Poetic Phonetics is a series of poetry and essays, exploring how sound affects our lives. The books are about how the calm is considered weak, how the humble are considered cowards, and how roots are considered simple. In the beginning was the word.

while sound, poetic style, is timeless,
history hobbles heuristic wordsmiths;
with pentameter iambic, and global pandemics.
whether under a bridge with Daitô Kokushi,
or dharma spanging with Kerouac n Cassady,
time and lives and rhymes intersect.
culture, a cauldron of logos and breath.
reaching out, reflections,
that is, crossing the oceans,
sound sculpting soul, chrysalic psyche;
double oh zero, licensed to poetry!

Which is to say, that I have been through a lot, not quite the same as I’ve done a lot, because most of my experiences have been from the nose-bleed bleachers. Except being a poet, and being a dj, and being homeless. Oh, and walking across the States. And a head on collision with a 16 wheeler. That’s about it. Did I mention poetry? The words I write are self psy-alms, ways of helping my mind synch up with the times, while staying within the shadow of sanity and spirit. It was many moons ago that I knew I would write The Handbook of Poetic Phonetics, and I am grateful to have been able to follow through with the words I have been given. The blessings over the horizon I am unable to see, yet the sonar signals that spiritual truth stays constant. Give thanks and praises!

To think of certain ways of writing as activism is crucial. What does it matter if we write eloquently about decolonization if it’s just White privileged kids reading our eloquent theory about it? Masses of Black people suffer from internalized racism; our intellectual work will never impact on their lives if we do not move it out of the academy.

bell hooks

The theory of the unconscious seeks the very thing that poetic language practices within and against the social order: the ultimate means of its transformation or subversion, the precondition for its survival and revolution.

Julia Kristeva – Revolution in Poetic Language

‘Poets are always right, history is on their side,’ a Bolshevik official warned Stalin as he considered a punishment for Akhmatova’s friend, Osip Mandelstam, over an unpublished but critical verse. 

T.M. The Economist Feb. 1 2021

Who can doubt, that poetry will revive and lead in a new age?

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I look to poetry to wake me up from the stupor of statistics; to help me reconnect, through empathy and close attention, with the singularity of each life—and with all life on this imperiled planet.

Sarah Pemberton Strong