Rap versus Poetry
Danjaruz Disclosures, Declarations, and Diatribes:
Let me try to answer this as succinctly as possible
I currently teach poetry to a high school Poetry club, which has about 10-15 regular members. Every Tuesday and Thursday, these kids come to me to learn more about poetry as an art and how to harness their creativity into poetic form.
The first thing I told them: 90% of the stuff you hear or read these days is crap. (especially if it comes from your cyber and itnernet buddies....If one more cyber"poet" sends me some "poems" to read, Im going to scream)
The second thing I told them, and it has become our mantra:
"Reading great poetry is crucial to writing great poetry"
With that said, Poetry, with the capital P, has gone down the drain, swam through the sewers, and been stripped of its dignity, and now lays in the middle of the street being run over by NYC taxicabs.
My kids have only read a minute amount of poetry in all of their years of high school (another reason I curse the public school system) and they struggle to just interpret meanings of certains words and metaphors. This shows me that their own work is lacking, simply because they havent strengthed their usage of metaphor, which is KEY to poetry.
Some of the best hip hop artists have mastered the use of metaphor in their lyrics. Having command of this KEY element of Poetry makes people go "oooooooooh" when you spit it. No one goes "oooooooh" when rapeprs just go on and on about jewels and bling. Take a look at people like Common ("Really rappers is hard to find like a remote control" "Ya videos are hard to watch like Medusa") and Talib Kweli ("You're more confused than Tiger Woods when he made up Cablanasian") and what they do with metaphors. Take a look at A Tribe Called Quest ("Bust off on your couch, now you got Seaman's furniture"). There are tons and tons of references throughout hip hop rap lyrics. an MC hones his/her skill until he/she has earned the respect of his/her peers.
The same goes for "poets" and "poetry". I learned in high school that you arent a poet until other people acknowledge you as such. How dare you call yourself a poet??!! And your work is garbage?! Too many people go around doing this and it has to stop lol.
I recently read an article about More Poetry, less Jam
http://aalbc.com/authors/def_poetry_jam_story.htm
please read that story, it speaks to this idea of Poetry "Jams" and such. One author says about Def Poetry Jam "I found it to be very well performed but lacking in content... And that is the thing that concerns me the most, that anyone could watch this and have an extremely skewed idea of what poetry is."
This is the "modern poetry problem". I will credit hip hop with the performance aspect of modern poetry. Hip hop has shown that it is about flexing your skills, battling, proving yhou are better than someone else, while somewhere along the line making some type of statement. Unfortunately, modern poetry has adapted the same agenda. Are there hip hop MCs who are modern day poets? Definitely!! Are there modern day poets who SOUND too much like hip hop MCs? Definitely!!!
How do we tell the difference? How we define what a poet is? again it is up to us and the consumers of the art, to define the parameteres, label the standards, etc. Kool Moe Dee did it with his book on the top 50 greatest MCs of all time. He took that liberty into his own hands. What we do is READ great poetry. If you think of everytime you have heard someone perform a poem and you have been like "yeahhhh thats hot" or you've "snapped your fingers after the performance, Imagine that same poem on a piece of paper, no poet performing, just words on a page. Are you feeling the poem the same way? Or does it feel somewhat empty? Lacking in some way?
many people write down their thoughts, emotions, feelings, etc. This is healthy and great. It is not all poetry though, and people need to face facts. Poetry is an ART FORM. Modern "poets" forget that fact. They do NOT read great poetry. They barely read or study ANY poetry. They just throw words on a page. They continue to do it because WE consume it, and congratulate them, and we applaud them, and accept it as being great, when really, it isnt. All of these erotic "poems", love "poems", you-are-my-nubian-queen-and-i-shall-be-your-african-king-forever-drinking-your-nectar-eternally-needing-you "poems", man people need to step the game UP. Read Blake, Yeats, Keats, Sanchez, Neruda, Giovanni, Baraka, Wheatley, Shelly, etc. Read great poets to beomce a great poet. Practice using different forms, challenge yourselves. Step outside of this hip hop poetry slam box, because it is stiffling the ART form.
I gave my kids a simple task of making an acrostic poem using the word IDENTITY. They are STILL struggling with that crisis...
Peace...
Let me try to answer this as succinctly as possible
I currently teach poetry to a high school Poetry club, which has about 10-15 regular members. Every Tuesday and Thursday, these kids come to me to learn more about poetry as an art and how to harness their creativity into poetic form.
