I really liked the work in Aloud this week especially that of Reg e. Gaines. He created such a strong sense of voice in each of his pieces and each one while having similarities the voices are very distinct. His content feels fresh despite the fact that it might feel like something we’ve heard before and I think it’s great that he just states the facts and doesn’t feel the need to be abstract. The first poem, Please Don’t Take My Air Jordans, was my favorite of the poems.

When I first started the poem, I took the title to be the voice of the narrator and I really liked the switch up. I originally thought that this poem would end with the narrator being robbed for his Jordans and at first, this seems like a viable story, the opening stanzas lead us to believe that the kid is rich and can have whatever he wants:

“ my air jordans cost a hundred with tax
my suede starts jacket says raiders on the back
I’m stylin….smilin…looking real mean cuz
it ain’t about bein heard just bein seen

my leather adidas baseball cap
matches my fake gucci backpack
there’s nobody out there looks good as me
but the gear costs money it sure ain’t free”

The kid is just another spoiled boy who roams the street pretending to be a badass exactly what you would think . Quickly the reader discovers that this isn’t the case. We, the reader, discover that what is important for the boy is still appearances but it’s getting to the appearance that’s the key. Gaines makes us accomplices in the behavior of this kid. We haven’t taught him to value his education, we haven’t taught him that his clothes don’t make him a man and in fact rap videos and media make him believe that how you dress and what you own are all that matters. Of course this is all in the subconscious because as he says “and the reason I have to look real fly/ well to tell ya the truth man I don’t know why”. Then we become an accomplice to the murder that he commits. The reader is the only witness to the murder and the only one who hears this other boy’s last words. Then he quickly dismisses the death and moves on.

Gaines really implicates the larger society in this poem. He uses the voice of this teen that we see depicted in the media, on the streets, in our friends and in our families. This boy whose voice Gaines embodies is no one new to us and that is what makes him so compelling. Seeing inside the head of someone you pass on the streets everyday is really interesting and Gaines keeps the work compelling by switching our perceptions. This boy isn’t just playing delinquent as we might think…he’s taken the next step to murder without remorse. As you read you begin to wonder, is this the fifth time he’s done it? The hundredth? How much of his gear has come from murder? What also makes the poem compelling is the rhyme scheme. I’m not usually a fan of rhyming as a rule but I think it works here as a way of creating voice for us. With the voice of this boy and what we know about him, the rhyming adds an amateur rapper sort of feeling to the poem, which you might imagine this narrator to be. I think it’s really great that Gaines keeps this poem feeling fresh despite the fact that we might feel we have a handle on this character already.

I really enjoyed the work from Aloud and Bum Rush this week. Not that I didn’t enjoy the other poems that we had to read but I really appreciated that the poems, which were written to be performed and read on the page, had a great honesty to them. They really stated things plain, which I always like. Sometimes I feel like we take abstract and metaphor too far as poets, I do it too sometimes. I think what I really like about these poems is that they are written to be enjoyed by the masses because that’s the way that you win competitions. I am definitely of the poetry is for everyone and not just academia so I liked the work.