Jayne Cortez

Jayne Cortez - "Womanist Warrior Poet"

Jayne Cortez is the author of eleven books of poetry and performer of her poems with music on nine recordings. Her voice is celebrated for its political, surrealistic, dynamic innovations in lyricism, and visceral sound. Cortez has presented her work and ideas at universities, museums, and festivals around the world. Her poems have been translated into many languages and widely published in anthologies, journals, and magazines. She is a recipient of several awards including: Arts International, the National Endowment for the Arts, the International African Festival Award. The Langston Hughes Medal, The American Book Award, and the Thelma McAndless Distinguished Professorship Award.

Her most recent books include THE BEAUTIFUL BOOK (Bola Press) and JAZZ FAN LOOKS BACK (Hanging Loose Press). Her latest CDs with the Firespitter Band are FIND YOUR OWN VOICE, BORDERS OF DISORDERLY TIME (Bola Press), TAKING THE BLUES BACK HOME, produced by Harmolodic and by Verve Records. Cortez is organizer of the international symposium "Slave Routes: Resistance, Abolition & Creative Progress" (NYU) and director of the film Yari Yari Pamberi: Black Women Writers Dissecting Globalization. She is co-founder and president of the Organization of Women Writers of Africa, Inc., and can be seen on screen in the films Women In Jazz and Poetry In Motion.

On the Imperial Highway: New and Selected Poems
Click to order via Amazon

Paperback: 131 pages
Publisher: Hanging Loose Press (February 23, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1931236909
ISBN-13: 978-1931236904
Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.5 inches

"Jayne Cortez's poems are filled with images that most of us are afraid to see." 'Walter Mosley

Jazz Fan Looks Back
Click to order via Amazon

Paperback: 115 pages
Publisher: Hanging Loose Press (October 23, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1931236097
ISBN-13: 978-1931236096

Somewhere In Advance of Nowhere
Click to order via Amazon

Paperback: 124 pages
Publisher: Serpent's Tail (May 1, 1996)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1852424222
ISBN-13: 978-1852424220
Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.4 inches

Cortez writes verse that's fiercely frank and urban. These poems range from the overtly political, even didactic, to the streetwise sensuality of Cortez's better rhythmic, percussive efforts which, no less harsh and glaring, provide an unflinching glimpse at life's ugliness. Occasionally, this grim point of view produces a keen, if gritty, kind of insight, and hence a hopefulness arising from clarity, as in "Companera (Ana Mendieta)," in which Cortez writes of a sculptor friend, "a cyclone in blue tennis shoes/ a sequin dress machete," who was thrown out of a window by a drunk lover: "Why not say/ after the exit of two great drummers/ & in between the entrance of/ one monumental earthquake/ a huge volcano eruption/ & reappearance of the tail of Halley's comet/ We lost Ana/ but Ana did not leap/ because Ana knew/ Ana could not fly." Despite much loss, the speaker of these poems manages to survive. This resilience animates Cortez's work and supports the unwavering, and compelling directness with which she confronts the world.

Poetry

There It Is
by
Jayne Cortez

And if we don't fight
if we don't resist
if we don't organize and unify and
get the power to control our own lives
Then we will wear
the exaggerated look of captivity
the stylized look of submission
the bizarre look of suicide
the dehumanized look of fear
and the decomposed look of repression
forever and ever and ever
And there it is

In fact
poetry
will not
strike
lightning
through
any
convoy of chickens

Today poems are like flags
flying on liquor store roof
poems are like baboons
waiting to be fed by tourists

& does it matter
how many metaphors
reach out to you
when the sun
goes down like
a stuffed bird in
tropical forest
of your solitude

In fact
poetry
will not
sing jazz
through
constricted mouth
of an anteater
no matter how many
symbols survive
to see the moon
dying in saw dust
of your toenail

"I am essence of Rose Solitude
my cheeks are laced with cognac
my hips sealed with five satin nails
i carry dreams and romance of new fools and old
flames
between the musk of fat
and the side pocket of my mink tongue."
-Jayne Cortez, Rose Solitude

Related Links

There It Is by Jayne Cortez

There It Is
by
Jayne Cortez