The first thing I told them: 90% of the stuff you hear or read these days is crap. (especially if it comes from your cyber and itnernet buddies....If one more cyber"poet" sends me some "poems" to read, Im going to scream)
The second thing I told them, and it has become our mantra:
"Reading great poetry is crucial to writing great poetry"
With that said, Poetry, with the capital P, has gone down the drain, swam through the sewers, and been stripped of its dignity, and now lays in the middle of the street being run over by NYC taxicabs.
My kids have only read a minute amount of poetry in all of their years of high school (another reason I curse the public school system) and they struggle to just interpret meanings of certains words and metaphors. This shows me that their own work is lacking, simply because they havent strengthed their usage of metaphor, which is KEY to poetry.
Some of the best hip hop artists have mastered the use of metaphor in their lyrics. Having command of this KEY element of Poetry makes people go "oooooooooh" when you spit it. No one goes "oooooooh" when rapeprs just go on and on about jewels and bling. Take a look at people like Common ("Really rappers is hard to find like a remote control" "Ya videos are hard to watch like Medusa") and Talib Kweli ("You're more confused than Tiger Woods when he made up Cablanasian") and what they do with metaphors. Take a look at A Tribe Called Quest ("Bust off on your couch, now you got Seaman's furniture"). There are tons and tons of references throughout hip hop rap lyrics. an MC hones his/her skill until he/she has earned the respect of his/her peers.
The same goes for "poets" and "poetry". I learned in high school that you arent a poet until other people acknowledge you as such. How dare you call yourself a poet??!! And your work is garbage?! Too many people go around doing this and it has to stop lol.
I recently read an article about More Poetry, less Jam
http://aalbc.com/authors/def_poetry_jam_story.htm
please read that story, it speaks to this idea of Poetry "Jams" and such. One author says about Def Poetry Jam "I found it to be very well performed but lacking in content... And that is the thing that concerns me the most, that anyone could watch this and have an extremely skewed idea of what poetry is."
This is the "modern poetry problem". I will credit hip hop with the performance aspect of modern poetry. Hip hop has shown that it is about flexing your skills, battling, proving yhou are better than someone else, while somewhere along the line making some type of statement. Unfortunately, modern poetry has adapted the same agenda. Are there hip hop MCs who are modern day poets? Definitely!! Are there modern day poets who SOUND too much like hip hop MCs? Definitely!!!
How do we tell the difference? How we define what a poet is? again it is up to us and the consumers of the art, to define the parameteres, label the standards, etc. Kool Moe Dee did it with his book on the top 50 greatest MCs of all time. He took that liberty into his own hands. What we do is READ great poetry. If you think of everytime you have heard someone perform a poem and you have been like "yeahhhh thats hot" or you've "snapped your fingers after the performance, Imagine that same poem on a piece of paper, no poet performing, just words on a page. Are you feeling the poem the same way? Or does it feel somewhat empty? Lacking in some way?
many people write down their thoughts, emotions, feelings, etc. This is healthy and great. It is not all poetry though, and people need to face facts. Poetry is an ART FORM. Modern "poets" forget that fact. They do NOT read great poetry. They barely read or study ANY poetry. They just throw words on a page. They continue to do it because WE consume it, and congratulate them, and we applaud them, and accept it as being great, when really, it isnt. All of these erotic "poems", love "poems", you-are-my-nubian-queen-and-i-shall-be-your-african-king-forever-drinking-your-nectar-eternally-needing-you "poems", man people need to step the game UP. Read Blake, Yeats, Keats, Sanchez, Neruda, Giovanni, Baraka, Wheatley, Shelly, etc. Read great poets to beomce a great poet. Practice using different forms, challenge yourselves. Step outside of this hip hop poetry slam box, because it is stiffling the ART form.
I gave my kids a simple task of making an acrostic poem using the word IDENTITY. They are STILL struggling with that crisis...
Peace...
posted by MBT4679 at 10/22/2004 11:47:00 AM
1 Comments:
Truer words have never been read........
Too often someone scribbles something with words that rhyme and automatically call it poetry. Not so. I once had a conversation with someone about all these so-called "erotic" poems. They were in awe at the words and the "imagery". I had to show how easy it truly is to do one of those elementary pieces and then it hit them, they're not so great after all.
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