A Quote by Omari Hardwick
I found poetry at 12 and 13 and, lo and behold, learned that my attorney father had a background in poetry - as he wore dashikis and Afros in the '70s and named his kids Arabic names. He was a poet and a lot like The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron and all of these folks. He definitely was an artist.
Related Quotes
I've always been a poet. My dad went to Lincoln University with Gil-Scott Heron, so I came out of the womb listening to Gil-Scott Heron.
I was proud my father spoke Arabic fluently - his father sent him to learn Arabic from a sheikh - and we had Arab friends. His task of understanding the Arabs - not only politics but poetry - was very important; he took it as a vocation.
I don't know that I had a sense that there was such a thing as "the poetry world" in the 1960s and early 70s. Maybe poets did, but for me as an onlooker and reader of poetry, poetry felt like it was part of a larger literary world. I mean, even the phrase "the poetry world" reflects a sort of balkanization of American literary and artistic life that has to some extent happened since then.
Loneliness is necessary for pure poetry. When someone intrudes into the poet's life (and any sudden personal contact, whether in the bed or in the heart, is an intrusion) the poet loses his or her balance for a moment, slips into being what he or she is, uses his or her poetry as one would use money or sympathy. The person who writes the poetry emerges, tentatively, like a hermit crab from a conch shell. The poet, for that instant, ceases to be a dead person.
I didn't ever consider poetry the province exclusively of English and American literature and I discovered a great amount in reading Polish poetry and other Eastern European poetry and reading Russian poetry and reading Latin American and Spanish poetry and I've always found models in those other poetries of poets who could help me on my path.
There's a sameness about American poetry that I don't
think represents the whole people. It represents a poetry
of the moment, a poetry of evasion, and I have problems
with this. I believe poetry has always been political, long
before poets had to deal with the page and white
space . . . it's natural.
I tend to like the way poets form communities. Writing can be lonely after all. Modern life can be lonely. Poets do seem to be more social than fiction writers. This could be because of poetry's roots in the oral tradition - poetry is read aloud and even performed. I'm just speculating, of course. At any rate, because poets form these groups, they learn from one another. That is one of the best things about being a poet.
To be honest, I wasn't crazy about the kind of poetry I found in high school English books. I didn't get really excited about poetry until I discovered Lorca in college. If it wasn't for surrealism, I'm not sure I'd have become so involved in poetry. I was attracted by the extravagant imagery and elements of fantasy. This was in the '70s and it seemed to fit the psychedelic mood of the times. I found it liberating.
If you listen to 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,' by Gil Scott-Heron, that album is dripping with rage.
America has not produced a more salient political musician than Gil Scott-Heron.
He who writes poetry is not a poet. He whose poetry has become his life, and who has made his life his poetry - it is he who is a poet.
There's not a big range in the political poetry of the last year, or not a political range. On the one hand, no poet that I know of who writes in English in the United States is anything but a humanist. So all poets, including myself, seem to be under that umbrella. We just don't have Rush Limbaugh poets, Ann Coulter poets.
Poetry is also the physical self of the poet, and it is impossible to separate the poet from his poetry.
A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is; otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named.
There's no difference between lyrics and poetry. Words are words. The only difference is the people who are in academic positions and call themselves poets and have an academic stance. They've got something to lose if they say it's all poetry; if there's not music to it, and you have to wear a certain kind of checkered shirt or something like that. It's all the same. Lyrics are lyrics, poetry is poetry, lyrics are poetry, and poetry is lyrics. They are interchangeable to me.
I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry - writing at writing.
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