A DJ draws a connection between two seemingly disparate things and says, 'Look, they are alike. You can dance to them.'
Poets often are dealing with history and are thinking about the way history moves across us, and we move in it.
I think that I try really hard to think about how we deceive ourselves, and we let ourselves be deceived.
Hip-hop at its zenith insists on thinking and dancing simultaneously. In fact, it sees them as synonymous.
Here are the facts my folks grew up so poor that, in the words of Redd Foxx, there were twenty o's between the p and r.
Great music - say jazz - has that inventive, improvisational quality that tells us something about life.
I remember in the '80s, people would literally have arguments over the best guitarist.
Certainly, there is, in our culture, this notion of, you know, you can become anything. You can change.
I think music is poetry in the sense that I think the condition of poetry I'm going for has some qualities of music that it aspires to.
The first rule of influence is that there isn't any. The second rule of influence is that it is everywhere.
There is, of course, no larger mass hysteria in American history than the epidemic of racism.
A poem can provide testimony. A poem can provide solace. It can provide a connection.
There's always been really interesting, diverse black voices talking and arguing and counterpointing.
People sometimes say hoaxes are about the blurry line between nonfiction and fiction. I just don't think it's a blurry line at all.
Poets often are dealing with history and are thinking about the way history moves across us, and we move in it.
I try to have a lot of influences, which is to say not to have one specific influence too strongly; that can end up badly.