Thulani Davis's Nothing but the Music Is a Must-Read

The Millions's Nick Ripatrazone selects four must-read poetry books for December, giving us some good context for Thulani Davis's Nothing but the Music: Documentaries from Nightclubs, Lofts, Dance Halls & A Tailor’s Shop in Dakar (Blank Forms Editions), which features a foreword by Jessica Hagedorn and an introduction by Tobi Haslett. About this excellent pick:

Nothing but the Music by Thulani Davis 

“Well, this isn’t poetry, I don’t know what it is, but keep writing it.” Elizabeth Hardwick’s advice to her student, a young Thulani Davis, resonated: Davis stepped aside from fiction for some time, and began writing poetry, including work that was performed with Ntozake Shange and Gylan Kain. Nothing but the Music collects work from 1974-1992, often originally performed, with frequent footnotes of date and venue. “I don’t wanna riot / don’t wanna riot / it’s Saturday morning / and I wanna dance,” Davis thrums in “It’s Time for the Rhythm Revue,” a poem that begins with play and ends with resonance: “a kid from Brownsville asked me / had I ever seen any violence / that’s why I clean my house / listening to songs from the past / times when no one asked anyone / if they’d seen a town burn / cause baby everybody had.” In “Zoom (the Commodores),” the narrator recalls driving through a thick thunderstorm to Atlantic City to see the Spinners in concert, and when she discovered the Commodores, the “tasteless fleshiness of the seventies,” a pulpy feel she still recalls: “give me the tacky grandeur of Atlantic City / on the Fourth of July / the corny promises of Motown / give me the romance & the Zoom.” A vibrant and yet smooth collection, steeped in rhythm. 

James Matthew Wilson, Michael Longley, and Anne Marie Macari round out the list for this month. Read on at The Millions.