rap + written “art” poetry = ?

I’m wondering what would happen if one tried to combine the rhythm of rap with some of the conventions of written poetry. (This is a naive question; there may be very obvious answers and lots of great examples.) As I understand it, rap lines usually contain four strongly accented syllables. There may also be any number of unaccented syllables, but each line takes an equal amount of time to say. That means that lines with many syllables go very quickly; but the four accented beats occur at a regular rate. Rhyme alerts listeners to the end of each line. Rap is sung/spoken against a digital beat, and the combination of that beat, the changing speed of the words, and the regular occurance of strong accents makes for an interesting form of syncopation. Rap doesn’t work especially well on paper, because it’s too hard to tell which syllables should be accented, and there’s no background beat.

In contrast, it’s hard to hear the length of a line in most modern written poetry. Even if rhymes are used, they tend to be subtle (off-rhymes or slant rhymes) and they are often concealed by enjambment. In conventional forms like iambic pentameter, each line has the same number of syllables, but a varying number of accents. In free verse, the number of syllables varies, but the reader still perceives each line as a meaningful unit. Information about line breaks is transmitted best on paper; it may be lost in speech. (Poetry in which line breaks are completely unimportant is simply prose.)

I don’t really listen to rap, but I understand that it’s a vital cultural phenomenon with tremedous energy and potential. I do read some contemporary “art” poetry, and I deeply admire a portion of what I read. I would probably like even more of it if I understood it better and worked harder at it. Written verse is valuable if only because silent, slow, careful reading of distilled language is good for the mind. Besides, “art” poetry connects to a wonderful heritage of writing as old as Sappho. Yet I suspect that as a whole body of work, current written poetry is not really going anywhere.

So could written verse draw inspiration from rap prosody? If rap performers could be persuaded to write some silent verse, they would contribute their energy and experience to the form. The technical trick would be to signal strong accents and line-speed–two aspects of language that ordinary writing does not automatically convey. I wonder if it would be possible to use subtle typographic clues, like slightly larger print for the accented syllables.

exhaustion

I just spent a whole day with 45 high school students, eight college students, and eight colleagues, talking intensively about the causes of obesity in Prince George’s County, MD, and planning a map-making project that will take us all spring. I have overall responsibility for the project, and this first day felt like a constant crisis, starting at 7 am. The tables we ordered didn’t seem to be there; we didn’t have recorders for some of the focus groups; we thought we’d lost a kid; the pizzas didn’t show up; sleet began to fall while the kids were outside learning how to use Global Positioning devices; and on and on. Actually, all the problems were solved and no damage was done. Once we go over the audiotape, videotape, written notes, and the maps that the kids made, I think we’ll find that it was a rich and highly informative day–a window into the lives of these young people. (Or perhaps a better metaphor would be a mirror, to show the kids what they are like as a group.) But for today, I’m too tired to think straight.

youth-led research

Last fall, CIRCLE issued a call for groups of young people (adolescents, or people 20-25 who haven’t attended college) to study youth civic engagement, possibly in partnership with adult mentors. CIRCLE has the funds to support a few such projects. We are looking for genuine, high-quality research that really emerges from young people. We closed the competition some weeks ago and deliberated today about 75 applications.

Meanwhile, a different group of colleagues and I are in the last stages of planning our own youth-led research project–a study of geographical factors in our community that may influence healthy eating and exercise. Next Monday, 35 high school students will come to the University to discuss these issues and help us begin planning a series of mapping exercises that they will conduct. I have been spending a lot of my time working on issues like: how to rent a school bus, how much pizza to order, and where to get tape recorders with mikes.

It’s clear that our work is far from state-of-the-art. We adults have done too much of the planning before the kids arrive on Monday. However, I don’t know whether any of the true youth-led projects generate excellent research. There is presumably a tradeoff between research quality and youth leadership. To get both at once would take time; you would need cadres of young people and an infrastructure for serving them (regular classes, meeting places, community partners, etc.). So I hope that we are at least on the road to doing work like that proposed by the best applicants to CIRCLE.

Straussophobia

Straussians are back in the news–and all over blogs–because of the controversy surrounding the President’s Council on Bioethics. The Council’s chair, Leon Kass, was influenced by the late Leo Strauss. Two of its members have just been replaced–possibly for dubious ideological reasons. I’m not going to comment on that controversy, since I don’t know the facts. I do enjoy the renewed attention to Straussianism, because it allows me to follow the postings of various young folks who are under Strauss’s influence. See, for example, the collection of links after Jacob Levy’s post, or this guide to “How to Spot a Straussian..”

Strauss is generally seen as a cultural conservative. However, his form of writing is indirect. He doesn’t say what his personal views are; instead, he “reads” classic authors of the past. He explains that great philosophers are always in peril because of the unpopularity of their views, so they write “esoterically”–with coded or hidden messages. Strauss rarely (if ever) says what the messages of these past authors are. If, however, you apply Strauss’ interpretative methods to his own writing, you find some evidence that he is actually endorsing a profound moral skepticism, akin to Nietzsche’s philosophical position. It so happens that Nietzsche used the same methods of encoding secret messages in his own writing, and explicitly described himself as an esoteric author. Thus I have argued that Strauss was the opposite of a cultural conservative. He was a God-is-dead Nietzschean.

Then the sociological question becomes: Which Straussians (proteges of Leo Strauss) are in on this game? My guess is, not many. One can actually do very interesting work as a Straussian minus the esoteric nihilism. Strauss drew our attention to the perilous position of critical thinkers in most, if not all, societies, and thus invited us to read the classics for hidden messages. This can be a productive approach. He also took some hard and effective shots at modern liberalism. I doubt that he favored straightforward conservatism as the alternative. But I do think he identified some of the deepest problems with liberalism, especially its tendency to support moral relativism as a moral absolute (a position that comes very close to self-refutation). Since Strauss, there has been a sophisticated and wide-ranging discussion of that issue, so he hardly had the last word. But he introduced an important topic.

Finally, Straussians make useful colleagues because they are relentlessly opposed to political correctness and are willing to be “elitists.” When we carelessly repeat nostrums like “the people’s right to know,” it’s great to have a Straussian around to say, “That’s complete nonsense.” They are excellent prods to actual thinking–which may have been Leo Strauss’ only goal in the first place.

young voters in Super Tuesday

CIRCLE folks were up late last night and early this morning crunching turnout figures for the 2004 primaries (and 2000, for comparison). We’ve posted a new fact sheet with all the information you could ask for. In short, turnout was relatively low yesterday for all age groups, probably because the last rounds of Kerry v Edwards just weren’t that exciting. Under-30 voters accounted for about 10 percent of the turnout in this primary season, the same as in 2000 (but much lower than their share of the population). Since overall turnout was down, fewer young people cast votes in Democratic primaries this year than in 2000. I don’t think this means anything about the state of youth politics–it has more to do with the contingencies and rhythms of this particular campaign season. We may still see a big increase in youth voting in November.