Friday, February 26, 2016

Olympic Butter Gold

Olympic Butter Gold by Jonathan Moody, 94 pages.

Award-winning poet and high-school teacher Moody has published a collection of fun, lyrical, and engaging poems thematically linked by references to superheroes, Eighties Hip-Hop, popular culture and its intersection with B-Boy culture (or the other way around) all melded with his life. He brings in references to his military upbringing in many of the poems, like "Operation Just Cause, 1989" and "Deployed."
Later, in the section entitled ""Lovelust a la Mode" he reminisces about a former girlfriend;

"At Elgin Air Force Base, rumors
about my frist girlfriend traveled
at the speed of sound. . .

She doesn't know who her real
folks are. It's a toss-up
 between Bessie Smith
& Charlie Parker, but she has more
Godfathers Than the Zulu nation."

His poems in the last section, "Ronda Final (Already)," express Moody's thoughts about, among other things, race, rap, and the fault-lines in America around these topics. Poems like "Gothic Barkley," and "2084 (from Ghetto Fabulous to Ghetto Facsist)" give this collection a strong finish.

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