The Spoken Word Revolution

During commercials or boring parts of the Olympics, I’ve been reading. I finished--which is to say, read most of--a book I’ve had kicking around here since the New Year when I was getting ready for my poetry reading: The Spoken Word Revolution: Slam, Hip Hop & the Poetry of a New Generation, edited by Mark Eleveld.



When I started reading at that event, it was something of a slam atmosphere, although not really a slam. It’s less so now. But I’m always interested in poetry read aloud, and this book comes with a CD of poetry readings, which actually, I haven’t listened to yet, although I added it to my iTunes....

I’m not sure what’s up with the whole poetry slam thing these days. This book (which came out in 2005) has several memoirs of the movement’s beginnings in Chicago and elsewhere (like Taos). I definitely think it was very cool that the slam thing generated so much interest in poetry. I have no problem at all with mixing poetry with other media or using it as almost stand-up comedy or performance art. On the other hand, as just poetry, most of what is in this book is just so-so. I made some notes as I read it and then tonight I went through it again and, really, the only ones that stood out for me were Yusef Komunyakaa--who has won the Pulitzer Prize--and Regie Gibson. Interestingly, when I went looking for online versions of their poems, I found Gibson’s poem in a blog that reviewed The Spoken Word Revolution, and that blogger also singled out Gibson as the best poet in the book.

I liked the Komunyakaa so much, that I checked his book of poems, Pleasure Dome, out of the library, and that’s the next book of poetry I’ll be reading. I think “Anodyne” would sounds quite nice read aloud, too, as you can hear for yourself here:

http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/komunyakaa/anodyne.php

Anodyne

By Yusef Komunyakaa



I love how it swells
into a temple where it is
held prisoner, where the god
of blame resides. I love
slopes & peaks, the secret
paths that make me selfish.
I love my crooked feet
shaped by vanity & work
shoes made to outlast
belief. The hardness
coupling milk it can't
fashion. I love the lips,
salt & honeycomb on the tongue.
The hair holding off rain
& snow. The white moons
on my fingernails. I love
how everything begs
blood into song & prayer
inside an egg. A ghost
hums through my bones
like Pan's midnight flute
shaping internal laws
beside a troubled river.
I love this body
made to weather the storm
in the brain, raised
out of the deep smell
of fish & water hyacinth,
out of rapture & the first
regret. I love my big hands.
I love it clear down to the soft
quick motor of each breath,
the liver's ten kinds of desire
& the kidney's lust for sugar.
This skin, this sac of dung
& joy, this spleen floating
like a compass needle inside
nighttime, always divining
West Africa's dusty horizon.
I love the birthmark
posed like a fighting cock
on my right shoulder blade.
I love this body, this
solo & ragtime jubilee
behind the left nipple,
because I know I was born
to wear out at least
one hundred angels.

http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/ is a nice little site, featuring the very fine poetry of Seamus Heaney, Philip Levine, Czeslaw Milosz, Robert Pinsky, Margaret Walker, Richard Wilbur, and Komunyakaa.

Here’s the Gibson poem I liked:

from The Spoken Word Revolution:

in the year i loved your mother
(for my daughter safiya who needs to know this)
by Regie Gibson



in the year i loved your mother
i lived a glorious death
i was satellite traveling between blood and star
a planet evolving through rage and grief

in the year i loved your mother
was a time of drought and deluge
a season of rain and ruin

between us much soil and water
an illiterate ocean of language and diction

i arrived to her half broken half breaking

in the year i loved your mother
we were drum and drone
a volley of polemic and ideal

once i glimpsed you
waving at me from her mouth
as dawn met our shoulders
she whispered your name

we became the thin line
between sea and mountain
valley and sky

in the year i loved your mother
gravity abandoned me to her
she was vortex-a black hole
sewn into the belly of a continent
crushing all into singularity.

grapewaswinewas
soundwassongwas
motionwasdancewas
dovewasvulturecirclingwaslandingwas
all that was : was herYYY

the year I loved your mother
was the year tragedy tamed tongues

we served ours stitched them into
one anothers mouths we grew fluent
in speaking pain.

we brought stones from our pockets
traded them hurled them back towards
each others wounds and those that missed
were gathered later were used to build our walls

she was an equinox of razors when i found her
an autumn of featherless wings
caught in this gale of a man

your mother was: soft lips cutting calluses
from my knuckles

a silk fist logged hard in my mouth
where it opened into a sunflower
widening in the crag of my throat

in her skin i was cryptic blasphemy
transparent decoded holy