Rap Poetry II

Turns out you can take a class:

http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/2003/3/03.03.07.x.html

Rap Poetry

Is there any such thing? And if there is, is anybody doing it well?

Clearly this is a subject on which I’m very much not an authority.

Just to clarify what I’m looking for, I’m not asking about rap musicians whose lyrics might be called poetry or could be said to be poetic. Nor am I looking for sophisticated rap artists and theorists like DJ Spooky, whose work partakes of many of the same ideas that motivate contemporary experimental literature. Nor am I looking for contemporary experimental poets, like for instance the fantastic Julie Patton, whose art is clearly informed by hip hop culture. And I’m not simply looking for spoken word poetry either, or other African diaspora poetries like dub poetry, about which I know a fair amount.

No, I mean rap poetry: poetry made up of the same rhyming, word play, inflections and slang that comprise rap lyrics, and doing it in a way that works as poetry.

Although I’m nothing like an expert on rap music, I’m hardly completely ignorant of it. My taste runs more towards classic first generation rap like Public Enemy than it does later manifestations, although that maybe as much because I lack information as for any other reason. But in any case I know enough about rap music to hold a conversation about the subject.

Why am I asking about this? Every year, I have at least one student, and occasionally more than one, who comes to an interest in poetry through rap. Oddly enough perhaps, although it’s not really that surprising given the broad success of rap, the student is often, although not always, a white male.

When I have students of this kind, I’m never entirely sure how I should be trying to help them. Of course, I can work with them on rhythm and other sound effects in poetry as well as I need to. But what I don’t know is how to point them to writers and performers who are doing rap rhythms well simply as poetry, writers and performers who might be used as models or influences. And lacking those reference points, while I want to encourage students to go farther on whatever path they’re taking, I don’t entirely know what going farther might mean. Of course I already suggest that they consider broadening their palate of working sound effects and can show them many examples along those lines, whether it be Edwin Torres, Tracie Morris, Linton Kwesi Johnon or many others. But rap poets as such? I got nothing.

Which is why any names and ideas that you have would be really helpful.

Vote for Barack Obama on Tuesday

One of the most consistent and ridiculous political untruths of recent years is the widespread belief that the Republican party behaves more responsibly with U.S. tax dollars. In fact the opposite is true. Republican administrations of recent years have handed out U.S. tax dollars freely to personal cronies and to the scam artists of Wall Street and the military industry. They take your money and give it to their friends. George Bush has presided over a swelling National Debt and a budget deficit that is by far the largest in the nation’s history, at $455 billion as of October 15. Contrast that with the over $100 billion surplus in the federal budget when Bill Clinton left office in 2000.

Vote for Barack Obama and stop the Republican party’s attempt to bankrupt their own country. Vote Democratic this election to restore U.S. fiscal responsibility.

The Dunwich Horror

"You needn't ask how Wilbur called it out of the air. He didn't call it out. It was his twin brother, but it looked more like the father than he did."

Agitprop Reading Series begins its second year on November 1

We hope you can join us this Saturday, November 1 for the next reading
in the Agitprop reading series at Agitprop Gallery (2837 University
Ave in North Park, entrance on Utah, a few blocks west of 30th
Street), featuring STAN APPS and MATHEW TIMMONS. Wine
and snacks will be served. Donations to the gallery are always
appreciated.

Stan Apps is a poet and essayist living in Los Angeles. His books of
poems include soft hands (Ugly Duckling Presse), Princess of the World
in Love (Cy Press), Info Ration (Make Now Press) and God's Livestock
Policy (Les Figues Press). A collection of essays is underway from
Combo Books. Recent work has appeared in Joyland: a hub for short
fiction (http://www.joyland.ca/home/los_angeles), Try Magazine,
Abraham Lincoln, Ecopoetics, and the Icelandic webzine Tregawott.
Stan ekes out a living as an adjunct college instructor, teaching the
poor to write short persuasive essays.

Mathew Timmons co-edits/curates Insert Press (w/ Stan Apps), LA-Lit (
w/ Stephanie Rioux) and Late Night Snack (w/ Harold Abramowitz). His
collaboration with visual artist Marcus Civin, a particular vocabulary
(P S Books), is forthcoming, and his work may be found in various
journals, including: Sleepingfish, P-Queue, Holy Beep!, Flim Forum,
The Physical Poets, NōD, PRECIPICe, Or, Moonlit, aslongasittakes,
eohippus labs and The Encyclopedia Project. He teaches
interdisciplinary arts and writing workshops for CalArts School of
Critical Studies.

