Saul Williams

This is vital. And while I am too young to truly remember what it was like in the immediate aftermath of September 11, and the years that followed (in which this poem came about), but I feel like it has only have grown more so over time.

, said the shotgun to the head. is a panacea for, and an antithetical statement against, the various perceptions of otherness and difference that increasingly divide us; as well as the egotist doomsday-ers whose various worlds are constantly in peril from show more these others.

This is perfect-bound love. Not 2a.m. sweet nothing love, not grandma's love of gratitude, but more like the stern, angry, disbelieving love of your mother when you roll in drunk and high and covered in hickeys at 2 in the morning on a school night at 16. Both depthless, and depthlessly livid.

Seek it out and put it in your brain already.

Shout-out to Blackalicious for having the balls to include a 5-minute beat poem on a 2002 hip-hop album and indirectly leading me to find this work. show less

Absolutely worthwhile, mystical, and fun. The language-play here is touching and memorable, with ideas/poems worth considering and rereading. Performers and readers alike should read this work; you can almost hear Williams' voice vibrating off of the pages and spiriting these poems into place. As a whole, the book isn't for every reader, but I also firmly believe that there's something here for everyone---every time I reread the words here, I see the work differently, and I don't believe show more that will ever change. For that alone, I have to recommend this work--it's something quite unlike anything else. show less

Saul Williams first book of poetry, S/he, accurately demonstrates the provocative qualities of his writing style. The book chronicles the deteriorating relationship between Williams' and his ex-wife, Marcia Jones. The poems are a cohesive meditation on relationships, maturation, and the intertwined nature of femininity and masculinity. Williams highly metaphorical and often aphoristic writing style surely owes something to Yeats and Blake, the two great poets of the occult, but even more so show more to Hip Hop music and its origins. Williams words pulsate with a certain beat, a beat that did not simply begin with D.Js in 1970s New York, but first manifested through djembes and djun djuns struck by the ancient orchestras of West Africa. That is what Saul Williams embodies, a style so raw and primordial that it can only be crafted by the strong, steady count of the raging human heart. show less

I had trouble connecting with this work until I stopped trying to make sense of the words on the page and, instead, started hearing Saul's voice delivering this message in my mind, with his distinct rhythm and inflection and flow. Then it became magic.