A collection of works that speak truth to power.
In this time of upheaval, hatred, bigotry and religious oppression, we cannot be silent, we must make our voices heard against the current u-knight-ed states of ameri-kkk-a. It is absolutely heartbreaking to be witness to man's inhumanity to man, the abuse of non-white people, the inability of white people to empathize with the plight of fellow human beings, the greediness of capitalism, the religious oppression of blind faith, and the absolute mind-boggling fact that people elected a misogynist, racist, rude, crude, obscene con man as the president of our country. Remember "In a racist society, it's not enough to be non-racist ... you have to be anti-racist." Angela Davis
Jane SpokenWord "Nothing can prepare you for the poetry within that stings the senses like the hot breath of the poet. Communicating directly with the nerve endings of her hands Grenier's poetry shocks and thrills ... spoken or read - burns with a raging in the bluest part of a flame"
Albey onBass "Rumbles along moaning, groaning and rumbling ... the contrabass adds double the gut-punch to their rage ... The rhythm is often that of a racing heartbeat even as the words are shepherded by a meter that is dangerously free."
Art Collins is a native Bostonian and a force on the global poetry scene. Art believes in the extraordinary power in words and considers his work entertainment that awakens social consciousness. A Co-host of the Lizard Lounge Poetry Slam, he was also a member of the 2008 and 2010 Lizard Lounge National Poetry Slam Team and a member of the Brother's Keeper Poetry/ Theatre Ensemble. He is an educator in the Boston Public School system while continueing to deliver his unique style of spoken word poetry to an international audience.
Michael 'Warrior' Bonds is a Motivational Speaker, a Mentor and a Youth Worker, he lends his voice to causes related to human rights, justice and equality. Self-published, his first manuscript "Gunz Poems & Rosez" (2005,) includes writings compiled while in prison. His second "The Write" (2012) is a collection of various writing styles,. He has an Associate's degree in Criminal Justice and he is a trained Cognitive Behavioral Therapist and Prison Industrial Complex Awareness workshop facilitator. A true art Actionist.
John Sinclair is an American poet, writer, and political activist from Flint, Michigan. Sinclair's defining style is jazz poetry. An emerging young radical poet in the mid-1960s, while working with the band MC5 (19680) he served as a founding member of the White Panther Party, a militantly anti-racist socialist group and counterpart of the Black Panthers. Arrested for possession of marijuana in 1969, Sinclair was given ten years in prison which sparked a protest movement led by prominent figures of the counterculture.
We are grateful to these amazing activist poets, Art Collins, 'Warrior' Michael Bonds, and Beat Poet John Sinclair for their contributions to Word Against the Machine. We are honored to call you friends. 'Nuff Respect.
Word Against the Machine Chyrel J. Jackson - Author, Writer, Poet. - October, 2020
I spent my Sunday Afternoon doing what I absolutely love reading. I was reminded today you never can judge a person by what is most visible skin color. I was reading Word Against the Machine. An Anthology of poems and it transported me back to a different era, time and space.Jane “SpokenWord” Grenier penned this artistic masterpiece. It had everything in it. I mean Everything. We throw terms around like “woke" as if these can only be used by a particular race or group of people. I’m guilty I have done it myself. Jane reminded me today we are only as blind as our conscience allows us to be. There were so many thought provoking poems that time won’t allow me to reference all in my review. I will cite the one’s that made me feel the most. All of them were beyond good. That adjective is too weak. This body of work was exceptional. I Write, Darkness of Knight, Winter Has Come to America, Righteousness, Bang Bang, Revolution, Bang your Dead, Reparations and Cerial Killer Moms left the greatest impact for Me personally. This collection of Poems transported me back to Marvin Gaye records and blue Lights in a your mother’s Basement. It was in your face, Unapologetically soulful and if you closed your eyes you would Confuse the depth of it’s rage for a Black Lives Matter Mom or a person of color who happened to meet the brutality of a hateful, racist white police officer. Jane most assuredly is not black but her writing hit its Intended mark. Her writings stirred your Soul. Today I was reminded that great isn’t born to one specific ethnic group but rather compassion and empathy should ground all of us. Jane is my sister from another Mother. She’s witty, soulful and Bright. She wrote of black pain as if she Actually lived it. I guess in a way Jane has. Word Against the Machine was gritty, raw and very Real. How can one work contain absolutely Everything? This compilation of Poems was both nostalgic and current all at the same time. Jane wrote of Black pain because she sees it. In this way the writing was not only present but also timeless as well. This work needs to be added in every African American college level literary course. I not only recommend Word Against the Machine, this collection of poems should be discussed and studied in all classroom curriculums just as Langston Hughes and James Baldwin are. I smiled reading this book today because it reminded me that soul is much more than a genre of music it is a feeling and experience that starts from the heart.
