american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang

Notes
Introduction: Political Poetry
in the United States
1. I use “rap” and “hip-hop” interchangeably in this book. I usually prefer
the term “hip-hop” because I see it as more inclusive and encompassing.
Most critics use the terms interchangeably, as do most in the culture.
Some artists, though, see rap as a style of music, hip-hop as the larger
culture of which rap is a part. KRS-One, for instance, draws a distinction
between rap “as something you do” and hip-hop as “something
you live,” in other words a culture. Hip-hop culture includes four basic
elements—rapping, dj’ing, graffiti writing, and breakdancing. See the
liner notes to KRS-One: A Retrospective. I also use the terms “rapper,”
“MC,” and “hip-hop artist” interchangeably.
2. It should be noted that Walt Whitman’s understanding of the poet’s public
role as people’s representative influenced many of these Latin American
poets, even if indirectly. In “Song of Myself,” he writes, “It is you talking
just as much myself ...I act as the tongue of you, / It was tied in your
mouth . . . in mine it begins to be loosened” (lines 1244–1245). For an
analysis of Whitman’s debatable influence on Latin American poets, see
Enrico Mario Santí’s “The Accidental Tourist: Walt Whitman in Latin
America” in Do the Americas Have a Common Literature?, ed. Gustavo
Pérez Firmat (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1990), 156–176.
3. See Stephen Burt’s “Portability; or, The Traveling Uses of a Poetic
Idea” in Modern Philology 100.1 (2002): 24–49, for an in-depth discussion
about this issue. He asks, “How far can we take a poem—and a
person—before they cease to be what they were?” (28).
4. See Terry Eagleton’s overview of Gadamer’s Hermeneutics in Literary
Theory (New York: Oxford UP, 1984).
5. See Don L. Lee, “From a Black Perspective,” Don’t Cry, Scream
(Detroit: Broadside P, 1969).
6. Zinn cites these particularly powerful lines from the poem: “Rise like lions
after slumber / In unvanquishable number! / Shake your chains to earth,
like dew / Which in sleep had fallen on you— / Ye are many, they are few!”
7. However, as contemporary U.S. politics show, political discourse may
appear to be clear, but much is smoke and mirrors and deception.
Giddens, for example, believes ideology is primarily rhetorical. It is the
form argument takes in the public sphere. In other words, the speeches
given to the public usually appeal to universal needs or welfare. There is