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Performance, vernacular culture, & feminist poetries: This week in A Social History of Spoken Word Poetry

3/4/2018

12 Comments

 
As an inveterate reviser (writing is never done, it's just due), I'm not surprised as I go through a semester and start seeing all sorts of other choices I could have made in designing a course, in selecting topics and readings and emphases and activities and assignments. It happens whether I create a new syllabus in one stressful week or ruminate for months, jotting notes in excited bursts of inspiration and pulling it all together in measured sessions full of careful thought. 

I don't always remember to document these alternative ideas when they occur, which means I'm not always refining and revising course plans as fruitfully as I might. As an aid to my own distracted memory, then, please enjoy the first installment of a new sometimes-series I'm thinking of as "other courses, other texts."

This post features 2 books we're reading for the Spring 2018 graduate seminar "A Social History of Spoken Word Poetry," and an increasing number of books that come to mind as I prepare for our conversation tomorrow. Note: Diana Taylor, author of 2 of the "other texts" below, is a scholar I've mentioned several times in class as we discuss the challenges of generating thick-enough (to paraphrase Geertz) description/representation of performance events to be able to describe and analyze them usefully in our research.

Current Course Readings

Performing the Word: African American Poetry as Vernacular Culture.
Fahamisha Brown, Rutgers UP, 1999.
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CONTENTS​​
  1. Mother Tongue: African American Vernacular Speech as Poetic Language
  2. Orality: Language and Voice
  3. The Poetry of Preachment: Didacticism in African American Poetry
  4. Song/​Talk: African American Music and Song as Poetic References
  5. Tell My Story: Boast and Toast Traditions
  6. "Black Is ... and Black Ain't": Of Gender and Generations in African American Poetry.
The Feminist Poetry Movement.
Kim Whitehead, UP of Mississippi, 1996. 
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CONTENTS
  1. The Life of the Movement.
  2. Judy Grahn's Poetics of Commonality 
  3. Feminist and Black Arts Strategies in the Poetry of June Jordan 
  4. Survival as Form in the Work of Gloria Anzaldúa and Irena Klepfisz
  5. History, Myth, and Empowerment in Joy Harjo's Poetry
  6. Motherhood, Eroticism, and Community in the Poetry of Minnie Bruce Pratt

Resources: Black Vernacular Verbal Performance
The Dozens, toasts, girls' games

The Dirty Dozens
Collected skits from In Living Color 

"Daddy Dozens" by Jamila Woods
"Daddy Dozens" written text
​"Daddy Dozens" audio performance
​
The Signifying Monkey
Performed by Rudy Ray Moore

"The Name Game" by Shirley Ellis

Relevant Studies

Performance
​Diana Taylor, 2016, Duke UP
Picture
​CONTENTS
  1. Framing [Performance]
  2. Performance Histories
  3. Spect-Actors
  4. The New Uses of Performance
  5. Performative and Performativity
  6. Knowing through Performance: Scenarios and Simulation
  7. Artivists (Artist-Activists), or What's to Be Done?
  8. The Future(s) of Performance
  9. Performance Studies
Diana Taylor is University Professor of Performance Studies and Spanish at New York University. She is the author and editor of several books, including The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas and Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina's "Dirty War", both also published by Duke University Press.

Prophets of the Hood:
​Politics & Poetics in Hip-Hop

​Imani Perry, 2004, Duke UP
Picture
​CONTENTS
  1. Hip Hop's Mama: Originalism and Identity in the Music 
  2. My Mic Sound Nice: Art, Community, and Consciousness
  3. Stinging Like Tabasco: Structure and Format in Hip Hop Compositions
  4. The Glorious Outlaw: Hip Hop Narratives, American Law, and the Court of Public Opinion
  5. B-Boys, Players, and Preachers: Reading Masculinity
  6. The Venus Hip Hop and the Pink Ghetto: Negotiating Spaces for Women
  7. Bling Bling…and Going Pop: Consumerism and Co-optation in Hip Hop
Imani Perry is a Professor in the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University.

