"Say Thank You Say I'm Sorry" -- Jericho Brown, Alfre Woodard

"Say Thank You Say I'm Sorry" poem by Jericho Brown (Pulitzer Prize for poetry) recited by the indomitable and stellar Alfre Woodard.


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Rattle Magazine published my poem last month

Almost a month has passed since Rattle Magazine published my poem "Digital Anthropologists Find Our Hashtags" for its Poets Respond series. The poem explores specifically the consecutive shooting deaths of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, by police officers in the first full week of July.

Just hours after I submitted the poem, a sniper killed and wounded police officers in Dallas, Texas. That week of July brimmed too much with violence, grief, and pointed fingers. So, although I was pleased Rattle had accepted the poem, I was also too through with humanity to share at this blog my poem's publication on Tuesday, July 12.

I share it now because since then I've gotten notes and calls from people telling me how they felt about the poem, which you may read at Rattle's site. Acknowledging publication at my blog is appropriate.

The poem was one of two the magazine published that week following the shootings. On Sunday, July  10, the site posted "The Dead Line," a poem by Nicole Homer, a poem that uses repetition to good effect.

Also, the website for the Academy of American Poets, Poets.org, published a poem by the current Poet Laureate for the United States, Juan Felipe Herrera, entitled "@ the Crossroads--A Sudden American Poem." Herrera's verse also addresses the present crisis and sorrow of police relationships with black and brown communities. Clearly he wrote his poem after the Dallas tragedy because the epigraph names the slain officers and is dated July 10. Homer and I wrote our poems before Dallas.

Sadly, by the time America solves this problem, by the time we all do the hard work of facing the root causes of this race-related crisis and too often reasonable distrust of police of officers, the world may have volumes of poems exploring or tackling this subject. There is no easy solution here because solutions means behaviors and systems must change, and people fear change, especially when change challenges the foundation of long-held world views and practices.

Verse can soothe, make space for catharsis, and initiate dialogue beyond the heated center. Poetry may not be as popular as it once was in this nation, but the art remains a source humans turn to during troubling hours.

Stuck in a Black Bird's Groove: obsessive love (Video)

We like to call our romantic fixations "crushes, torches, or love-sickness," and this video poem is probably more along the romantic vein rather than stalker, but I know some psychologists who would call any inability to stop thinking about someone and still longing for the person's company to be an obsession. Some even say infatuation is a form of mental illness.

The speaker of this poem is not in a state of mind to give up yet.

I wrote this poem in 2006. Between coming out of a harrowing divorce and attempting to date again, I may have been a touch crazy back then (not about the ex, though), but I still like this poem. Also, I had a muse of sorts, one I wish would go back to writing a few love poems again, but the person's gone uber spiritual, rather lofty. The work is good; I just miss the poet's old stuff.

The video for "Stuck in a Black Bird's Groove" is a remix. I made an older video for the poem and posted it to YouTube two years ago, but I was just learning how to use Windows Movie Maker back then, so, the video had some issues. I never rally liked it. Last week I decided I really, really didn't like it, so I made that video with its 200 views private, and produced this one.

For those reading who like to document process, first I edited the poem a little, nothing major, and then I went in search of royalty-free music, pictures, and video clips. I became a member of Dreamstimes.com for still shots and VideoBlocks.com for video.

Doing poetry videos every once in a while fulfills me in some way. I do it even though the videos don't draw a lot of hits (with the exception of "Misery," which did better than average for original poetry). And this one comes on the heels of the "Break-Up Poem," which I did last week and hardly anyone's watched. At the end of August I also produced a video of another poet's work, "An Angel for New Orleans," for the 9th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

I didn't post the written poem of "Stuck in a Black Bird's Groove" on YouTube. I've posted them here.

Stuck in a Black Bird's Groove
by Nordette N. Adams

I cannot speak to you.
But my eyes still seek out you.
My soul's been meek for you.
But I cannot speak to you this truth.

When the evening come and all my sorrows stretch
prostrate before silver streams of early moon weeping,
When birds come to roost in charcoal blue,
tangled strands of my mourning,
my head still tilts toward your breath.

I listen and I long.
I listen for your song.

