Time to Reflect

I went into Poetry class looking for a way to make up for the monstrosity of an english class that I took during fall term. I wanted something unique and a new look on literature.

I definitely found it.

Oh gosh my first poem "What Is Poetry?" is all over the place, no real direction just a bunch of words thrown together that I thought hopefully sounded good...

Poetry is like a wave
Beating to its own drum
A flowing free verse in the sun
Emotions rise and fall
Moving with meter and rhyme
Will yours stand the test of time?

With the help of Mrs.Lewis and my classmates my poetry was able to grow into something I am very proud of. I made sure to think out every line of the poem so it had a main direction and so that it all had the same feel. As I look back on the poems of the second half of the term it's hard to say which one is my favorite, but the one that shows the most improvement in my eyes is "I'm Going to the Drugstore" which goes like this...

I go to the drugstore daytime, nighttime, anytime.
Open 24/7.
Feeling low, feeling bad, to some this is a safe haven.
(But to most it just takes the money their sav'in.)

Enter, enter, enter, I take a step inside
I ask, Do you have any of..? The white haired clerk stops me before I say,
I know what you need, come with me please I know the way.
Past the aisles of nuts, boxers, and MnMs with wings
I see it all in the back and my heart starts to ping.

I'll get you everything you need the man said, some with this some with that,
I look at the bottle it says sodium benzoate, dextromethorphan, and oscillococcinum, what the hell is that!
Everything you need my dear is in these blue baby pills
Take some before lunch, then after lunch, and some during lunch and you should be okay,
But if that doesn't work I have some yellow, orange, green, and turquoise pills that you can have, take all that you need.

Advice in hand I leave the man with the hope of feeling better.
But what my man doesn't know is that I know better.
I mix my special cocktail to get the fix I need
I feel bigger then smaller and I look a few shades of green.

Then bottle in hand I saw what my man never told me to see,
I read the overdose warning.

As you can see very different.

In the beginning of the class I think I had a simple idea of poetry. I knew I liked it, I knew it could be funny or dark, and I knew that there was a difference between children's poems and serious adult poems. Now it's not like any of those ideas have changed, but it seems that I've gotten a chance to go deeper into those ideas and create new ones. The most important thing I think I learned was that poetry has no rules. That is just great because every other class at Sem has a lot of rules that cannot be changed or else the world will end. It was so nice to be in a class and not feel pressure all the time and know that it's okay to feel like shit for the day and kind of zone out cause you don't feel well. Wait I'm getting wayyy off track. Back to poetry. Lastly I'd have to say that I don't think that my perspective on poetry has changed but that now I have more perspectives to choose from.

Thanks for a great class Mrs. Lewis!!

Final Reflection

When I began this poetry class I had absolutely no idea whatsoever what poetry was about and what I could possibly contribute to it. I had no idea that there could be modern poets. It may seem kind of silly, but I though of poets as old english type of men with absolutely no sense of humor. However, throughout the course of this class I realized that poets can be interesting and not only boring.

The first poem I wrote was:

Meter, Tone, Rhyme, Beat
Poetry
Couplet, Haiku, Sonnet
Poetry
Expression, Emotion
Poetry
Free Verse
Poetry
4, 3, 2, 1
Poetry.

The Last Poem I wrote was:

Poetry is ruleless
Poetry is fearless
Unstoppable
It has no limits
There are many children of poetry and granchildren and great granchildren
Poetry is pretty busy
But always seems to have time on its hands
TIme to educate with its words and adopt another child.

I think that at the end of poetry, as corny as it sounds, I found myself. I really think that I started to portray myself more and put myself into my poems toward the end of the class way more then I had in the beginning. I loved my poem Baby Boy, which is on the ning, I really think that I showed a more deep side of myself then I had before. I also am really proud of my poem Mommy Deadly. It is kind of creepy, but in a really good way. Though because of Mrs. Lewis my final poem What is Poetry is my favorite. I think the two poems I put on this blog post really show my growth throughout this class. I am so proud to have had Mrs. Lewis as a teacher. She is the best teacher I have ever had.

Ice Cube

Ice Cube Now

Ice Cube then

O'She Jackson was born in 1969, although he is better known for his stage name Ice Cube. He is an actor, producer, screenwriter, and rapper who was born in South Central Los Angeles, California. When Ice Cube was sixteen years old he developed his interest in Hip-Hop and began writing raps while skipping class at his local high school. He later attended the Phoenix Institute of Technology in the fall of 1987 and studied ARchitectural design. Ice Cube is very well known for his career with N.W.A. 

