Quraysh Ali Lansana

Just bought this too - couldn't help it, the preview pieces in Poetry Magazine were so good...

Review:
Excellent, cannot recommend it enough. I don't know how to do it justice, so I'm going to quote one of the artist statements.

"The break is forever chipping away new labyrinths toward the place where the human soul goes to feed when nothing else will let it eat. The break is moving. It is a shape-shifter and a trickster. [....] The anthology here is peopled with writers who've paid their tribute to Papa 'Legba one way or the next. They've studied and lived in the liminal space from which the break emanates. They've pledged to the tradition of the break and the pilgrimage it demands. Each is chipping away a different maze to get to where the bass lives, and ensuring that his tracks can only be followed by those who pay the necessary tithes. It is why this anthology is a bible and a code-book. It is essential reading and trickster it is - offering several doors through which you may enter, if you have a clue about what you're travelling to."
-Roger Bonair-Agard

If you haven't read it... read it.
If you have read it... watch the videos, go to the shows, see the kids coming up in the next class that are building on this tradition.… (mais)

Quraysh Ali Lansana provides the reader with a selection of poetry that not reflects the author’s life but the changing world in time and geography. The poet takes the reader in life as an African-American in Oklahoma. "in eufuala" capture the small Alabama town life for a poor black man who by his own words cannot vote. The poem rings with segregation, good ol' boys, knowing one's place, and diabetes. Chicago is different with a different violence and still a deep ingrained repression protrayed in "statement on the killing of patrick dorismond ." Other times we are reminded of what we all long for, against all odds:

i am not non-violent i am a teacher
i am not non-violent i am a writer
i am not non-violent i vote
we are not non-violent we care


The dating of the early poems is magnificent and anyone from the period would immediately recognize:

a harvest gold & avocado green leisure suit with fm radio, it was their,
well, daddy’s, mansion, his james brown conk cool, his funky country on radials, power windows and doors a working class music.
~ 1972 ford ltd

Lansana provides the reader with a snapshot of America that few chose to look at or look at with any pride. It is more real than the American Dream and lives everywhere. It may look different or be explained away but it exists and evolves with time.… (mais)

There are a few standouts here; the opening poem by DJ Renegade is a marvel. For the most part, though, this is a collection of very young, promising poets, more a list of who to keep an eye on than a collection that's worth reading now.

ETA: three months later and this book hasn't left my bedside. I keep coming back & back to it, finding new wonders each time. I originally gave this 3 stars; I'm upping it to 5. Ignore what I said above, or maybe consider it only inasmuch as this: it may take a while to realize the utter brilliance & beauty here.… (mais)