I wish I could take credit for that awesome linguistic masterpiece in the title. However, it is from a poem called
Project Princess. I'm gonna give you a second here to click on that link and then click on the "audio" icon on the poem's page. This performance of the poem is from the
United States of Poetry series that was aired on PBS oh so many years ago. Don't get me wrong--the words radiate from the page and are artfully chosen. However, the performance of this poem is, for a sheer lack of words, AMAZING.
Click. Listen. Seriously. I'll wait. Be prepared to be amazed (in my humble, humble opinion....).
Things I love about this poem (part rap, part spoken word, ALL GENIUS):
1. The line that I used in the title, especially her inflection of the word "goddess." I used to get that line stuck in my head all day long.
2. The way she chews the words of the line, "Spare your simple, fragile feelings with the same sense that you came." She slowly, deliberately devours the words before dropping them at your feet.
3. The way she ends this vocally harsh poem with singing. *Drool*.
Now, this poem is incredibly important to me for several reasons. First of all, watching United States of Poetry (at my mom's encouragement...thanks, mom!)as an awkward, angsty fourteen-year-old inspired me to write poetry, take my first poetry class at The Loft (where I got my first glimpse of an artistic community and wanted more), attend the Arts High School, and basically set the course for the cultivation of my personhood. Anyway, I remember hearing this poem on USOP and feeling my jaw drop. I had never heard anything like it before and I regretted that public television didn't come with a rewind button.
I heard the poem again from a recording in a class at the Arts High School, and again, was completely mystified and full of awe. Here was this completely badass woman taking a rather pigeonholed art form (i.e. hip hop) that, at least in 1995, was just drenched in negative stereotypes, and daring to open the umbrella of poetry over it--an umbrella that had been previously reserved for the intellectually privileged. An umbrella that has been known to put on airs. Here was this woman who could transform poetry into sound and rhythm. This woman who could make proper poetic devices like alliteration and meter fall to their knees. She later spoke at the Arts High School when she was in town with her show Geography and talked about her experience of performing Project Princess at the Apollo. Her discussion of her process as a performance artist was so riveting and honest, and she was so engaging and warm that I don't think I blinked the entire time. A few weeks later I performed my own poem that was modeled after Project Princess. It was a clumsy attempt at best, but MAN it felt so good.
Now, somehow in the fog of the end-of-high-school-beginning-of-college months I seemed to have forgotten this amazing poet's name. Hell, maybe I never knew it to begin with. As I took the plunge into interviews at Sarah Lawrence (we interviewed our professors in the weeks before our classes began in order to be absolutely certain that the class was a perfect fit), I happened upon a class that I thought looked interesting. As I was interviewing the professor, I knew I had seen her before, but I couldn't quite place it. I think I freaked her out with my incessant, distracted staring....but then it hit me! "Oh my God!! YOU wrote Project Princess!!"
She laughed and squirmed a little. "Yes, Project Princess. That poem is my arch nemesis."
The amazing poet's name is
Tracie Morris , and her Performance Poetry class was one of the most amazing of my four years of college. She taught me a true appreciation of sound, and its contexts, and the nuances of vocal inflection and double entendre and rhythm. She taught me about the aesthetics and physicality of language as the bearer of political and cultural messages, and the genius of hip hop as an art form. She brought to campus the likes of Fab 5 Freddy and Jayne Cortez and Amiri Baraka. She once made me repeat the word "red" a dozen times until I found an inflection that worked with the rest of the poem. She created within me a hypersensitivity to sound and its subtleties. It is because of her that my ear is able to absorb and decipher the different sounds of Asia: the salty, sing-songy ocean of Thai; the throaty string of the Vietnamese dan gao; the high pitched trill of Khmer music. She taught me how to use the microphone as a device, a tool, in performance that went far beyond a simple amplification of the voice for the audience to hear better.
My final project in the class was a piece called The Anatomy of Goodbye. It was a poem that I had written and recorded (PAINSTAKINGLY) with two tracks of my voice. I then used the recording to choreograph a dance. I never would have thought I could do something like that, nor have I done anything like it since. But so overwhelming was Tracie's energy and inspiration and encouragement and expertise that she was just able to transfer her gifts to me effortlessly. She is barely five feet tall, gets shy and fidgety when you compliment her work, and has this adorable girly sweetness about her. But MAN. The woman is a FORCE OF NATURE. She had high, high expectations and worked me 'till I dropped.
The reason for this random outburst of Tracie Morris love? Well, first of all, she deserves it. Second of all, she recently appeared in one of my dreams with some rather important advice. Several other strong women who have been influential in my life have also done the same over the last few nights. I think these women deserve to be celebrated, and I'm most definitely going to listen to the messages that they are giving me while I sleep.
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Here are some other Tracie Morris websites:
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Tracie's Web -
Tracie's WebsiteThose of you in New York can also check her out, from time to time, at the
Nuyorican Poets Cafe.
