Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Cafe

Browsing the aisles this week, I stumbled on a volume titled Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Café. The Nuyorican is a cultural center for writers in New York. It began in 1973, in the living room of writer and professor Miguel Algarín. His goal was to provide a venue for emerging writers and artists to showcase their work. By 1975, Algarín realized that his living room salon was much too small for the large number of new artists in the city, so he rented an Irish Bar called the  Sunshine Café and converted it into the Nuyorican. Over the course of the last 30 years, the café has hosted innumerable emerging writers, musicians, and filmmakers as well as established artists, including Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, and Amiri Baraka.

The Nuyorican is located in the Lower East Side, a neighborhood that has seen significant changes. In 1975, the Lower East Side was certainly not among the most sought-after neighborhoods in the city. Now, the LES houses young professionals and the few remaining artists who haven’t been priced out of Manhattan by skyrocketing rent. But when asked whether he believes this transformation will have an impact on the café, Algarín has asserted that it will not, because the café was never intended to cater to any particular group of artists, but rather to provide a meeting place for artists with a wide range of backgrounds.

(photo by Raúl)

Aloud is a comprehensive collection of poems that have been performed at the café and works by artists who have appeared there. True to Algarín’s philosophy, the poems vary widely in style and theme. They’re edgy, personal, and often experimental. It’s an eclectic anthology with a history just as diverse, and it’s definitely worth a read if you’re a fan of poetry that’s honest and emotionally unfettered.

The Moments, the Minutes, the Hours

With the success of Jill Scott’s recent album, The Real Thing, Words and Sounds Vol. 3, and her concert tour now at an end, I thought it was a good time to revisit her book of poetry. The Moments, the Minutes, the Hours gives readers a glimpse of the R&B singer as she was at the beginning of her artistic career.

Before her work with the band The Roots, Jill Scott was a spoken word artist, performing her work live at poetry readings. Of course, her beautiful voice and her experience in a Canadian production of Rent didn’t hurt when she was discovered by Amir Thompson of The Roots, who invited Scott to collaborate with the band. She contributed to the writing of the band’s song “You Got Me,” which won a Grammy in 2000.

I am a long-time fan of Scott’s music and a new devotee of her poetry. What has always affected me most about her music is the raw honesty of her lyrics. Listening to a Jill Scott song, you feel as though she’s in the room speaking to you as she would a close friend. Her poetry has the same unembellished honesty. The cadence of her poetry has a distinct lilt, carrying one word right into the next, like natural speech. Scott speaks about the issues that are so crucial to experiencing life fully – relationships, spirituality, self-identity – and brings to them a new and very personal outlook. In Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman argues that the goal of the poet is to see life and humanity as they truly are and to convey those insights honestly, without sentimentality or disingenuous decoration. Scott certainly accomplishes that.

For example, she begins a poem discussing something as seemingly banal as her experience with being potty trained and, with the concluding line, “I don’t even think of you now,” abruptly turns the poem into a sharp and biting portrayal of her relationship with the parent in question.

Jill Scott appeared on last year’s premier episode of Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry on HBO. I highly recommend checking it out on You Tube:

It’s emotionally raw and somewhere between an a cappella performance and spoken word. Clearly, Jill Scott is as much a poet as she is a singer.

The Strand

On one of the first warm days in New York last week, I decided to go on a walk and join the hordes milling around the city, finally seizing an opportunity to emerge from the hibernation necessitated by the merciless winters of the east. I found myself wandering through Union Square, so I made my way to The Strand, an institution in the city and one of the bookstores I visit often.

Its location is primo, E. 12^th and Broadway, in the heart of Greenwich Village. The Strand is one of those bookstores that seem to emanate a love of all things literary. It supposedly houses 18 miles of books – a claim that seems entirely plausible once you’ve combed the aisles. Shelves are floor to ceiling – I’ve actually pulled the muscles in my neck trying to read titles. The aisles wrap around each other, meeting at odd angles, changing directions. Losing track of time entirely is unavoidable if you find your way to the more secluded sections of the store.

Photo: Aturkus

What may be The Strand’s most notable characteristic is its sense of history. Benjamin Bass opened the store in its original location on Fourth Avenue in 1927. In 1956, his son took over and moved the store to its current location, and it has been owned and operated by the Bass family ever since. The family’s longstanding and continuing commitment to literature and quality writing is still felt there. The smell of old paper hits you when you walk in. The Bass family also has a history of employing local artists, including Patti Smith, who worked at the store as a clerk in the ‘60’s.

The Strand boasts an enormous collection of rare, used, and out of print books. I found a copy of I Have Tried to Tell The Truth, a collection of Orwell’s letters and essays, which is surprisingly difficult to get your hands on, given the author. It’s nowhere to be found in Borders or Barnes & Noble, and even the other independent bookstores I’ve been to lately haven’t carried it. The last time I checked Amazon, only hardcover copies were available, starting at $70. At the Strand, though, I finally found a used paperback copy for $8.95.

Even New York fashion has been influenced by The Strand. The store carries canvas shoulder bags with its logo in bold red and white. The bags are available in different styles and colors and are practically a wardrobe staple among young New Yorkers. I’ve seen women wearing Chanel and toting Strand bags. It’s heartening to think that our ideas of what’s trendy don’t have to come from beauty magazines.

The Strand is among the world’s largest used bookstores. Its primary competitor is Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon. Since I’ll be moving to the west coast soon, and I have a friend in grad school near Portland, I’ve added Powell’s to my bucket list. As for anyone visiting or living in New York, I highly recommend a stop at The Strand. You’ll find whatever you’re looking for and even if you don’t buy anything, it’s worth the trip to soak up the ambiance.