Madness Tight on the Heads of the Rebels
It is a new year, and I must soon get back to shameless self-promotion by reposting my poems… but first I have to begin the year with some Reggae-talk. One of the reasons I finally came around to poetry is because I liked Reggae—and one reason I like Reggae is L.K.J.
Linton Kwesi Johnson does amazing poetry. I don’t care for his leftist politics but his verse is more interesting and intense than that boring, writerly tripe you find in academic journals and the margins of well-known effete liberal publications. The first-class dub musicians backing him up add another dimension to his poetry. I just learned that he came up with the basslines for these dub poems. His work is focused and powerful in a way that Amiri Baraka’s psycho-drivel never was.
Lonely Arts Club Banned
Pass de Sergeant some PEPPAH — make wi jerk dis pork
& wheel & turn & come again MISTAH DEE-JAY !
HAVE an IRIE NEW YEAR’s EVE
GOOD BYE 2015
ConnectHook doan tink dat Jesus sekand commin’ reveal inna di person of di ex-emperah of Ithiopia HAILE SELASSIE I –
but we DO love di one-drop riddim, righteous fearful DUB, an all a dem ting deh…
I-man also love di Beatles dem…
Open it, Clown
Our solution, then, is to open the box.
And when we do, we find it’s not a coffin, but a buzzing hive, whether you can see the resident poet-bees working inside or not. Rather than rehashing arguments that have been made a thousand times, I propose a logical conclusion: if you have to keep declaring, over and over, that poetry is dead, it can’t actually be dead. Poetry can’t possibly die if people keep talking about it, and announcing its supposed death counts as conversation. And in the meantime, the poets buzz on, crafting and creating, regardless of what internet bloggers, journalists or social critics have to say.