Ice Cube dropped out of college in the winter of 1987 and joined N.W.A. Ice Cube and Dr. Dre released the EP My Posse, under the alias of CIA in 1987. Ice Cube wrote for Dr. Dre and Eazy-E' for the N.W.A groups landmark album, Straight Outta Compton, which was released in 1988. Once 1990 hit, Ice Cude found himself constantly arguing with the groups manager, Jerry Heller. Ice Cube and Heller had many financial disputes. Ice Cube explains about Heller, "Heller gave me this contract, and I said I wanted a lawyer to see it. He almost fell out of his chair. I guess he figured, how this young muthafucka turn down all this money? [$75,000] Everybody else signed. I told them I wanted to make sure my shit was right first."

In 2004 Ice Cube rapped his hit singles "Check Yo Self", "It Was a Good Day" and affiliated song "Guerrillas in tha Mist". Then in 2005 Ice Cube teamed up with and Emmy Award winning film maker R. J. Cutler, they created a six part documentary called "Black. White." Then in October of 2006 Ice Cube was honored by VH1 for his Hip-Hop career. However, I do not look up to Ice Cube as much as I do to other stars of the Black Arts Movement. However, I might just be bias because I hated his movie "Are We There Yet?". Which is his most recent movie and I feel that it shows that his career has just gone downhill since the Black Art's Movement.

Queen Latifah

Queen Latifah Now

Queen Latifah in the 1980's

Dana Elaine Owens born in March 18, 1970 is a singer, rapper, actress, and spokes model. Dana Elaine Owens, better known for her stage name as Queen Latifah, was born in Newark, New Jersey and almost immediatly became involved in beatboxing. Her stage name Latifah is an Arabic word meaning delicate and gentle. Her first stage debut was in high school during a school play called, "The Wiz." A very well known African American version of the Wizard of Oz. After many years of being an amature beat boxer she started a beat boxing womens group called Ladies Fresh.

Queen Latifah signed with Tommy Boy Records in 1988, they then helped her release her first break through album All Hail the Queen in 1989. At this point in time she was only ninteen years old which made her one of the youngest break out female artists during the black arts movement. Then in 1998 she realeased her next album Order in the Court after featuring in many other Black Arts Movement artists albums, such as The Hustlers and DJ Mark the 45 Kings

Queen Latifah is a model for what women during the Black Arts Movement were all about. After having a rocky upbringing in the wrong part of town she still prevailed and became the success that she is today. A huge impact on her career was her brother who died in a motorcycle accident in 1992. "It gave me more drive to do what I wanted to do and made me feel that I had a gardian angel watching over me always," said Queen Latifah.

Reflection of the class

At the beginning of poetry class I didn't really have an idea what poetry is. I thought I would have to know a lot about the different kinds and styles of poetry to be able to write my own one. Well, I was wrong.

Over the weeks I started to discover a new site of myself and poetry. I have to admit that on our first workshop day in class, when Mrs. Lewis said: "So, then just start writing." I was really stunned and thought: "What? They want me to write something? But I don't know how, I don't know any styles, Aahhhhh!!"

Well, and that was the thing I did wrong.I don't really need to know a lot of styles or rules or anything to write poetry. Poetry is all about myself and my feelings and not about any program I have to fit in. After I discovered that, it became much easier for me to write poetry and I even started to enjoy it. Also the class and the people there helped me a lot because no one laughed about the other and we always got a great feedback. Also the fact that everyone was writing poetry made it much easier because so I didn't think about it a lot and just did it.

But of course we didn't write the whole time. Learning about the single poets, their life and their style was also very interesting for me and helped me to see poetry and poems with different eyes.

The change of my poetry, is also very obvious.

In the beginning of the class I tried really hard to make everything rhyme. Of course that is not always bad, but it made it very difficult for me to express myself and stopped my flow. My poem "With twenty fife" is a very good example for that:

With twenty fife, so far away,
I want to go and not just stay.
Will go to see, explore the world,
to be were no one's been before.
Will learn and laugh to find my way,
that's all I just can say, today.

At the and of class, however, I got to understand that it doesn't always have to rhyme but that the rhyme just comes along by itself waiting for us to pick it up. In the last poems I wrote, it is easy to see that they are more myself. I was able to enjoy writing them more and to express myself better. My poem "Still there" is a good example for he development of my poetry writing:

A people picture, picture people,
up and down and to the sides.
Full of color, full of black.
Lots of figures, long and short,
lips and eyes and hair and hand.
The same we are.
The same after all.

So, I think now I have said everything. All in all, I really enjoyed that class and it helped me to see and express myself better. It also taught me a lot about different people in different times and how they experienced poetry. It was like a little window to the head of someone else.

