Jamaal May: Detroit’s Machine God
“I look to poetry, with its built-in capacity for compressed and multivalent language, as a place where many senses can be made of the world. If this is true, and I’ve built a life around the notion that it is, poetry can get us closer to reality in all its fluidity and complexity.”
–Jamaal May (qtd. in “May,” Kenyon)
Detroit. A city haunted by corrupt, broken souls. An unforgiving wasteland littered with violence, crime, and homelessness. A city that once stood proud and strong is now fighting for every breath. Few people enjoy the scenery here anymore; its inhabitants rush to escape these brutal streets, away from the plague that has infected this once glorious haven. Who can find beauty in all of this black ruin, these shattered dreams? The answer is Detroit-poet Jamaal May. May is an explosive poet whose words are barely contained on the page. His writing exposes the vigor and tenacity of his home city, Detroit, and enlightens all who experience his work on a variety of diverse subjects, from personal heartache, to the hum of a city, drowning in machinery, and bodies exhausted by the struggle to survive.
May was born in 1982, in Detroit, Michigan. For over several years, he taught poetry teacher in local Detroit public schools. May also toured as a performer and worked as an audio engineer. He has received many awards, including the prestigious Beatrice Hawley Award from Alice James Books and a nomination for the NAACP Image Award for his first book, Hum. Among others honors, Jamaal has also acquired The Spirit of Detroit Award, fellowships from Cave Canem, Frost Place, Bucknell University, and Kenyon College, and an Indiana Review Poetry Prize. Today, Jamaal May is the Co Poetry Editor for...
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...ive grab your attention? May has been compared to the greatest of the greats, people like Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson. He possesses an ability to grab a part of your soul and reach into your heart, digging deeper inside of it with every line of every poem he so articulately constructs. He establishes a connection with every reader, in every situation, at any time. Jamaal May is a fantastic and upcoming poet who has so much more to offer the world. May continues to direct the successful Organic Weapons video and chapbook series, teaching in Vermont College’s MFA program and is maintaining his name as a poet, adding to his reputation with every piece he publishes. Do you want to feel the spirit of Detroit? Do you want to experience the rush of energy and vitality contained in each of its people? Jamaal May can show you this; it’s your turn to be the reader.
Paul Laurence Dunbar is one of the most influential African American poets to gain a nationwide reputation. Dunbar the son of two former slaves; was born in 1872 in Dayton, Ohio. His work is truly one of a kind, known for its rich, colorful language, encompassed by the use of dialect, a conversational tune, and a brilliant rhetorical structure. The style of Dunbar’s poetry includes two distinct voices; the standard English of the classical poet and the evocative dialect of the turn of the century black community in America. His works include a large body of dialect poems, standard English poems, essays, novels, and short stories. The hardships encountered by members of is race along with the efforts of African Americans to achieve equality in America were often the focus of his writings. http://www.dunbarsite.org/
...from the dullness of schoolwork to many possibilities. The next lines poke fun at the value of education and celebrate their street learning. ?Lurk late,? ?Strike straight,? ?Sing sin,? and ?Thin gin,? contradict any possibility for mental growth. Symbolism comes in the picture in the next line, ?We Jazz June,? which has many meanings. The word ?Jazz? signifies sexual intercourse. Then the word ?June? becomes a female. The tone of the poem dramatically changes when the reader learns the dropouts die soon. The group end in the last line, ?Die soon,? the final consequence of trying to be cool. Seemingly having fun in the beginning being cool, they are now completely powerless because they are dead. The poem really gives an obvious picture of what young African-American males are driven to do under the impression of trying to be cool. Since their minds are headed straight to corruption, they have no clue because they are having so much fun being cool. Leaving school, staying out late, singing sin, drinking alcohol, and having sex apparently are the only things that are important to them. With this mentality, more and more inner city males while continue hastening toward their death.
"Paul Laurence Dunbar." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit; Gale, 2002. Literature Resource Center. Bowie High School, Arlington TX. 19 Nov. 2009.
