Big Sole Blog (BSB)

I don't know what overtook me today, but for the first time in maybe 30 years, I heard Aretha Franklin's "All the King's Horses," which I've posted above, and started crying. My first thought is that I needed to cry because I've been holding so much in over the last year (family deaths, health concerns, a variety of fears). Once in my life I was known for crying often--sobbing because

State Laureate of Louisiana, Julie Kane April is gone and with it National Poetry Month. For some, that thirty days of appreciation of the ancient art may be the only time they think about poets and verse or consider how much poetry adds to our lives. Sadly, too, for others, the only time they will hear a poem outside of school may be when someone dies or moves on in some other way.

Richard Blanco, inaugural poet, delivered a beautiful poem for President Barack Obama's inauguration on January 21, 2013. The poem is entitled "One Day. " On Twitter I described the poem as "beautiful, lyrical, expansive, inclusive." I saw others tweet about its strong imagery. The poet discussed earlier with the BBC capturing the U.S.A. in verse. He told the interviewer that writing a poem

Cinéma Vérité By Nordette N. Adams A mother creeps through the streets of New Orleans. Her dress has the hue of fresh blood because her children are dead. She clangs an old cowbell,      shouting: "You thought it was a movie, but the Zombie Apocalypse is here. People fear leaving their homes because the dead-eyed swarm. "I have seen the walking dead. Their teeth gleam as bullets, seeking

After listening to the blues channel a bit this morning, I'm starting to think that's where you go if you want to research the poetry of aging. Bettye Lavette's "Talking Old Soldiers," for instance, is a brooding piece about a forgotten man whose friends are all buried now at the local graveyard. I also heard James Armstrong's "Blues at the Border" in which there are the lines "You see the

Ticket Rhetoric   By Nordette N. Adams Romney/Ryan.    Mitt's mechanistic;    Paul's penile-Palin,    but smarter . . . maybe. The Double-Mitt Twins conceived to re-position the winds of forefathers: Mayonnaise-y,    retro-phase-y — A paste-hasty    empire strike! Resetting grand narrative to unrainbowed heritage:    America unwomened    then America unblack — The great take-back.

At the outset, my prayers are with the victims and their families whose lives have been irrevocably changed due to today's massacre in Aurora, Colorado (71 people shot of which 12 are dead). There's no need for me to cover the details here because any reader can visit the websites of the major networks and watch as well as read the coverage of James Holmes's rampage. I'm posting now because I'm

Happy National Poetry Month!While surfing for something about Louisiana-born poet Yusef Komunyakaa, I came across a interview at Well&Often Press: The Love Child of Frida Kahlo and DMX: An Interview with Safia Elhillio. It included video of Elhillio performing her spoken word poem "Questions for John Coltrane, from his saxophone." The interview, conducted and written by Kameelah Janan Rasheed,

If you would prefer to read the text of this poem outside the video, click here.I do not have an easy answer to that question in the title of this post--"What's wrong with writing sentimental poetry and fiction?"--but I have a few thoughts about why writing critics reject poets who write what they call "Hallmark Card verse" or fiction authors who slather on the sentimentality that causes readers

President Barack Obama more than likely ticked off people on both the right and the left with his recent argument that raising taxes on the rich lines up with Jesus' teaching that "to whom much is given much shall be required." On the right there will be those angry because they believe (and are wrong) that Obama is not a Christian and so he has no right to quote Jesus Christ. On the left there

This poem is cross-posted at the Urban Mother's Book of Prayers. I have been experimenting with a graphics software program.

Today is Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. He was born January 15, 1929, and tomorrow the nation celebrates. President Ronald Reagan signed the order for the holiday on November 2, 1983, and Coretta Scott King, according to Time.com, said then "This is not a black holiday; it is a people's holiday."I remember when whether or not to make his birthday a national holiday was bitterly debated in the

I can only work through the misery via creativity. The post on this piece is at the Urban Mother's Book of Prayers.

In the above video, Nordette Adams recites Aberjhani's poem "And Then the Rain God Screamed for Love" with original music composed by Mark "Rahkyt" Rockeymoore.Kathleen Thomas is the photographer who took the picture of Aberjhani you see in this post.

Here is a poem that I wrote in 2006, but I decided to record and translate it to video over this weekend. It uses royalty free music from Incompetech.com. The piece playing behind the spoken word vocal is Acralate, a selection with African influences."Stuck in a Blackbird's Groove" is a blues poem about one level of unrequited love.

So, Japan has digitized commercial spokespeople and holographic rock stars.CreationBy Nordette N. AdamsThe new world comes at us fast:Unhuman creatures, made to last.Pretty zombies of our minds—not of flesh, born of time—will count our days and nightsas we inject nanobots to spiteour blood. Desperate, we fight Deathor God to overcome the soiled breathwe have called life. Dust mocks us to the

You know that the spoken word poem "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" by Gil Scott-Heron left its mark on America because the title's become a commonplace. For instance, I heard a television reporter making reference to the poem during the so-called "Arab Spring" protests of this year as a point of commentary. He said, "Apparently the revolution will be televised." The title of Gil

Here's video of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama's Wednesday, May 11, evening event of Poets at the White House. The president started the evening saying, "The power of poetry is that everybody experiences it differently. There are no rules for what makes a great poem. Understanding it isn’t just about metaphor or meter. Instead, a great poem is one that resonates with us,

Let me say at the outset that the verses that follow are by Paulo Freire, but in their original form they are presented as prose not poetry in his last book Pedagogy of Freedom, Chapter 3, "Teaching is Not Just Transferring Knoweldge." (The video at the end of this post is one of his last interviews before his death in 1997)As I read this book, I am struck increasingly by how his philosphy had

More on Rankine and Hoagland at WritingJunkie.netI've been trying to get a steady beat, nothing overly elaborate nor sedate, on the poetry controversy involving race at this year's AWP, the 2011 conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. Writers met in D.C., February 2-5.The controversy came to my attention when I received a message from poet Jericho Brown on Facebook that