Generally, my taste in poetry runs to Robert Frost, W. B. Yeats and ee cummings. I am often left scratching my head by the performance stuff, but this is way too powerful to miss. Enjoy...
Every Young Jewish Person and everyone who loves a young Jewish person should see this!
6 comments:
Powerful and wonderful.
Fun stuff.
Wow! If that is poetry I can get into that. I am a retired trucker and I thought I had a pretty good handle on what things are or are not. Guess I was wrong.
Having more than a nodding acquaintance with the oral style of mid 20th century counter culture poetry I am amazed at how perfectly someone so young has mastered it. Surprised that it hasn't changed more. My observation is in no way a put down. That particular style of expressing strongly felt conviction works for me. In the current climate it is doubly good to see someone standing up for the Jewishness so forthrightly.
I've spent too long in this life having to read the under message to what is being spoken or written.
In her use of hip hop language and rhythm, she has cast her identity in the mold of the black culture; the audience is mostly black: perhaps the setting is within the black milieu; she has declared her oppressor the be white -- the mutual enemy -- through her description of the "typical white person." Her message is one more variation of "us against the white oppressor."
As an artist, I recognize the fact that by adopting another's technique, you have adopted their vision: the mode of perceiving.
As a Christian, I recognize the message of hate.
Upon having published my comment above, I recalled an incident in the late '60s at Rutgers-Newark: a black poet gave a recital of his poetry that was of the language of that time period. At the end of the recital, some crass, preppy English major spoke up and complained that the poet's poetry didn't sound like Shakespeare: an arrogant refusal to allow a vision to have its own voice. It wasn't that I agreed with the man's poetry: I simply had no problem with him using his own voice.
This same poet was a black militant. Now, he was a visiting artist in the Art and I had several friendly conversations with him. One day while I was talking to him in the print studio, his wife passes by holding their infant son. The man states that his wife is Jewish - as it was none of my business re what his wife was, I remained silent. He then continued to declare that although he loved his wife, he would kill her come the Revolution - that took my breath away.
And that is the nature of the "breath of the beast' that breathes through the "Hebrew Mamita."
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