Some of these I haven't heard yet.
It's different, OK.
I always get asked the question about reading styles--
cadence and performance versus, what we call back home,
paid-for sustained styles.
I often feel trapped between some
of the, what I consider to be outdated,
opinions about the lack of wholeness in the argument.
So this is "No Easy Task," and attempts to speak to that.
"Suddenly our names were more than our own, our dramas too.
And as if the inherited craft of our--"
And this proem also has a lot of ellipses in it,
so I'm trying to make you feel them.
"And, as if the craft of our inherited calling
had only two camps of Blackness--
Academic and Spoken Word--
our best work, the work for all work,
had to work on the page, if we wanted to be published,
and on the stage, if we want it to be recorded.
But, mostly, we just wanted to be whole--
respected and known, and heard--
reviewed and enjoyed, as in, in the tradition of worriation
and, a loud noise followed by many louder ones.
And not always as lonely as an "I" and not always as burdened
as a "we" and never anyone's token, hyphen, bridge,
honorary anything, or literary pet.
Even if the listeners weren't reading to what we're spitting,
even if an Open Mic never opened an open book,
haters, and an opened book never booked an open mic, favorites.
And ironic browbeat if you a sonnet.
If you a star you wish you were higher, a sermon.
Enter audience, the audio antithesis of academia,
worrying text to talk and talk to text.
How entertainment, poor-folk prosody, oral jewelry, flow?
The problem with American poetry is there's not enough
Africa in it--
bling bling has more rhythm and imagery than all of Ashberry.
At the edge of Subject, poetics.
At the center of Subject, prose.
The uneven ribs of verse, with its progression
of resurrections, reverses.
Outdated show-offs like villanelles and sestinas,
pretending not to perform, costume form.
The content of character, not the shape of content,
shapes form.
There's no such thing as formlessness.
Applause.
All poems perform."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
I say Ashberry just to be a poets advocate,
but you could put--
you could put me in there, you can put anybody in there.
It's-- it gets too much play.
It's different.
[HUMMING]
Yes, you said too much play about poetry unless poetry is--
becomes too much commercialized, perhaps,
loses its sense of reality.
No, I would speak about--
in the industry, the personality--
the cult of personality within play, and how that often works
and the avoidance of awards and jobs and things like that.
And I do know that even I, little two-buck guy,
I get celebrated often in a way that--
it's work, you know?
Just trying to do the work, you know, so.
Yeah
So the poems aren't meant to be---
of people love Ashberry.
You know, I like Ashberry.
It's the figure of what it represents, as opposed to me
critiquing John Jordan.