hsienhsien27's review
5.0
I read Digg's poetry in the anthology The &NOW AWARDS 3: The Best Innovative Writingand decided to make a list in my review of it of the authors I liked. For some reason, Diggs was the one I liked the most of everyone. The anthology was focused on experimental literature, so of course her poem, daggering kanji was quite eccentric. But what caught my heart was the fact that she was a polyglot. The only language that I am somewhat familiar with, that she had written in, was Spanish. I didn't understand most of it, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't what Diggs was expecting.
"dummy check dummy worth check check
dummy check my name check check dummy dummy
dummy check dummy lavender lollipop dummy dummy check check
dummy check dumby dumb dumb dah..."
from have you forgotten any personal property?
Twerk is a really odd work. The poetry didn't have a consistent rhyme, but it did have a tempo. The spaces in between the words and paragraphs, the formatting of the stanzas, the whole structuring of Twerk is a tribute and it contains the soul and rhythmic repetition of hip hop.
"k'k'kkrill k'k'kk'kosher k'k'kolohe k'k'kk'kinkajou
k'k'ku'ulala k'k'ku'ulala k'k'ku'ulala
k'k'ku'ulala
k'k'kunan k'k'kk'kinky k'kk'karma k'k'kosdu
k'k'ku'ulala k'k'ku'ulala k'k'ku'ulala
k'k'ku'ulala"
from daggering kanji.
Diggs writes in maybe over 5 languages. Sometimes she translates it, sometimes she doesn't, leaving some words as sort of like the various puzzle pieces of her poems. That was the beauty for a lot of the poems, some of them didn't really make much sense, meaning that you couldn't really understand what it meant because she spoke in various tongues, maybe someone across the globe would understand. The beauty was the ambiguousness and the wonder.
Poetry is more than the language of metaphors and similes, more than spats of imagery. The words themselves are poetry. They form that form minimalist scenes, compared to fiction where most of the time you're supposed to paint a whole canvas. They are the linguistic portraits that come in a variety of forms, within the words and the structure that surrounds them. Diggs has a more surrealist approach to her poetry, it is never emotive, instead it focuses on a structural and musical beauty, with various foreign languages and stanzas switching in different positions and dialects without warning and somehow still flowing coherently to make a linear poem.
"Good lord, you make my eyeliner sweat pika twins.
Peep this joint, I ain't feeling your vibe easy breezy.
No shogun coming from your tongue.
Mista Popo, mista Tom,
you queasy.
Where's your flying rug, homie?
Yama-uba bored, my agents gonna reward nada.
I shuffleboard smoochies in the land of the rising sun's cosplay papa.
from mista popo™ hollas @ jynx
There's a lot of pop culture references throughout Twerk, such as 90s anime like Dragon Ball Z in the poems mista popo™ hollas @ jynx and who you callin' a jynx? (after mista popo) the Japanese subculture called ganguro, and hip-hop hits from the 90s and early 2000s, one of the songs is titled "damn right it's betta than yours," which is possibly a reference to Kelis' "Milkshake." And the poem, (Boo Yaa) contains lyrics from the song "RID is coming" by a hip-hop called Boo Yaa T.R.I.B.E. After the last poem of the collection there is a section dedicated to explaining what languages some of the words belonged to and what stanzas or lines were appropriated. A lot of the poems in Twerk contain the words of about sections of websites, TV shows articles, and other people's songs and poetry. It is if she did a collage poetry of her favorite songs, TV shows, and research ventures by copying and pasting in Microsoft Word.
Twerk is a brilliant work that pays tribute to the ever evolving world of technology and Black American culture. With the choppy writing and even the book design, Diggs poetry could be at times, glitchy and spasmodic. The front cover is somewhat reminiscent of retro mod fashion, echoing Austin Powers to anybody who wasn't born during that time but is familiar with parodies of that time. The collection contains a sort of fascination that echoes the kungfu frenzy generation. It is an avant-garde tongue twisting tribute of the world's many people's including the languages of indigenous peoples, reminding everyone that English isn't the only way to speak in poetry.
(Honestly, I really hate that I have to do all of this formatting. There's a link to the blog post though.)
Rating: 5/5
Originally published here: http://wordsnotesandfiction.blogspot.com/2015/05/twerk-by-latasha-n-nevada-diggs.htmly
"dummy check dummy worth check check
dummy check my name check check dummy dummy
dummy check dummy lavender lollipop dummy dummy check check
dummy check dumby dumb dumb dah..."
from have you forgotten any personal property?
