Kevin Young sums it up

The poetry of Kevin Young is very recent which makes it interesting to read, but also challenging to know how to interpret. His poetry seems to have a visual and an oral feel, and like others, seems to integrate and address both aspects of poetry. He also uses interesting wordplay in DEFACEMENT and other poems that challenge the reader to break down what he is saying, what it sounds like, the diction and accent, and also the organization.

In the Poetic Statement many of the common themes we have discussed throughout this course are unpacked from Young’s poetry. He uses blues and jazz forms that harkens back to times of oral poetry and tradition. The Statement also notes how Young uses differing poetic forms to mirror what his poetry is saying or commenting including the familiar topics of love and relationships. He also seems to speak about these topics with a vivid quality not unlike what Wanda Coleman did as well.

For all of these reasons, it seems holistic to finish with a poem who address so many of the themes and ideas we have explored throughout this course.

Yes, I did a research paper freshman year about hip hop and whether it still contained a message about problems in urban communities and oppression. I found that over the years hip hop has changed, glorifying thug life instead of creating an awareness of the oppression and bad living conditions in urban areas. Many argue that hip hop began to target white suburban teenagers which sales records seemed to prove. Today there is hip hop that contains that message, but it is mainly underground and not being heard on the radio. Now people seem more interested in making money than really sending a message. But yes, as Sarah points out, that seems to be the case with all music. Protest(political and social) songs aren't really seen on the top 40 countdown... I always found it interesting though why such a large amount of suburban white teenagers would be obsessed with gangster rap. But then again, why not? I am pretty sure I remember one critic argued that they just wanted to piss off their parents/ feel bad ass. It is interesting to compare this situation to poetry though. There are poems that are merely candy, but I feel for the most part poems have a good amount of medicine, some kind of message. I just think that contrast between music and poetry is interesting...

mainstreem hip hop

Saw an article while doing paper research that I found interesting, and thought I’d share the idea with y’all. The article was about hip-hop, and it asked the question: “[D]oes black art still play a role as a place of sustenance for an oppressed people’s spirit, as a site of resistance?”. The article argued that there are two types of hip-hop, the more mainstream type, which has become highly commercialized, and the less mainstream type which is more about politics. I guess I’m interested in why the more commercialized stuff is so popular. Looking at the slam poetry, I found most of those poems to be great. With hard rock fading out and hip-hop coming in style, it’s interesting that there is rarely more than one song per artist that speaks about politics. Usually when I turn on the radio, the music is light, or has somewhat offensive lyrics, but a good beat. I just found it interesting that the author of the article was arguing that most of the smaller hip-hop artists spoke about political issues, while the mainstream ones didn’t—the author argued that it is the smaller hip-hop voices that give oppressed people something to work for, while the main ones help stifle them. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is true for almost all music—not just hip-hop. I know it’s an extreme view, but I still found it something worth thinking about.

Prose Confusion too!

What I found most intriguing about Nathaniel Mackey was his diversity in form. We read prose, poetry and an interview by him, and nearly all of them were equally baffling to me. Like last class, sometimes I found that if I read his poems faster I could make some sense of them, but as a whole I was left wondering about many of the poems. In particular, I cannot say that I as really able to make sense of the visual poems with odd indentations. I tried reading just the right justified words to see if it worked together, or also using the single word as a cue for the rest of the stanza, but still hound no definitive answer. Which left me wondering, what do these visual cues mean? What such discourse in presentation? What is he saying by the way he arranges the poem, not the words within it?

One of the most interesting things for me though was the interview. I thought that Mackey tied together and essentially summarized so many of the discussions and questions we had semester. He discussed the how poems can be both oral and visual simultaneously, how religion and music are often one and the same, how the audience can matter but also be irrelevant, and seemed to express consistent “integration” ideas as Harryette Mullen.

Proposition 209

I got pretty interested in the idea that California (and polititians in general) word things in a difficult manner to make people vote differently than they normally would. I went to my friend Wiki, and looked up proposition 209:

The passage of proposition 209 amended the California Constitution to include a new section (Section 31 of Article I), which reads:

(a) The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.

(b) This section shall apply only to action taken after the section's effective date.

(c) Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as prohibiting bona fide qualifications based on sex which are reasonably necessary to the normal operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.

