The Rhyme Renaissance: A Harvard Poet

Take five minutes of your time to view this video. It’s of Harvard student’s poetry reading. The subject, aside from a history of poetry in five minutes, is what role does rap have in relationship to it … you’ll be surprised (perhaps somewhat swayed) by the conclusion that a young Harvard student proposes.

It’s an honest and innocent question I’ve held many a self dialogue about, and personally think worthy of wonder: to what extent is rap to be considered poetry by definition?

Despite the often brutal nature and violent topics propagated by contemporary rap artists, despite its real-world internal and external conflicts, rapacious diminishment of genders , and its misguided exaltation of money and wealth, rap music still adhere (albeit loosely) to a metrical pattern, a rhyme scheme, and other such poetic attributes. Let me put the question clearly: Is rap poetry?

I would love to hear input form anyone- especially anyone who writes or teaches poetry, or anyone who listens to or produces rap lyrics. Lend me arguments for or against the question; give me an example, post a link, whatever …. my ears are open.

To enlarge video click the small box under 'You' where YouTube is posted

My Lovely Jean

I smell the cold in the rain.
It touches me through the screen
And weeps for my gain:
Its nemesis, my lovely Jean.

I found her beauty in the blue
Beyond the loamy medium,
Far beyond the multi-hue,
And further still from all this tedium.
Through it she pulled me to her heart,
And all that I called ‘I’ repined-
Since now its world was torn apart
By Love that pulled me from its bind.

Now pain sleeps in the silhouettes-
In clouded blues above and bold-
And thunders down on Jean its threats,
While shedding tears that smell of cold.

-jwm



Of the Poem:

The idea was to represent redemptive love mythologically. The story is of a person pulled into the heart of the highest heavens and, leaving the viler aspects of nature behind in the clouds, is made one with heavenly Love.

The darker aspect of the poem is Pain (in many ways one's former love), of which the raining sky and those thunderclouds represent.


I chose only to follow a rhyme scheme (there's no intentional meter).

A Memory of Delta D.O.C.

I left the buildings for the brink-
For Delta’s wretched grounds below-
To interface with others jailed,
When to delight a sight did show:
The prison sky seemed calm to me
As orange tints embraced her blue;
Then Jesus spoke through every cloud
With love no mortal mouth can do.

-jwm

Of the Poem: True event ...