Sweet Tea/Dirty Rice
New and Selected Poems
Marvin X
Sweet Tea/Dirty Rice is raw, beautiful, painful, low-down and funky, uplifting like hearing Nat Turner has risen.--from the introduction, Dr. Ayodele Nzinga, BAM Oakland, founder, Lower Bottom Playaz
He has always been in the forefront of Pan African writing. Indeed, he is one of the founders and innovators of the revolutionary school of African writing.
--Amiri Baraka
Marvin X is the USA’s Rumi...X’s poems vibrate, whip, love in the most meta- and physical ways imaginable and un-. He’s got the humor of Pietri, the politics of Baraka, and the spiritual Muslim grounding that is totally new in English –- the ecstasy of Hafiz, the wisdom of Saadi.
--Bob Holman, Bowery Poetry Club, New York City
His love poems will resound as long and as deeply as any love poems ever written by anyone: Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonia Sanchez, Maya Angelou.
--Fahizah Alim
...This is more than poetry--it is singing/song, it is meditation, it is spirit/flowing/flying, it is blackness celebrated, it is prophecy, it is life, it is all of these things and more, beyond articulation....
--Johari Amini (Jewel C. Lattimore)
With respect to Marvin X, I wonder why I am just now hearing about him-I read Malcolm when I was 12, I read Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez and others from the BAM in college and graduate school-why is attention not given to his work in the same places I encountered these other authors? Declaring Muslim American literature as a field of study is valuable because recontextualizing it will add another layer of attention to his incredibly rich body of work.He deserves to be WAY better known than he is among Muslim Americans and generally, in the world of writing and the world at large. By we who are younger Muslim American poets, in particular, Marvin should be honored as our elder, one who is still kickin, still true to the word!
--Dr. Mohja Kahf, Professor of English and Islamic Literature, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
When you listen to Tupac Shakur, E-40, Too Short, Master P or any other rappers out of the Bay Area of Cali, think of Marvin X. He laid the foundation and gave us the language to express Black male urban experiences in a lyrical way.
--James G. Spady, Philadelphia New Observer Newspaper
Marvin X
photo Kamau Amen Ra
Contents
I Am John Coltrane
Christian Terrorists
The Negro Knows Everything
Little African Woman
I Am American
Party of Lincoln Sinking
To Mexico With Love
Don't Let My Son Look Like This
Talkin Ignut
What is Love
I Will Go into the City
For the Women
I Don't Want to Know Your Name
I Release You
Funny thing I Already Knew
Fly Like a Hawk
Oh, Mighty Kora
Poem for Unresolved Grief
You Don't Know Me
It is Fine to Dream
If Only You Knew How Beautiful You Are
African Blues Ain't Blue
Oh, Mighty Kora
Again the Kora
Empire
Don't ask, don't take
Something is Goin on up in here
Post Black Negro
Remembering Dad
And We Wonder
And then there are Angels
Cyberspace Dead
Memorial Day
Dream Time 2
If I Were A Muslim In Good Standing
Old Warriors
In the Temple of X
There Was an Island
A Street Named Rashidah Muhammad (Dessie X)
Poem for Clara Muhammad
Prayer for Young Mothers
This
Yes, it’s all there
When I think about the women in my life
Letter to dead negroes in cyberspace
We’re in love but you don’t know me
Growing up
In my solitude, for Duke
A Day we never thought
Mama’s bones
Love is for the beloved
Lesbian
Poem for unresolved grief
Song for Reginald Madpoet
Benazir Bhutto
Dis Ma Hair
Ancestors II
Facing Mt. Kenya
O, Kora, Elegy for John D
Who are these Jews?
For Jerri Jackmon
When Lemmie Died
And then the end
How does it feel to be a nigger
No black fight
Praise song for Askia Toure
Bank the Bankers
Don't dream bout ma man
Ah, air so fresh
I Am a Revolutionary
Do you want to see me tomorrow
Can you feel the spirit
My people were never slaves
Poem #3 for R
Poem #2 for R
O, Malcolm X
Fathers sing blues too
To Egypt with Love
Letter to my grandson, Jahmeel
Closure
Kamau
Don't Say Pussy
What If
Publication date: Late May, 2016. $19.95. Pre-publication price: $15.00. To pay by credit card, call 510.200.4164. Not available in book stores, order direct from publisher: Black Bird Press,
1222 Dwight Way, Berkeley CA, 94702.
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