Sunday, December 19, 2010

Spoken Word Poetry on the Page

The first idea in "What is this Thing Called Rap?" is that it is common for an undergraduate to have their "face blown off" by postcolonial theory. I hate to admit it, but this totally happened to me, when I was taking, you guessed it, Postcolonial Literature and Theory while studying at the University of London. And then they review a new anthology of rap, which, while admirable, appears to have a ton of mistakes in it. I've been following the discussion on how this book was created, and mostly what I keep going back to is one of the oldest adages of poetry: it's meant to be spoken outloud. Rap, like poetry, is never as good when read, it's good when you read it outloud to yourself, or even better, hear the writer read it themselves.

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