Malcolm X

Even though Malcolm X did not really live during the Black Arts Movement, I think it is still very important to mention him, since he was the one that actually started it. With his speeches and teachings he inspired people and gave them strength to move forward in achieving their rights.

Malcolm X (born: Malcolm Little) was born in 1925 as the son of Earl and Louise Little. His father was the leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and spoke out loudly for the rights of blacks. So Malcolm had already been in contact with anti-white movements from his early years on. It also was his father, that taught him the values of black pride and self-reliance. The rest of his childhood was not very pleasant because his father was murdered by the Black Legion, a white supremacist group, and his mother had a nervous breakdown and was brought to a mental hospital.

During his early adult years, Malcolm went to High school and was one of it’s best students. But when one of his white teachers told him that his wish to become a layer was “no realistic goal for a nigger” everything changed for Malcolm and he dropped out of school. He did not see the sense in going to school and learn if the world would not accept a black man no matter how intelligent he is.

Malcolm then moved to New York where he started some illegal activities, like gambling and robbery that later brought him to jail. There he started to educate himself and found new interest in books and education. He also became a muslim and a member of the “Nation of Islam” that, like the UNIA, preached black self-reliance. After he came out of prison, Malcolm spend the next twelve years of his life working for the Nation and became one of it’s most popular members.

In 1964, however, he left the organization because of conflicts that had risen between him and the Nation’s leader Elijah Muhammad. He then founded “Muslim Mosque, Inc.”, a religious organization and the “Organization of Afro-American Unity”, a secular group that advocated black nationalism. After that, Malcolm X spent some time traveling. He visited Africa, France and the United Kingdom but also Mecca, where he made his pilgrimage to Mecca.

Back in the US he started to speak and preach again and became even more popular than before. He spoke at regular meetings of his newly founded communities but also before some political groups. People also say that he enjoyed speaking to college students and that he never missed such an opportunity.

With the growth of his popularity and the aggression of his speeches, also conflicts with the Nation of Islam became more serious. Malcolm started to receive dead threats against him and even assassinations against him and his family took place.

Finally, on February 21, 1965, one year after he had left the Nation of Islam, he was assassinate during one of his speeches in Manhattan’s Audubon Ballroom. Three men from the crowd shot him in the chest 16 times. Malcolm then died on the way to the hospital. The three men, all members of the Nation of Islam were later caught and convicted. However, Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation, always denied in later interviews that his organization had anything to do with Malcolm’s assassination. His only command was that “We know such ignorant, foolish teachings would bring him to his own end.”

At the following funeral on February 27, 1965, thousands of mourners came to show their grief. Malcolm X was then buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

Malcolm X’s assassination led to a great wave of fury among the black population. A lot of people arose in anger and started to found communities of their own to advance the movement for their right. Also many very popular and important people during the Black Arts Movement, found their inspiration and incentive in Malcolm X’s person and speeches.

So, even though Malcolm X did not really participate in what we today call the Black Arts Movement, he still was one of the most influential and inspiring people during this time and the foundation stone of the movement.

Sources:

- wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X

-the official website of Malcolm X: http://www.malcolmx.com/

- Malcolm X: A Profile: http://www.koranselskab.dk/profiler/malcolmx.htm

Block Party

Even though the hip-hop culture can have it's serious side dealing with racism and oppression, it still makes music that can't help but make you want to dance and jump all around. Thankfully the DJ's in the 1970's knew this (of course they did) and created a fabulous little thing called a Block Party.

The first Block Party was deejayed by DJ Kool Herc (video "Let Me Clear My Throat") for his sister's birthday on 1520 Sedgwick Ave in 1973. What is usually needed for these parties is a DJ to spin those beats (duh), a space to hold the party, and of course people. There usually is not a specific reason to have a block party besides just celebrating and having a good time including eating, dancing, singing, and rapping. Usually streets and whole blocks within a city are marked off or closed to accommodated all of the people attending these parties.

The block party has transformed over the past 40 years into movies and family time. For example in 2005 Dave Chappelle made a documentary called Dave Chappelle's Block Party. He held the party in Brooklyn and brought together numerous artists together to perform such as Kayne West, Mos Def, and the Fugees. He did this to bring together the citizens of Brooklyn to enjoy a once in a lifetime free block party with music, comedy, history, and community.

Lastly, I have been to a block party on my own block. The annual James Street Block Party is quite a sight. We block off the whole street and fill it with food, music, and yes bouncy jumpy things. It's a great way to bring together all of families of James St. to have some fun.