{Poem Spotlight #1} 3 ways to speak English by Jamila Lyiscott

While I prepare my journal entry for today's class (7/8/2019) [I'll have to wait until the weekend because it will be a lengthy one!], I would like to share this gem that resonates exactly with what we discussed: rhythm/voicing/sound as a fundamental component of poetry. The lecture on spoken word will come later on, but I feel this is a case in point for the ideas that a) sometimes the oral dimension not only adds to a poem but is actually a fundamental part of it, and b) that sometimes the poet is the only one who can read the poem as they conceived it (and that this is okay too). 

I am a bit cynical when it comes to spoken poetry as I feel it can get gimmicky very easily (again, a conversation for another post), but this is pure genius to me. The way Lyiscott plays with the rhythm and her "3 Englishes", the way she musicalizes the rhyme, how she alludes to the cultural patterns encoded in dialectal variation, it all comes together in a piece that is accomplished and fascinating in both form and content. 

This is a poem which, in my opinion, would be great to read as the words themselves are precise and clever, but it is absolutely incomplete without Lyiscott reading it.