We hope to see you there and for all festivities afterwards!

AGITPROP POETRY SERIES
Saturday, June 7th
7:00pm
AGITPROP Gallery
2837 University Ave in North Park. Entrance on Utah.

Untitled Speculations: Where I'll Be This Weekend

(text taken from the conference website)



Untitled: Speculations on the Expanded Field of Writing

REDCAT and CalArts present the fifth annual series of experimental writing conferences at REDCAT, Untitled: Speculations on the Expanded Field of Writing is a two-day conversation about writing which, in some manner, exceeds the printed page. While familiar with visual artworks constituted as a set of instructions, secrets written by visitors in a book, or one artist erasing of another artist's work, is discussed how to be equivalent in the literary world. The conference is October 24-25, 2008.

Untitled is a common name of contemporary art works and also refers to the incipient moment of a new text or idea. It was chosen to convey a sense of openness and process. A variety of writers and artists will discuss the use of language and words and/or their object status, the book and the letter, the question of the "emptiness" vs. the fullness of language as a poetic medium, the pictorial versus the narrative, the incorporation of extra-linguistic symbols and signs (maps, diagrams, formulas, etc.), the question of conceptual writing and words off the page -- performed, cited, projected, incanted or invoked.

Among the participants is Kenny Goldsmith, an "uncreative" writer who labels himself the most boring writer in the world. He writes books that include everything he said for a week (Soliloquy, 2001), every move his body made during a thirteen-hour period (Fidget, 1999), and a year of transcribed weather reports (The Weather, 2005).

Artist Young-Hae Chang is part of a corporate web art group known as Heavy Industries, whose short Flash texts have mesmerized the art world with their combination of graphic boldness and acute commentary on culture, politics and commerce, yielding a new kind of literary cinema.

Currently teaching in the Writing Program at CalArts, and another participant, Salvador Plascencia's first novel, The People of Paper, takes place in the Chicano Diaspora. Reflecting on the nature of literary characters, some of his people are literally made of paper, and others get paper cuts from them.

The conference will include two panels on the topic of Litterality, and examine how writers use what we normally consider non-linguistic elements, such as symbols, diagrams, maps, or scores placed in the context of writing. Also explored are invented writing systems, and what it might mean to think about the book as an object rather than as a collection of words or sentences.

As in the art world, many kinds of appropriation have been undertaken by experimental writers in the last several years. The panel on Appropriation and Citation will look at these practices, asking questions about whose work and what material gets appropriated, cited or resurrected, who owns texts, and if there is a difference between appropriation and citation.

A panel on The Meaninglessness or -fulness of Language will examine language as a vehicle of meaning. Rather than look at what texts say, it asks if language simply taken on its own is empty, saturated with meaning, both, or something else.

The fifth panel on The Concept of Conceptual Writing, looks at the use of writing not to convey meaning or tell stories but to convey concepts, asking how this might be similar, or not, to the work of conceptual artists in the visual arena.

In addition to the five panels, there will be two evening readings. The participants in the conference are Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Latasha Diggs, Johanna Drucker, Kenneth Goldsmith, Robert Grenier, Douglas Kearney, Steve McCaffery, Julie Patton, Salvador Plascencia, Jessica Smith, Brian Kim Stefans, Stephanie Taylor, Shanxing Wang and Heriberto Yepez. This event is organized by Matias Viegener and Christine Wertheim of the Writing Program at CalArts, and funded by The Annenberg Foundation.

Conference Schedule:

Friday, October 24
12.30 p.m.
Opening Addresses

1.00-3.00 p.m.
Litterality 1
Writing is not speech, it is letters on a page. What do we make of the inclusion in writing of non-alphabetic signs, symbols, diagrams; writing as map or score; invented writing notations; or the book as object?

Panelists will includes Johanna Drucker, Salvador Plascencia, Latasha Diggs, Shanxing Wang

3.30-5.00 p.m.
The Meaninglessness or -fulness of Language
As a vehicle, is language empty, saturated with meaning, both, or something else?

Panelists will include Jessica Smith, Bob Grenier, Christine Wertheim

5.00-6.00 p.m
Drinks at REDCAT with participants and audience

8.30-10.30 p.m.
Evening Readings/Performances
TBD

Saturday, October 25
10.30 a.m-12.00 p.m.
Appropriation and Citation
Whose work and what material gets appropriated, cited and resurrected? Who owns texts? Is there a difference between appropriation and citation?

