The Poet X, Day 1: Love Under Breakbeats

Lecture Structure:
1) Towards a wild and
untamed literature
2) “It’s a date night. It’s
not a poetry reading.
It’s a slam!”
3) “For now I just listen
to the noise”
4) Disrupting form,
disrupting Afro-
Latinidad Past Performers at the Nuyorican Poets Café:
Erykah Badu, Orquesta de la Luz, Black Thought,
and MF Doom
The Gilberts say that X as a replacement letter makes Spanish
unpronounceable, not conjugatable, and frankly, confusing.”

Terry Bias, “ ‘Latinx’ is growing in popularity. I made a comic

to help you understand why”
More from
Terry Bias
 “We should embrace
working with this kind of
alphabet soup”
 “…it nevertheless confounds all
Ralph E. Rodriguez, Latinx reason to think that the heterogenous
Literature Unbound: Undoing
Ethnic Expectation
communities and peoples from more
than twenty different nations (who
now reside in the United States)
gathered under its mantle would
produce a body of literary works
that could be said to be recognizable
because of the supposedly shared
racial or ethnic identity of the
authors.”
José Martí, Preface to The Golden Age Monthly Available on Canvas!
Publication of Recreation and Knowledge
Dedicated to the Children of America (1889)

This enterprise of The Golden Age wishes to place

a volume in the hands of the children of the
Americas that will entertain and rejoice them; that
will teach them without weariness; that will
stimulate them to use their mental and physical
capabilities on an equal basis; to love feelings more
than to love sentimentality; to substitute a sickly
and rhetorical poetry still in fashion with another
healthy and useful poetry born from the
knowledge of the world; to study preferably the
laws, agents, and history of the soil upon which
they toil for the glory of their good names and the
needs of their livelihood.
Part I: Towards a wild and untamed literature

Elizabeth Acevedo, Introduction to reading at Split This

Rock Poetry Festival (2018)
 Elizabeth Acevedo
• Born in Harlem to Afro-Dominican
parents
• Performed at poetry slams at the
Nuyorican Poets Café and the
Bowery Poetry Club starting at 14
• Published three YA novels, a
chapbook of creation myths, a novel
for adults,
• National Slam Champion, fellow at
CantoMundo and Cave Canem
poetry residencies, Youth Poet
Laureate of the Poetry Foundation
• First became nationally known for
her poem “Hair”
 In their lawsuit last month, John and Robin
From the Coble — the parents of a ninth-grader at the
Charlotte school — said Xiomara’s cryptic musings in The
Poet X amounted to a “frontal assault” on their
Observer, family’s Christian beliefs and values, thus
“Classroom violating the religious protections spelled out in
the U.S. Constitution.
fight over book
escalates.
[...]
Huntersville
case reaches U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn refused. The
nation’s 2nd veteran Asheville judge ruled Friday that the
highest court.” Cobles had failed to prove that their child would
be harmed by the book or that the school
(2020) endorsed the novel’s criticism of organized
Your father will become “un hombre serio.”
Merengue might be your people’s music
But Papi will reject anything
that might sing him toward temptation.

“When You’re Born to Old Parents, Continued,”

p 19
Las Chicas de Can, ”Juana la Cubana”
It’s just when Father Sean
starts talking about the Scriptures
that everything inside me
feels like a too-full,
too-dirty kitchen sink.

When I’m told girls

Shouldn’t. Shouldn’t. Shouldn’t.
When I’m told
To wait. To stop. To obey.
When I’m told not to be like
Delilah. Lot’s Wife. Eve.
It’s just when Father Sean
starts talking about the Scriptures
that everything inside me
feels like a too-full,
too-dirty kitchen sink.

When I’m told girls

Shouldn’t. Shouldn’t. Shouldn’t.
When I’m told
To wait. To stop. To obey.
When I’m told not to be like
Delilah. Lot’s Wife. Eve.
It’s just when Father Sean
starts talking about the Scriptures
that everything inside me
feels like a too-full,
too-dirty kitchen sink.