I loved the poems but the jazz feel over them was an entirely different mood altogether. I'm a huge jazz fan so the whole vibe was quite a different experience. It was timeless and so artistic.
I said the whole feel was so Isaac Hayes/Marvin Gaye and blue lights in your mom's/dad's basement. It really was. Reading them was amazing the accompaniment of music was just stellar. It was so female version of Arthur Prysock.
Five Stars just aren’t enough. Chyrel J. Jackson
Read the full conversation.
Jane Grenier & Albey Balgochian: Word Against the Machine
By Phillip Woolever - January 26, 2020
It can be very rewarding to read the work of an author who's clearly passionate about their subject matter. That's obviously the case with this multi-media project by Jane "Spoken Word" Grenier. Considering the vital state of current global events, more of this type artistic statement should to be added to the cultural conversation.
Grenier tackles a broad range of today's societal woes including US politics, racial injustice and rampant consumerism while injecting sincere stanzas of personal insight and social observation. The volume isn't packed with abstract imagery or nuanced niceties, it's more of an in your face alliteration of accurate anger.
Combined with 48 minutes of eight bass-backed recordings the package harkens a return to counter-culture days from the 1950s and '60s when loudly proclaimed youthful uprising sparked an inertia that altered multi-national institutions, traditions and attitudes. This book makes it easy to envision bohemian readings at Greenwich Village and City Lights "happenings" or partying masses atop the torn down Berlin Wall.
That's not to imply this collection is some leftover flashback. Many enduring images from times when the early beatnicks or hippies walked the earth were ridiculous stereotypes, distorted by advertisers or cheap moviemakers, but the free spirit of such scenes was authentic. Unfortunately, the strength and style of those anti-establishment movements also became iconic stereotypes which are now cliché. Grenier manages to avoid that critical minefield; her poetry is clearly and cleanly from the good heart of socio-political activism.
Grenier's focus covers American households in "Cerial Killer Moms":
Cerial Killer Moms kill you slowly
with mystery meats
disguised as frozen treats
dinner in a box complete.
Or global extremism in "Bang Your Dead":
In the name of a muslim jihad
or a bible thumpin' christian crusade
as long as it's your version of god
then you're happy
regardless of the mess that you've made.
In your god's name.
hindus, muslims, christians and jews
all throw their dice in vicious war games.
The wrath of god
an eye for an eye
millions of dead motherfuckers just the same.
Grenier's husband Albey Balgochian adds sparse but effective bass lines that serve as effective enhancements on the recordings, with touches of distortion or his bow. Balgochian also handled production, recording and mixing duties. Grenier's vocal delivery is more subdued than her vocabulary, which carries the vibrancy of previous political protests while maintaining a fresh energy and outlook. Though the tones and frenzy are more subdued, the project is reminiscent of the MC5's 1969 debut album intensity on Kick Out the Jams, regarding shared, take no prisoners outrage.
Three of the recorded pieces feature collaborations from Boston poets Art Collins and Michael "Warrior" Bonds and special contributor John Sinclair. Sinclair was the MC5's original manager, a founder of the anti-racist White Panther Party and Woodstock era firebrand. He relocated to Holland and established Radio Free Amsterdam, a great blues and jazz station.
"The guest poets brought their own pieces to the table," Grenier told All About Jazz. "I explained the project and invited them to voice their own word against the machine." After the guest segments were recorded Grenier added some of her own complimenting pieces to forge dialogs that are a highlight of the project.
Her piece "I Am A Poet," from this collection, was included in the 2019 We Are Beat, National Beat Poetry Anthology , and her work has appeared in Good Housekeeping, Boston Magazine and the Boston Globe among other publications. Grenier was also featured at the Whitney Museum's 2016 Cecil Taylor retrospective exhibition, in a live performance piece with the late pianist.
Whether the voice belongs to unsung, small town open-mic aspirants or widely recognized poets like Langston Hughes or Carolyn Forche, those who howl truth to power remain vital messengers. Grenier has earned her place among those honored ranks.
