the last poets

Melmoth

Bruxist
seamus heaney recently said somewhere that eminem was keeping the english language alive.

don paterson has argued for the occult potency of poetry here:

http://www.poetrylibrary.org.uk/news/poetryscene/?


Is there anyone matching sonic experimetation with the kind of linguistic dexterity paterson is talking abbout these days?

and does anyone here actually read poetry?
 

Melmoth

Bruxist
my "poetry" blog is here : http://peyoetryhut.blogspot.com[/QUOTE]

thanks, this is interesting stuff.

Nick said:

But I like The Last Poets

Me too, and the Watts Prophets.

I guess I want to know who people see around,
whether in Grime, hip-hop, new folk, the 'hidden reverse' or wherever, with the true
invocatory touch about their voice, flow or lyrics
 

Woebot

Well-known member
Melmoth said:
I guess I want to know who people see around, whether in Grime, hip-hop, new folk, the 'hidden reverse' or wherever, with the true invocatory touch about their voice, flow or lyrics

Luka's probably the one to ask. He's always held that Nas and Pharoahe Monch are poets. As for Grime, well I guess Dizzy is a poet, D Double may be a poet, Trim is definitely a poet, Dogzilla is a genius but probably more of a prose writer (ya get me) Kano is definitely not a poet (though that isnt strictly a criticism)

The thing I've always about terming lyricists poets is that its a form of creeping gentrification. The Last Poets were such bad bwoys that you couldnt ever accuse them of trying to make "third stream" style concessions to classical culture. I reckon poetry is like music journalism in a way, the moment it becomes POETRY it's pointless, you might as well flush it down the loo. Byron and Shelley, if you met them you'd probably just be blown away by their force of character and intensity. (Passing note my cousins are Wordsworths, there's no blood in it though, cant claim to be consanguisly inspired lol)

Actually all that Amiri Baraka-styled black poetry has always left me singularly unimpressed. It gets it's frisson from kind of tenuous connection to Rap, but like so what! Why do we have to compare rappers to poets at all? Why cant we compare poets to rappers, and actually at the end of the day (historically speaking) thats probably a truer parrallel.

Obligitaory name drop: Introduced myself to Jallal Nurridin at a Dub Poetry thing in the early nineties he did alongside LKJ. And now I think of it, met LKJ on a train to the airport once too (chatted a bit with him, damn LKJ is the PERFECT gentleman, such ****ing acumen, so bloody intelligent)
 

puretokyo

Mercury Blues
Well, seeing as you mention both poetry and the occult and sonic experimentalism (not to mention the hidden reverse) I need to take the easy shot and say "Coil"! Among the rest of their work, if anyone's heard their track "A Cold Cell" (as yet unreleased, only available on one Wire Tapper and on the live cds), that song is an amazing occult working of words.

And of course,

"Eat your greens, especially broccoli."
 

Melmoth

Bruxist
WOEBOT said:
The thing I've always about terming lyricists poets is that its a form of creeping gentrification.

Absolutely, the Christopher Ricks syndrome, tasteful appreciation. The term poetry has accreted so much
baggage that its tempting to abandon it. But at the same time I don't want to cede it to the snobs and purists. As an index of cultural value it refers to something that can be found across almost all art and for which I can't think of a suitable substitute. When you say that Dizzy is a poet (agreed) but that

Dogzilla is a genius but probably more of a prose writer (ya get me)

you get to the heart of it, its a very interesting and useful distinction.
 

Melmoth

Bruxist
puretokyo said:
Well, seeing as you mention both poetry and the occult and sonic experimentalism (not to mention the hidden reverse) I need to take the easy shot and say "Coil"!

Yeah and when I saw Coil last they had a huge picture of Pasolini behind them at one point, who was of
course a poet as well as a film maker.
 

satanmcnugget

Well-known member
thanks for the kind comments regarding my peyoetry-blog :)

i wld nominate Pharoahe Monche (sp?) as definitely a poet...havent checked in with him since Simon Says...must remedy that

also, of all the Wu Warriors, i wld have to say Cappadonna is definitely possessed by the spirit...some of his lines just flip my wig..wish i cld quote him offhand, but i cant
 

johneffay

Well-known member
puretokyo said:
"A Cold Cell" (as yet unreleased, only available on one Wire Tapper and on the live cds)

It's on the 'Silver Voice' compilation thingy as well.

I think David Tibet's latter material with Current 93 is probably better than Coil; particularly 'Hypnagogue'. The reason I say this is that I would happily sit down and read Tibet's stuff for it's own sake, whereas I don't think Balance's lyrics stand up without the the sonics in the same way.
 

