Don’t miss this week’s Best of Button playlist, featuring the top-viewed recent videos on the Button YouTube Channel. Today’s additions: Rachel Wiley, Talia Young, & Brittany Rogers. Congratulations poets!
Check out Rachel’s forthcoming book, NOTHING IS OKAY, dropping March 2018!
“‘That time of the month’ has about double the amount of syllables as ‘period’.”
Congratulations to Raych Jackson on topping 500,000 views on this amazing poem. Check out more videos from Raych and the 2017 Rustbelt Poetry Festival here.
“I’m not here to make you comfortable, I’m here to free myself.”
Don’t miss this week’s Best of Button playlist, featuring the top-viewed recent videos on the Button YouTube Channel. Today’s additions: Neil Hilborn, Sam Sax, & Paul Tran! Congratulations poets!
“Fat girl walks into the doctor’s to ask about anti-depressants and gets prescribed exercise instead, because obviously her depression is because of her fat, and obviously fat bodies never exercise and stay fat.”
Congratulations to Rachel Wiley on topping 100,000 views on this remarkable poem. Check out more videos from Rachel here and here.
Don’t forget to check out Rachel’s forthcoming book, NOTHING IS OKAY, dropping March 2018!
In-Depth Look: Talia Young – “While My Love Sleeps I Cook Dinner”
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 call her love, as if she herself is love: something glowing and untouchable…”
Note how this poem explores the big, universal idea/trope/archetype of the long distance relationship through some stunningly specific imagery. For example, we could do a deep dive into just this passage:
“I tell my friends: I’m moving to a new country, because I have already left Minneapolis entirely. What exists between us? A piano string. A cord strung between two cups. All the veins in my body pulled taut.”
That sequence of three images works so well because each one is concrete– something that isn’t just an idea or a concept, but that you can visualize, or imagine holding in your hand. But there’s another layer to the sequence: each concrete image also belongs to the same family of images: they’re all string-like structures that enable some form of communication. It’s one thing to think of some cool images; it’s something else to have those images be consistent and supportive of one another.
Finally, there’s the additional effect of the last of the three images being something fantastical– it’s still easy to visualize, but it’s also bizarre (in a good way) and evocative. That rhythm– example, example, fantastical example– powerfully reinforces what the line, and the poem as a whole, is trying to say about the relationship between love, distance, and technology.
The poem also includes lines like “Our love in the shaky hands of the wifi” and the climactic: “I imagine a room in which every text is preserved in its own carved wooden box; I imagine all of this is physical, somewhere.” Both of these lines say something profound not just about long distance relationships in a general sense, but about how those relationships work right now, in this historical moment. That impulse– to document the specificity of the actual experience rather than attempt to capture some storybook archetype of what we think that experience “should” look like– serves this poem so well.
“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.”
