Category: Poetry

WHY HIP HOP POETRY MATTERS

9/27/2022

Carole Boston Weatherford

The Poet Professor

One reviewer claimed that my book, The Roots of Rap: 16 Bars on the 4 Pillars of Hip Hop, surprised him. “I didn’t take Carole Weatherford for a hip-hop head,” he confessed.
Maybe not. But I have designed and taught a hip-hop course for college students. I write poetry and stories steeped in oral traditions. And I was raised on family lore; street, playground and handclap rhymes; proverbs; spirituals; and the call-and-response of the black church. As a child, I also read Langston Hughes poems and chanted James Brown’s anthem, “Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud.” I later tuned into Gil Scott Heron’s spoken word manifesto, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”

Back in the day, I partied to Whodini, the Fat Boys and Run DMC, but did not fathom the power of rap until 1981 when I heard “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. The song confirmed for me that rap is rooted in resistance.

Rap originated in the late 1970s among alienated black and Latino youth in the Bronx, Harlem and Brooklyn. The genre has since come of age, and rappers have won Grammys for best album (The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in 1999) and best song of the year (Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” in 2019). In 2017, Kendrick Lamar won the Pulitzer prize for music, a first for rapper.

Today, hip hop is the language of global youth culture. Rap reveries have replaced hoop dreams, especially as a male rite of passage. A vehicle for self-expression, hip hop gives youth validation and agency. Despite rap’s rebellious vibe, the genre has form and makes use of figurative language.

Here’s how I harness the power of hip hop in the classroom. I discuss rap’s roots in oral traditions and its use of poetic elements. I show documentaries on the pillars of hip hop: graffiti, breakdancing, deejaying and emceeing. We study how rap influences pop culture, politics and commerce. Finally, I get students to write homages, confessional lyrics, social commentary and/or advertising jingles. My son and collaborator, poet/illustrator Jeffery Weatherford, amps up the excitement with a mini-studio that lets students download beats, record lyrics and mix audio. Mobile apps can produce similar results.

Like the genre itself, rap workshops convey to students that their voices deserve to be heard.

James Brown by Frank Morrison.

Rapper by Frank Morrison

Carole Boston Weatherford has written many books inspired by oral traditions, including The Roots of Rap: 16 Bars on the 4 Pillars of Hip Hop, illustrated by Frank Morrison. Here is Vicki Cobb's review.

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The Battle Hymn of the Chicken Pox Troopers

5/23/2022

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Vicki Cobb
The Master Chef of Kids’ Hands-on Science

How does a virus cause a disease? A virus is not a complete living thing. It is like a free-floating nucleus of cell. It doesn’t “grow” but under certain conditions it can make a copy of itself or reproduce. It invades the cells of other living things to use the internal structure of the host cells to reproduce. At a certain point, the number of new viruses in a cell is so large that the cell ruptures and dies, spilling out newly made viruses to continue the invasion to other uninfected cells.

One virus we understand very well is chicken pox. Chicken pox is a very contagious disease that enters the body through the air and affects mostly children. When I was young almost every kid got chicken pox but, since 1995, there has been a vaccine, which makes you immune and protects the spread of the disease to others. Is there another way to explain how this virus works? Suppose I imagine a virus could think, which it can’t. But, imagination gives me the freedom to think differently.

So I wrote a poem about an army of chicken pox viruses as they are about to attack a human being, maybe you, my reader. A “battle hymm” is a chant or a song to rally the troups just before an attack.

The Battle Hymn of the Chicken Pox Troopers

Charge forward, fellow viruses!
Invade a cell or two
Then let us join together
And make a chicken pox on you.

Let cells try to fight us
No matter what they do
Red spots of our graffiti
Make a chicken pox on you

We make the top skin separate
And fill the space with goo,
Small, itchy blisters are a stage
Of chicken pox on you.

And when the blisters break, my friend
You think perhaps we’re through
But no. Now there is a scab
For each chicken pox on you

Scratch a scab so it comes off
Baring skin that’s raw and new,
A scar forever marks the spot
Of that chicken pox on you.

The source? Chicken with fowl pox

To the battle, fellow viruses!
We’re more noteworthy than flu
They just make you feel sick
We make our chicken pox on you!

Meet your personal superheroes - your body's cells Superhero cells rally together to battle common childhood ailments in this series in which Vicki Cobb explains how your amazing human body heals itself and fights off intruders. Here's her book on yet another virus: Your Body Battles a Cold.

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Mary Makes a Monster

10/27/2021

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Cheryl Harness
She’s historical!

You know how it is: old campfire stories, interesting things you’re doing or seeing or hearing about—they get all mixed up in your dreams and your stories. That’s how it was for Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. One night in 1816, in Switzerland, when there wasn’t anything on TV (because it wasn’t invented yet), she and her friends decided they’d each write a horror story. By combining her knowledge with the idea what if, 18-year-old Mary made up one about a monster. It’d turn out to be one of the most famous monsters ever.

These were some of the ideas that influenced Mary’s thinking:

She’d read the Greek mythological story of Prometheus, who got in BAD trouble with the gods for stealing their powerful, amazing FIRE. In fact, Mary’s dreamy poet boyfriend, Percy Shelley, whom she’d marry later on, was writing about Prometheus. Their handsome poet-friend George Gordon, known as Lord Byron had been writing about him too. What if Mary wrote about a scientist who stole God’s power of making LIFE?
People had been talking about this Italian scientist, Luigi Galvani, who’d been doing exciting experiments with electrical sparks: They made animals’ muscles move – even if they were dead!
In her travels in Germany, Mary had seen the medieval Castle Frankenstein.