Panelists will include Steve McCaffery, Doug Kearney, Kenneth Goldsmith

12.30-2.00 p.m
Litterality 2
Writing is not speech, it is letters on a page. What do we make of the inclusion in writing of non-alphabetic signs, symbols, diagrams; writing as map or score; invented writing notations; or the book as object?

Panelists will include Brian Kim Stephans, Julie Patton, Vincent Dachy

Break

3.30-5.00 p.m.
The Concept of Conceptual Writing.
What is the relation between conceptual writing and the trajectory of conceptual art?

Panelists will include Stephanie Taylor, Heriberto Yepez, Young-Hae Chang+Marc Voge

5.00-6.00 p.m.
Summary Discussion with all panelists

8.30-10.30 p.m.
Evening Readings/Performances
TBD

Organized by Christine Wertheim and Matias Viegener from CalArts’ MFA Writing Program.

White Racists for McCain/Palin

In what ways is the rise of racist behavior among McCain/Palin supporters the same racism that one might have seen in the U.S. in the 1980s, the 60s, or even earlier? That’s one of the questions I’ve been asking myself lately while simultaneously wishing that this campaign season would get itself over with a little more quickly. It’s not a question I have a complete set of answers to (obviously) so much as a set of observations and speculations. I’m not trying here to take up the issues of structural or institutional racism but to look at ways in which racist attitudes showing themselves in this election season seem like or unlike past manifestations.

What’s new is calling a Presidential candidate a terrorist and associating African Americans and other minority groups with terrorism. This seems very much a post September 11 phenomenon.

What’s new also is the degree of fear and anger at the idea that a black man might be President. Of course that’s new because it’s never really been a possibility before.

What’s not new is the anger of economically marginal whites at finding themselves competing for jobs with minority groups and sometimes losing out and believing that such a situation is unacceptable. White people’s feelings about entitlement seem pretty similar to what they have often been.

What’s also not new is the lack of jobs and loss of opportunity in rural areas. That said, there’s certainly a new cycle going on in U.S.’ boom and bust tendencies that has different features than earlier. I’m not sure what those features are exactly, but they have to do with what kinds of jobs have vanished and what few kinds remain. With most industrial and agricultural jobs long gone, what remains other than low wage retail work and various small business attempts at making a few dollars? Still, that particular change isn’t all that new, although at the moment it may be particularly severe.

What is new is the degree to which the white middle class is disappearing in many small city and rural environments. The degree of division between a few elites and a struggling underclass is less hidden, while more small cities begin to resemble abandoned urban areas.

What is also new is the increasing number and types of minority group citizens in small city and rural areas. This demographic shift may suggest that even rural whites now encounter more types of minority groups than in the past.

What’s new also is the degree to which even racists often seem to understand that being labeled a racist is a bad thing. Racists are more quick than ever before to deny that they are racists and to make a public ruckus if anybody calls them racist. As unpleasant as that phenomenon is, it indicates a profound shift in U.S. history. Even many racists grant that racism is wrong and so in some instances have to struggle with how best to code racist language so that it doesn’t seem transparently racist.

But does the above also suggest that there may be less white racists than ever before? That’s something I don’t know.

What’s new also is the relationship between Americans and material goods. Of course if one compares standards of housing and kinds of available material goods between 2008 and the 1960s and further back, it would be immediately clear how many more material goods are available to economically marginal people than were 50 years ago. But, for instance, the explosion of the price of gas means that it’s more difficult to afford to drive a car, if you actually have one, so that a basic element of rural life seems endangered. And people are less likely to own their own homes and more likely to not be able to afford the homes they have recently tried to purchase.

What’s not new is the degree of scapegoating and its perpetual illogic: that minority groups are to blame for the problems of white people, rather than the financial and market practices of people who often may have a similar cultural background.

This list is hardly complete. Certainly I’m not talking here about the more subtle, sometimes even unconscious racism that continues to pervade U.S. culture: the identification of behavioral traits with race and racially coded behavioral preferences, etc. The effects of the less visible racism practiced by comfortably well-off suburban and urban people is also much harder to recognize and describe. And it’s difficult to know the degree to which any of these things will finally affect the voting on November 4. Still, it has been interesting (as well as troubling, obviously) this election season to witness the ways racism itself changes in relationship to other changing social dynamics.