“My depression is like that guy lifting directly in front of the weight rack.”
Don’t miss this week’s Best of Button playlist, featuring the top-viewed recent videos on the Button YouTube Channel. Today’s additions: Nora Cooper and Olivia Gatwood!
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’ve decided that I will not speak unless I can say the complete truth. This has made it so much harder to talk about the things that are really important to me.
The most common critique of slam poetry is that it’s predictable, or “tropey,” to use an increasingly useful pop culture term. We talk about the same subject matter, using the same structural and poetic elements, through the same delivery style. On one hand, I think this critique misses the mark, especially when it comes from outside the culture (see points #4 and #5 here for a few more thoughts on that), but on the other hand, it isn’t particularly difficult to see why that critique exists– we could, as a community, challenge ourselves to explore new angles on issues, push our writing into more interesting places, and strive to create work that doesn’t sound like everyone else’s.
That larger context makes this poem particularly interesting. While the “gimmick” (and I don’t mean that in a bad way) of the poem is obvious, there’s a deeper impulse at play in how the poem uses negative space. That silence isn’t just for drama’s sake; it’s embedded in the writing in a way that directly counters that charge of predictability. The “father” section, for example, could be read in multiple, conflicting ways, which captures something profound about the nature of both that specific relationship, and the larger idea of the truth as something that is messy, sometimes contradictory, and difficult to grasp. Poets are sometimes expected to be able to “illuminate the truth” in just three minutes; this poem functions as a critique of that, while simultaneously being an example of what that work might actually look like.
If you like Singer’s work, there’s much more available online.
In-Depth Look: William Evans – “They Love Us Here”
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.
“This is what you do when you are Black and at jobs where you suffer through being the minority, you send your daughter to the better school where she will suffer through being the minority.”
I remember first getting into writing, and thinking (not necessarily consciously, but somewhere deep down) that poetry was about saying simple, universal things in the most needlessly convoluted way possible. Of course, as I kept writing, reading, and listening, I figured out that the work that really sticks with me does the exact opposite: it uses simple, straightforward language to tackle deep, complex, multi-layered ideas. It’s probably no coincidence that William Evans was one of the first poets whose work had an impact on me.
This poem is only a minute-and-a-half long piece of storytelling. But within that, there’s so much– not just about race, but how race intersects with class, and history, and family, and fairness, and struggle, and America. It’s a furious indictment of so-called “benevolent racism,” but a poem that was just that, while still valuable, probably wouldn’t be as powerful as a poem that is equally about a father considering the future of his daughter. That personal angle both enriches and complicates the political message, creating a dynamic conversation between impulses, issues, and perspectives.
Find more from William Evans here, and get his new book here!
“Now, when it comes to the actual picture taking of ya dick, you can’t just do the overhead aerial shot. You gotta add variety. Show how the size stacks up against inanimate objects: a remote, a Snapple bottle, a Bath and Body Works 3-wick candle…”
Congratulations to Omar on topping 250,000 views on this hilarious poem. Check out more videos from Omar here and here.
“I’m worried that the only picture they will show on the news is his mugshot; not the selfies we’ve taken with the double-dog Snapchat filters.”
Don’t miss this spectacular poem from Nia Lewis, 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.
“Kissing you felt like singing the lyrics to my favorite song and your mouth was singing along. So whenever I kiss someone new I will tell them they’re getting the words wrong.”
Don’t miss this beautiful poem by Maddie Godfrey, featured contestant in the 2016 Button Poetry Video Contest.