When I’m told girls

Shouldn’t. Shouldn’t. Shouldn’t.
When I’m told Xiomara
doesn’t have a
To wait. To stop. To obey. fantastical cat,
When I’m told not to be like but she does
Delilah. Lot’s Wife. Eve. have poetry!
When the only girl I’m
supposed to be
was an impregnated virgin
who was probably scared
shitless.

“Church Mass,” p 59
If Medusa was Dominican
and had a daughter, I think I’d be her.
I look and feel like a myth.
A story distorted, waiting for others to stop
and stare.
“How I Feel about Attention,” p 48
If Medusa was Dominican
and had a daughter, I think I’d be her.
I look and feel like a myth.
A story distorted, waiting for others to stop
and stare.
“How I Feel about Attention,” p 48
A remixing (a variant
produced by the deliberate
manipulation of source
material) of Medusa
 For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital
necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light
within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward
survival and change, first made into language, then into
idea, then into more tangible action.
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider
 eve cardi poem 307 cap

Elizabeth Acevedo, “Self Portrait of Eve as Cardi B” (2018)

We believe in art that samples, steals, and
borrows to create the most compelling and
important work possible.

We believe in Ezra Pound’s charge to “make

it new” and/or Andre 3000’s revelation that
“you only funky as your last cut.”

Nate Marshall, “Blueprint for BreakBeat

Writing”
The “Amen Break”
Part II: “It’s a date night. It’s not a
reading. It’s a slaaaaaam!”

22 Jump Street (2014)

I crumple the flyer in my backpack.
Balled and zipped up tight.
Tuesdays I have confirmation class.

Not a chance Mami’s gonna let me out of that.

Not a chance I want anyone hearing my work.

Something in my chest flutters like a bird

whose wings are being gripped still
by the firmest fingers.
The poet talks about being black, about being a
woman, about how beauty standards make it
seem she isn’t pretty.

I don’t breathe for the entire three minutes.

“Spoken Word” p 76
 It was just a poem, Xiomara, I think.

But it felt more like a gift.

“Spoken Word” p 77
 For Xiomara, her notebook (and
the rejection of poetic forms) gives
her the language to push back
against her mother’s expectations
and inspires the actions she takes
at home, at school, at church, and
throughout New York.
Friday, December 14
Open Mic Night

The legendary Nuyorican Poets Café

is not close to Harlem.

It takes us two trains and a walk in the

brick-ass cold to get there, and when we do,
the line to get in is halfway down the block

Not even nightclubs around the way

look half as packed as this.

The café is dimly lit, with paintings on the wall

The host is a statuesque black woman
From my interview with Bob
Holman, original slammaster
at the Nuyorican Poet’s Café
We started, and I said, this is not
going to be a Wednesday night at
eight like St. Mark's or a Sunday
afternoon at two. Like all the other
poetry readings. We're going to do
this Friday at nine o'clock, and it's
still done Fridays at nine o'clock.
This is a date night. It's not a
reading. It's a slaaaaaaaam!
 Acevedo said there’s a sense of “walking into
a lineage” of other Latinx spoken word
From The performers at the cafe. “Even as the poets
get younger, you feel that there’s something
New York being passed down,” she said.
Times, “The
The magic of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe was
Early Days how it blended old-world and new, Acevedo
of the said. It was “this space that, yes, was in
conversation with hip-hop. Yes, was in
Nuyorican conversation with the beat poets. But was
also in conversation with something that was
Poets Café” inherently Puerto Rican, inherently
Caribbean, inherently Latinx.”
 Notable performers at the Nuyorican
Poet’s Café

Allen Ginsberg Nzotake Shange Giannina Braschi

 Notable performers at the Nuyorican
Poet’s Café

Eminem Company Flow Mos Def (aka

Yasiin Bey)
Available on
Canvas
(Spotify and
Apple Music)
MF Doom (Daniel Dumile), at the Nuyorican Poets
Café, circa 1998
MF Doom performing in Central Park, circa 2005
We need diverse
books, teachers
from those
cultures to share
their
worldviews,
and initiatives
that support
writers and the
spaces where
they collaborate
Part III: “For now I just listen to the noise”

Outro to “Doo Wop (That Thing)” by Lauryn Hill

This is the story of how generations of young
people reared on hip-hop culture and
aesthetics took to the page and poem and
microphone to create a movement in
American letters in the tradition of the Black
Arts, Nuyorican, and Beat generations and
add to it and innovate on top. We are in the
tradition—and making one up.
Kevin Coral, Preface to The Breakbeat Poets:
New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop
Kendrick made you think about it, but he is not
your savior.

