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?