Phillip Woolover
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Word Against the Machine
Darcie Friesen Hossack - Author, Writer, Managing Editor for Word City Monthly. - September 2020
Oh my God oh my God oh my God! you are brilliant, and searing, and...and... I was told that a prophet is someone who speaks truth, and just one poem in, that’s what I just heard. Jane SpokenWord shaves meat from bone in poetic calls to justice, peace, empathy, freedom, solidarity. Thank you.
Darcie Friesen Hossack
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Jane Grenier & Albey Balgochian: Word Against the Machine
By Raul da Gama - Nov 5, 2019
A review of Word Against the Machine - by Jane "Spoken Word" Grenier and Albey "onBass" Balgochian
The poet is the most conspiratorial of artists. No other artist is privileged to enter another person's mind so invisibly. Poems need nothing but themselves to make themselves felt; no wall to hand on, no stage or screen. Spoken or read, poems require merely our confidence to receive them. The unique pleasure of poetry is an unencumbered transmitting of one mind's experience to another.
Among the handful of poets - published and/or performing today - one mind that thrills is the one inside Jane Grenier's brain. Communicating directly with the nerve endings of her hands Miss Grenier's poetry shocks and thrills - once again - in Word Against the Machine, her new collection of poetry that appears in a slim volume with artfully creative line drawings by her husband and contrabassist Albey Balgochian.
I had said earlier that a poem needs no accompaniment to transmit its message. But Miss Grenier's work on the complementary CD - like those of the poets of Jazz, the Beats and Rappers; The Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron and others - does, in fact come with accompaniment. In Ms. Grenier's case this takes the form of Mr Balgochian's contrabass. And if the words of Ms. Grenier's poetry were not tough enough (which they most certainly are), Mr. Balgochian's moaning, groaning and rumbling contrabass adds double the gut-punch to their rage.
Words Against the Machine comes after Ms. Grenier's and Mr Balgochian's earlier work, Tragically Hip (2012). When the 2012 book was published credit was given to the artists who then called themselves Zen Beatz. The word, "Zen", of course, comes from the Chinese (Chan), which traces its roots to the Indian practice of dhyana (or "meditation") from a school of Mahayana Buddhism. The poetry took issue with social anomalies even then as well. But compared to the tone of voice of the poems in that book, the poetry of 'Word Against the Machine' - spoken or read - burns with a raging in the bluest part of a flame.
The rage makes for an urgency not simply to listen, but to act; a call to rise up from apolitical stasis, to voice dissent and join any resistance up to and including (I am assuming, voting Trump and his Republican refusniks out of office). There is no secret that all of that has been brought on by the fascist-politik of the present government in the White House. The rot, as we know it, is so deep that it is being spewed forth in almost every aspect of life today. The artists deals a blow to this from the very cover of the book onwards where the title nestles cheek-by-jowl with words signifying the issues and emotions involved: "love", "justice", "solidarity", "freedom", "peace" and more.
Still nothing can prepare you for the poetry within that stings the senses like the hot breath of the poet. You don't have to wait long for that either. Here is Jane Grenier in the first poem in the book:
"Acknowledging the depth of evils perpetrated
by white sheets in the night.
A trail of tears, devastation, destruction, slavery,
rape, mutilations, murder, mass incarcerations.
Hatred
Sorrowed by purposely inflicted pain
of one human upon another
I weep at the heartlessness of it all." (from "Questing")
Then she decries the power of what she calls "the right-wing moral majority" and
"liberated to generate visions", she proceeds to define her poetic objective with:
"Curving words, staining vowels, dripping metaphors.
Engaged in abstractions
Committed to shine
To Black Lives Matter
To Standing Rock
To Dreamers
To Lovers
To Youth on the march
To Women on the move
To Humanity
To inspire tribal resolution
Where I and he and she and me
and the rest of yous including you and us
become
We" (from "Questing")
With her stated "quest" and manifesto, Ms. Grenier proceeds to tackle hot-button issues and explode the myths and singing against the proverbial joy spring in "Winter has come to America" where she finds that "we have been trumped" and that "Whitey is blindly stumbling through life"... again, she calls the faithful to action, saying that "Silence is Death".
Ms. Grenier writes not with pen to paper, but rather with the raw nerve endings of her fingers. Her poetry is visceral. Eden does not exist, she says in "Righteousness" where "Vengefully severed from the promised garden" she finds herself - and indeed - all of her country "Surrounded by wailing walls of lamentation." Here too the imagery is stark and even phantasmagorical: "Rising from the volcanic mud of beasts", the "cruel men and mean women" of her poem "prey upon us as their sin eaters feasts".