(d) Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as invalidating any court order or consent decree which is in force as of the effective date of this section.

(e) Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as prohibiting action which must be taken to establish or maintain eligibility for any federal program, where ineligibility would result in a loss of federal funds to the state.

(f) For the purposes of this section, "state" shall include, but not necessarily be limited to, the state itself, any city, county, city and county, public university system, including the University of California, community college district, school district, special district, or any other political subdivision or governmental instrumentality of or within the state.

(g) The remedies available for violations of this section shall be the same, regardless of the injured party's race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin, as are otherwise available for violations of then-existing California antidiscrimination law.

(h) This section shall be self-executing. If any part or parts of this section are found to be in conflict with federal law or the United States Constitution, the section shall be implemented to the maximum extent that federal law and the United States Constitution permit. Any provision held invalid shall be severable from the remaining portions of this section.

To me this sounds like the abolition of racism and sexism, but in reality (according to Wiki), it really is about doing away with affirmitive action.

California claims that abolishing affirmative action has helped California, "The African American graduation rate at the University of California, Berkeley increased by 6.5 percent,[2] and rose even more dramatically, from 26 percent to 52 percent, at the University of California, San Diego" (wiki. Graduation rates have improved, but enrollment has gone down: "Criticism was made of the fact that of the 4,422 students in UCLA's freshman class of 2006, only 100 (2.26%) were African American[2]. In fact, opponents of Proposition 209 note that there are greater disparities in elite education in the post-Proposition 209 era due to decreased African American and Latino enrollment. Proponents, on the other hand, note that Asian American enrollment rates dramatically increased at a majority of UC campuses" (wiki).

On a lighter note, since we are taking a poetry class, I wrote a poem on the way to class the other day, and because I can't make it to the poetry slam, I thought I'd post it here:

English Major

I majored in English,
But I minored in Gym,
That’s because there’s
three sets of stairs
in Richardson.

Sipping on my mocha-cola liquid-energy,
Running faster than an R.O.T.C.
And time seems to be running faster than me
All this for a college degree?!

But no, wait the door’s locked.
So I knock and I knock,
But the door itself seems to mock,
And the hands on my clock won’t stop.

So I need to go down the steps to go up some more
Another set of stairs!
Now I have to go up four!
All because of the stupid locked door.

So I step and I step and I step and I step,
And I sweat and I sweat and I sweat and I sweat,
And with every sweat step,
I begin to regret
Why I put on Dove deodorant, instead of
Super ultra mega platinum Secret.

So I swan-dive into my chair,
Pretending to be unaware
Of how everybody in my class begins to stare.
...maybe this time the teacher won’t care.

But of course she’s irate,
And I’m marked as ‘late’
But it doesn’t matter how I do in English,
Because in gym, I’m doing great!

George Lipsitz, "The Possessive Investment in Whiteness"

You can find it here.

Epic Situation

I am glad that i waited to enter my passage in our blog this week, as today's class was difficult for me to grapple with, in particular the assumption that the speaker of a performed piece is to be identified as the narrator. For the sake of qualification, I took performing poetry with Randy Hill and one of the devices we learned about was this notion of the Epic Situation. The epic situation as we defined it was the where and who of a performance. So if you are performing Maya Angelou's Phenomenal Woman, You would have to decide, where am I going to set this performance and who will I portray? In this case, you may go about the generic route personifying a woman in a public sphere, or you may attempt to portray a transgendered male, convincing himself of his womanhood in a private setting. The point is that unless specified otherwise, we need to contain the narrator to the person within the poem and not the deliverer/speaker. Do not assume that because a black woman is presenting a poem about a skinhead, the narrator of the piece is a black woman. Instead, listen and interpret her words. The opening line is: “They call me skinhead.” Thus with ample critical analysis it may be determined that the poems narrator is, indeed, a skinhead, and not the black woman speaking the poem, shall we relate the stage to the setting of the poem too? It is difficult to separate that which we are so used to trust, our sight, from poetic thought. I am not saying that I know everything there is to know about poetry – we all know that’s not true, but I am saying that I am certain that the speaker is not a black woman and to my knowledge it has nothing to do with the way she’s dressed. Maybe it has something to do with her skin color and the volumes of cultural history that’s bound within, but nothing is indicative that it is about or through the voice of Patricia Smith. I don’t like to generalize, but I do fancy myself to play with the evidence provided to me, and the opening line is enough for me.

