The BreakBeat Poets Read online

  Praise for The BreakBeat Poets

  “A cool & diversified version of a mixtape. The BreakBeat Poets is a thorough and complete summation of Golden Era writers who continue to build the scene of literary and performance poetry.”

  —Chance The Rapper

  “The BreakBeat Poets presents the struggle-born whispers, joyous shouts, and hopeful flows of a beautiful multitude four decades in the making. Here are the voices of a movement that just won’t stop. For the urgent midnight roar of the people’s poetry and the glimpses of freshly conjured dawns awaiting their own breaks—this book is nothing short of essential.”

  —Jeff Chang, author of Who We Be: The Colorization of America and Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

  “Finally! Here’s the anthology that puts in print what we’ve known all along: rap is poetry, and hip-hop is a genre of poetry bigger than poetry itself. Read these poems and get rid of the notion once and for all that hip-hop poems are meant for the stage and don’t work on the page. And the authors’ statements and essays place these poems straight in the American grain, the current iteration of the African American poetic lineage. The BreakBeat Poets is the essential text for anyone who wants to know what’s up with American poetry in the digital age.”

  —Bob Holman, Bowery Poetry Club

  “Every generation needs its poets; we never doubted that the rappers were poets, but as The BreakBeat Poets shows, the rappers didn’t put the poets out ­­of work.”

  —Mark Anthony Neal, coeditor of

  That’s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader

  “It’s amazing to see how expansive the dialogue has become. This book is heavy!”

  —Bobbito Garcia, cohost of The Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Show

  © 2015 Kevin Coval, Quraysh Ali Lansana, and Nate Marshall

  Haymarket Books

  PO Box 180165

  Chicago, IL 60618

  773-583-7884

  [email protected]

  www.haymarketbooks.org

  ISBN: 978-1-60846-450-0

  Trade distribution:

  In the US, through Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, www.cbsd.com

  In the UK, Turnaround Publisher Services, www.turnaround-psl.com

  All other countries, Publishers Group Worldwide, www.pgw.com

  Special discounts are available for bulk purchases by organizations and

  institutions. Please contact Haymarket Books for more information at

  773-583-7884 or [email protected].

  This book was published with the generous support of Lannan Foundation and the Wallace Action Fund.

  Library of Congress CIP data is available.

  Cover art from Untitled… Negro Mythos Series by Hebru Brantley.

  Contents

  Kevin Coval

  Introduction

  Randall Horton (1961)

  an (i)witness say he still had the mike in his hand

  Joel Dias-Porter aka DJ Renegade (1962)

  Turning the Tables

  Wednesday Poem

  Thomas Sayers Ellis (1963)

  An Excerpt from Crank Shaped Notes

  Quraysh Ali Lansana (1964)

  mascot

  crack house

  seventy-first & king drive

  Evie Shockley (1965)

  duck, duck, redux

  post-white

  Tony Medina (1966)

  Everything You Wanted to Know about Hip Hop But Were Afraid to Be Hipped for Fear of Being Hopped

  The Keepin’ It Real Awards

  Willie Perdomo (1967)

  Shit to Write About

  Word to Everything I Love

  Writing about What You Know

  Mario (1967)

  Agate

  Roger Bonair-Agard (1968)

  Honorific or black boy to black boy

  Fast—how I knew

  In defense of the code-switch or why you talk like that or why you gotta always be cussing

  Lynne Procope (1969)

  Shine (for Joe Bataan)

  All Night

  Patrick Rosal (1969)

  B-Boy Infinitives

  Kundiman Ending on a Theme from T La Rock

  A Note To Thomas Alva

  Ode To The Cee-Lo Players

  Tracie Morris

  Untitled

  Jason Carney (1970)

  America’s Pastime

  LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs (1970)

  who you callin’ a jynx? (after mista popo)

  damn right it’s betta than yours

  gamin’ gabby

  Mitchell L. H. Douglas (1970)

  Hood

  Krista Franklin (1970)

  Manifesto, or Ars Poetica #2

  Preface to a Twenty Volume Homicide Note

  Adrian Matejka (1971)

  Beat Boxing

  Robot Music

  jessica Care moore (1971)

  mic check, 1-2.