You do not seek out me.
You've not been meek for me.
Your outlook's bleak for me.
You do not seek out me, your sooth.

When the morning come and my joy seeps out,
vanishing with coral dreams of dawn,
When birds take flight and leave me
to grieving gray days of my journey,
my soul turns toward your heartbeat.

I listen and I long.
I listen for your song.

The blues is black with me.
Black blues fall back on me.
This deck's not stacked for me.
The blues is black with me.
It's you.

When noon bring sun to seek my scarlet sins,
and sun drops in pale sky to cast its shadows,
When black birds fly past with wings spread wide,
and I stand on Earth in envy,
my dreaming conjures your heartfire.

I listen and I long.
I listen and I long.

© 2006 Nordette Adams
....

An Angel for New Orleans (Video)

In 2005, Rahkyt aka Mark Rockeymore, produced the music and audio for this poem, "An Angel for New Orleans" by Aberjhani, after Aberjhani recorded the recitation. Nordette Adams created the video this weekend in recognition of the 9th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Recent clips have been added at the end to acknowledge the city's progress since that tragic day, August 29, 2005.

Watch this video interpretation of "Colored Things"

Earlier this week, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Eric Toler of North Carolina decided to create a video interpretation of my poem "Colored Things." Eric's twitter page says he "write[s] about self-love & queer life." His page also links him to "It's Who I Am," a magazine for young adults written by young adults. I hope you enjoy his video. I did!

UPDATE: When I first saw this video, I had not yet heard about the Pharell issue discussed at Harriet. But in a way, this video could relate to that, though that was not the producer's intention at all.

Does Pharrell's hit Happy sound like another song to you?

You may also enjoy
"Yes, Pharrell,
subconscious plagiarism
is a thing."

As the writer Oscar Wilde said, "Talent borrows, genius steals." I take that statement to mean that a talented person recognizes the value of another's good work or art and imitates it. A genius, however, takes imitation to a new level, sometimes improving upon the original so much that observers, readers, or listeners don't even recognize the theft. The genius makes it his or her own.

I submit that creative genius is also an ability to take disparate parts and recombine them into something new and fresh that stands on its own.

Perhaps what we see often today is the cycle of creation and re-creation at work or maybe what we see today is evidence that the human mind has run out of ideas. Artists and writers, however, have been facing charges that they have copied or "borrowed from" each other more than they should since the invention of the printing press. The charge is not new, and neither are efforts to explain how and why this copying or "borrowing" occurs. The great poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1817 addressed this issue in his preface to Prometheus Unbound.

But how did I end up on this topic today? A Facebook discussion.

Sometimes I look up and I realize that I've written so much in response to a Facebook discussion that I might as well post whatever I've said at my own blog. Does that ever happen to you? When I read a debate on the public Facebook page of talk show host Lisa Durden today, I had that experience. We debated whether Pharrell Williams's super hit "Happy" from the movie Despicable Me 2 sounded like Stevie Wonder's "Fingertips" and "Cool Jerk" by the Capitols.

Honestly, I knew "Happy" felt familiar, but the song did not seem close enough to a specific song to me to matter. I felt what Pharrell had captured was one of the sounds of an era more than a particular song of that era (the 1960s). But full disclosure here: I love "Happy."

Here is what I had to say on FB:

