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Urban Contemporary History Month: Poems by Scott Woods
In his second full length collection, Scott Woods further interrogates the intersection of identity and society, exposing the frequently imposed and false duality of twenty-first century Black life by a world that prefers its art and people in neat boxes. The poems of Urban Contemporary History Month navigate multiple sides of the issues it raises - police abuse, idol worship, the definition of Black culture, and the importance of the blues chief among them - chipping away at our understanding and acceptance of American life as we know it. The collection includes extended meditations on juke joint culture, art as a communal projection, and a cento comprised entirely of the first lines of Stephen King stories. Both personal and quietly polemic, Urban Contemporary History Month is a sly, knowing collection told with the trademark humor and intellectual nuance Woods is frequently praised for.
- GenresPoetry
118 pages, Paperback
Published February 18, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 10, 2019
If each American poet must play for either the Whitmans or the Dickinsons, then Scott Woods clearly belongs on the Whitman team. He can do the Dickinson thing if he has to (perfect miniatures realized in precise diction), but his mind is too expansive, his heart too generous, to be defined by small forms or small ideas. Scott Woods' poems of the black community—be they sidewalk murals of the Columbus, Ohio streets or lost blues weekends in the juke joints of Clarksdale, Mississippi—function as parts of a Whitman-style epic, rousing and embracing, but leavened by clear-eyed realism and reductive wit. The great virtue of these poems is that, though they can sing bravely of pain and darkness, they also express with good humor and love what it means to be black in America. In doing so, these poems sing for us all: they sing about what it means to be black, but they sing what it means to be human too.
One of my two favorite sections of this book is its first, called “Southside.” It begins with a short six-part poem about changing fashions, “The Reverse Chronology of Sagging Pants,” which moves from the current saggy, beltless style (Good thing I got a gun./ I'd never catch you with my pants like this) and travels back in time to berets, bell bottoms and dashikis (a dashiki is a black smoking jacket) to zoot suits (if you ain't got no watch chain/she ain't got no time) until it arrives at slavery days (you find a rope for a belt if you lucky). There are disturbing poems here, treating of urban violence and giving us glimpses into the minds of those enmeshed in that violence (“(Ar)rest Assured,” “To the Mother of my Enemy,” “Prisoner #74234 Speaks on your Commute”). My favorite of these is “6 in the Morning,” a haunting little story in verse that I will let you read for yourself. This whole section is filled with sharp, detailed observations, but perhaps my favorite piece is the six page poem called “The Livingston Avenue Suite,” which is the best evocation of an urban street I can remember since I first encountered Galway Kinnell's “Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World” over forty years ago.
My other favorite section is the second, “Clarksdale,” which takes as its subject a juke joint in Mississipi, but is also about the hard work and attention necessary to succeed in any creative endeavor (like poetry, for example). This is perhaps best shown in the long poem, “How to Build a Juke Joint”:
Above all, own it. Never share it.
Brand it with your fists.
Tongue its tiles and poolstick poked panels.
Swim in its flooded stalls,
sleep in its booths and to the jukebox's
skipping '45's
Keep makin' a job of it,
every night.
Never make it home.
Thats everyone else's job.
Your job is to keep the drinks cold and
handy, and to make sure that
when the bulldozers come,
you don't have a tear left to shed.
“Muse Arcade,” the shortest section, is also the weakest, but there are good poems (“Lured” is my favorite) to be found here too. The fourth section returns to the “Southside” with poem filled with spirit and and humor that are equal to the first “Southside” section, but are leavened with an even greater share of wit and humor. My favorites here include “How to Make Nunchuks“ (a childhood project), “Indian in Our Family” (the mythic source of “good hair”), “Denny's Diner and Colosseum” (vivid glimpse of a restaurant fight), “Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Love Note, Third Grade,” and “To the Question, 'If You Have so Many Poetry Accolades, Why are You Still a Libarian (sic)?.'” But my absolute favorite is “Urban Legends,” a poem that puns on “urban” to present us with ten distinctly African-American—and fabricated Woodsian—folk beliefs. These are the two that made me laugh most:
Gangsta rap crawls into your ears while you sleepand
and puts black people in your dreams.
If you stand in front of the mirror and chant the word
“Obama” three times, Ben Carson will appear.
I would recommend this book to all lovers of poetry. I learned much about the black experience by reading it and a little about myself too. (Oh, I almost forgot: there is an unusual “gimmick” in this collection which I found to be a lot of fun. I will let you discover it for yourself, only adding that all you fans of "Choose Your Own Adventure” books will be pleased).
To conclude, I give you this short poem from “Southside I”
RULES FOR PLAYING STAND YOUR GROUND
Players must handle all weapons
with an extreme lack of caution.
Players may not negotiate.
Players may not share, only sell.
Players may stand their ground,
but only when armed.
Kings can only move one space in a backward direction.
Queens may move in any direction
so long as their kings are dead.
Players may pass “GO” only after
popping a New Year's round.
Players may collect $200 only after
finding where the bullet lands.
Players may survive.
Players may persist.
Players will lose.
Players should only be told this once armed.
Game ends when there is no one left to shoot.
January 25, 2016
Scott Woods is at once brilliant and brutal and beautiful. I didn't know it was possible to cry and laugh until I cried inside of the same stanzas. If he was a church soloist, I'd throw a shoe at him while hollering. Instead, I sat and stared at the wall afterwards while contemplating the simultaneous futility and agility of my own pen. When I have the courage to read this again, I'll let Scott pick the shoe.
March 9, 2016
Reading this collection of poems is the equivalency level of 3 or 4 semesters of racial studies courses, but Woods packs each page with more heart, poignancy, and laughter than you thought possible from the syllabus. Some poems give you a Google Earth Satellite Hybrid view of the inner city libraries and forgotten neighborhoods that are the real soundtrack to Woods' poems about NWA on the big screen, Big Bang on the Boombox, and Buddy Guy in the Gospels.
Like this passage from "The Livingston Avenue Suite"
Streets littered like trash tornados hit them.
The houses have as many clapboards as people.
They eventually replace the sidewalks
but never the buildings, like Jesus is holding
everyone's lease until He gets back.
Shoes on a wire make the clouds
behind them look like they're running.
One of the undercurrents of genius in this collection is the running Choose-Your-Own-Adventure at the end of each poem. This creates an staggering number of parallel setlists to explore and adds new context to each poem that you re-read, when faced with choices like:
If you thought those were fireworks, turn to page 20
If you knew they were gunshots, turn to page 27
If you're still arguing that Pluto is a planet, turn to page 79
If you knew Gravity was ridiculous, turn to page 60
Starting at the beginning, the table of contents is the obligatory ice cream social mixer where poems politely curtsey and introduce themselves. But Woods' titles breakdance all over this list of page numbers like an Electric Boogaloo on refrigerator cardboard.
Of course I am eager to find out what poems are attached to titles like:
A Reverse Chronology of Sagging Pants
Jesus Wept, Then Sulked A Lot
These Aren't The Thugs You're Looking For
Neil deGrasse Tyson's Love Note, Third Grade
Black House Party, circa 1979
Needless to say, I was not disappointed.
Every poem lives up to its title.
Like this passage from "The Livingston Avenue Suite"
Streets littered like trash tornados hit them.
The houses have as many clapboards as people.
They eventually replace the sidewalks
but never the buildings, like Jesus is holding
everyone's lease until He gets back.
Shoes on a wire make the clouds
behind them look like they're running.
One of the undercurrents of genius in this collection is the running Choose-Your-Own-Adventure at the end of each poem. This creates an staggering number of parallel setlists to explore and adds new context to each poem that you re-read, when faced with choices like:
If you thought those were fireworks, turn to page 20
If you knew they were gunshots, turn to page 27
If you're still arguing that Pluto is a planet, turn to page 79
If you knew Gravity was ridiculous, turn to page 60
Starting at the beginning, the table of contents is the obligatory ice cream social mixer where poems politely curtsey and introduce themselves. But Woods' titles breakdance all over this list of page numbers like an Electric Boogaloo on refrigerator cardboard.
Of course I am eager to find out what poems are attached to titles like:
A Reverse Chronology of Sagging Pants
Jesus Wept, Then Sulked A Lot
These Aren't The Thugs You're Looking For
Neil deGrasse Tyson's Love Note, Third Grade
Black House Party, circa 1979
Needless to say, I was not disappointed.