  John Murillo (1971)

  Ode to the Crossfader

  1989

  Renegades of Funk

  francine j. harris (1972)

  Stitches

  Pull down the earth

  This is a test

  t’ai freedom ford (1973)

  how to get over (senior to freshman)

  how to get over (for my niggas)

  how to get over (for kanye)

  Suheir Hammad (1973)

  break (rebirth)

  break (sister)

  break (embargo)

  Marty McConnell (1973)

  The World tells how the world ends

  object

  John Rodriguez (1973–2013)

  Bronx Bombers

  What I Saw Was Not Your Funeral

  At My Best

  Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie (1973)

  Paper Bag Poems

  Global Warming Blues

  Sunday

  Possible (for Amiri Baraka)

  Tara Betts (1974)

  Hip Hop Analogies

  Switch

  Paolo Javier (1974)

  from All Convulsions

  Douglas Kearney (1974)

  Quantum Spit

  No Homo

  Drop It Like It’s Hottentot Venus.

  avery r. young (1974)

  a prayer fo mama Brenda Matthews (warrior brew)

  after an artis(t) talk

  Lemon Andersen (1975)

  The future

  Michael Cirelli (1975)

  The Message

  Astronomy (8th Light)

  Kevin Coval (1975)

  the crossover

  jewtown

  molemen beat tapes

  white on the block

  Jericho Brown (1976)

  Motherland

  Mahogany L. Browne (1976)

  When 12 Play Was on Repeat

  upon viewing the death of basquiat

  nameless

  Aracelis Girmay (1977)

  ELEGY IN GOLD

  BREAK

  Idris Goodwin (1977)

  Say my name

  Old ladies and dope boys

  These are the breaks

  Enzo Silon Surin (1977)

  Corners

  Mayda Del Valle (1978)

  It’s Just Begun

  Denizen Kane (1978)

  Ciphers Pt 1

  Vigil Pt 1

  Paul Martinez Pompa

  I Have a Drone

  Kyle Dargan (1980)

  CREWS

  SLANG

  O.P.P.

  Tarfia Faizullah (1980)

  100 BELLS

  NOCTURNE IN NEED OF A BITCH

  BLOSSOMS IN THE DARK

  SELF-PORTRAIT AS SLINKY

  Samantha Thornhill
(1980)

  Elegy for a Trojan

  Ode to a Star Fig

  Ode to Gentrification

  Ode to a Killer Whale

  Aleshea Harris (1981)

  Harbor

  Jacob Saenz (1982)

  Evolution of My Block

  Evolution of My Profile

  GTA: San Andreas (or, ‘Grove Street, bitch!’)

  Nadia Sulayman (1982)

  bint ibrahim

  Sarah Blake (1984)

  Ha Ha Hum

  Adventures

  Adam Falkner (1984)

  If You Don’t Know

  Chinaka Hodge (1984)

  Small Poems for Big

  Marcus Wicker (1984)

  Stakes is High

  When I’m alone in my room sometimes I stare at the wall, and in the back of my mind I hear my conscience call

  Ars Poetica in the Mode of J-Live

  Bonita Applebum

  Michael Mlekoday (1985)

  Self Portrait with Gunshot Vernacular

  Self Portrait from the Other Side

  Thaumaturgy

  Kristiana Colón (1986)

  a remix for remembrance

  stockholm syndrome

  Eve Ewing (1986)

  to the notebook kid

  Ciara Miller (1987)

  In Search of Black Birds

  Morgan Parker (1987)

  Let Me Handle My Business, Damn

  Joshua Bennett (1988)

  When asked about my hometown: an admission

  When asked about my hometown: an anecdote

  Love Letter to Zack, The Black Power Ranger

  Alysia Nicole Harris (1988)

  When I Put My Hands in the Air It’s Praise

  Britteney Black Rose Kapri (1988)

  Winthrop Ave.

