Sunday, April 26, 2015

3 Jazz and Eileen Myles Amiri Baraka - review by Alison Cuthbertson

I stumbled through the doors after a subway rush and found my place at the back of the room. It was a small quaint gathering in St Mark’s Church for the reading of Amiri Baraka’s collection of poems from the last five decades. As I entered I was sucked into a funky jazz poem overlay “like this time and that time!” with a woman lulling words behind the shouting man and laughter tying all together. It was smooth and rough, easy then hard and the male voice jerked and shook while the others went soothingly. This was especially unique and was extremely enjoyable to listen to poetry composed in such a way.  After this music faded there were many readers of Baraka’s work I felt drawn to Eileen Myles and her execution of the reading. I found the relationship between her and Baraka intriguing in the way the she was everything he hated.
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1 comment:

  1. UnknownApril 26, 2015 at 4:12 PM

    this majorly got cut off. here is the rest

    Before Myles proceeded to read she explained how it is strange for people to assume the identity of an intended person while reading aloud other’s work. Myles mentions straight men reading gay/queer poems which they read with voices other than their own, and this is what was strange about it. As for Myles, I felt that she owned it. She made Baraka’s poems her own because she did not try to be anybody else.
    Amiri Baraka was a well-respected African-American writer and poet. This man wrote about Civil Rights and white racism giving his poetry an activist edge and comes off as anger. Of course he was angry and though he boarders on the cliché of the angry poem, I feel that Baraka gets away with it. There needs to be that intensity and shock to get his point across and also to deepen the severity of the issues he so cared for. Eileen Myles read intensely as she should. “It is the dying of life,” as a firetruck sirens through the walls adding to Myles’ urgency, her voice fevering. I wonder what Baraka would have thought of Myles reading his work.

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