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Souls
A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society
Volume 5, 2003 - Issue 1
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Original Articles

Understanding the New New Black Poetry

Pages 16-31 | Published online: 02 Feb 2011

References

  • Forman , Ruth . 1997 . “ Renaissance ” . In Renaissance , 120 Boston : Beacon Press .
  • Ken S. Wiwa, Hurston Wright Foundation Legacy Awards, Washington, D.C., 5 October 2002.
  • I use the terms Black and African American interchangeably. For the purposes of this essay, my use follows Clarence Major's explanation in the editor's note of 7"Ac' Garden Thrives: Twentieth Century African-American Poetry (New York: Harper, 1996), 437. Major defines African American poetry as "poetry written by poets who trace some of their ancestors to Africa and who have lived as blacks in the U.S., irrespective of where, in the Diaspora, they happened to have been born."
  • Tony Medina and Louis Rivera, eds., Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001), xix.
  • Sec, for instance, Roben Parker's discussion of "the social ideology of genre" in which he observes that the relationship between value and verse influenced many ethnographers' decisions to transcribe unlincated "oral narrative" into stanza and line breaks and to classify it as poetry. "Text, Lines and Videotape: The Ideology of Genre and the Transcription of Traditional Native American Oral Narrative as Poetry," Arizona Quarterly 53, no.3 (Autumn 1997): 144 145.
  • Dana Bryant, W.vAmg From the Top, Warner Bros. Records, 1996.
  • Sckou Sundiata, Long Story Short, Righteous Babe Records, 2000.
  • Eargasms: Crucial Poetics, Volume 1, Ozone Records, 1999.
  • Clarence Major, comp., The New Black Poetry (New York: International Publishers, 1969).
  • John Rickford, Spoken Soul (New York: Rickford and Rickford, 2000), 4.
  • Asim, "New Thing?" 312.
  • Amiri Baraka, "State/Meant," in Home: Social Essays (New York: Morrow, 1966, 1969), 252.
  • Amiri Baraka, "The Leroi Jones / Amiri Baraka Reaqder, William J. Harris, ed. (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1991).
  • Joel Dias-Porter, a.k.a. DJ Renegade, "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash," in Medina and Rivera, eds., Bum Rush, 264.
  • Bob Holman, "Performance Poetry," in Annie Finch and Kathrine Varnes, eds., An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 341.
  • Trade Morris, "Hip Hop Rhyme Formations: Open Your Ears," in Finch and Varnes, eds., Exaltation of Forms, 227.
  • Sonia Sanchez, Bum Rush, xv.
  • Morris, "Project Princess," Our Souls Have Grown Deep Like the Rivers: Black Poets Read Their Work, Rhino Word Beat, 2000.
  • Morris, "Princess," The United Stales of Poetry, Mouth Almighty Records, 1996. This compilation is based on the PBS documentary series of the same name.
  • Morris, "Princess," http://www.worldof poetry.org/usop/land4.htm (contains a printed ver-sion of the poem).
  • Paul Hoover, "Counted Verse: Upper Limit Music," in Fineh and Varnes, eds., Exaltation of Forms, 32.
  • Morris, "Princess," world of poetry.org. Morris's readings of the poem on both the Rhino and Mouth Almighty recordings.
  • Morris, "Princess."
  • Kevin Young, "The Black Psychic Hotline, Or, The Future of African American Writing," Giant Steps (New York: Harper Perennial, 2000), 6.
  • Morris, "Rhyme Formations," in Finch and Vaenes, cds., Exaltation of Form, 227.
  • Moore, "My Caged Bird Don't Sing and Every Black Bird Ain't A Piece of Fried Chicken," The Words Don't Fit In My Mouth (New York: Moore Black Press, 1997), 97.
  • Williams, "1987," Seventh Octave (New York: Moore Black Press, 1997), 35.
  • Williams, "Indigo On," Octave, 8.
  • Ibid., 7.
  • Moore, "My Caged Bird," The Words Don't Fit, 97.
  • Moore, "My Caged Bird," Eargasms.
  • Saul Williams, "Twice the First Time," Eargasms.
  • Morris, "Rhyme Formations," Exaltation of Forms, 227.
  • Medina, Bum Rush, xix.
  • Ibid.
  • Jabari Asim, "What Is This New Thing?" in Joannc V. Gabbin, ed., The Furious Flowering of Africian American Poetry (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999), 315. Hc cites Digable Planets and Arrested Development as notable exceptions.
  • Major, "The Explosion of Black Poetry," The Dark and The Feeling (New York: Third Press, 1974), 36 37. Echoing Major's statement, Stephen Henderson remarked in his classic monograph, Understanding the New Black Poetry (New York: Morrow, 1973), that the cold and mute technology of the page ultimately confronted Black Arts poets, and they were limited by the material boundaries of the written word.
  • Karla Holloway, Codes of Conduct: Race, Ethics, and the Color of Our Character (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 114.
  • Morris, "Rhyme Formations," 225.
  • Asim, "New Thing'.'" 311, 312.
  • Senna and Troupe quotations from book jacket back, Paul Beatty, Joker, Joker, Deuce (New York: Penguin, 1994). Senna also quoted in Michelle lngrassia ct al., "A New Beat Generation Tries on Its Goatee," Newsweek, 19 April 1993.
  • Beatty, "Verbal Mugging," Joker, Joker Deuce, 36.
  • Ibid., 37.
  • Elizabeth Alexander, "At the Beach," Body of Life (Chicago: Tia Chucha Press, 1996), 80.
  • Ibid.
  • Performance by Alexander in Furious Flower : African American Poetry 1960 1995, Volume IV Initiates, Joanne Gabbin, executive producer, California Newsreel, 1998.
  • Ibid., Gabbin statements.
  • Sharan Strange, "The Body," Ash (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001), 62.
  • Ibid.
  • Young, "Black Psychic,"Giant Steps, 2.
  • Robin M. Caudell, "Where Poets Explore Their Pain While Others Beware the Dog," American Visions, October 1999.
  • Major, New Black Poetry, 20 21.
  • Ibid.
  • See Meta DuEwa Jones, "Jazz Prosodies: Orality and Textuality," Callaloo 25, no. 1 (Winter, 2002).

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