June Jordan's Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint

Rating:
Summary: A good read
Review: Even if you don't teach poetry writing, you will love this book if you're a writer of politically conscious poetry or if you care about how good poetry gets written. With the popularity of Slam poetry these days, this is a very useful primer. It includes poems from different cultural backgrounds about a range of racial, social, and gender issues. It also provides lists of suggested readings that go beyond the narrow range of poetry books found in mainstream bookstores.

Rating:
Summary: A tribute to the power of poetry and to democratic teaching
Review: Lauren Muller, editor, gently persuades a talented crew from June Jordan's Poetry for the People classes at UC Berkely, to tell the rest of us how they do it--run poetry workshops and readings that literally transform their participants and audiences. The book provides college and communityteachers with an accessible plan for poetry workshops, including syllabii, bibliographies, thoughtful meditations on the teaching and writingof poetry, and a rich sampling of poems. It's a tribute not only to the power of the word but also to the solid principle that teaching, like popular theater, is one of the democratic art forms that can revolutionize the way we think and how we live in community.

Rating:
Summary: Puts "the people" back into poetry
Review: This book, based on the experience of students and poets involved with June Jordan's popular UCal/Berkeley poetry courses, is a handbook for people who want to put poetry in the mouths and pens of "The People," everybody -- whether in the university or in a community setting such as a coffeehouse or church. The "white male" poetry of the "canon" is here put in its rightful place as but one of the several American poetry traditions, which also include African American, Caribbean, Native American, Asian American, Chicano/a, gay and lesbian, women's, and Irish American poetry, for which beginning bibliographies are supplied, as is a sample syllabus and an anthology of student poetry.

Rating:
Summary: Puts "the people" back into poetry
Review: This book, based on the experience of students and poets involved with June Jordan's popular UCal/Berkeley poetry courses, is a handbook for people who want to put poetry in the mouths and pens of "The People," everybody -- whether in the university or in a community setting such as a coffeehouse or church. The "white male" poetry of the "canon" is here put in its rightful place as but one of the several American poetry traditions, which also include African American, Caribbean, Native American, Asian American, Chicano/a, gay and lesbian, women's, and Irish American poetry, for which beginning bibliographies are supplied, as is a sample syllabus and an anthology of student poetry.