In Conversation with Morgan Parker
"In my writing I try to collapse time. It’s part of putting everything on the same plane: high and low art, pop and philosophy, comedy and tragedy, personal and political, past and present. One thing echoes another; it’s impossible not to hear an echo. I try to create juxtaposition and conversation by bringing all the echoes into the chorus. Letting the dead speak, I guess."
via MCSWEENEY'S |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Amaud Jamaul Johnson on Gwendolyn Brooks's "A Lovely Love"
"I was twenty and an undergraduate at Howard University, taking Dr. Jon Woodson’s Survey of African American Poetry. He was suspicious of labels and spent the first weeks of class arguing against his own course title. His first lecture began with a summary dismissal of Maya Angelou, who a year earlier was Bill Clinton’s Inaugural Poet. He would hand out poems with the authors’ names blacked out, and ask: “What makes this a Black poem, or is this good or bad?” We had to defend our answers. Our shortcomings were immediately evident. This is how I was introduced to Gwendolyn Brooks’s 'A Lovely Love.'" |
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