From the publisher: “While there have been countless books written about Detroit, none have captured its incredible musical history like this one. This collection of poems and lyrics covers numerous genres including jazz, blues, doo-wop, Motown, classic rock, punk, hip-hop, and techno. Detroit artists have forged the paths in many of these genres, producing waves of creative energy that continue to reverberate across the country and around the world. While documenting and celebrating this part of Detroit’s history, this book captures the emotions that the music inspired in its creators and in its listeners. The range of contributors speaks to the global impact of Detroit’s music scene—Grammy winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, and poet laureates all come together in this rich and varied anthology, including such icons as Eminem, June Jordan, Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith, Rita Dove, Jack White, Robbie Robertson, Paul Simon, Nikki Giovanni, Philip Levine, Sasha Frere-Jones, Patricia Smith, Billy Bragg, Andrei Codrescu, Toi Derricotte, and Cornelius Eady…”
Jim Daniels is the author of six fiction collections, seventeen poetry collections, and four produced screenplays, and has edited five anthologies, including Challenges to the Dream: The Best of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Writing Awards. Honors and awards he has received include the Tillie Olsen Award for Creative Writing, the Brittingham Prize in Poetry, the Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award, and two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. A native of Detroit, Daniels is the Thomas Stockham Baker University Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
M. L. Liebler is the author of fifteen books and has been on faculty in the English department at Wayne State University since 1980. He is an internationally known and widely published Detroit poet, university professor, literary arts activist, and arts organizer. He received the 2017–2018 Murray E. Jackson Scholar in the Arts Award at Wayne State University, the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award in 2010, and the 2018 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award. He is currently the President of the Detroit Writers’ Guild.
Don’t miss out: The Pittsburgh launch for RESPECT will be on Tuesday, April 7, 7:00 at the Red Dog Reading Series (Chatham University Commons, Fifth Avenue/2nd Floor University Space) and will feature Jan Beatty, Charlie Brice, Jim Daniels, and M.L. Liebler!
“An incredible book. Comprehensive. Panoramic. And makes a case for Detroit being the greatest music city in the United States.” —Steve Wynn, singer, songwriter, and guitarist for The Dream Syndicate
“So many lines and stanzas emblematic of Detroit’s poetry and music resonate in R E S P E C T, edited by Jim Daniels and M. L. Liebler, and Kim D. Hunter’s homage to the late Faruq Z. Bey personifies the collection. His horn, Hunter writes, ‘was just another / way to breathe.’ And this is a breathless assemblage of the city’s most gifted voices.” —Herb Boyd, Black Detroit: A People’s History of Self-Determination
“This stirring collection of poetry captures decades of Detroit’s genre-spanning music legacy, from jazz to R&B to techno. Each stanza’s beats, rhythms, and grooves evoke the sounds of the city’s clubs, streets, and scenes with passion and pleasure. The inspiring selection of voices reveal the mystery of The D’s musical spirit, and Daniels and Liebler deliver a significant contribution to its lyrical arts.” —Roberta Cruger, former CREEM magazine staff writer/editor (1970–1974)
Jan Beatty
Love Poem w/Strat
for The MC5’s Wayne Kramer & The Stooges Ron Ashton: Strats Supreme
My baby’s got a solid-body
guitar, rocks it hard like dinosaurs
eating cars, plays it dirty like worlds
exploding, like Stevie Ray’s battered strat,
Badlands sticker on the back, he’s got a fever
for the steamroller, like Hendrix on Voodoo Child,
like Jeff Beck avalanching notes into air/
my baby’s a gunslinger, plays
his guitar rock-hard—
he likes it old-style, he likes it Muddy,
likes it Elmore James, bends it crazy
on his ’62 reissue arctic white strat
& his head rolls back/
to that precise pain, that one note screaming,
his mouth twisted open & the light crossing
his face like a freight train passing—
my baby’s a gunslinger, plays
his guitar rock-hard—
he likes it Freddie King/whole body vibrato/
likes it Howlin Wolf, my baby plays it
strings-against-the-mic-stand dirty/twists
the body to the Hubert Sumlin script/screams
through his Fender vibro-king—he’s
got a hard-on for traditional, fuck
special effects, fuck overplay/he’s got love
for his whammy bar, got love
for his double cutaway fins, jams
his headstock into the air, rips a hole
in the sky with his song
Charles W. Brice
Setting Up Soul—1968
Pull the big case that contains the cymbals, snare drum, cymbal stands, and sticks out of the van. Tell the guys in the band to hold on, you’re comin.’ Haul in the bass drum in its plastic case and the floor tom. Open the bass drum case and pull out your kick beats, the ones that made the bloods smile and caused dancin’ in the streets. Unwrap the floor tom and lean it toward the snare drum the way Marvin Gay inclines his ear to hear the grapevine. Tip the snare drum so it’s ready for that rimshot—SMACK—“I feel good . . . !” Caress the tom-tom until you slip it onto the bass drum holder, smooth and slow, like Percy Sledge loves a woman. Set the ride cymbal on its stand and coax it down toward the floor tom, lower, a little lower, lower now—I ain’t too proud to beg. Please, please, please, place the crash cymbal where you can reach it fast, smash it hard, with force, super bad. Put that sock cymbal stand by me ‘till it fits my left foot like a stirrup. I’ll ride that mustang, Sally, all night long.
M. L. Liebler
Rhythm and Blues Fire
for The Falcons & Sir Mack Rice
Tonight gasoline pours
Creating a fire of rhythm
And blues igniting an engine
Of sweet soul dreams
Warm, dark purple
Late summer night songs
That respect themselves
Hot harmonies on an Eastside Detroit street
Falcons singing in the front
Room and across the street
And a young boy hears
Their call and response.
It’s a new church
It’s Detroit. It’s late 1959
And it’s our good fortune to have
New hymns for our northern souls.
Jim Daniels
Patti Smith at the Punch and Judy Theater
She’s one freaky kinda
scarecrow scarin all
the birds away no crop
to protect just scarin
on principle cause ever-
body needs a good scare
get the blood flowin
thinkin bout dyin
or just bein bored.
Us? we’re stoned
as always so when
she spits on us
it just feels
like rain.
These poems are excerpted from RESPECT: The Poetry of Detroit Music. They are published here courtesy of the publisher and should not be reproduced without permission.
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