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A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR Arich hybrid of memoir and historyThe New Yorkerof theliteraryart form that has transformed the cultural landscape by one of its influential practitioners an awardwinning poet professor and slam champion

Bennetttransports us back to the city blocks bars cafes and stages these artists traversed and inhabitedan instructive text for young poets artists or creative entrepreneurs trying to find a way to carve out a space for themselvesShines with a refreshing dynamism The New York Times

In 2009 when he was twenty years old Joshua Bennett was invited to perform a spoken word poem for Barack and Michelle Obama at the same White House Poetry Jam where LinManuel Miranda declaimed the opening bars of a workinprogress that would soon revolutionize American theater That meeting is but one among many in the trajectory of Bennetts young life as he rode the cresting wave of spoken word through the 2010s In this book he goes back to its roots considering the Black Arts movement and the prominence of poetry and song in Black education the origins of the famed Nuyorican Poets Cafe in the Lower East Side living room of the visionary Miguel Algarn who hosted verse gatherings with legendary figures like Ntozake Shange and Miguel Piero the rapid growth of the slam format that was pioneered at the Get Me High Lounge in Chicago the perfect storm of spoken words rise during the explosion of social media and Bennetts own journey alongside his older sister whose work to promote the form helped shape spaces online and elsewhere dedicated to literature and the pursuit of human freedom

A celebration of voices outside the dominant cultural narrative who boldly embraced an array of styles and forms and redefined whatand whomthe mainstream would include Bennetts book illuminates the profound influence spoken word has had everywhere melodious words are heard from Broadway to academia from the podiums of political protest to cafs schools and rooms full of strangers all across the world