The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas
Diana Taylor, Duke UP, 2003
Picture
After Mecca: Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement
​Cheryl Clarke, Rutgers UP, 2004
Picture
CONTENTS
  1. Acts of Transfer
  2. Scenarios of Discovery: Reflections on Performance and Ethnography
  3. Memory as Cultural Practice: Mestizaje, Hybridity, Transculturation
  4. La Raza Cosmetica: Walter Mercado Performs Latino Psychic Space 
  5. False Identifications: Minority Populations Mourn Diana 
  6. "You Are Here": H.I.J.O.S. and the DNA of Performance 
  7. Staging Traumatic Memory: Yuyachkani 
  8. Denise Stoklos: The Politics of Decipherability 
  9. Lost in the Field of Vision: Witnessing September 11 
  10. Hemispheric Performances 

Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America
Geneva Smitherman, Wayne State UP, 1977
Picture
CONTENTS
  1. From Africa to the New World and Into the Space Age
  2. "It's Bees Dat Way Sometime"
  3. Black Semantics
  4. "How I Got Ovuh"
  5. "The Forms of things Unknown"
  6. Where It's at
  7. Where Do We go From Here? T.C.B.!
​Appendix A
Some Well-Known Black Proverbs and Sayings

Appendix B
Get Down Exercise On Black English Sounds

​Appendix C
Black Semantics: A Selected Glossary
​CONTENTS
  1. 'Missed Love': Black Power and Black Poetry 
  2. The Loss of Lyric Space in Gwendolyn Brooks' "In the Mecca"
  3. Queen Sistuh: Black Women Poets and the Circle(s) of Blackness
  4. Black Feminist Communalism in Ntozake Shange's for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf
  5. Transferences and Confluences: Black Arts and Black Lesbian-Feminism in Audre Lorde's The Black Unicorn

Love & Theft
​Eric Lott, Oxford UP, 1983
Picture
CONTENTS
  1. Blackface and Blackness: The Minstrel Show in American Culture
  2. Love and Theft: "Racial" Production and the Social Unconscious of Blackface
  3. White Kids and No Kids At All: Working Class Culture and Languages of Race
  4. The Blackening of America: Popular Culture and National Cultures
  5. The Seeming Counterfeit": Early Blackface Acts, the Body, and Social Contradiction
  6. "Genuine Negro Fun": Racial Pleasure and Class Formation in the 1840's
  7. California Gold and European Revolution: Stephen Foster and the American 1848
  8. Uncle Tomitudes: Racial Melodrama and Modes of Production

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New ​Mestiza
Gloria Anzaldua, Aunt Lute Press, 1987
​
Picture

Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts
James Scott, Yale UP, 1992
Picture
CONTENTS
  1. The homeland, Aztlan
  2. Movimientos de rebeldia y las culturas que traicionan
  3. Entering into the serpent
  4. The Coatlicue state
  5. How to tame a wild tongue
  6. The path of the red and blank ink
  7. Towards a new consciousness​
More on Spanglish...
A Hidden History of Spanglish in California 
An episode of the podcast The World in Words from PRI (Public Radio International).

The Games Black Girls Play.
​Kyra Gaunt, NYU Press, 2006
Picture
CONTENTS
  1. Slide: Games as Lessons in Black Musical Style 
  2. Education, Liberation: Learning the Ropes of a Musical Blackness 
  3. Mary Mack Dressed in Black: The Earliest Formation of a Popular Music 
  4. Saw You With Your Boyfriend: Music between the Sexes 
  5. Who’s Got Next Game? Women, Hip-Hop, and the Power of Language 
  6. Double Forces Has Got the Beat: Reclaiming Girls’ Music in the Sport of Double-Dutch 
  7. Let a Woman Jump: Dancing with the Double Dutch Divas 
CONTENTS
  1. ​Behind the Official Story
  2. Domination, Acting, and Fantasy
  3. The Public Transcript as a Respectable Performance
  4. False Consciousness or Laying It on Thick?
  5. Making Social Space for a Dissident Subculture
  6. Voice under Domination: The Arts of Political Disguise
  7. The lnfrapolitics of Subordinate Groups
  8. A Saturnalia of Power: The First Public Declaration of the Hidden Transcript 

12 Comments
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5/7/2020 03:26:33 am

Spoken word poetry is my favorite thing to do. I love being able to voice out the feelings that I have in my heart. In my opinion, it is because I can do that, that I enjoy life. I want to keep on doing it for as long as I am able. I believe that I can touch a lot of people's hearts as long as I am allowed to pursue my passion for both writing and performing my writing

Reply
Ketos link
4/21/2022 04:20:52 am

I am a poet and like to write the poem for the children. A lot of poems are in my collection. There are many poems written by me . I like it.

