“The church still gives purpose to all of the ghosts, because even with our hands up, don’t we still look like we are praising?”
Don’t miss this week’s Best of Button playlist, featuring the top-viewed recent videos on the Button YouTube Channel. Today’s additions: Pages Matam & William Evans! Congratulations poets!
In-Depth Look: Billy Tuggle – “Marvin’s Last Verses”
Appreciating poetry is often about patience: sitting with a poem, meditating on it, and re-reading it multiple times. With spoken word, we don’t always get a chance to do that. This series is about taking that chance, and diving a little deeper into some of the new poems going up on Button.
I’m struck by the structure of this piece– it feels like it all takes place in a single moment, the “life flashing before your eyes” experience. Because of that, every line becomes vital– every memory, or regret, or passing thought has to both stand on its own as a human experience and be a metaphor for something that experience alone maybe doesn’t quite capture.
For example, connecting a mother’s scream, to screaming fans, to lovers– these are three moments, but they also highlight that balance between pleasure and pain that drives so much art. From talking about Berry Gordy’s Motown “assembly line,” to Gaye’s father’s jealousy, to Gaye’s own fears and struggles– this poem unearths the tragedy behind the art that is so life-giving to so many. And that tragedy isn’t held up as a good or generative thing (which is a trap I think a lot of artists fall into); it’s simply held up as something we all need to face.
Find more from Billy Tuggle (who, incidentally, was always one of the kindest, most supportive members of the larger spoken word community when I was coming up, and to whom I am very grateful) here.
Finally, this poem is dedicated to David Blair, one of those poets I wish every up-and-coming or aspiring spoken word artist knew about. Blair’s work was transcendent– a word I think a lot of us use for a lot of poetry, but one that truly fits in this case. If that’s a new name for you, a few links: – Video: “Detroit (While I Was Away)” by David Blair – Video: “My Time at Chrysler” by David Blair – Video: “Freedom Calling” by Blair and The Boyfriends – Blair’s obituary in Solidarity – An interview in the Detroit Metro Times, featuring this quote: “The authentic self is a way more subversive creature than we care to put out there most of the time, and that’s fine. But you really got to face yourself and not be afraid to tell your story, ’cause somebody may need to hear it.”
“Hello, love. Hello, moment allowed above the surface like a dolphin at war.”
Don’t miss this week’s Best of Button playlist, featuring the top-viewed recent videos on the Button YouTube Channel. Today’s additions: Toaster, Franny Choi, & Melissa Lozada-Oliva. Congrats poets!
Don’t miss Melissa’s incredible book, PELUDA, now available!
In-Depth Look: William Evans – “Bathroom Etiquette”
Appreciating poetry is often about patience: sitting with a poem, meditating on it, and re-reading it multiple times. With spoken word, we don’t always get a chance to do that. This series is about taking that chance, and diving a little deeper into some of the new poems going up on Button.
Aspiring poets ask about writer’s block a lot. They tend to also ask questions like “where do you get your inspiration?” a lot. Of course, these are good and natural questions, but I also remember when I was just getting started, asking the same questions; I remember asking them less out of curiosity and more out of fear– the fear that every poem has to be some monumental, earth-moving feat, the fear that if I’m not constantly producing I’ll fall behind (whatever that means), the fear that I don’t have anything to add to the larger conversation.
My favorite answer to that question is brought to life by this poem. William Evans has a gift for presenting “small,” slice-of-life moments, and then really digging into them to explore how history, and policy, and experience, and culture, and more all add up to create a moment. When you can cultivate that kind of critical lens, when you can challenge yourself to really see what’s going on inside– or behind– a scene or situation, you become able to see poems everywhere. This piece takes the most seemingly throwaway social interaction (two coworkers joking about an email memo about urinal splashguards) and excavates something profound about history, bodies, memory, lineage, and even white supremacy.
Note the subtle emphasis placed on the “my” in “But my grandfather…” at 1:26. The whole poem turns on that point. The whole “seemingly throwaway situation” turns into something else. When people ask me about writer’s block today, that’s my answer: it isn’t always about trying to access some brilliant truth outside of yourself; it’s about taking the time to find the “something else” in a scene, moment, or memory to which you already have access.
Find more from William Evans here, and get his new book here!
“There is nothing rational about love. Love stutters when it gets nervous, love trips over its own shoelaces. Love is clumsy, and my heart refuses to wear a helmet.”
Appreciating poetry is often about patience: sitting with a poem, meditating on it, and re-reading it multiple times. With spoken word, we don’t always get a chance to do that. This series is about taking that chance, and diving a little deeper into some of the new poems going up on Button.
“Do you know that? What it means to come from catastrophe? To have no word for homeland except the crack of bone?”
Franny Choi’s work is always inspiring in its willingness to challenge the audience, to withhold easy answers and cultivate a more critical understanding of complex issues. This poem approaches that work by using personal narrative as an entry point into an exploration of something potentially abstract: how power isn’t just about armies and economics; it’s about whose definitions we accept, and who gets to set the terms of engagement for battles both physical and cultural.
That could be an essay. That could be a book. That could take any form– but as poetry, there’s a heightened awareness of the relationship between language and matter, between the symbol and the thing being symbolized. Note lines like “My mother’s tongue is a snipped string, a stripped stinger,” or “…except a myth that we were once whole, except a hole, rising from the ground, oh holy, holy the fractures through which lava comes…” I hear that wordplay, that use of assonance and consonance, that focus on homophones– not just as fun poetic pyrotechnics, but as the poem’s content (its interest in questions about language, identity, etc.) being elegantly reflected in its form.
One other thing I’d like to point out: the hand gesture at 2:47 is a fantastic example of how spoken word choreography doesn’t have to be super complex or flashy to be effective. That small movement does so much work as the poem approaches its conclusion.