Cole made you feel empowered, but he is not your

savior.

Kendrick Lamar, “Savior,” Mr. Morale &

the Big Steppers (2023)
I want to get to know him.

I ask him if he has the new J. Cole album.

Aman signs his name beneath mine on the
lab report.
The bell rings, but neither of us moves.

- “J Cole vs. Kendrick Lamar,” p 81

Aman straightens and for the first time his
eyes lock onto mine:

‘Yeah, I got Cole, but I rather the

Kendrick Lamar—
we should listen to his new album together
sometime.
I fell in love with Nicki Minaj,
with J. Cole, with Drake and Kayne.

With old-school rappers like

Jay Z and Nas and Eve.

“Asylum,” p 82
And maybe this is why Papi stopped listening to
music,
because it can make your body want to rebel. To
speak up.

And even that young I learned that music can

become a bridge
between you and a total stranger.

“Asylum,” p 82
But even though I’m nervous
when I get to bio, the moment
I sit next to him I calm down.
Like my dream has given me
and inside knowledge
that takes away my nerves.

‘I’d love to listen to Kendrick.

Maybe we could do it tomorrow?’
“The Thing about Dreams,” p 87
‘No music today, X.
Instead I want to hear you.
Read me something.’

And I instantly freeze.

Because I never, never read my work.
But Aman just sits patiently.

“Listening, pg 111
‘No music today, X.
Instead I want to hear you.
Read me something.’

And I instantly freeze.

Because I never, never read my work.
But Aman just sits patiently.

“Listening, pg 111
And when I’m done I can’t look at Aman.
I feel as naked as if I’d undressed before him.
But he just keeps fiddling with my fingers.

‘Makes me think of my mother being gone.

You got bars, X. I’m down to listen to them
anytime.”

“Listening,” pg 117
Part IV: Disrupting form, disrupting Afro-Latinidad

Elizabeth Acevedo, Hair (2014)

 Clipping: when an
audio device receives
more sound input than
it can handle, causing
distortion
But I can hold my back like a coat hanger, too.
Straight and stuff and unbending
beneath the weight of her hard glare

‘I don’t want to take

the bread and wine, and Father Sean says
it should always and only be done with joy.’

“Not Even Close to Haikus,” p 60

But I can hold my back like a coat hanger, too. (12)
Straight and stuff and unbending (7)
beneath the weight of her hard glare (8)

‘I don’t want to take (5)

the bread and wine, and Father Sean says (9)
it should always and only be done with joy.’ (11)

“Not Even Close to Haikus,” p 60

But I can hold my back like a coat hanger, too. (12)
Straight and stuff and unbending (7) Playfulness
beneath the weight of her hard glare (8) with
language like
Lewis
‘I don’t want to take (5) Carroll

the bread and wine, and Father Sean says (9)

it should always and only be done with joy.’ (11)

“Not Even Close to Haikus,” p 60

Rough and Final Draft of Assignment 3 (p 179-80)
When I was little
Mami was my hero.
But then I grew breasts
and although she was always extra
hard on me,
her attention became something
else, like she wanted to turn me
into the nun
she could never be.
I’ve always found Nicki Minaj
compelling. Although she gets
a bad reputation for being
‘overly sexual’ and making
songs like ‘Anaconda,” I think
the persona she portrays in
her videos is really different
from who she is in real life.
“Ants,” p 201
“from
skyscraper(s) &
erything” by
Avery R. Young
(2020)
Thank you! Please
reach out!

Alex Diaz-Hui
adiazhui@princeton.ed
u
PhD Candidate, English
and Latin American
Studies

To play us out, “i” by Kendrick Lamar