The writing, then, is fiercely emotional, but in its imagery, is also redemptive. But the "Time is Now", she tells us but only if we answer an urgent "yes" to the series of rhetorical questions put to us in that poem. You do have to make a clean break away from the "amerikkkan" society that you have found yourself in though. The consequence, she announces in "Blood on the Track", will be dire, as: "Precariously perched on insanities edge" we'll see "Innocence transformed into fists of might."
On some poems - the ones recited on the accompanying disc - Ms Grenier is joined by slam poets Michael "Warrior" Bonds, Art Collins and John Sinclair. Together they indulge in ferocious dialogues as they "spit" the poems - "Political Speak-Reparations", "I can't get no Saddest Faction" and "I Dance" respectively. The harshest imagery is tempered with brilliant word-play and even humour, albeit a tad dark - and all of it comes as Mr Balgochian rumbles along on his contrabass. The rhythm is often that of a racing heartbeat even as the words are shepherded by a meter that is dangerously free. This and every other poem recited or read is poetry at its finest no matter whether you experience it reading through the poems in the book or performed by artists on the sharpest edge of creativity as Jane Grenier and Albey Balgochian clearly are.
JazzdaGama
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September 8, 2019
Poetry review: Word Against the Machine.
Every once in a while something comes along out of the blue that restores one's faith in humanity, and that's what I want to say about this book of poetry. Sent to me unsolicited for review by co-author Jane 'SpokenWord' Grenier, it reminded me that there are others out there who are beyond disturbed at the state of our world, from the corruption in politics to the devastation of our environment to the corporate takeover and ruination of everything holy.
I get the sense -- from Jane's nickname and from the available audio recordings of several of these poems accompanied by co-author and Albey 'onBass' Balgochian -- that this poetry is meant to be experienced auditorily, such as at a slam poetry or spoken word event. Nevertheless, it stands on its own as solid poetry whether read aloud or in silence.
The themes of these poems are founded in resistance to the evils facing us in this country today, from the current occupant of the White House ("I woke up to an orange man president with a wig hat on" in "Darkness of Knight") to the corporatization of the food supply ("those who control the food, control the world" in "Those who Control the World") to the destruction of the environment ("I'm hear to tell you that it's you that I fear, all that smell you smear on daily from your toes up to your hair" in "Anthrax and Bombs") to the folly of religion ("as long as it's your version of god then you're happy" in "Bang your Dead") to racial injustice ("where is your outrage?" in "Reparations").
The last three poems are strong back-and-forth collaborations with poets Michael 'Warrior' Bonds, Art Collins, and John Sinclair.
There are connections to Jack Kerouac here. Grenier uses neologisms such as "politricks" and "deNOTcracy" in "I Write" to make her points. Jack would dig that. And her poem "I am a poet" was chosen for publication in "We Are Beat," the National Beat Poetry Foundation Anthology 2019. There's a Beat flavor to this poetry, as well as a Beat attitude toward social conventions. Finally, it's poetry, and Jack was a poet of considerable note as we've pointed out repeatedly in this blog.
Overall, this book is a wake-up call, a call to action from a devout member of "the resistance" who understands that "silence is death" (in "Winter has come to America"). As such, I can only say huzzah and encourage readers to buy the book.
Remember, "you're never too old to mend your soul" (in "JIMI").
Rick Dale - The Daily Beat
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Darcie Friesen Hossack - Author, Writer, Managing Editor for Word City Monthly. - September 2020
Oh my God oh my God oh my God! you are brilliant, and searing, and...and... I was told that a prophet is someone who speaks truth, and just one poem in, that’s what I just heard. Jane SpokenWord shaves meat from bone in poetic calls to justice, peace, empathy, freedom, solidarity. Thank you.
Darcie Friesen Hossack
Jane Grenier & Albey Balgochian: Word Against the Machine
By Raul da Gama - Nov 5, 2019
A review of Word Against the Machine - by Jane "Spoken Word" Grenier and Albey "onBass" Balgochian
The poet is the most conspiratorial of artists. No other artist is privileged to enter another person's mind so invisibly. Poems need nothing but themselves to make themselves felt; no wall to hand on, no stage or screen. Spoken or read, poems require merely our confidence to receive them. The unique pleasure of poetry is an unencumbered transmitting of one mind's experience to another.
