Nate Marshall

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Nate Marshall is an award-winning author, editor, poet, playwright, performer, educator, speaker, and rapper. His book, Wild Hundreds, was honored with the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s award for Poetry Book of the Year and The Great Lakes College Association’s New Writer Award. He is also an editor of The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop and he also co-curates The BreakBeat Poets series for Haymarket Books. Marshall co-wrote the play No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks with Eve Ewing, produced by Manual Cinema and commissioned by the Poetry Foundation. He also wrote the audio drama Bruh Rabbit & The Fantastic Telling of Remington Ellis, Esq., which was produced by Make-Believe Association. His last rap album, Grown came out in 2015 with his group Daily Lyrical Product. His next book, FINNA, is due out in 2020 from One World/Random House. Nate was born at Roseland Community Hospital and raised in the West Pullman neighborhood of Chicago. He is a proud Chicago Public Schools alumnus. Nate completed his MFA in Creative Writing at The University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers' Program. He holds a B.A. in English and African American Diaspora Studies from Vanderbilt University. Marshall has received fellowships from Cave Canem, The Poetry Foundation, and The University of Michigan. Nate loves his family and friends, Black people, dope art, literature, history, arguing about top 5 lists, and beating you in spades. Source

out south

… And they, since they

were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

 

—Robert Frost, “Out, Out”

 

 

In Chicago, kids are beaten. they crack

open. they're pavement. they don't fight, they die.

bodies bruised blue with wood. cameras catch

us killing, capture danger to broadcast

 

on Broadways. we Roseland stars, made players

for the press. apes caged from 1st grade until.

shake us. we make terrible tambourines.

packed into class, kids passed like kidney stones.

 

each street day is unanswered prayer for peace,

news gushes from Mom's mouth like schoolboy blood.

Ragtown crime don't stop, only waves—hello.

crime waves break no surface on news—goodbye.

 

every kid that's killed is one less free lunch,

a fiscal coup. welcome to where we from.

Published:

2010

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2023

Themes:

Poetic Form

Police Brutality

Racial Injustice

Literary Devices:

Antanaclasis

The repetition of a word within a phrase, in which the second use of the word utilizes a different and sometimes contrary meaning from the first.

Epigraph

a short quotation or saying at the beginning of a book or chapter, intended to suggest its theme

Metaphor

a comparison between two unrelated things through a shared characteristic

Simile

a comparison between two unlike things using the words “like” or “as”

Sonnet

A poem with fourteen lines that traditionally uses a fixed rhyme scheme and meter.