Saul Williams is by far the greatest performing-poet I have ever seen.

A manifesto--you will rethink the social, mythical, and religious institutions upon which this nation was founded, and be encouraged to hearken back into yourself and your soul, and the soul of all the world, and embrace one another in love and not fear and war--to overthrow the tyranny of a white male god for the mother that gave birth to us all in the beginning. Keep your mind and heart open, and see for yourself what you see. Don't read it just once, but read it all at once.

As close to perfection as words can get to. Beautiful. There’s many lines and pages I would love to get tattooed because the prose is that stunning and powerful. A must read.

"can he be heard over the gunfire
the whizz of passing missles
the crash of buildings
the cries of chilren
the crack of bones
the shriek of sirens?
or is that his mighty voice?"

Honestly I did not expect to like these ramblings as much as I did. They were odd but I found myself turning one page after another. & the use of different fonts was interesting.

Half the time, the poems didn't make sense to me but it's aesthetically pleasing to my eyes and soul.

Read this and it left me feeling confused. Then I listened to the poet reading this on Youtube and I understood!! Strong, powerful, emotional. And yet I am still miles away from grasping the full meaning of the poem. I need to read this again some day.

no idea

First reading. Absolute madman but deeply felt.

I need to expose myself to more poetry but in the meantime, it talks of deep intense attraction, politics, with a tasteful dose of blasphemy in every other line. Love it.

An epic poem in the vein of 'Howl' - Ginsberg is even namechecked in the acknowledgements. This takes the form of a ten-part rambling, psychedelic monologue comparing and conflating religious and romantic love. The language and themes get increasingly fervent and stray into political thoughts here and there, and Williams builds a cosmology of the sacred feminine as the true embodiment of the divine. In terms of typography the book plays fast and loose with font sizes and layout, often with single thoughts or words getting an entire page to themselves. The effect, when read in a single sitting, is to capture the freewheeling euphoria of a life-changing attraction and romantic yearning. I wish this had resonated with me more, though. I understand there's good stuff going on but some of the wordplay feels trite and the polar opposite of subtle. It does feel less developed and intricate than his other work, especially later poetry, but his passion is infectious and there are a good few turns of phrase that stuck with me.

I started liking it less and less the more I kept going on...

Saul Williams is a hip hop artist, actor, writer and slam poet apparently best experienced live. If that’s the case, his poetry collection, ,said the shotgun to the head., is the equivalent of canned laughter.

,said the shotgun to the head. is one big poem broken into numbered sections counting down from 10. Williams starts his pretentiousness in the introduction, stating his belief in a female god because of a passionate kiss (a kiss that inspired the book). Williams basically writes through his feelings, but apparently doesn’t go back and edit with his mind. Instead, he has graphic designers use different font types, styles, sizes and backgrounds. I’m all for this type of endeavor when it succeeds—like in the visual edition of Philip Yancey’s What’s So Amazing About Grace?—but the visuals better help the words on the page, and, in this case, simply tweaking the font comes off as nothing more than a pretty distraction. To me, ,said the shotgun to the head. just looks like far too much style over way too little substance. I’m sure Saul Williams could tell you the importance of capitalizing the ‘i’ on one page and not on another, but I don’t much care.

I’d be willing to run with the premise laid out in the introduction if it actually went through the depths Williams initially spoke of, but nah, let’s make it about phallic weapons smashing into metaphorical female body parts (the cliché womb, vulva, etc.). Ooh, and make it angry! Like Rage Against the Machine-influenced poetry written by a 14-year-old. Sprinkle with pop culture references and call it a book. By the end (see page 175), I was laughing at what Williams accused children of inheriting from their fathers: murder! This was, of course, bolded in a font three times larger than the previous statements. (I’m going to guess my laughter was not the response William wanted.) Even with all I can balk at in the collection, Williams occasionally still has his quotable moments—pages 25, 61, 67, 70, 78 and 171—but overall, his emotion isn’t inked out in a way that translates to the reader, not even with all his graphic designer support. One star.

A fascinating poetic rumination on American culture post 9/11. An indictment on our shallow modern values, lack of connection to the Earth, and patriarchal society.