Among the handful of poets - published and/or performing today - one mind that thrills is the one inside Jane Grenier's brain. Communicating directly with the nerve endings of her hands Miss Grenier's poetry shocks and thrills - once again - in Word Against the Machine, her new collection of poetry that appears in a slim volume with artfully creative line drawings by her husband and contrabassist Albey Balgochian.
I had said earlier that a poem needs no accompaniment to transmit its message. But Miss Grenier's work on the complementary CD - like those of the poets of Jazz, the Beats and Rappers; The Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron and others - does, in fact come with accompaniment. In Ms. Grenier's case this takes the form of Mr Balgochian's contrabass. And if the words of Ms. Grenier's poetry were not tough enough (which they most certainly are), Mr. Balgochian's moaning, groaning and rumbling contrabass adds double the gut-punch to their rage.
Words Against the Machine comes after Ms. Grenier's and Mr Balgochian's earlier work, Tragically Hip (2012). When the 2012 book was published credit was given to the artists who then called themselves Zen Beatz. The word, "Zen", of course, comes from the Chinese (Chan), which traces its roots to the Indian practice of dhyana (or "meditation") from a school of Mahayana Buddhism. The poetry took issue with social anomalies even then as well. But compared to the tone of voice of the poems in that book, the poetry of 'Word Against the Machine' - spoken or read - burns with a raging in the bluest part of a flame.
The rage makes for an urgency not simply to listen, but to act; a call to rise up from apolitical stasis, to voice dissent and join any resistance up to and including (I am assuming, voting Trump and his Republican refusniks out of office). There is no secret that all of that has been brought on by the fascist-politik of the present government in the White House. The rot, as we know it, is so deep that it is being spewed forth in almost every aspect of life today. The artists deals a blow to this from the very cover of the book onwards where the title nestles cheek-by-jowl with words signifying the issues and emotions involved: "love", "justice", "solidarity", "freedom", "peace" and more.
Still nothing can prepare you for the poetry within that stings the senses like the hot breath of the poet. You don't have to wait long for that either. Here is Jane Grenier in the first poem in the book:
"Acknowledging the depth of evils perpetrated
by white sheets in the night.
A trail of tears, devastation, destruction, slavery,
rape, mutilations, murder, mass incarcerations.
Hatred
Sorrowed by purposely inflicted pain
of one human upon another
I weep at the heartlessness of it all." (from "Questing")
Then she decries the power of what she calls "the right-wing moral majority" and
"liberated to generate visions", she proceeds to define her poetic objective with:
"Curving words, staining vowels, dripping metaphors.
Engaged in abstractions
Committed to shine
To Black Lives Matter
To Standing Rock
To Dreamers
To Lovers
To Youth on the march
To Women on the move
To Humanity
To inspire tribal resolution
Where I and he and she and me
and the rest of yous including you and us
become
We" (from "Questing")
With her stated "quest" and manifesto, Ms. Grenier proceeds to tackle hot-button issues and explode the myths and singing against the proverbial joy spring in "Winter has come to America" where she finds that "we have been trumped" and that "Whitey is blindly stumbling through life"... again, she calls the faithful to action, saying that "Silence is Death".
Ms. Grenier writes not with pen to paper, but rather with the raw nerve endings of her fingers. Her poetry is visceral. Eden does not exist, she says in "Righteousness" where "Vengefully severed from the promised garden" she finds herself - and indeed - all of her country "Surrounded by wailing walls of lamentation." Here too the imagery is stark and even phantasmagorical: "Rising from the volcanic mud of beasts", the "cruel men and mean women" of her poem "prey upon us as their sin eaters feasts".
The writing, then, is fiercely emotional, but in its imagery, is also redemptive. But the "Time is Now", she tells us but only if we answer an urgent "yes" to the series of rhetorical questions put to us in that poem. You do have to make a clean break away from the "amerikkkan" society that you have found yourself in though. The consequence, she announces in "Blood on the Track", will be dire, as: "Precariously perched on insanities edge" we'll see "Innocence transformed into fists of might."
