Poets Tell the Stories of Their Countries on NPR

From NPR:
Poets can play a unique role in a country's politics, culture and social movements. They act as innovators, visionaries and truth tellers.

Three poets from different cultures — Iraq, Puerto Rico and New York — talk about the role of poets and poetry in different places. The three are part of the Split This Rock Poetry Festival in Washington, DC.

Guests:

Quincy Troupe, poet and author, most recently of The Architecture of Language

Sinan Antoon, poet and assistant professor at New York University

Naomi Ayala, poet and writer

Audio and transcript at source

Poem-of-the-Week: Quincy Troupe

The Hours Fly Quick

the hours fly quick on wings of clipped winds
like nonsense blown from mouths of hot air—
people—including my own—form syllables, suds,
words shot through pursed lips like greased sleaze
& bloom inside all these rooms dominated by television’s
babble sluicing idiot images invented in modern test tubes—
clones—blinking, slathering all over controlled airwaves
of an up-for-sale world, blinking a paucity of spirit,
so dance you leering ventriloquists, marionettes,
you greedy counterfeits, dance, dance, dance


-Quincy Troupe

From The Architecture of Language (Coffee House Press 2006)

Buy The Architecture of Language from our friends at Teaching for Change!


Quincy Troupe is an award-winning poet and author. He has written 18 books that include poetry, children’s books, and non-fiction works. His books of poetry include Transcircularities: New and Selected Poems (Coffee House Press, 2002); Choruses; Avalanche; Weather Reports: New and Selected Poems; Skulls along the River; Snake-Back Solos: Selected Poems 1969-1977, which received an American Book Award; and Embryo Poems, 1967-1971. He has written two best-selling biographies: Miles: The Autobiography, Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe (Simon & Schuster 1989), and The Pursuit of Happyness (HarperCollins/Amistad 2005). He has written the screenplay for Miles and Me: A Memoir (University of California Press 2000), which is scheduled for production in 2009.

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Troupe will be featured at Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness, March 10-13, 2010, in Washington, DC. The festival will present readings, workshops, panel discussions, youth programming, film, activism—four days of creative transformation as we imagine a way forward, hone our community and activist skills, and celebrate the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for social change. For more information: info@splitthisrock.org.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem-of-the-Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

Split This Rock
http://www.splitthisrock.org/
info@splitthisrock.org
202-787-5210