Billy Collins is one of the most credited poets of this century and last. He is a man of many talents, most recognized though by his provocative and riveting poetry. As John McEnroe was to the sport of tennis, Billy Collins has done the same for the world of poetry. Collin’s rejected the old ways of poetry, created his own form, broke all the rules, and still retains the love and respect of the poet community. Collins has received the title of Poet Laureate of the United States twice and also has received countless awards and acknowledgements. He has achieved this through a style of poetry that is not over-interpreted and hard to understand to most, but that of the complete opposite, his poetry is hospitable and playful.
Though this poem is only a small snapshot of what I personally thought Douglass was going through, I could never adequately understand the frustration he must have had. My hope in writing this poem was not to provide a psychoanalysis or theoretical idea structure to any audience, but rather to show that even today, a modern audience member like me, can appreciate the struggle of a fellow human and speak against injustices, specifically in Douglass’s time.
Poetry Foundation. Ed. Poetry Foundation. Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute, n.d. Web. 26 Jan. 2014.
The poems contained many lovely images that illustrated passion and empathy. My favorite images in his poems, “The Birds Are Here” and the poem about his FBI interrogation, were of the confetti and explosives. I thought both of these images were interesting portrayals of each poems’ situation. I believe Jamaal’s poems are appropriate lengths and they seemed to vary depending on the poem. For example, the FBI interrogation based poem was shorter than a couple of his other poems that he read; but, I did not question why it was shorter in fact it made sense within the context of the poem. I imagine the interrogation did not last long once they realized that Jamaal May was not who they thought he was; the poem matches this idea. Overall, I really enjoyed Jamaal May’s abstract betrayal of his poetry. He mentioned after the readings were over that many of his poems were based off of life experiences and although I understood that idea after listening to his explanations, I thought they did not take a literal approach which I think benefitted his performance overall. Jamaal May was a fantastic beginning to the reading on Monday, October the 17th. Ultimately his performance style really contrasted that of Tarfia
The poem America by Claude McKay is on its surface a poem combining what America should be and what this country stands for, with what it actually is, and the attitude it projects amongst the people. Mckay uses the form of poetry to express how he, as a Jamaican immigrant, feels about America. He characterizes the bittersweet relationship between striving for the American dream, and being denied that dream due to racism. While the America we are meant to see is a beautiful land of opportunity, McKay see’s as an ugly, flawed, system that crushes the hopes and dreams of the African-American people.
Ferguson, Margaret W., Salter, Mary J., and Stallworthy, Jon. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. fifth ed. N.p.: W.W. Norton, 2005. 2120-2121. 2 Print.
Leonard, K. D. (2009). African American women poets and the power of the word. The Cambridge Companion to African American Women's Literature, 168-187.
“Lucille Clifton.” Poets.org. The Academy of American Poets, 1997-2014. Web. 12 Mar. 2014. http://poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/79 .
Masson, Davis. Essays Biographical and Critical: Chiefly on English Poets. La Vergne, Tennessee: Lightning Source, Inc., 2007.
It is a way to crucially engage oneself in setting the stage for new interventions and connections. She also emphasized that she personally viewed poetry as the embodiment of one’s personal experiences, and she challenged what the white, European males have imbued in society, as she declared, “I speak here of poetry as the revelation or distillation of experience, not the sterile word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word poetry to mean — in order to cover their desperate wish for imagination without insight.”
He is a hustler to the end, a smooth-talker who is now at home in his new ego and his new profession. Jones employs the dynamics of change in his speaker throughout the poem. From an aimless vagrant to a passionate revolutionary, Jones plots his speaker's course using specific words and structural techniques. Through these elements, we witness the evolution of a new black man—one who is not content with the passivity of his earlier spiritual leaders.
... is poetry for “everyone”, even though authors want to make meaning and tell a story; our interpretation of a poem is what counts. The true beauty of a poem is the fact that it is subject to various interpretations (Videnov, pp. 126-30).