiences with religious upbringing and his perspective on organized religion. The poem also connects religious experiences with family and childhood memories, demonstrating how personal history can remain connected to questions of belief.
Poetry about religion does not have to provide a theological argument. It can simply document the process of questioning what a person has been taught and considering what they believe for themselves.
Love as Part of Identity
Although Thinking Then contains significant social and political commentary, it also includes a more intimate side through its Love section.
The section contains “I Know Love,” “Left Behind,” “San Diego,” and “Southern Girl.”
These poems introduce relationships and emotional experiences into a collection otherwise concerned with race, religion, health, and politics. Their presence is important because relationships are another major influence on identity.
People often understand themselves through their connections with others. Love can create a sense of belonging, while separation can create feelings of uncertainty and loss. Relationships can also influence decisions about the future and change the way people understand their own experiences.
Including love alongside the other sections reinforces one of the collection’s central characteristics: personal identity is made up of many different experiences.
Health and the Changing Sense of Self
The collection also explores how physical circumstances can influence identity.
The Destination section includes “18+,” “Always Tennessee,” “Multiple Sclerosis,” “Refuge,” and “Tennessee.”
The poem “Multiple Sclerosis” is especially significant because it reflects on the effect of illness on the speaker’s abilities, ambitions, and expectations. The experience described in the poem represents more than a health challenge. It also raises questions about what happens when circumstances change the future a person imagined for themselves.
Health can influence almost every aspect of life, including independence, relationships, work, ambitions, and self perception. When those circumstances change, a person may have to reconsider what they can do and what they want from the future.
Through poetry, that process can be expressed in a deeply personal way.
Identity Is Never Completely Fixed
One of the broader ideas that emerges from Thinking Then is that identity continues to develop.
A person’s beliefs can change.
Relationships can change.
Health can change.
Political opinions can change.
Understanding of race can change.
The way someone sees themselves can change.
The title Thinking Then itself suggests reflection on thoughts from a particular period and perspective. The collection can therefore be read as a record of the author’s thinking as shaped by the experiences surrounding him.
This is one reason personal poetry can be valuable. It captures a particular way of seeing the world at a particular point in time.
From Personal Thought to Political Commentary
The collection eventually moves into more explicitly political territory.
The Political section includes “Anarchism,” “Climate Change,” “F*ck The IRS,” “Nationalism,” and “Not You.”
These poems demonstrate how personal beliefs can develop into broader opinions about society, government, freedom, responsibility, and political institutions.
The political writing is direct and deliberately opinionated. Rather than presenting itself as neutral commentary, it reflects the author’s particular perspective.
That makes this section different from the more intimate poems about love or identity, but it still fits the larger structure of the collection. Political ideas are another part of how a person understands the world.
For readers interested in the complete collection and the range of subjects explored by Littlejohn, Buy the book at Amazon and read Thinking Then in its entirety.
Why Poetry Works for Difficult Questions
Some questions cannot easily be answered with a simple statement.
What does identity mean?
How should people understand their racial background?
What role should religion play in someone’s life?
How do relationships influence who we become?
What happens when illness changes our expectations?
How should individuals relate to government and society?
Poetry does not necessarily have to answer these questions. It can give writers a way to examine them.
That is particularly valuable when the subject is personal. A poem can preserve uncertainty and contradiction without forcing everything into a final conclusion.
The Value of Unfiltered Perspective
Another defining quality of Thinking Then is its willingness to present an unfiltered perspective. The collection does not attempt to make every subject comfortable or universally agreeable.
That is particularly visible in the racial, religious, and political sections. The poems express strong opinions and personal reactions rather than trying to remove the author’s individual voice.
For readers, this creates an opportunity to encounter a perspective directly and consider it for themselves.
A strong literary work does not necessarily require every reader to agree with the author. Sometimes its value comes from encouraging readers to think more carefully about why they agree, disagree, or have questions of their own.
Looking at Identity From Multiple Directions
The greatest strength of Thinking Then may be the way its different subjects connect.
Race is connected to identity.
Religion can influence identity.
Relationships influence emotional experience.
Health can change expectations.
Politics can reflect personal beliefs about freedom and society.
Personal experiences can shape all of these areas.
Rather than treating these subjects as completely separate, the collection allows them to exist within the same body of work.
That creates a more complicated portrait of the individual behind the poems.
Poetry as a Record of Thought
At its heart, Thinking Then is a collection about thinking.
It records questions, experiences, beliefs, frustrations, relationships, and observations from different areas of life. Some poems are intimate, while others are confrontational. Some examine personal experiences, while others move toward larger questions about society.
This variety is what makes the collection distinctive.
It does not ask readers to enter only one emotional world. Instead, it invites them to move through several different parts of the author’s perspective.
For anyone interested in poetry about identity, race, religion, love, and personal experience, the collection offers an opportunity to explore how these subjects can overlap and influence one another.
Check out our Website to discover more about Josiah G. Littlejohn, his poetry, and his other published works.
Thinking Then ultimately demonstrates how poetry can become a record of personal thought while also engaging with larger questions about society. Through its exploration of race, religion, love, health, identity, and politics, the collection presents a writer willing to examine difficult subjects from a deeply personal perspective. Its value lies not in providing one final answer, but in giving readers material to consider, question, and interpret for themselves.