Every poem lives up to its title.
February 27, 2023
So much to digest, so much word power- not to be rushed through.
June 5, 2018
Enjoyable and unsettling. Accessible and particular.
Woods is a witty, sharp social critic who does not avoid
the self-effacing.
His poetry is art at the service of his community.
Favorites
Best sci-fi social critique:
"These Aren't the Thugs You're Looking For"
Stoormtroopers stop your hovercraft,
want to know where you're going,
what do you have in the trunk
...
A gash of light, charred dissent,
the desert wind wiping away your chalk outline
like a Jedi mind trick
Best executed concept:
"Neil DeGrasse Tysons's Love Note, Third Grade"
Most transcendent:
"Boombox of the Spheres"
By all accounts, the Big Bang was the first rap song,
all bass, a tidal vibration of everything happening at once,
every trunk rattling the bones of Carl Sagan and God
is a lonely person screaming back at the universe,
demanding to be heard by any and everything,
wanting to remake the world in their image.
This is why people fear it,
why we turn our heads at red lights
like we can't see new planets coming;
why police must be called to reign in its dull destruction:
some people want things to stay
exactly the way they are.
Most powerful:
"(Ar)rest Assured"
if you open the paper
and read that i have been shot by the police,
rest assured
...
i did not run away
i did not walk toward
...
i promise: i was talking about downton abbey
and the sin of cold coffee
and hunting season bucks
anything to keep me alive
...
i know what a bullet's job is
i followed directions, fell on first hit
i was as non-violent as i could squeeze into this body
i've been told if you're not violent you can survive this
lie still, lie dead before the bear
do not move when snakes rear up
my mouth moving over concrete cracks
praying the whole time
to a god I am certain
used to kill things.
April 15, 2023
I struggle with poetry generally, but a lot of this really clicked for me. Standouts included: the Livingstone avenue suite, (ar)rest assured, phylum, urban legends, the requisite numbered stanza poem, and to the question, “if you have so many poetry accolades, why are you still a libarian (sic)?”
Oh, and of course The Confession, a poem made up entirely of first lines from Stephen King novels and short stories - yes please!
Oh, and of course The Confession, a poem made up entirely of first lines from Stephen King novels and short stories - yes please!
August 24, 2017
It's a climate-changey cold August day, but Scott Woods' Urban Contemporary History Month heated it right up for me. Every one of these poems is a scorcher, just blazing under his righteous, wise, brutally funny gaze. I can't say enough about how brilliant this is.
July 25, 2020
Smart, edgy, often funny -- and with a surprise, choose-your-own-ending style.
August 19, 2020
This collection was beautiful, fun, and heart wrenching in turn. Woods is generally great though, and this is no exception.
July 18, 2023
really enjoyed the choose your own adventure style sequencing
March 6, 2019
I greatly benefited from having seen Scott Woods read poetry live. Being able to "hear" his voice while going through this collection added such a great deal of enjoyment. The collection covers a broad range of themes, from specific scenes on the east side of Columbus to poems in the Star Wars universe and covering music, barbecue, police brutality, and so much more. This book also had an interesting "choose your own adventure" style suggestions at the ends of certain poems, that makes for interesting pairings.
Particular favorites include "Boombox of the Spheres," "Neil deGrasse Tyson's Love Note, Third Grade," "Diogenes Looking for an Honest Cop," "(ar)rest assured," and "To the Question, 'If You Have So Many Poetry Accolades, Why Are You Still a Libarian (sic)?'"
I had the pleasure of working with the author for several years. Knowing the wonderfulness of Scott Woods the person makes this a biased review. I read this while meandering around the 3rd Floor at work.
Particular favorites include "Boombox of the Spheres," "Neil deGrasse Tyson's Love Note, Third Grade," "Diogenes Looking for an Honest Cop," "(ar)rest assured," and "To the Question, 'If You Have So Many Poetry Accolades, Why Are You Still a Libarian (sic)?'"
I had the pleasure of working with the author for several years. Knowing the wonderfulness of Scott Woods the person makes this a biased review. I read this while meandering around the 3rd Floor at work.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews