Maya Angelou is a rapper now. The late writer’s poems have been layered with hip-hop beats for a new album, Caged Bird Songs. The album uses previous recordings of Angelou and a few made last year. “She saw (hip-hop) as this generation’s way of speaking and conveying a message,” her grandson Colin A. Johnson said. Pair with: Our tribute to Angelou.
The Caged Bird Raps
To Boldly Go
"[Maria] Bamford's newest show...is a more polished product, but equally radical—as unsettling as anything Andy Kaufman ever did." Is the Internet the comedy world's final frontier?
Arm on the Armrest
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The Book Prisons Fear
The New York Times dives into why prisons fear the New Jim Crow certain states have gone to great efforts to allow their prisons to ban it and in other states it's fairly difficult to obtain if you're a prisoner. We're big fans of the New Jim Crow here; it was a Millions staff pick and extremely popular on Year in Reading lists back in 2013.
“They lined up the translators and shot them.”
Recommended Reading: George Szirtes’s “Afterword: The Death of the Translator,” which is available on The White Review’s website.
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Depp on Thompson
With the imminent release of The Rum Diary, Johnny Depp shares some personal memories of the late Hunter S. Thompson.
Color in Poetry
Recommended reading: "What is Color in Poetry" by Dorothea Lasky for Poetry. It's a lengthy article but a thoughtful one, and, as a bonus, it includes some of Lasky's childhood poetry. Pair with our earlier post about reading teenage poetry to crowds and you've got a theme for the day.
“The Game” and Fan Fiction
Electric Literature has published a look at two new Sherlock Holmes fan fictions, "the game," and various copyright complications, which just happens to dovetail with our own Elizabeth Minkel's Year in Reading account of admitting to loving Sherlock fan fic. In fact, loving the great detective has a lot to do with writing well: as Ryan Britt puts it, successful fan fiction authors "all love Holmes and his adventures way more than the man who created the great detective thought possible. Which, today, remains the biggest cultural mystery we’ll hopefully never get tired of investigating."
I love the idea of bringing classic texts into arenas that entice young minds. Mixing words with music and poetry and visually stimulating images of art are all great ways to encourage people to participate in new experiences. Fantastic idea! I hope it is wildly successful.