I drove to Kent to hear Joshua Bennett and he made a thousand brown ova swoon while brothas gave him subliminal dap when he rhymed "Ellison" and "heaven is."
He started his set off with the first lines of Lucille Clifton's "Won't You Celebrate with Me" and went into a poem he wrote after he heard the Zimmerman verdict. Since that day, two more Black people asking for help have been shot to death.
In class, we discussed whether or not a poet has the right to write beautifully about something tragic he has never experienced, say, the death of his wife from cancer. We debated whether it was dishonest because the reader is assuming the poet is writing from experience and feels cheated when the poet says, "No, no, I made that up, my wife is right here, pink and healthy."
In other news, white people have run out of shit to say and are now borrowing other people's pain.
If Joshua Bennett is any indication of his generation, they are cohorts shiny and new with wonderful things. They care about gender issues (he asked a room full of brothas to stop cat calling women on the street--personally, I always liked catcalls); rethinking the education system; disability vs. difference; and love. Yes, love. Always love.
Joshua told of how Thomas Jefferson said that Black men where incapable of love. In that context, his every love poem was a revolutionary act against Jefferson and his legacy.
And he knew who Rilke was. :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment