phati’tude contributor Tony Medina, a two-time winner of the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People for DeShawn Days (2001) and I and I, Bob Marley (2009),  has published his seventh collection of poetry, An Onion of Wars (Third World Press). This latest collection is a satirical and surprising commentary on contemporary issues facing young and old alike. His mastery of language, imagery, conversation, and voice permeates each and every selection within this 100-plus page volume. The Caribbean writer and novelist Jan Carew shares the following: “The poetry . . . is complex. It strips the street to its simplest common denominator of survival and tears off layer upon layer of stark realism.” An Onion of Wars is available for sale on Amazon.com.

Medina has spent much of his adult life living in Harlem. He is the author/editor of sixteen books for adults and young readers. His anthology, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam (co-edited with Louis Reyes Rivera), was a Washington Post Best Book of the Year (2001). His poetry, fiction, and essays appear in more than ninety anthologies and publications, and he is the author and editor of two previous Third World Press titles, Committed to Breathing (2003) and Role Call (2002).

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OLLIN MORALES || COURAGE 2 CREATE || JUNE 2011

Well, folks, I’ve hit another life snag. I guess it was bound to happen again, right?

I’ve done my best, but life is just doing a much better job at getting in the way of my writing these days than ever. I’ll do my best to power through, but I thought that in the meantime we could reflect on some of the lessons I learned in the past, when I hit a life snag before. Maybe by reviewing them we can both be illuminated.

As I re-read some of these old posts, I wondered if maybe the most important lessons aren’t meant to be learned only once, but over and over again. Maybe it’s because the important lessons have to cut deeper into you as time goes on, like waves making a dent in the sand every time they slice the shore. >>READ MORE

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Check out photos from the 1st Annual African American Literary Festival at the Langston Hughes Community Library & Cultural Center in Corona, New York! Be sure to scroll down the page to check it out.

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KEN TUCKER || OCT. 2010 || THE BEST AMERICAN POETRY

Newsweek has already hailed Howl as “a great film,” which is exactly what it is not. Now, a great performance — that’s more like it. James Franco captures the Allen Ginsberg we hear in our heads and know in our bones. The actor lowers or raises his diaphragm and pitch to achieve Ginsberg’s soul-vibrating chant-recitations of the movie’s title poem. Franco never once relies on his own crinkly-eyed smile to charm or wink at his audience. Instead, he looks at the camera with Ginsberg’s cock-eyed, moist deadpan, or reproduces the Elated Allen Grin — an ear-to-ear face-splitter that can vanish in an instant.

Howl is a sentimental disappointment whenever Franco isn’t front-and-center. Filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman can justify the animation sequences by Eric Drooker by saying that Ginsberg himself collaborated with Drooker, but that doesn’t make the cartoon sequences any less maudlin.

As for the restaging of the Howl obscenity trial, Jon Hamm and David Strathairn give good, understated performances in search of dramatic reinforcement: They’re reduced to reciting court transcript, staged with all the immobility of a grade-school pageant.

No, at bottom, Howl will survive most usefully when some adroit techno-lit-phile inevitably recuts the film as a YouTube video consisting solely of Franco’s recitation of “Howl.” Maybe with a split-screen of Ginsberg own readings. “Great YouTube video” doesn’t have the same ring as “great film” (yet). But it’s truer to the spirit of both Ginsberg’s great poem and Franco’s great homage to it.

For more info, check out the film’s website at howlthemovie.com.

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Our Launch Party @ the Bowery Poetry Club on Friday was a great success!  Special thanks to all the poets who participated in the program:

Tara Betts, Timothy Liu, John Keene, Angelo Nikolopoulos,
Nancy Mercado, Jeffrey Perkins, Devi Lockwood,
Sue Sinclair, Jon Sands & Jesús Papoleto Meléndez
our special guest David Henderson
& host, Jorge Pupo

(Note: Eileen Myles was unable to participate, but we look forward to having her at another phati’tude event.)

Photos by Lorraine Miller Nuzzo, Copyright © 2010

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