  We House: after Krista Franklin’s Definition of Funk

  Angel Nafis (1988)

  Legend

  Ghazal for My Sister

  Conspiracy: A Suite

  Gravity

  José Olivarez (1988)

  Ode to the First White Girl I Ever Loved

  Home Court

  Joy Priest (1988)

  No Country for Black Boys

  Ocean Vuong (1988)

  Always & Forever

  Self-Portrait as Exit Wounds

  Prayer for the Newly Damned

  Daily Bread

  Fatimah Asghar (1989)

  When Tip Drill Comes on at the Frat Party Or, When Refusing to Twerk Is a Radical Form of Self-Love

  Unemployment

  PLUTO SHITS ON THE UNIVERSE

  Franny Choi (1989)

  PUSSY MONSTER

  IMPULSE BUY

  Nate Marshall (1989)

  on caskets

  prelude

  picking flowers

  juke

  Aaron Samuels (1989)

  Broken Ghazal in the Voice of My Brother Jacob

  Danez Smith (1989)

  cue the gangsta rap when my knees bend

  twerk (v.)

  Dinosaurs In The Hood

  Dear White America

  Jamila Woods (1989)

  Defense

  Blk Girl Art

  Deep in the Homeroom of Doom

  Daddy Dozens

  Benjamin Alfaro (1990)

  What the Eyes Saw

  Safia Elhillo (1990)

  a suite for ol’ dirty

  Aziza Barnes (1992)

  Juicy (an erasure)

  Camonghne Felix (1992)

  Badu Interviews Lamar (an erasure)

  Police

  Steven Willis (1992)

  Beat Writers

  Reed Bobroff (1993)

  Four Elements of Ghostdance

  Malcolm London (1993)

  Grand Slam

  Kush Thompson (1994)

  this, here

  E’mon McGee (1996)

  My niece’s hip-hop

  Angel Pantoja (1997)

  Murder Is My Name

  Nile Lansana (1997) and Onam Lansana (1999)

  Lesson one

  Ars Poeticas & Essays

  Quraysh Ali Lansana

  Art, Artifice, & Artifact

  t’ai freedom ford

  Artist Statement

  Michael Mlekoday

  Artist Statement

  Douglas Kearney

  Artist Statement

  Angel Nafis

  Artist Statement

  Aziza Barnes

  A Locus of Control and the Erasure

  Tara Betts

  Life Is Good: How Hip Hop Channels Duende

  Roger Bonair-Agard

  Journeying to the break: The cost of the pilgrimage

  Patrick Rosal

  The Art of the Mistake: Some Notes on Breaking as Making

  Nate Marshall

  Blueprint for BreakBeat Writing

  Reprinted Poems

  Acknowledgments

  Biographies

  Introduction

  Ciphers rise together:

  The Black Poets, edited by Dudley Randall

  Black Fire, edited by Amiri Baraka and Larry Neal

  The New American Poetry, edited by Donald Allen

  “Scenario,” by A Tribe Called Quest, featuring Leaders of the New School.

  Posse Cuts, and the Rock Steady Crew. The Harlem Renaissance and the Native Tongues. The Black Arts Poets and the Good Life Cafe. Flavor Unit and the Beat Generation.

  This is the first anthology of poems by and for the hip-hop generation. And it’s about time. This book is this first of its kind. It includes more than four decades of poets and covers the birth to the now of hip-hop culture and music and style. This is the story of how generations of young people reared on hip-hop culture and aesthetics took to the page and poem and microphone to create a movement in american letters in the tradition of the Black Arts, Nuyorican, and Beat generations and add to it and innovate on top. We are in the tradition—and making one up. Hip-hop saves young people from voicelessness and art-less public educations. We came to writing in numerous ways, inside and outside of academia. We are dropouts and MFA degree holders, money folders and working folk. The story of how we got here, how I got here, is indicative of how many of my peers and colleagues came to the page, to the poem, and to this book.

  Here we go:

  At some point I was building on the phone with Idris Goodwin, rapper/poet/essayist and hip-hop’s August Wilson. A continuing conversation, trying to assess and theorize and practice what hip-hop generation writers are doing that’s different from writers of other generations. How we flip it and make it fresh, our own, how it’s similar attention to the syllabic breath unit paid by Gwendolyn Brooks, John Coltrane, and Lil Wayne, how it’s some AFRICOBRA kool-aid color realist portraiture and also legible/illegible graffiti wildstyle and sometimes simultaneously Sun Ra futurism/future world/reclamation of history, on some Lerone Bennett Jr., Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Howard Zinn–type shit.