Melmoth

Bruxist
SatanMcNugget said:

also, of all the Wu Warriors, i wld have to say Cappadonna is definitely possessed by the spirit

For me, Ghostface has the poetry too in the Wu





johneffay writes:

I think David Tibet's latter material with Current 93 is probably better than Coil; particularly 'Hypnagogue'. The reason I say this is that I would happily sit down and read Tibet's stuff for it's own sake, whereas I don't think Balance's lyrics stand up without the the sonics in the same way.[/QUOTE]

Yeah and Tibet also talks in interview about Dowland and Campion, the great ancestral english poets.
 

satanmcnugget

Well-known member
*slaps himself in the forehead* good call, Melmoth! and i was listening to Ghostface early this morn, too...yeah, i have (had, actually) some early Wu demos in which he is free-styling, and his flow is just UNREAL...one of the most original in hiphop EVER
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Just to add an observation (please note that, while I listen to a lot of hip-hop, I'm generally more interested in the sonix and the flow than in the lyrics per se, tho', like everyone, I can appreciate a good line - and I tend to tune in more to grime lyrics, as, living in London, they tend to have more resonance for me):

I have always found interesting the complete disparity between many of the great rappers' dexterity with language in the course of their flow, and the often laughably banal cliches and, frankly, idiocies, that they come out with in the course of interviews. Reading an interview with, say Nas or KRS-ONE, is usually a painful process - very little to say, ridiculously ill thought-out ideas, no sense of the sheer, well, wackness of what they are saying, etc....

Compared to people like Gil Scott-Heron or Linton Kwesi Johnson, the lack of articulacy of many rap stars is pretty embarrassing, if truth be told.

(PS Was impressed with Kano in a recent interview - his unwilingness to subscribe to cliched ideas and general all-round charm)

I think I may just start an argument with this, but I also think that the point is fairly indisputable if anyone has ever seen Nas interviewed on TV or in print.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Btw, I'd def nominate Gil Scott-Heron as the best marriage of music and 'poetry' (whatever it gets defined as) that I know of. Don't know if anyone saw the BBC4 documentary, but to see Gil reciting his rhymes while walking through Harlem was very There's a Griot Goin' On (apologies for the pun).
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
why not Kano?

just curious

i sort of get what you mean -- on something like 'what have you done for me lately' it's very prose-y, no metaphor or flights of imagery as such, and also nonpoetic in the sense of being a cold-eyed and deromanticised, weighing up a situation, tallying what's in his interest, a transactional view of sex

one of the things with poetic claims for rock/etc lyricists is that when separated from the intonation and grain of utterance and the play of the voice against the groove etc etc they lose a lot -- sometimes everything -- and that seems even more the case with hip hop/grime etc -- when the Source does those 'hip hop quotables' they always read terrible
 

Melmoth

Bruxist
I don't mean carefully constructed lyrics that use the accepted codes and conventions of 'poetry' in the traditional sense, I mean language taking over from the voice: channelling, incantation. Its there in Beefheart I think, and it absolutely cannot be divorced from the other sonic components, as Blissbogger says.
 

luka

Well-known member
oh shit! i thought this was a boring thread about the last poets! how come no one told me!

some of my favourite momnets-ghostface on investigative reports and impossible, rza on 4th chamber and wu gambinoes, nas on new york state of mind, fast life (from a kool g rap album), nas really is something specail, jean grae, currently the best mc in the world, check the bootleg lp with her spitting over tracks like 'all i need' (jay-z is it a just blaze beat?) eminen is dazzling though i don't like hardly any of his music, i even like some of that atmsophere stuff (girl with the tatooed arms or whatever) rza on mommy whats a gravedigga (as my essence tried to squeeze, through the crack of dawn) pharoahe monch is an incredible virtuoso, i like mr lif, common has a beautiful voice and has written some lovely lines, biggie wrote some great stuff though his flow is fairly conventional, the pharcyde has some lovely lovely momnets (runnin, life is just a moment in time etc) aceyalone is a lyricist i don't care what anyone says, scarface has written some deep bars (minds playing tricks blahetc) all the usual suspects really.
 

echevarian

babylon sister
well always have been a Leonard Cohen fan

and he wrote poetry long before he ever started writing songs


some of the stuff off of songs of leonard cohen and songs of love and hate

would definitely fall under that mystical incantory tradition


what I tend to think of as the lyric tradition



was reading the birth of tragedy the other day

where Nietzsche compares Homer vs. Archilochus


with Homer being a prose like staid metered poet

and Archilochus being this wild man, who apparently

invented the folk process


"Let us add to this the most important phenomenon of all ancient lyric: they took for granted the union , indeed the identity, of the lyrist with the musician.

I think its mostly a modern distinction between musicians and poets.

And believe me I've sat through poetry classes in school

that convinced me that written poetry had a richly deserved death

a half centrury ago


I like the Beats though, mostly Ginsberg

who eventually performed with punk bands


so yeah, luka named some of the best poets of the last ten years

its just everyone calls them rappers now
 
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