I really enjoyed Liza Peterson’s poetry – especially “Ice Cream Cone.” She took a much more lighthearted approach to the problems faced by women and African Americans (and African American women). She managed to turn real issues – manifestations of racism and sexism – into pet peeves for the characters in her poems. But that transformation didn’t take away from the weight of the problems themselves, it just made the characters seem stronger. I got the impression, as an audience member, that both of the characters, from “Ice Cream Cone” and “Waitress,” had actually risen above their respective daily challenges – disgusting sexual suggestions and ignorant customers – and turned them into inside jokes. Nevertheless, I say the weight wasn’t lost because at the end of both poems, the implication was that the characters would deal with the same crap the next day, and the day after, and that there was a problem much bigger than the individual idiots set each woman off on the particular day after which the poems were modeled. The individuals are products of an American culture that okays their behavior, and no matter how many times they get corrected, they will never examine themselves for fault. So, even after I had laughed at “Ice Cream Cone,” I was straight-faced by the last line because it was clear that that wasn’t an isolated episode.

I agree. The performances from Patricia Smith were very strong and intense, especially "Skinhead." I thought the way she performed it was amazing. I felt that her expressions and the way she handled every word was dead on. I also really liked her poems from Blood Dazzler. Hurricane Katrina has been an extremely big issue over the past few years and I thought it was really awesome that she put together an entire book with poems about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. I felt that her prologue depicted the atmosphere of New Orleans really well. I felt like she was describing the dark side of New Orleans and its toxicity. How visitors are consumed by the city. I also really liked the performances from Liza Peterson. I felt she was very animated and did a nice job at getting to what she wanted to say. I also felt her poems dealt with themes we haven't really seen yet: woman being objectified by men in "Ice Cream Cone" and an individual's origin in "Waitress." It seems ridiculous to think that a women can't even eat an ice cream cone without getting some sort of sexual comment. I think she did a nice job of getting the message across while being amusing as well. "Waitress" brought up a good point about origin. It is crazy to think that someone would ask what an individuals native tribe was when her family has been here for generations. She is American! I just think people have these romantic ideas about foreign countries. I am not going to lie. I am guilty of it too. I remember when I took African literature and our professor asked us about our presumptions of Africa. When I thought of Africa, I immediately thought of the savanna and all the wildlife, people living in huts. Of course after learning about Africa I knew otherwise, but it is really just amazing to think about how a lot of people are just ignorant. Education really is the key.

Smith vs. Coleman

The oral poetry of Patricia Smith, whether watched on Youtube or read from the page, is extremely powerful in its raw emotion and stark imagery. The creative arrangement of her poetry to complement a written and oral form is also interesting. For me, the most enjoyable part is that she speaks sometimes about distant things like Medusa, in such a way that it seems real. At the same time, she is able to dissect real things, like Hurricane Katrina in ways that are real and made to be surreal at the same time.

The subject matter and diction of her poems is not unlike the power that we saw from Wanda Coleman, although for some reason it seems less jarring. Maybe it is because I have read Coleman first, or maybe it is the hearing of the poem in an oral form and imagining its spoken delivery that makes it less shocking but no less powerful. Her ability to deliver the poem adds character to it and makes it a story. She also explores a diverse subject matter which sheds light on a variety of social and cultural issues or minorities not normally seen, as seen in “Skinhead.”

Certainly, the era of slam poets and oral poetry is back, although I wonder how much of the residues of the jazz and blues can still be felt in the cadence and improvisational delivery?

Private Prisons

As promised, I’m doing my blog on private prisons, brought to you by Wikipedia and a few other sites. Unfortunatly, I found that there are a few companies that own a bunch of prisons, but besides “contractual agreements”, I couldn’t find where they got their money.

Private prisons receive their money through contractual agreements with “local state or federal governments that commit priosoners and then pay a per diem or monthly rate for each prisoner confined in the facility” (Wikipedia). They began in England after the American Revolution. They could not ship criminals to the United States after the revolution, so “Great Britain began placing them on hulks moored in English ports” (Wikipedia). The first for-profit prison in the United States was in California in 1852. Private prisons did not become especially popular until the 1980s, where there was a war on drugs which made several prisons become overpopulated and new ones needed to be built.

