March 19, 2018
By Gabrielle Bates Anastacia Renée: “Do you feel free on the page?” Tyehimba Jess: “I feel opportunity.” * Seeing and hearing Tyehimba Jess read from his Pulitzer-Prize winning collection Olio at SAL two weeks ago has me rethinking every parameter and practice I’ve ever accepted as fixed. The expansive, acrobatic, mechanical wonder of Jess’s syncopated […]
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March 12, 2018
From my mind to my heart: a message to me One of those late night conversations and I found me The real me Age eighteen I understand now Took the time to look back And I thought Wow Childhood It was a lock down Locked between the people who gave birth to me Defined as […]
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February 22, 2018
Seattle poet and educator Quenton Baker, whose work focuses on anti-blackness and the afterlife of slavery, writes below on Tyehimba Jess’s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Olio. Jess’s work weaves sonnet, song, and narrative to examine the lives of African American musicians from the Civil War era on, in an effort to understand how these performers met, resisted, and […]
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