  It was the early ’90s. Not too long after The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and, after reading a magazine whose title I can’t remember, I realized this particular magic was meant for me. In this magazine the words of Sekou Sundiata, Willie Perdomo, and Paul Beatty appeared. So did something about Poets, the Lower East Side, and New Africa. Something like that. That experience was similar to when I first read Sonia Sanchez, Jayne Cortez, Nikki Giovanni, Amiri Baraka, and Haki Madhubuti, of sitting cross-legged in the stacks of a public library completely engrossed in Dudley Randall’s anthology, when I felt that finally here is poetry that is alive and relatable, a language of the working: all the horror and hope and humanity. And here, via Willie and Paul particularly, was, in my mind, how hip-hop might look and read and sing and break and holler on the page.

  Reading these poets sent me to find the public cultural spaces of hip-hop praxis. The open-mic live spots and B-boy/B-girl jams that operate as aesthetic showcase and battleground and communal sanctuary. In Chicago, it was the Blue Groove Lounge, a Mo
nday-night set run by DJ Jesse De La Pena and the Afro-centric oil and book shop Another Level at Lit-X’s Saturday-night live open-mic spot. These were public cultural spaces where budding practitioners brought their kung-fu out in the open. Hip-hop’s need and desire to connect to an audience, in the call and response, made manifest.

  So Idris and I were talking, right… and conferring on the growing audience for this work, the tens of thousands of young people we are in front of on a yearly basis with this new poetic, who give it back tenfold in the growing hyper/multi-literate hip-hop–centric educational ciphers and spaces, informal and otherwise, in the organizations we build and build with: Youth Speaks in the Bay and the Brave New Voices network; Urban Word in NYC; the Neutral Zone in Ann Arbor, MI; the First Wave cohorts in Madison, WI; crews of young writers in Tulsa, OK; Dallas–Fort Worth, TX; Omaha, NE; DC-Maryland-Virginia; South Florida; Hamilton, Ontario; Boston; Nashville; Seattle; and of course the tens of thousands of young writers we have communed with around the word at Young Chicago Authors and the Louder Than A Bomb festivals blossoming around the country. Today, there are dozens of community-based organizations engaged in building and educating around this work. And we were talking about this new mass and growing movement and army, and we were on one and thinking about the whole thing and Idris said something crazy like, “Yeah man, you know, we are the BreakBeat Poets, our generation, this is what we do.”And I was like... excuse me? And then I was silent for a minute and knew he was on to something and felt like some miracle break just happened and it took me back and I think my eyes watered and think I might’ve let a tear drop... maybe.

  The BreakBeat Poets. Poets influenced by the breaks. The break down, polyrhythmic, funky sections of records extended by Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash to lay a sonic foundation for the largest global youth culture in the history of the planet rock. The break where dancers, break boys and break girls (B-boys and B-girls), emerge on the floor to pop and lock and spin and defy the limitations of body and gravity. To break from the norm. The BreakBeat is the earth of hip-hop, what rappers began to rhyme couplets over. They extended those couplets to make verses and choruses and began to slant rhyme and enjam and extend the line and line break in odd, thrilling places. A break in time. A rupture in narrative. A signifying of something new. Fresh. Dope. Ill. A generation unto itself. Arrived and here. A break from the Beats, an extension of the Black Arts, a continuation of the Nuyorican crew on the Lower East Side, a pidgin and Nation language, to cite Kamau Brathwaite. Hybrid and mixed. The BreakBeat Poets blow up bullshit distinctions between high and low, academic and popular, rap and poetry, page and stage. A break from the wack. A break from the hidden and precious, the elite and esteemed. A break from pejorative notions about what constitutes art, who it’s for and by and why. A break with the past. The bridge is over. The BreakBeat Poets and hip-hop culture are saving american poetry.