This new “modern” private prison business first emerged publically in 1984 when Corrections Corporation of America received a contract to take over a facility in Hamilton County in Tenessee. By December 2000, the United States had 153 private correctional facilities (which includes prisons, jails, and detention centers). These private correctional facilities had over 119,000 people in them. Today, the United States has 264 correctional facilities, with almost 99,000 adult offenders. “7% of the 2 million adult prisoners in the United States are in private facilities.” (prisonpolicy.org)

Private prisons provide more jobs for local cities, are more cost-efficient for each local town as well as put pressure on the public prison systems. States save money if they have both public and private prison systems. There are several contradicting studies as to whether the private prison system actually saves each state money.

The poor economy has affected the stalk market for the private prisons, so there are not many new ones being built. I could not find how people gained profit from prisons, but “The cost of corrections-in cluding state, local, and federal corrections budgets-ran to more than $20 billion a year in the early 1990s. The cost of constructing enough cells just to keep up with the constant increase in prisoners is estimated at $6 billion a year” (mediafilter.org).

Sorry guys, although I found that there are three major companies that run private prisons, I really don’t know where the money comes from. Please let me know if you find anything.

Here are the sites I went to:
http://www.prisonpolicy.org/prisonindex/overviewprivate.html
http://mediafilter.org/MFF/Prison.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison

Nick's Questions for Monday, April 13

Nick Blaise
African American Poetry: 347
Theo Hummer
Questions


1. Saul Williams says, “The youth of today are using poetry slams and open mics as a means of calling our new world into order.” Explore the ways in which Williams employs his idea through his performance of “Amethyst Rock,” how does it speak to Davis’ article, what is it bringing to our attention?
In context in the film Slam, Saul Williams’s character uses his performance of “Amethyst Rock” to disrupt and defuse a brewing prisonyard gang fight (the YouTube clip cuts off the incipient fight at the beginning of the poem, but includes the gang members’ baffled yet awed responses at the end). What assumptions or hopes about poetry does this scene indicate?

2.”It is my hope that this book will encourage readers to question their own assumptions about the prison.” With respect to Davis, Williams, Bernstein, and Chomsky, have your opinions changed? “Are prisons obsolete?”

3. White Supremacy Capitalist Heterocentric Patriarchs. That’s what the United States seems to labeled as in Chomsky’s article, do you believe that this idea of social control is instated by these types of people (mentioned above)? How does this speak to the race relations we have already discussed through various other poets and essayists? Is it necessary to be an evil person with evil intentions in order to behave in ways that support white supremacist, capitalistic, heterocentric, and/or patriarchal structures in society? What forms of dissent are possible? How effective is literature as a means of dissent?

4.Drawing from earlier works like Dunbar’s “We Wear The Mask:” Is the mask voluntary or involuntary in this case? In which case? Where do we see the mask in play in Saul Williams’s work? In Angela Davis’s? In Nell Bernstein’s? In Noam Chomsky’s? What’s the relationship between strategic use of “the mask” and prison reform or abolition?

5. Williams describes the differences between an African drumbeat and an American drumbeat: “The indigenous drumming of continental Africa is known to be primarily dense and quite often up-tempo. The drumming of the indigenous Americas, on the other hand, in its most common representation is primarily sparse and down-tempo.” How do you suppose this metaphorical clash of drumming has been reflected and inquired in our readings up until now? How has it affected our ideas of culture?

6. “I remember learning of Ancient Egyptian dynasties and how, in some, the scribes were more popular, while in others the focus was on the illustrators.” How has slam poetry consolidated the two roles into an inventive uniform?

response to Sarah

In response to Sarah:

The notion of separating things – histories, genders, classes – for the sake of profit hadn’t occurred to me, either until I read your post. My first impulse is to reject such a practice as thoughtless commercialism, but after mulling it over, I think there might actually be something to be gained from telling Black history as separate from [White] history.

