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By Rome Jorge, Lifestyle Editor
Emo—for “emotive” wear-your-bleeding-heart–on-your-sleeve
pop-diluted punk music that borrows much of its aesthetics from
Gothicism—is more than about bands and singers. Like other genres
such as punk, Goth, new wave romanticism or folk protest music, the
subculture encompasses fashion, philosophy and, yes, literature.
Debatably, the antecedent to emo lit was Verses
That Hurt: Pleasure and Pain from the Poemfone Poets.
Regardless of whether you consider the book emo
or not (and surely many of the book’s authors would be aghast with
the label or any sort of label for that matter), this poetry
anthology incontestably screams with the same full-throated angst
that emo music does.
It was published in 1986 in New York and written
in part by many of the Bohemian habituates Manhattan’s Lower East
Village and devotees of the music Mecca, CBGB. This was the same
milieu that gave birth to emo music as well as the rock musicale
Rent and the spoken word competitions that would later be known as
Slam. This was the time of acquired immuned deficiency syndrome
(AIDS) awareness and LBTG rights, post-punk and rap music. La Vie
Boheme indeed. All that should give you an idea on what to expect
from this anthology of rhymes.
Verses That Hurt is based on poetry phoned in on
an answering machine by various artists including Beat poet Allen
Ginsberg. Great as he is, he’s not the best this book has to
offer. Other poets include Penny Arcade, Tish Benson, Nicole
Blackman, David Cameron, Gaston Neal, Xavier Cavazos, Todd Colby,
Mathew Courtney, M. Doughty, Kathy Ebel, Anne Elliot, Janice
Erlbaum, John Giorno, John Hall, Bob Holman, Christian Hunter,
Shannon Ketch, Bobby Miller, Wanda Phipps, Lee Renaldo, Shut-up
Shelly, Hal Sirowitz, Sparrow, Spiro, Edwin Torres and Emily XYZ.
The actual spoken word recordings can be heard
on the CD entitled Poemphone: New World Order—if you can find any.
(Previously it was available online on www.nakedear.com. But now
that web address seems to be a porn site.) Regardless, this book,
still available locally and on Amazon, is more than adequate. The
rhythm and cadence of each verse are self-apparent. You can hear the
lyricism it in your head as you read.
Candid and artful, the book is nothing but
in-your-face honesty. The pages scream about heartache, eroticism,
fellatio and cunnilingus, homosexuality, drugs, AIDS, sadomasochism
and urban alienation, among many other things.
There’s also great deal of post-modernism in
this book; many of the poems are about poetry. Manifesto by Arcade,
Hello All You Dialectical by Cameron, Hardcore by Ebel and The
Has-been Poet by Holman all deliver missives aimed at wannabe
lyrical gangsters.
Arcade, Benson and Blackman, the first three
poets of the book—all female—deliver the most stirring rhymes.
They’re slamming. However, the relentless angst—page after page
of caustic and bitter verses—can make finishing the book a chore
to some.
Can you stand it? If you can dig emo—if
you’re in that stage in your life—you can. Endure the barbed
wire kisses. This book hurts so good.
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