Street Corner Blues Poetry Rapoetry And Song

The poems that I wrote in NYC in this book were “I Had a Dream”, “Spider, Spider”, “The Follies of a False Façade” “When Men Look Into My Eyes”, “The Plantation”, “Street Corner Blues, subtitled Motherless Chile’”, “You Say You Fed Up, I Say Shut Up!”, “Black Power”, “I Had A Dream”, and “The Plantation”. The rest of the poems in this book were written by me after I relocated to Buffalo, NY. CD and DVD in works in progress so you can listen to these poems on CD with a backdrop of negro spirituals being sung so sweetly and in 3 part harmony in the background. Or watch it on DVD, My youtube channel is sblack3001 you can message me there.

Love poems like ONE LONELY DAY, and WHENEVER YOU FEEL LONELY, You’re on My Mind. and erotic love poems like Sweet Cherry Kisses, “SUGAR AND SPICE”., FREAKY NASTY BOY (which is a R&B hip hop rap song, I NEEDS ME A HANDYMAN which is a blues love song also, I AM YOUR HANDYMAN?. Just Give Me The Dick is a blues song also, and other love poems like IF I CAN’T SELL IT I’MO SIT ON IT ‘CAUSE I AIN’T GIVIN’ IT AWAY., or THE WOMAN WITH 8 ASSES. I had a lot of fun writing these poems and I hope it will bring just as much excitement into your love life as it has in mine.

In this jaunty and intimate collection, Kevin Young invents a language as shimmying and comic, as low-down and high-hearted, as the music from which he draws inspiration. With titles such as “Stride Piano,” “Gutbucket,” and “Can-Can,” these poems have the sharp completeness of vocalized songs and follow a classic blues trajectory: praising and professing undying devotion (“To watch you walk / cross the room in your black / corduroys is to see / civilization start”), only to end up lamenting the loss of love (“No use driving / like rain, past / where you at”). As Young conquers the sorrow left on his doorstep, the poems broaden to embrace not just the wisdom that comes with heartbreak but the bittersweet wonder of triumphing over adversity at all. Sexy and tart, playfully blending an African American idiom with traditional lyric diction, Young’s voice is pure American: joyous in its individualism and singing of the self at its strongest.

Blues singer, preacher, cultural critic, exile, Africadian, high modernist, spoken word artist, Canadian poet—these are but some of the voices of George Elliott Clarke. In a selection of Clarke’s best work from his early poetry to his most recent, Blues and Bliss: The Poetry of George Elliott Clarke offers readers an impressive cross-section of those voices. Jon Paul Fiorentino’s introduction focuses on this polyphony, his influences—Derek Walcott, Amiri Baraka, and the canon of literary English from Shakespeare to Yeats—and his “voice throwing,” and shows how the intersections here produce a “troubling” of language. He sketches Clarke’s primary interest in the negotiation of cultural space through adherence to and revision of tradition and on the finding of a vernacular that begins in exile, especially exile in relation to African-Canadian communities. In the afterword, Clarke, in an interesting re-spin of Fiorentino’s introduction, writes with patented gusto about how his experiences have contributed to multiple sounds and forms in his work. Decrying any grandiose notions of theory, he presents himself as primarily a songwriter.

Born in African American work songs, field hollers, and the powerful legacy of the spirituals, the blues traveled the country from the Mississippi delta to “Sweet Home Chicago,” forming the backbone of American music. In this anthology–the first devoted exclusively to blues poems–a wide array of poets pay tribute to the form and offer testimony to its lasting power. The blues have left an indelible mark on the work of a diverse range of poets: from “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes and “Funeral Blues” by W. H. Auden, to “Blues on Yellow” by Marilyn Chin and “Reservation Blues” by Sherman Alexie. Here are blues-influenced and blues-inflected poems from, among others, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, June Jordan, Richard Wright, Nikki Giovanni, Charles Wright, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Cornelius Eady. And here, too, are classic song lyrics–poems in their own right–from Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, Ma Rainey, and Muddy Waters. The rich emotional palette of the blues is fully represented here in verse that pays tribute to the heart and humor of the music, and in poems that swing with its history and hard-bitten hope.

This collection of essays, first published in 1987, provides a sociological treatment of many musical forms – rock, jazz, classical – with special emphasis on the perspective of the practising musician. Among the topics covered are the legal structures governing musical production and the question of copyright; recording and production technology; the social character of musical style; and the impact of lyrical content, considered socially and historically.

A Companion to the Harlem Renaissance presents a comprehensive collection of original essays that address the literature and culture of the Harlem Renaissance from the end of World War I to the middle of the 1930s. Represents the most comprehensive coverage of themes and unique new perspectives on the Harlem Renaissance available Features original contributions from both emerging scholars of the Harlem Renaissance and established academic “stars” in the field Offers a variety of interdisciplinary features, such as the section on visual and expressive arts, that emphasize the collaborative nature of the era Includes “Spotlight Readings” featuring lesser known figures of the Harlem Renaissance and newly discovered or undervalued writings by canonical figures

In the underground urban landscape each of us finds ourselves in these uncertain days, bleakness, loneliness, and cavities of the soul are most prevalent. We feel like cages and boxes, steel and cardboard. We act like cobras and rats. Not because we want to, but because we think we have no choice. In the red-streak alarm America of today, sidewalks and street corners are the most potent and pregnant reminders of that emptiness. We forget what, where, and how we traversed and what each space looks like because we are taught from grade school to concentrate on the important matters in our lives. But how can you tell what is significant if you cannot comprehend what is not? How can existence flourish if one does not extend the same feelings and sensitivity to the darker and more ambivalent entities as to those lighter, more meaningful and clear? In the end, sidewalks and street corners are part of our daily lives. If they do anything, these poems capture the spirit of that cement, mortar, brick, and asphalt to offer a collection rich in voice and virtue and loud in ambiance and indigo. It is the dust, rust, dirt, and density of sidewalks and street corners that we often forget. This poetry, this very verse, then, is a sign of those staunch road blocks and hurdles in our everyday lives. But most importantly, it is also an answer or solution as to how to overcome or clear the very mental obstacles that are preventing us from achieving all that we can while waking to the brightest sun and falling asleep to the mildest moon.

This book analyses historical, literary, and cultural shifts in African American literature from the 1920s-1930s.