WEBVTT

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Some of these I
haven't heard yet.

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It's different, OK.

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I always get asked the
question about reading styles--

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cadence and performance
versus, what we call back home,

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paid-for sustained styles.

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I often feel
trapped between some

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of the, what I consider
to be outdated,

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opinions about the lack of
wholeness in the argument.

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So this is "No Easy Task,"
and attempts to speak to that.

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"Suddenly our names were more
than our own, our dramas too.

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And as if the inherited
craft of our--"

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And this proem also has
a lot of ellipses in it,

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so I'm trying to
make you feel them.

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"And, as if the craft
of our inherited calling

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had only two camps
of Blackness--

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Academic and Spoken Word--

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our best work, the
work for all work,

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had to work on the page, if
we wanted to be published,

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and on the stage, if we
want it to be recorded.

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But, mostly, we just
wanted to be whole--

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respected and known, and heard--

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reviewed and enjoyed, as in,
in the tradition of worriation

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and, a loud noise followed
by many louder ones.

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And not always as lonely as an
"I" and not always as burdened

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as a "we" and never anyone's
token, hyphen, bridge,

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honorary anything,
or literary pet.

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Even if the listeners weren't
reading to what we're spitting,

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even if an Open Mic never
opened an open book,

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haters, and an opened book never
booked an open mic, favorites.

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And ironic browbeat
if you a sonnet.

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If you a star you wish
you were higher, a sermon.

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Enter audience, the audio
antithesis of academia,

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worrying text to talk
and talk to text.

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How entertainment, poor-folk
prosody, oral jewelry, flow?

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The problem with American
poetry is there's not enough

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Africa in it--

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bling bling has more rhythm and
imagery than all of Ashberry.

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At the edge of Subject, poetics.

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At the center of Subject, prose.

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The uneven ribs of verse,
with its progression

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of resurrections, reverses.

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Outdated show-offs like
villanelles and sestinas,

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pretending not to
perform, costume form.

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The content of character,
not the shape of content,

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shapes form.

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There's no such thing
as formlessness.

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Applause.

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All poems perform."

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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I say Ashberry just to
be a poets advocate,

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but you could put--

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you could put me in there,
you can put anybody in there.

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It's-- it gets too much play.

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It's different.

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[HUMMING]

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Yes, you said too much play
about poetry unless poetry is--

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becomes too much
commercialized, perhaps,

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loses its sense of reality.

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No, I would speak about--

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in the industry,
the personality--

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the cult of personality within
play, and how that often works

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and the avoidance of awards
and jobs and things like that.

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And I do know that even
I, little two-buck guy,

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I get celebrated
often in a way that--

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it's work, you know?

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Just trying to do the
work, you know, so.

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Yeah

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So the poems aren't
meant to be---

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of people love Ashberry.

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You know, I like Ashberry.

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It's the figure of what it
represents, as opposed to me

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critiquing John Jordan.

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