February 2012
7 posts
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April Rain Song
Let the rain kiss you Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops Let the rain sing you a lullaby The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk The rain makes running pools in the gutter The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night And I love the rain. Langston Hughes
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Words like freedom
There are words like Freedom Sweet and wonderful to say. On my heart-strings freedom sings All day everyday.
There are words like Liberty That almost make me cry. If you had known what I knew You would know why.
by Langston Hughes
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“The Nuyorican Poets Cafe,
a cultural icon on New York’s Lower East Side...”
– Nuyorican Poets Cafe website
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“iii
and me angel
i’m tryin to write this
in honor of your divinity
but...”
– by suheir hammad from Angles got no maps in Listen Up! ed. zoe anglesey
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Doubtless by Steve Ericson
When I was seven,
I looked to heaven
and dreamed
of going to the moon
but pretty soon
somebody came along
to change my tune.
They put me down.
Bang! There my dream lay
on the ground.
Thank God, eventually
I came around
and dreamed another dream.
At first it seemed
a good idea to hide it,
confide it
to absolutely no one.
But that was no fun,
besides, I realized
I couldn’t....
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Latin Night at the Pawnshop
The apparition of a salsa band gleaming in the Liberty Loan pawnshop window:
Golden trumpet, silver trombone, congas, maracas, tambourine, all with price tags dangling
like the city morgue ticket on a dead man’s toe
-Martin Espada
from Aloud Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe
January 2012
44 posts
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“If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing...”
– Anais Nin (via mikefrawley)
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Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day
by Nikkie Giovanni
Reading to accompany the piece [link].
“Don’t look now I’m fading away Into the gray of my mornings Or the blues of every night
Is it that my nails keep breaking Or maybe the corn on my second little piggy Things keep popping out on my face or of my life
It seems no matter how I try I become more difficult to hold I am not...
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Kidnap Poem
by Nikkie Giovanni read by her here.
ever been kidnapped by a poet if i were a poet i’d kidnap you put you in my phrases and meter you to jones beach or maybe coney island or maybe just to my house lyric you in lilacs dash you in the rain blend into the beach to complement my see play the lyre for you ode you with my love song anything to win you wrap you in the red Black...
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“yeah if i were a poet i’d kid
nap you”
– Nikkie Giovanni
More on her from the Penn State African Research Center
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People Equal by James Berry
Some people shoot up tall.
Some hardly leave the ground at all.
Yet-people equal. Equal.
One voice is a sweet mango.
Another is a nonsugar tomato.
Yet-people equal. Equal.
Some people rush to the front.
Others hang back, feeling they can’t.
Yet-people equal. Equal.
Continued
Source: Hip Hop Speaks to Children, Nikki Giovanni, Ed.
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Hip Hop
Hip hop is a form of musical expression and artistic subculture that originated in African-American and Hispanic-American communities during the 1970s in New York City, specifically the Bronx.
Since its emergence in the South Bronx, hip hop culture has spread to both urban and suburban communities throughout the world.[9]Hip hop music first emerged with disc jockeys creating rhythmic beats by...
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Beats from music for poetry →
Nikki Giovanni on Cadence in poetry and song
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The Poetics of Hip Hop →
Glossary of Poetic Terms
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Ego Tripping →
Poem by Nikki Giovanni
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Now is the time
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in...
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“This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would...”
– Martin Luther King I have a dream excerpt, para. 4
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Beat
Most music, dance and oral poetry establishes and maintains an underlying “metric level”, a basic unit of time that may be audible or implied… the beat. This consists of a (repeating) series of identical yet distinct periodic short-duration stimuli perceived as points in time.[13] The “beat” pulse is not necessarily the fastest or the slowest component of the...
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Rhythm
Rhythm is made up of sounds and silences. These sound and silences are put together to form a patterns of sounds which are repeated to create a rhythm. A rhythm has a steady beat, but it may also have different kinds of beats. Some beats may be stronger, longer, shorter or softer than others. In a single piece of music, a composer can use many different rhythms.
Rhythm (from Greek...
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Syncopation
In music, syncopation includes a variety of rhythms which are in some way unexpected in that they deviate from the strict succession of regularly spaced strong and weak but also powerful beats in a meter (pulse). These include a stress on a normally unstressed beat or a rest where one would normally be stressed. “If a part of the measure that is usually unstressed is accented, the rhythm is...
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River lyrics by Joni Mitchell
It’s coming on Christmas They’re cutting down trees They’re putting up reindeer And singing songs of joy and peace Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on But it don’t snow here It stays pretty green I’m going to make a lot of money Then I’m going to quit this crazy scene Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on I wish I had a river so...
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Hyperballad lyrics
We live on a mountain right at the top there’s a beautiful view from the top of the mountain every morning i walk towards the edge and throw little things off like: car-parts, bottles and cutlery or whatever i find lying around it’s become a habit a way to start the day i go through this before you wake up so i can feel happier to be safe up here with you it’s...
Amelia
Amelia (video) by Joni Mitchell I was driving across the burning desert When I spotted six jet planes Leaving six white vapor trails across the bleak terrain It was the hexagram of the heavens it was the strings of my guitar Amelia * it was just a false alarm…
Lyrics continue…
Poetry Niches & Rhythms Syllabus →
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Árstíðir
Falling and falling on me everytime I walk under a tree yellow leavs and orange leaves and I feel like something I have felt before and feel like every every year the fall is very very near….
First Verse of Árstíðir - Pascal Pinon
Lyrics continued.
Watchendofmarch:
sharpsharpteeth:
Pascal Pinon at the coast
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Free Man in Paris
…
I was a free man in Paris I felt unfettered and alive There was nobody calling me up for favors And no one’s future to decide You know I’d go back there tomorrow But for the work I’ve taken on Stoking the star maker machinery Behind the popular song…
lyrics continued.
-Joni Mitchell
sleepinginthesnow:
My psychology book smells like chocolate. That might be my fault.
growing-orbits:
My family’s name is entwined with a small town in northern Poland. Where lakes and trees have marked a silent landscape, and despite the darkness of history, the Baltic Sea’s salty breath blows endlessly all the same. I never visited, but I can feel its somber beauty as a part of me, perhaps more than everything I do know.
“I have sea foam in my veins,
I understand the language of waves.”
– Le testament d’Orphée (via pauses-and-silences)
j u i l e t t 1 4: Autumn of Lost Things →
juilett14:
Leaves yellow and crushed autumn of lost things; a fragrance of tiptoes and broken strings and midnight rings around eyes so fragile. we have been stolen from - the days are wolves. Too many hands separate us, too many separations from song. i am walls upon walls, singing for things vital and…
furorpoeticus:
poetry is simple you sort of split your skull so that spinal fluid seeps out into sentences
