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PRAISE
"A cool & diversified version of a mix tape. The BreakBeat Poets is a thorough and complete summation of Golden Era writers who continue to build the scene of literary and performance poetry."
—Chance The Rapper
"The BreakBeat Poets book release party is more than a poetry reading, as the anthology itself is more than a compilation of iambic pentameter. It starts with the editors, two of whom are the city's most illustrious performance poets, Kevin Coval and Quraysh Ali Lansana, the perfect creative minds to oversee this book created for the hip-hop community."
--Chicago Tribune
"The BreakBeat Poets digs past simplified stereotypes and outdated narratives and opens us up to thoughtfully crafted work that positions hip hop not only as a culture, but also as a messenger of social context, a vehicle of political response and a tangible solution."
--Lambda Literary
"The success of hip-hop has radically reshaped many American art forms. This is particularly true of poetry... The BreakBeat Poets comes at an exciting time."
--Gawker
"The BreakBeat Poets is not concerned with proving that hip-hop is poetry but rather with documenting the positive impact this musical form has had on poetry. In addition to the diversity of writers and theme, there is a wonderful variety of forms and styles in The BreakBeat Poets. You will find couplets and prose and scattered words. There are scribbles and cross-outs and pages where you have to turn the book sideways to read. The range of selections from individual poets is impressive as well."
--The Rumpus
"One of the most diverse and important poetry anthologies of the last 25 years."
--Latino Rebels
"The Breakbeat Poets presents the struggle-born whispers, joyous shouts, and hopeful flows of a beautiful multitude four decades in the making. Here are the voices of a movement that just won't stop. For the urgent midnight roar of the people's poetry and the glimpses of freshly conjured dawns awaiting their own breaks—this book is nothing short of essential."
—Jeff Chang, author of Can't Stop: Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
"Every generation needs its poets; we never doubted that the rappers were poets, but as The Breakbeat Poets shows, the rappers didn’t put the poets out of work.”
—Mark Anthony Neal, co-editor of That’s the Joint: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader
"[T]he first definitive anthology of poems by poets who fuse together the aesthetic of hip-hop and the style of slam poetry with the written-word tradition... [a] dynamic, groundbreaking, genre-merging volume."
--Booklist
"The BreakBeat Poets offers a thrilling vortex of diverse voices. From slavery to Jim Crow, from gang violence to black identity, The BreakBeat Poets presents an enthralling and necessary overview of an often overlooked vein of contemporary poetry."
--Foreword Reviews
"Finally! Here’s the anthology that puts in print what we’ve known all along: Rap is Poetry, and Hip-Hop is a genre of poetry bigger than poetry itself. Read these poems and get rid of the notion once and for all that Hip-Hop poems are meant for the stage and don’t work on the page. And the author’s statements and essays place these poems straight in the American grain, the current iteration of the African-American poetic lineage. The Breakbeat Poets is the essential text for anyone who wants to know what’s up with American poetry in the Digital Age."
—Bob Holman, Bowery Poetry Club
"It's amazing to see how expansive the dialogue has become. This book is heavy!"
—Bobbito Garcia, former host of All That: Hip-Hop/Spoken Word Showcase at The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, 1991-1998
—Chance The Rapper
"The BreakBeat Poets book release party is more than a poetry reading, as the anthology itself is more than a compilation of iambic pentameter. It starts with the editors, two of whom are the city's most illustrious performance poets, Kevin Coval and Quraysh Ali Lansana, the perfect creative minds to oversee this book created for the hip-hop community."
--Chicago Tribune
"The BreakBeat Poets digs past simplified stereotypes and outdated narratives and opens us up to thoughtfully crafted work that positions hip hop not only as a culture, but also as a messenger of social context, a vehicle of political response and a tangible solution."
--Lambda Literary
"The success of hip-hop has radically reshaped many American art forms. This is particularly true of poetry... The BreakBeat Poets comes at an exciting time."
--Gawker
"The BreakBeat Poets is not concerned with proving that hip-hop is poetry but rather with documenting the positive impact this musical form has had on poetry. In addition to the diversity of writers and theme, there is a wonderful variety of forms and styles in The BreakBeat Poets. You will find couplets and prose and scattered words. There are scribbles and cross-outs and pages where you have to turn the book sideways to read. The range of selections from individual poets is impressive as well."
--The Rumpus
"One of the most diverse and important poetry anthologies of the last 25 years."
--Latino Rebels
"The Breakbeat Poets presents the struggle-born whispers, joyous shouts, and hopeful flows of a beautiful multitude four decades in the making. Here are the voices of a movement that just won't stop. For the urgent midnight roar of the people's poetry and the glimpses of freshly conjured dawns awaiting their own breaks—this book is nothing short of essential."
—Jeff Chang, author of Can't Stop: Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
"Every generation needs its poets; we never doubted that the rappers were poets, but as The Breakbeat Poets shows, the rappers didn’t put the poets out of work.”
—Mark Anthony Neal, co-editor of That’s the Joint: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader
"[T]he first definitive anthology of poems by poets who fuse together the aesthetic of hip-hop and the style of slam poetry with the written-word tradition... [a] dynamic, groundbreaking, genre-merging volume."
--Booklist
"The BreakBeat Poets offers a thrilling vortex of diverse voices. From slavery to Jim Crow, from gang violence to black identity, The BreakBeat Poets presents an enthralling and necessary overview of an often overlooked vein of contemporary poetry."
--Foreword Reviews
"Finally! Here’s the anthology that puts in print what we’ve known all along: Rap is Poetry, and Hip-Hop is a genre of poetry bigger than poetry itself. Read these poems and get rid of the notion once and for all that Hip-Hop poems are meant for the stage and don’t work on the page. And the author’s statements and essays place these poems straight in the American grain, the current iteration of the African-American poetic lineage. The Breakbeat Poets is the essential text for anyone who wants to know what’s up with American poetry in the Digital Age."
—Bob Holman, Bowery Poetry Club
"It's amazing to see how expansive the dialogue has become. This book is heavy!"
—Bobbito Garcia, former host of All That: Hip-Hop/Spoken Word Showcase at The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, 1991-1998