In my opinion, there is no such thing as White history in America because “White” is running in the background of whatever historical account is at hand. Until fairly recently, accounts of slavery, segregation, the Civil Rights Movement, etc., were all told from a White perspective (with the exception of the occasional Frederick Douglass figure). This, to me, is the equivalent of an attempt to tell White and Black history in conjunction. However, such attempts fail because a single perspective cannot be avoided. I suppose if a Black committee and a White committee were to sit down and write a history of the US together, it would be viewed as a genuinely biracial account. But what would be lost in the process of trying to make facts fit? And if it came down to an irresolvable disagreement, what would wind up in the book? I think the separation of Black and White histories, especially in countries heavily influenced by the enslavement of Blacks, is actually beneficial to a complete understanding of the unified history.

Separate for Profit

I know that we have spoken about this in the past, but I think that I've found a new way at looking at this idea: why is it that there are (at least) two separate histories in the United States? Why is the same history being written separately by the same company?

I know that we spoke about the "black history" vs. "white history" in the United States, but I never thought of the same company publishing books on both, instead of merging them together. How much of this is for the company to make a profit than actually believing that these histories should be told separately? Is it more profitable to separate people and advertise to each group separately?

I know that in marketing, women are seperate from men, the races are split up, and there are even different stores according to where a person lives in the United States, but I guess it never occured to me that profit could go as far as how we separate hisotry.

Some Commonality

In thinking about our discussion about the reality of Wanda Coleman’s poetry and Houston Baker’s story of his childhood experience, our readings for today seem to support the use of personal stories. Yusef Komunyakaa also uses the poetic form as a way to provide commentary and stories based on his personal experience. Some of the most powerful stories he tells reflect his experiences in Vietnam. I found both “Tunnels,” “Facing it” and “Tu Do Streets” to be really interesting and pointed. I think the essay form of these poems also makes them somewhat easier to read. In addition, this is consistent witih some of the early challenges to formal conventions by other poets, including inconsistent line breaks, the use of “&” and a lack of stanzas are continued in his form.

It would also be an interesting topic to discuss how Rita Dove’s “Motherhood” ties into our discussion of the Wolf. The wolf from Coleman’s poem seems to reappear here and much of the imagery and story line actually seems quite similar.

Multiple Black Aesthetics & Experimental Poetry

Hi, folks. The other day (when we were outdoors) I talked to you a bit about experimental poetry and the notion of "a" black aesthetic; I mentioned a guy named Ron Silliman and wished I had my dissertation chapter with me so I could read a couple quotes to you from it. I mentioned that Ron Silliman (a white experimental poet) had--in trying to come to grips, perhaps, with why he found more "traditional" poetry more interesting when it was written by black poets than when by white ones--possibly overly monolithized African-American poetic traditions. Here's the quote I wished I could read to you:

"Progressive poets who identify as members of groups that have been the subject of history--many white male heterosexuals, for example--are apt to challenge all that is supposedly “natural” about the formation of their own subjectivity. That their writing today is apt to call into question, if not actually explode, such conventions as narrative, persona and even reference can hardly be surprising. At the other end of this spectrum are poets who do not identify as members of groups that have been the subject of history, for they have been its objects. The narrative of history has led not to their self-actualization, but to their exclusion and domination. These writers and readers--women, people of color, sexual minorities, the entire spectrum of the 'marginal'--have a manifest political need to have their stories told. That their writing should often appear much more conventional, with the notable difference as to whom is the subject of those conventions, illuminates the relationship between form and audience."
--Ron Silliman, “Poetry and the Politics of the Subject” 63

In the introduction to his book Discrepant Engagement, Nathaniel Mackey counters, “There are, however, writers from socially marginalized groups who do both--tell their stories while calling such conventions into question, tell their stories by calling such conventions into question. The distinction between a formally experimental center and a formally conventional periphery distorts and grossly oversimplifies matters” (19). We have read and are about to read lots of poets whose work illustrates Mackey's point: Etheridge Knight, Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, Traci Morris, and Harryette Mullen, for just a few examples. Harryette Mullen sympathetically cites an account similar to Silliman’s--“You know, there was a joke that circulated among minority (and some women) graduate students: ‘It’s that white male subjectivity that needs to be put on hold . . . the rest of us . . . need our subjectivity’”--but she also questions it:

