“We don’t live in the same acronym. The rainbow flag is all the color he can tolerate in his life. And at the end of the day he can wipe off the paint and the glitter and I stay colored and shining.”
Don’t miss this astonishing poem from Amir Khadar, performing at Button Poetry Live.
“In the dark, light only casts shadows and it’s easy to be a target when lurking hands can hide.”
Don’t miss this dynamic poem from Amaya Blankenship, performing during the finals of the 2017 Get Lit Words Ignite Classic Slam, the largest youth poetry tournament in Southern California. Order Get Lit Rising today at simonandschuster.com, and join the #LiteraryRiot at getlit.org.
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.
“My masculinity is a well-hung portrait in a hallway of a crumbling house.” ———
One of the most powerful things that poets do is attempt to view issues through the lens of relationships. As many of us are already aware, if we want to persuade an audience that our point-of-view about a particular issue is worthwhile, just rattling off the linear, logical arguments probably isn’t going to work (especially today). But if we can translate our argument into a story, particularly a story that orbits around personal relationships and the emotions that drive them, people might actually listen.
The first two-thirds of this poem only hint at its eventual thesis statement; through the exploration of a real, grounded, human relationship, Johnson provides context, brings the audience in, and sets the stage for the “here’s what I’m really talking about” section of the poem. And when that section comes, when Johnson really dives into how children are socialized to think about masculinity and the damage that that does, it’s all the more powerful for not just appearing from the void– we already care about the people touched by it.
For people interested in this topic, two links: One is a short poem by Nayyirah Waheed, and the other is a longer talk from Tony Porter, co-founder of A Call to Men. Also, be sure to check out more of Javon Johnson’s work here.
In-Depth Look: Hanif Abdurraqib – “Watching A Fight At The New Haven Dog Park”
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.
“And I too, dress for the hell I want, and not the hell that is most likely coming.” ———
In school, I remember learning about metaphor, but it was always tied to learning about simile. Part of the “lesson” was being able to differentiate the two, and I think that because of that, a lot of us still tend to think about metaphor in an overly specific way. “It’s like a simile, but doesn’t use like.” We so often see metaphor as another tool in the toolbox, and not something more fundamental to the craft of poetry; less screwdriver or pliers, more hands.
As this poem demonstrates, metaphor is so much more than a one-line comparison between two images or ideas. It’s about world-building. It’s about how we interface with reality through the telling of stories, or the sharing of images. And because that process is messy, metaphors can be messy too– they’re not always perfectly-balanced equations. The swirling imagery in this poem– from the dogs, to their owners, to the memory of another fight, to the more concrete flashes of blood, teeth, and fists– it all pushes us deeper into the poem’s reality, closer to the nuanced point that Abdurraqib is making.
