Saul Williams

Saul Williams is a rap slam poet and spoken word performer. You may have seen him on MTV doing spoken word poetry. What makes his poetry flow and dance? He uses a complex series of literary devices.

Directions:

1. Identify the use of assonance, consonance, alliteration, personification, hyperbole, or any other literary devices. You may circle, underline, or highlight themhowever you choose to identify them is acceptable. 2. Be prepared to discuss them. 3. Create your own rap slam using complex literary devices.

Saul Williams

(during a rap slam practice at the Portland Nationals)

Whish-shhhh, whish- shhhh, whish- shhhh If I could sample the wind I would loop it and let my life poem flow over its sacred beats. Using Kilamenjaro as my jembe I would drum rainbows out of the moonlight and use them as hooks in between verses. Verses of little girls spinning ropes in opposite directions waiting for an opening to jump in. As the world turns double dutch I jump double time over oceans and back the water waves and I wave back awakening echoes of sunshine, folks get round in the sunshine, but the lightening FLASH three times and its time for the course which includes cornbread, candied yams, and all that good stuff, which black folks and Saturn are made of. As we approach the second verse the roots of trees are plucked from baselines which resonate and shake the earth devastating everything thats not built in harmony in it. The second verse is a journey through the ruins of ruined souls that valued all that was nothing and nothing of the all-knowing, ever-flowing wind which is the undercurrent of this current blowing the funky drummer from here to eternity. But even as ruined souls back spin the wind mills forward and rocks steady till the sun hits the fader and the chorus kicks in then the moon yells, Go! and we all back spin, Zulu!! as the moonlight shines true blue silvery indigo light my spirit takes flight because the indigo moonlight is my endo, indigo, indigo-on-to-the-break-of-dawn, rock, rock steady steady to the early morn,

Word is born. Im talking about seeing your nature in nature and nature in your nature, New York states of mind did not create cha, neither til you listen to rock hear mine care mine a rocky mountain top if you heard hip hop. Its graduated urban an element that created it and let and open-wide countryside illustrate it. Riding in a freight train, listening to Coltrane my reality went insane and I think I saw Jesus. He was playing hop-scotch with Benny Carter who was cursing him out in a Scat-like gibberish for not saying, Butterfingers. And God created sand like seeds of time, the pains of man the frames of mind which built these frames which is the structure of my urban superstructure. The trains and planes could corrupt and obstruct your train of thought so that you forget how to walk through the woods, which aint good, cause if you aint never walked through the trees listening to nobody beats the biz then you aint never heard hip hop. And it dont stop and it dont stop and it dont, stop letting cities define you, confine you to that which is cement and brick. We are not a hard peoples. Our domes have been crowned with the likes of steeples. That which is our being soars with the eagles and the Johnathon Livingston Seagles. Yes. I got wings. You got wings. All got wings. All God wings. So lets widen the circumference of our nest and escape this urban incubator. You see, the wind plays the world like an instrument, blows through trees like flutes, but trees dont grow in cement. And as heartbeats bring percussion, fallen trees bring repercussions, cities play upon our souls like broken drums. We drum the essence of creation from city slums. But city slums mute our drums. And our drums become hum-drum cause city slums have never been where are drums are from. Just the place where our daughters and sons become off-beat heartbeats, slaves to city streets, where hearts get broken and heartbeats stop. Broken heartbeats become break beats for niggers to rhyme on top. But they rhyme about nothin. They dont got nothin to rhyme about cause youve never seen the moon, your styles cant be universal if youre not in tune with the whish- shhhh, whish- shhhh, whish- shhhh.

Transcribed from the video taken from http://www.slamnation.com/outtakes/outtake2.html