american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang

enthusiastic for, and knowledgeable about, independent artists than it
is in the United States. His latest European tour featured Sadat X
(of Brand Nubian), Greg Nice (of Nice and Smooth), and Ge-ology.
10. U.S. hip-hop is becoming increasingly rural, southern, and
Midwestern, and many of its loyal followers suburban. Even so, hiphop
is a thoroughly urban art form, especially abroad.
Conclusion
NOTES 211
1. Poems lose some magic in the transcription from performance to
page, as often happens with hip-hop lyrics. Please see the following
sources for an introduction to spoken-word poetry: Nuyorican Poetry:
An Anthology of Puerto Rican Words and Feelings, eds. Miguel Algarín
and Miguel Piñero (New York: Morrow, 1975); Listen Up!: Spoken
Word Poetry, ed. Zoë Anglesey (New York: One World, 1999); Aloud:
Voices from the Nuyorican Poets’ Café, eds. Miguel Algarín, Bob
Holman, and Nicole Blackman (New York: Owl Books, 1994); and
Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, eds. Tony Medina and Louis
Reyes Rivera (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001). See also Slam,
dir. Marc Levin (Vidmark/Trimark, 1998) and Def Poetry—Season 1
(2002).
2. Over the last half decade hip-hop has developed its own language
poetry. Experimental, often frustrating, but usually entertaining, challenging,
and thought-provoking, it is overtly political in small snapshots
and in its overall approach. Some MCs who make what I call an
exploratory language-based hip-hop—but remain grounded in its
basic values, principles, and aesthetics—are underground icons MF
Doom, Aesop Rock, Del the Funky Homosapien, El-P, Busdriver, and
to some extent, Ghostface Killah.
3. Dove uses this dual approach often. In Selected Poems, see “Belinda’s
Petition,” “The Abduction,” “The Slave’s Critique of Practical
Reason,” and “Kentucky, 1833.” James Wright’s “Saint Judas” has
a similar historical imagination and is just as moving and haunting
as Dove’s.
4. McGrath’s poem appears in Capitalism (Hanover, HH: Wesleyan UP,
1990). I initially found it in Poems for America: 125 Poems that
Celebrate the American Experience (New York: Scribner, 2002), 216.
5. Balaban’s “Reading the News and Thinking of the T’ang Poets,”
Locusts at the Edge of Summer: New & Selected Poems (Port Townsend,
WA: Copper Canyon P, 1997), 135, deals with these very issues.
Much of my information on T’ang poetry comes from Balaban’s
lectures in a Spring 2001 graduate course on East Asian Literature at
North Carolina State University.
6. It is prudent to note that epic poems such as The Iliad and The Odyssey
celebrate warfare, and in a different way so does Paradise Lost.