#jayne cortez

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Jayne Cortez with The Trevor Watts Quartet, Seven Dials Club, London, March 27, 1986, Organised by Apples & Snakes Poetry Collective [Spoken Word Archive, London (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)]

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July 28, 2025

Today, we’re asking what happens when AI replaces a teacher, looking back on Harold and the Purple Crayon, cheering the artists fighting back against Alligator Alcatraz, and more!

On Lit Hub dot com:

What happened when Piers Gelly tried to replace himself with AI? “Far from being nihilistic, take-no-prisoners cheaters, my students seemed genuinely confused. I could work with confused.” | Lit Hub Technology

Natalie Guerrero explores the interconnectedness of identity, erasure and language in America today. | Lit Hub Politics

“In literature I have found a landscape or galaxy that is vaster and more enduring than a country or a state.” Ha Jin considers the universal power of artistic practice. | Lit Hub Craft

On the enduring legacy of Harold and the Purple Crayon and the freeing art of imagination. | Lit Hub Art

Margaret Busby discusses the disruptive poetry of Jayne Cortez: “Rereading her words was a reminder of how far ahead of the game she always was.” | Lit Hub In Conversation

“Resy treated me like a little niece. She was also my On-the-Job Instructor (OJI) and was to supervise my first three days of delivering mail.” Read from J.B. Hwang’s debut novel, Mendell Station. | Lit Hub Fiction

From around the internet:

John Darnielle offers a remembrance of Ozzy Osbourne. | Pitchfork

“Oh but it is as dull and painful to recite about what creative act should be as it is to read about it.” Letters from Claude McKay. | Paris Review

Carolina Ana Drake reports on how the artists of the Florida Everglades are fighting back against the proposed “Alligator Alcatraz.” | Harper’s Bazaar

“If it happens to a writer, the struggle to turn the experience into language mirrors the abortion itself, bringing whatever it means out of the body and into the light.” On how to write an abortion story. | Lux 

What does it mean when a revolutionary cookbook is (mostly) made up? | The New Yorker

Annie Berke explores the enduring appeal of Clueless. | Defector

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[fairest]

There It Is

By Jayne Cortez

My friend

they don't care

if you're an individualist

a leftist  a rightist

a shithead or a snake

They will try to exploit you

absorb you  confine you

disconnect you  isolate you

or kill you

And you will disappear into your own rage

into your own insanity

into your own poverty

into a word a phrase a slogan a cartoon

and then ashes

The ruling class will tell you that

there is no ruling class

as they organize their liberal supporters into

white supremacist lynch mobs

organize their children into

ku klux klan gangs

organize their police into

killer cops

organize their propaganda into

a device to ossify us with angel dust

preoccupy us with western symbols in

african hair styles

inoculate us with hate

institutionalize us with ignorance

hypnotize us with a monotonous sound designed

to make us evade reality and stomp our lives away

And we are programmed to self-destruct

to fragment

to get buried under covert intelligence operations of

unintelligent committees impulsed toward death

And there it is

The enemies polishing their penises between

oil wells at the pentagon

the bulldozers leaping into demolition dances

the old folks dying of starvation

the informers wearing out shoes looking for crumbs

the life blood of the earth almost dead in

the greedy mouth of imperialism

And my friend

they don't care

if you're an individualist

a leftist  a rightist

a shithead or a snake

They will spray you with

a virus of legionnaire's disease

fill your nostrils with

the swine flu of their arrogance

stuff your body into a tampon of

toxic shock syndrome

try to pump all the resources of the world

into their own veins

and fly off into the wild blue yonder to

pollute another planet

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

[surrealistnyc]

Out August 19: Firespitter, The Collected Poems of Jayne Cortez

Associated with the Chicago group, Jayne Cortez collaborated in the Marvelous Freedom/Vigilance of Desire 1976 catalogue and published and recorded her poetry in a long series of releases. Performing with the "cobalt-blue intensity at the center of flame light," Jayne Cortez brought her band The Firespitters to the Schomburg Center's Poetry Tribute to Langston Hughes on February 1, 2002 and read from her explosive poetry. Listen to "There It Is." More on the evening in Africana Heritage.

My thanks to Steven Harris for this and the previous two book suggestions.

[stellaendless]

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[black-whole]

Poetry in motion

Jayne Cortez