Similarity between songs is not enough to constitute actual theft in the legal sense. Musicians (and poets) have long borrowed from each other and imitated styles in sincerity as well as in tongue and cheek. Tongue in cheek examples of borrowing in music would be Stevie Wonder himself playing "Mary had a little Lamb" at the end of "Fingertips," and Rufus featuring Chaka Khan drawing in the bass line of Bobby Womack's "A Woman's Gotta Have It" at the end of "Stop on By." Paying homage and so imitating sincerely is what "Alicia Keyes did when she borrowed part of Prince’s “Adore” for her song "Like You'll Never See Me Again." But unlike Stevie and Rufus did with their tongue and cheek borrowing, Alicia plays almost the same notes but off; hence, she alludes to “Adore;” she doesn’t steal it. In poetry, both the tongue and cheek and the paying homage types of borrowing usually fall into the allusion category. In the case of "Blurred Lines," Pharrell and Thicke went overboard. Also, Thicke made a definite effort to make "Blurred Lines" clearly echo "Got to Give It Up," but now wants to claim otherwise. And again, it seems to me that, they went overboard. Sections of the “Blurred Lines” can be played over "Got to Give It Up Part II" with little disturbance in listening, meaning the two songs almost mesh. [The founder of SameThatTune.com says that the Pharrell and Thicke definitely pushed the boundaries of the tribute song with "Blurred Lines"] The same cannot be said of "Fingertips" and "Happy." The similarity between those two comes with imitating a style, not a specific song. Even the similarity between "Cool Jerk" and "Happy" in this instance is not enough to constitute theft but more a case of style imitation. Just as theft in print is determined by how much is borrowed as well as a denial of borrowing, in music it depends on how much of the song is ripped from the other song and a refusal to acknowledge the “borrowing.” [SameThatTune.com also has an opinion on "Happy" and other songs, and they explain it in musical terms.] The best legal cases are when it's so obvious even a first-grader can tell it's the same song. For instance, most people who've heard "He's So Fine" more than once immediately recognized George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" was the same song. Harrison lost in court. His theft was classified as "subconscious plagiarism." Nevertheless, when it comes to beats and bass lines, musicians constantly borrow from one another, sometimes evenly openly admitting that they've done so as is the case in one of the songs I've mentioned in the post I've linked to here, but usually there's some variation: a speeding up of the riff or a slowing down, a change of a note here and there. And when the same beats and bass lines or sounds are borrowed often enough, then the music becomes a style the same way that in poetry certain poem arrangements eventually become poem forms. And Stevie [Wonder] may be cutting Thicke and Pharrell some slack on “Blurred Lines” because he’s giving the variation more weight than the similarity. [This was written in response to someone else in the conversation saying Stevie Wonder said "Blurred Lines" and "Got to Give It Up Part II" are not the same.]

That's all I said on Facebook, but since I'm writing here again about musical similarities and sometimes out-and-out copying, here is a "borrowing" aka a sampling that I pointed out to another friend of mine, Steven Hart, that made him gasp, "You're right!" When I first heard the opening of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" (the Valkyrie's cry) I immediately recognized the theme from the 1960s TV show Get Smart.  You be the judge; I've posted both below:




Related:

• "Borrowed Groves: The Clash, Katrina & the Waves, Robin Thicke, and Pharrell"
• Alicia Keys's love affair with Prince

Apple's New Poetry-Pumped iPad Air Ad: "You May Contribute A Verse" - "Your Verse Anthem" (Video)

Apple's New iPad Air commercial, "Your Verse Anthem," makes much of poetry, quoting the great Walt Whitman's "O Me! O Life!" As Fast Company notes, the speech that opens the commercial and continues with Whitman's poem comes from the 1990 movie Dead Poet's Society. The character John Keating (played by Robin Williams) says the following:

We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering--these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love--these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman:

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring, / Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish, / Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) / Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d, / Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me, / Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined, / The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life? // Answer. / That you are here—that life exists and identity, / That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

This beautifully done, 90-second commercial makes me curious about the person at Apple's ad agency who developed it. Is that person a poet? Poets have sometimes ventured into the ad business. Jane Friedman, for instance, mentions in the Whidbey MFA Panel podcast (audio) at Author MBA that poet Todd Boss of MotionPoems.com wrote ad copy for a while.

One thing I'm sure of is that Apple did not broadcast this ad to suck up to poets. Poets are a very small demographic and the genre itself is not as highly esteemed in popular culture as it once was.

Forbes Magazine also discusses the "Your Verse Antehm" commercial and its use of the movie. In addition, it points out that in ten days the Macintosh computer will be thirty years old. The writer connects the iPad Air ad to the iconic 1984 ad that introduced the Macintosh. You know, it's the one with the Big Brother figure on a screen speaking to the gray masses. The commercial ends with "And you'll see why 1984 will not be like 1984." The writer asserts that Apple's strategy is to remind consumers that when you purchase an Apple product you're not merely purchasing machinery; "you're buying an experience."

Lagniappe: I've posted video of the William's delivery of the speech in the Dead Poet's Society below.