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Ken Camell ll link
6/11/2025 01:04:37 pm

Greetings,

My name is Kenneth Camell ll an Oakland Ca resident and I am a student at Cal Poly Humboldt (online) who is striving to write myself out of poverty.

"The Blues fused the pain and strain
That came from chains
And whips which stripped and stained
The brain and chipped
Away at the self esteem
Of people deemed 3/5 of a human being
So it was best to express the stress
In music and this proved quick
To be therapeutic
There's a dispute it's
Strange since claims
Of this art starts in the 1860s
And this debate seems tricky
Since some say
It wasn't til The 1900s
When W.C Handy's
Band proceeds
To make a tune
Named Memphis Blues
There's no doubt
The Blues originates
From the U.S South
Four of
The places; Carolinas, Georgia
Mississippi and Texas
Respect this
In regard to the art
One of the best of them
Is Blind Lemon Jefferson
And one name is constant
That's Robert Johnson
A czar with the guitar
Then the singers
Bessie Smith , Ethel Waters and Ma Rainy
Made race records
The precursor to Rhythm & Blues
Yes sir
And the Great Depression
Didn't erase this expression
And The Great Migration
Reshaped the direction
And it spread massive
To new demographics
St Louis, Detroit and Chicago crafted
A new sound don't be shocked
That it was Rock
& Roll fo sho" - Kin Camell (Google That)

"In the 1970s
NYC wasn't heavenly
The school system for the public
Was rubbish
Plus its published
So you can read thee
How and why
It's outside
Of the school and church
The youth search
For the truth and worth
And DJ Kool Herc
Was the new birth
politicians were cruel jerks
The Big Apple was, filled with worms
And snakes
They come in many forms and shapes
The serpent's tool
Was urban renewal
An astounding process
That moved Black and Brown
To housing projects
While vile
Landlords
Made the Bronx
Resemble Vietnam War
Can you believe these mad men ?
Even Reggie Jackson
Was treated shady
And he was the best player on the Yankee
Baseball Team
Race of all things,
Is used for separation
And since welfare isnt reparations
City streets are filled with desperation
Music is the bridge
Which gives kids
A gift and that's the biz
In the heart if the Bronx
A new art form was launched
To abstain from the gangs , amongst
Other thangs
Teens need an outlet
Rappers Delight wasn't out yet
Then Crack changed the whole game."- Kin Camell (Google That)

"At the age of 3
She began to handle piano keys
In 1955, she was denied
Acceptance into college
When she applied
It was due to
Segregation
America's apartheid
But despite all the hatred
To Juliard she made it
On her track Mississippi Goddamn
She let ya know life was risky
For a Black man
This is
More than a poem
About Nina Simone
She's a revolutionary
With a microphone
When she sang
She hit America like cyclones
Her beautiful thick lips
Spit soulful linguistics
If you missed it
Go to the store
And cop a disc quick
Her song Sinnerman
Fed my soul like dinner fam
Her songs provided
Info on legislation
Such as Jim Crow
And segregation
Its crazy though
Her songs don't get played
On the radio
But she's important still
She inspired Erykah Badu
And Lauryn Hill
Some say Nina's
Demeanor was meaner
Than the average senorita
But that's because
America didn't treat her
With respect
So she chose to reflect
The fact
Thats it's a blessing
To be Young, Gifted and Black !- Kin Camell (Google That)


Due to lack of health and wealth I wasn't able to pursue my Master's Degree at Howard so I'm pursuing my second Bachelor's Degree from Cal Poly Humboldt.

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    Thanks for visiting Poetry/Pedagogy. This site blog is where I'll post notes and thoughts about the critical pedagogies and literacies work happening in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and around the world. - Sue

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  • Home
  • Sue's Blog
  • Youth Spoken Word Poetry
  • Poems. Just poems.
  • English education
  • Class Plans and Resources
    • ENGL4302: Spoken Word Poetry & Pedagogy
  • Contact
  • The Public Teacher Interview Project