Hmmm…I’ll bet you can guess now what story Mary wrote! In it, her character, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, gathered parts of dead people’s bodies in his laboratory. His experiment? He’d make a perfect person then bring it to LIFE with the power of lightning – and it worked! But – oh no! Dr. Frankenstein accidentally created a MONSTER! And then a lot of horrible things happened!

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which was first published in 1818, never got very good reviews, but never mind. In the almost two centuries since she wrote it, Mary’s monster story has sparked the imaginations of playwrights, moviemakers, cartoonists, musicians, and Halloween costume-makers again and again and again.

It kind of makes you wonder about your own ideas and memories. What if you put them together in your imagination? You could spark a story into LIFE!

English actor Boris Karloff, as the monster in Universal’s Frankenstein (1931) Wikimedia commons

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley, some years after writing her story.

Cheryl Harness is not only a nonfiction author and an illustrator, but she has also written a novel called Just for You to Know. If you would like to read an excerpt from her book, click here.

MLA 8 Citation
Harness, Cheryl. "Mary Makes a Monster." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 30 Oct. 2017.

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September 11, 2001

9/5/2021

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by Vicki Cobb
The Master Chef of Kids' Hands-on Science

See note at end. This is now history. Babies born around this time are now adults.

A cowardly bully came out
of his cave today to
trespass on our shining city.
Out of the blue
he had the nerve
to punch out its
two front teeth.
The pain is excruciating;
Bleeding is everywhere.
The remaining stumps are
grotesque.
We've lost our pretty smile.
We can't bite a big apple.
It's hard to look at mutilation.

Dazed, we check for damage.
Although choking on thick air,
we are very much alive.
Our heartbeat is strong.
There is no drop in our vital signs.
Blood rushes in to replace
blood lost.
Slowly we discover
we can still chew
and make a fist and
think.

Oh yes, we'll make sure
this "holy" terror
can never return
to our playground
or our friends.'
But how?
How do we shadow box
a villain who doesn't
play by the rules?
We see evidence
of our noble,
generous,
and loving spirit.
Yet hate destroys
within as well as without.

Here then is our challenge:
We must keep this wound
from festering
becoming toxic to ourselves.
We must imagine the unimaginable
to thwart evil
before it comes back for more.
We must seek justice,
not vengeance to
preserve our soul.
We must trust our leaders
who see more
than this one tormenter.
We must be brave
and patient
and faithful.

As good as we believe
ourselves to be,
we must become better.

Scar tissue is stronger
than unscarred.

Text copyright © 2001 by Vicki Cobb

Reflection: I wrote this poem on September 12, 2001. I am a New Yorker. One grandson, who was 4, was starting school, a few blocks from ground zero. My husband was working in the city. It was a terrible day. I wrote this poem to try and make sense of it for my readers. Do you think it is still true today?

Here I am in 2014 on the 43rd floor terrace in lower Manhattan. The brand-new Freedom Tower, on the site of the Twin Towers lost on 9/11, soars behind me. It is 1776 feet tall.

Vicki Cobb is the author of about 95 books. The book that first got her noticed was Science Experiments You Can Eat. It has become a classic. This is the cover of the third revised edition of the book, published in 2016.

MLA 8 Citation
Cobb, Vicki. "September 11, 2001." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 11 Sept. 2017, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/category/cobb-vicki.

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A Man of His Word

4/30/2021

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Jim Whiting
The Running Encyclopedia

When he was a young man in his mid-twenties, future Roman leader Julius Caesar was voyaging across the Mediterranean Sea. Pirates swarmed over his ship. They took him to their base on tiny Farmakonisi Island, which lies off the coast of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), and held him for ransom.

    When he learned how much the pirates were demanding for his release, Caesar laughed. Do you have any idea who I am, he asked. I belong to one of Rome’s most important families. So you can get more money for me—a lot more—almost three times as much. The astonished pirates were only too happy to oblige him.

    Keeping a friend and two servants with him on Farmakonisi, Caesar ordered the rest of his traveling party to go to Asia Minor and raise his ransom. While they were doing that, Caesar acted as if he were the ruler of the tiny island, rather than a captive cowering in fright. He ordered the pirates to attend lectures and poetry readings he gave, and prodded those who nodded off as he droned on and on and on. When he wanted to sleep, he ordered the pirates to either speak in whispers or go to another part of the island. He even played games with them. He also told them that when he was released, I promise I will hunt you down and execute you. In the spirit of bonhomie he engendered, the pirates apparently thought he was joking.

    He wasn’t. Though outwardly he was friendly with the pirates, he seethed inwardly at the humiliation of being taken prisoner. After the ransom was paid, Caesar sailed to a nearby port. He raised a fleet of ships and scores of armed men. He returned to Farmakonisi, captured the pirates, and reclaimed the ransom money. He threw his former captors into prison. They didn’t stay there long. Caesar crucified them. He did show some mercy. Since crucifixion was a long, lingering death, he cut their throats so they died instantly.

Marble bust of Julius Caesar--Wikimedia Commons

Jim Whiting has written on many subjects. Check out his page on Amazon.com

MLA 8 Citation
Whiting, Jim. "A Man of His Word." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 26 Mar.
2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/A-Man-of-his-Word.

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WHY HIP HOP POETRY MATTERS

The Battle Hymn of the Chicken Pox Troopers

Mary Makes a Monster

September 11, 2001

A Man of His Word

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