"Ron Silliman, in The New Sentence, talks about . . . I think the essay’s called 'The Political Economy of Poetry,' and he ends it by talking about this perceived division between what are called the 'Aesthetic Schools of writing' and the 'codes of oppressed peoples.' He says, of course, the aesthetic schools are not without their politics or their ideological stance, they just express it through aesthetic means and procedures. And I would want to add that--I don’t think he does but I would want to add--the codes of oppressed peoples also have their aesthetic basis." Mullen joins Mackey’s category of “writers . . . who do both” by asking herself, “Well, in what ways would I want to problematize my black female subjectivity,” acknowledging and rethinking the assumptions that underlie “the tradition of the ‘authentic voice’” (interview with Farah Griffin).

I hope you'll find some of this helpful and/or interesting!
Cheers,
Theo

Discussion Questions for April 1, 2009

Discussion Questions for April 1, 2009

Quincy Troupe asks in his poem “Conversation Overheard”, “who made up this standard of beauty anyway?”. How is this a theme in the poems we have read so far, and how does this relate to the theme of “the mask?” How/ why have these become themes in African American poetry?

“It is Not” is a poem that is written in a way that is supposed to be read orally. Why did Quincy Troupe choose to write it this way, and how does this come back to the traditions of African American poetry? On the other hand, why do you think that “The Syntax of the Mind Grips” was not written in the same way? How do you think critics would see the two poems differently, and why do you think one type of writing is more likely to “the cannon”?

“Dualism” (Norton Anthology, 2058), a poem found in a book about racism and communism, speaks about being outside and inside a “hungry” history. This poem uses incorrect grammar, and ends with a misspelled word. Why do you think Ishmael Reed chose to write it this way?

Do you think that any musical artist today has Neo-HooDoo? How does this tie into the black aesthetic? Why does Ishmael Reed say that the Beatles were conjuring the music and ritual of a ‘Forgotten Faith” which is a “traditional enemy of Christianity”, but earlier says that Neo-HooDoo can be found in the “Pentecostal” and “Baptist”? What does the quote, “every man is an artist, and every artist is a priest” mean? (Neo-HooDoo Manifesto, 2063).

Why does Ishmael Reed continually speak about history in his poems? As discussed in previous classes, why do so many African American authors feel that they must speak about the history of “their people”?

poetry?

Beginning with Monday’s readings, and including today’s, I have all of a sudden noticed several distinct changes in style that, to me, almost make these poems a different art form from “poetry.” For instance, it seems like the poets from Monday and today all meant for their poems to be read aloud; all of the strange punctuation and enjambment almost makes the poems make more sense out loud than on the page. Other signs of this change are the lack of rhyme scheme and meter. The presence of these in earlier poems, in my opinion, made reading them out loud feel a little unnatural. With both gone, poems sound closer to the way someone might speak in a conversation, which takes focus off of how the poem sounds and replaces it on what the poem is saying, especially via unique word choice (since it is no longer restricted by rhymes). The reason I say these new poems seem like a different art form from just plain “poetry” is because I feel like they lose something without a voice to read them. They’re like a cross between poetry and a play – or maybe a song. And by being called “poetry,” I bet they aren’t reaching the entirety of the audience they should reach.

I think it is interesting to look at the change in form for the poems this week. While up until recently most poems had some form of structure. Obviously some had a more constrictive form, but this seems to be the first time that a number of the others are taking the form into their own hands. The words are not capitalized and there is some random punctuation as well. For example, in "In The Interest of Personal Appearance" two of the lines start with commas. Also when I was reading the poems to myself, they didn't seem to make a lot of sense. Then when I read them out loud, it made a world of difference. I am not saying I understood everything. But the poem did seem to become much clearer. I think this has a lot to do with the punctuation. A lot of the lines can be read continuously even when there are periods. I think the purpose of many of the periods is to just make a pause before the word in order to emphasize that word. Slashes are used to create the same effect, but I feel they are more obvious. It's like a line break within a line. I kinda of like this playful form because I feel like the authors have complete artistic control; however, I feel like it can be much harder to interpret what is going on in the poem or what the author is trying to say. At the same time though I think the meaning is more of what the reader takes from the poem which I like as well.