Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway ... and More

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743476220 ISBN 13: 9780743476225

Publisher: Atria, 2005

This upbeat, one-of-a-kind collection brings the Def poets -- as featured in the Tony Award-winning Broadway show and popular HBO television program -- to life on the page. Among them: Suheir Hammad, Beau Sia, Steve Colman, Stacyann Chin, Mayda del Valle, Georgia Me, Poetri, and other well-established and up-and-coming Slam artists who have forever changed the face of poetry and offer a fresh, exuberant, insightful, and comedic look at who we are as Americans today.

About the Author:

Danny Simmons, a renowned painter of abstract-expressionist oil works, owns the Rush Arts Gallery in Manhattan and Corridor Gallery in Brooklyn. A poet and cofounder of the Def Poetry Jam performance series, he heads the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation with his brother, Russell Simmons. He lives in Brooklyn.

Review:

"These poets seize us with rhythm and passion. They give us romance, realism, comedy, and politics. That's entertainment!"
-- New York Times

"Stunning, startling, amazingly now."
-- Ntozake Shange

"What a lot of people don't know is Broadway itself emerged from uptown cabaret from rent parties....You belong. Yeah, Def Jam Poetry Rap. Hip-Hop Nation. You belong."
-- Nikki Giovanni

"Def Poetry Jam shows that when you present black and Hispanic kids with literature that has something to do with their lives, they'll pay attention."
-- Ishmael Reed