Twerk is a really odd work. The poetry didn't have a consistent rhyme, but it did have a tempo. The spaces in between the words and paragraphs, the formatting of the stanzas, the whole structuring of Twerk is a tribute and it contains the soul and rhythmic repetition of hip hop.
"k'k'kkrill k'k'kk'kosher k'k'kolohe k'k'kk'kinkajou
k'k'ku'ulala k'k'ku'ulala k'k'ku'ulala
k'k'ku'ulala
k'k'kunan k'k'kk'kinky k'kk'karma k'k'kosdu
k'k'ku'ulala k'k'ku'ulala k'k'ku'ulala
k'k'ku'ulala"
from daggering kanji.
Diggs writes in maybe over 5 languages. Sometimes she translates it, sometimes she doesn't, leaving some words as sort of like the various puzzle pieces of her poems. That was the beauty for a lot of the poems, some of them didn't really make much sense, meaning that you couldn't really understand what it meant because she spoke in various tongues, maybe someone across the globe would understand. The beauty was the ambiguousness and the wonder.
Poetry is more than the language of metaphors and similes, more than spats of imagery. The words themselves are poetry. They form that form minimalist scenes, compared to fiction where most of the time you're supposed to paint a whole canvas. They are the linguistic portraits that come in a variety of forms, within the words and the structure that surrounds them. Diggs has a more surrealist approach to her poetry, it is never emotive, instead it focuses on a structural and musical beauty, with various foreign languages and stanzas switching in different positions and dialects without warning and somehow still flowing coherently to make a linear poem.
"Good lord, you make my eyeliner sweat pika twins.
Peep this joint, I ain't feeling your vibe easy breezy.
No shogun coming from your tongue.
Mista Popo, mista Tom,
you queasy.
Where's your flying rug, homie?
Yama-uba bored, my agents gonna reward nada.
I shuffleboard smoochies in the land of the rising sun's cosplay papa.
from mista popo™ hollas @ jynx
There's a lot of pop culture references throughout Twerk, such as 90s anime like Dragon Ball Z in the poems mista popo™ hollas @ jynx and who you callin' a jynx? (after mista popo) the Japanese subculture called ganguro, and hip-hop hits from the 90s and early 2000s, one of the songs is titled "damn right it's betta than yours," which is possibly a reference to Kelis' "Milkshake." And the poem, (Boo Yaa) contains lyrics from the song "RID is coming" by a hip-hop called Boo Yaa T.R.I.B.E. After the last poem of the collection there is a section dedicated to explaining what languages some of the words belonged to and what stanzas or lines were appropriated. A lot of the poems in Twerk contain the words of about sections of websites, TV shows articles, and other people's songs and poetry. It is if she did a collage poetry of her favorite songs, TV shows, and research ventures by copying and pasting in Microsoft Word.
Twerk is a brilliant work that pays tribute to the ever evolving world of technology and Black American culture. With the choppy writing and even the book design, Diggs poetry could be at times, glitchy and spasmodic. The front cover is somewhat reminiscent of retro mod fashion, echoing Austin Powers to anybody who wasn't born during that time but is familiar with parodies of that time. The collection contains a sort of fascination that echoes the kungfu frenzy generation. It is an avant-garde tongue twisting tribute of the world's many people's including the languages of indigenous peoples, reminding everyone that English isn't the only way to speak in poetry.
(Honestly, I really hate that I have to do all of this formatting. There's a link to the blog post though.)
Rating: 5/5
Originally published here: http://wordsnotesandfiction.blogspot.com/2015/05/twerk-by-latasha-n-nevada-diggs.htmly
chapp010's review
3.0
This book is so new, so innovative that I can't really say I know what happened to me.
lapetite's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.0
A fun albeit disorienting experience.
rtc
rtc
pyrrhicspondee's review against another edition
4.0
I am not quite smart enough for some of these, but that is my usual experience of poetry--not just poetry written in, um, eight? languages. Super cool, unlike pretty much anything else I've ever read.
ammonite's review against another edition
I'm not sure I can really rate this; all I can say is that the description in the GR entry is accurate and descriptive. It was unlike anything else I've ever read.
chellyfish's review against another edition
4.0
I'll have to come back and edit this review when I've had some time to reflect on this collection, and when my mind isn't spinning o_O The subtraction of one star can be attributed to my multilingual inefficiency.
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