This book is well mapped out, but really not for me.

Brother Saul is one the takes us into parallel places looking into the very lives we lead from the view of a messenger.

I must admit, I like Saul Williams performances better than his books. The same words on a page seem to lose their life somehow. Still, the concept of this book is awesome: Saul claims to have found scrolls of ancient poetry written in a language that he eventually deciphers through a magical sort of vision. It is these poems that he credits with his rise in the Slam Poetry world and many of them will be familiar to anyone who has listened to his cds.

Thinkin of a master plan. Lyrically smoove

He is brilliant.

Another Excellent book from Saul Williams... if you love poetry, outmindish thinking and or/hiphop, this is a must have...

So I'm not much into modern poetry (how on earth does one start, or even get bearings? You may well be diving but I, I am merely sinking), but you've got to keep trying things out. Anyway, if you've missed Blackalicious's epic performance of Dr. Williams's "Release (Parts 1, 2, 3)" on 2002's Blazing Arrow, go acquaint yourself with some of the most daring, innovative, inspiring rap made this decade -- seriously, go do it; the album's an epic achievement and represents everything good about hip-hop. His imagery's a bit more informal than I like from a PhD, and I've really no patience for "social commentary" written after 1980 or thereabouts (c'mon, if you can't make it now, you never could've made it, so shut up and go generate economic output (but see note below)), but his lyricism's outstanding and I am a real sucker for these lines:

...Catchphrases and misunderstandings
But they are not what I feel when I am alone
Surrounded by everything and nothing
And there isn’t a word or phrase to be caught
A verse to be recited
An iamb to defile my being in those moments
I am blankness; the contained center of an “O”
The parametric containment of an “A”
I stand in the middle of all that I have learned
All that I have memorized
All that I’ve known by heart
Unable to reach any of it
There is no sadness
There is no bliss
It is a forgotten memory
A memorable escape route that only is found by not looking
There, in the spine of the dictionary the words are worthless
They are a mere weight pressing against my thoughtlessness
But then, who else can speak of thoughtlessness with such confidence
Who else has learned to sling these ancient ideas
Like dead rats, held by their tails,
So as not to infect this newly oiled skin?
I can think of nothing heavier than an airplane
I can think of no greater conglomerate of steel and metal
I can think of nothing less likely to fly
No wings more weighted...

beautiful. We'll see how this goes.

ps: things like this are said because they're fun to say. please don't turn my goodreads into a political debate. i'm well aware of how horribly insular and banal this comment comes off, i promise.

pps: the political debate restriction does not apply to Apple Computer, whose policies do more to hold back humanity than stem cell opponents and anti-nuclear activists put together. Every time I see one of those stickers, I want to take a sledgehammer to the pretension-cart on which it rides. You people are more obnoxious than Opus Dei and would find yourselves beside the Khmer Rouge on Judgement Day if the whole concept of the Judeo-Christian value function F() wasn't an undefined bunch of rubbish.

ppps: but even Apple confounds me less than the idea of "natural diets". we're all pulling up chairs at the same periodic table, folks. don't let the organo-farmergrocer complex turn you into little eichmanns. remember: nothing is too big to be knocked on its ass and everything is cool, baby.

"it's the real... hip hop (hip hop)" (c) Mobb Deep

Saul Williams is a great rapper and poet. I really loved this collection, however I must admit that I was disappointed in how little of it was new. Most of these poems have turned up in his songs or other writings before. It's a nice collection of them in one place though.

I'd love to hear him read this.

Actually, I recognize a fair amount of this from his music, but that's not a problem.

This Poetry is Superb in my opinion. Incredibly Intellectual and complex without being pretentious. Saul Williams paints beautiful pictures with words.

Just didn't seem as coherent as She or ", Said the Shotgun to the Head". I enjoyed Saul's essays on hip hop and poetry at the beginning and the end more than I did the actual "scrolls" themselves. Still worth reading, but I just don't think it's his best.