On some poems - the ones recited on the accompanying disc - Ms Grenier is joined by slam poets Michael "Warrior" Bonds, Art Collins and John Sinclair. Together they indulge in ferocious dialogues as they "spit" the poems - "Political Speak-Reparations", "I can't get no Saddest Faction" and "I Dance" respectively. The harshest imagery is tempered with brilliant word-play and even humour, albeit a tad dark - and all of it comes as Mr Balgochian rumbles along on his contrabass. The rhythm is often that of a racing heartbeat even as the words are shepherded by a meter that is dangerously free. This and every other poem recited or read is poetry at its finest no matter whether you experience it reading through the poems in the book or performed by artists on the sharpest edge of creativity as Jane Grenier and Albey Balgochian clearly are.
JazzdaGama
Back to Top
September 8, 2019
Poetry review: Word Against the Machine.
Every once in a while something comes along out of the blue that restores one's faith in humanity, and that's what I want to say about this book of poetry. Sent to me unsolicited for review by co-author Jane 'SpokenWord' Grenier, it reminded me that there are others out there who are beyond disturbed at the state of our world, from the corruption in politics to the devastation of our environment to the corporate takeover and ruination of everything holy.
I get the sense -- from Jane's nickname and from the available audio recordings of several of these poems accompanied by co-author and Albey 'onBass' Balgochian -- that this poetry is meant to be experienced auditorily, such as at a slam poetry or spoken word event. Nevertheless, it stands on its own as solid poetry whether read aloud or in silence.
The themes of these poems are founded in resistance to the evils facing us in this country today, from the current occupant of the White House ("I woke up to an orange man president with a wig hat on" in "Darkness of Knight") to the corporatization of the food supply ("those who control the food, control the world" in "Those who Control the World") to the destruction of the environment ("I'm hear to tell you that it's you that I fear, all that smell you smear on daily from your toes up to your hair" in "Anthrax and Bombs") to the folly of religion ("as long as it's your version of god then you're happy" in "Bang your Dead") to racial injustice ("where is your outrage?" in "Reparations").
The last three poems are strong back-and-forth collaborations with poets Michael 'Warrior' Bonds, Art Collins, and John Sinclair.
There are connections to Jack Kerouac here. Grenier uses neologisms such as "politricks" and "deNOTcracy" in "I Write" to make her points. Jack would dig that. And her poem "I am a poet" was chosen for publication in "We Are Beat," the National Beat Poetry Foundation Anthology 2019. There's a Beat flavor to this poetry, as well as a Beat attitude toward social conventions. Finally, it's poetry, and Jack was a poet of considerable note as we've pointed out repeatedly in this blog.
Overall, this book is a wake-up call, a call to action from a devout member of "the resistance" who understands that "silence is death" (in "Winter has come to America"). As such, I can only say huzzah and encourage readers to buy the book.
Remember, "you're never too old to mend your soul" (in "JIMI").
Rick Dale - The Daily Beat
Back to Top
I get the sense -- from Jane's nickname and from the available audio recordings of several of these poems accompanied by co-author and Albey 'onBass' Balgochian -- that this poetry is meant to be experienced auditorily, such as at a slam poetry or spoken word event. Nevertheless, it stands on its own as solid poetry whether read aloud or in silence.
The themes of these poems are founded in resistance to the evils facing us in this country today, from the current occupant of the White House ("I woke up to an orange man president with a wig hat on" in "Darkness of Knight") to the corporatization of the food supply ("those who control the food, control the world" in "Those who Control the World") to the destruction of the environment ("I'm hear to tell you that it's you that I fear, all that smell you smear on daily from your toes up to your hair" in "Anthrax and Bombs") to the folly of religion ("as long as it's your version of god then you're happy" in "Bang your Dead") to racial injustice ("where is your outrage?" in "Reparations").
The last three poems are strong back-and-forth collaborations with poets Michael 'Warrior' Bonds, Art Collins, and John Sinclair.
There are connections to Jack Kerouac here. Grenier uses neologisms such as "politricks" and "deNOTcracy" in "I Write" to make her points. Jack would dig that. And her poem "I am a poet" was chosen for publication in "We Are Beat," the National Beat Poetry Foundation Anthology 2019. There's a Beat flavor to this poetry, as well as a Beat attitude toward social conventions. Finally, it's poetry, and Jack was a poet of considerable note as we've pointed out repeatedly in this blog.
Overall, this book is a wake-up call, a call to action from a devout member of "the resistance" who understands that "silence is death" (in "Winter has come to America"). As such, I can only say huzzah and encourage readers to buy the book.
Remember, "you're never too old to mend your soul" (in "JIMI").