SEXIEST POEM OF 2008 is Anne Waldman and Akilah Oliver's collaborative CD MATCHING HALF

SOMETHING FOR YOURSELF OR SOMEONE YOU LOVE WHO LOVES POETRY AND AMAZING MUSIC, JUST IN TIME FOR holiday stupidity, which is why this CD is important, confronting stupidity.

If you haven't heard the CD MATCHING HALF by Waldman and Oliver (with Ambrose Bye's music), then you haven't heard anything like this, I guarantee you! The political as FIERCE poem as FIERCEST song of 2008! Although I've seen Anne Waldman perform many times over the years, HER VOICE -- have you heard her SING? -- I mean, she can REALLY SING, not just one of the most memorable reading voices of our time! The poem/song "TO SHOW MY FACE" on the CD gives us the incredible and powerful range she possesses in her voice. YOU TOO will be listening to this CD over and over and over! "Not Cleopatra's face, not Emperor Hirahito's face, not an Agrippa at the control, not the face of a tyrant or a super errant knight."

FINALLY, poetry/music that's amazing as poems as much as they are as music! I feel like I've been waiting for this CD my whole life!

The poem/song "CORSET" by Anne Waldman is dedicated to the great Emma Goldman, and the poem/song becomes a very large finger circling around the lives of hard working, sweating factory women, the finger moving DIRECTLY into the center of the circle of the story, to the fascist center, the dark axis.


An excerpt of "CORSET (for Emma Goldman)":

I'll call: arise! and would cast in a daily sweat of labor a struggle a sweet edge that way for it's an energy of daily sweat and toil to be free of the fascisms of how and when and why and why o never free of J. Edgar Hoover but my imagination ever free of the imagination of J. Edgar Hoover who will certainly most certainly have your number in his fractious labor and psychopathic toil even now when he the ghost of fractious J. Edgar Hoover is stalking haunting the work places the meeting places the "commune" of all my sweat and purpose. What is it to be a large woman be-speckled and intent in my libertarian socialist moment you want to call it that why you can call it that and it's so much more but do call it that and you will I'm sure call it that and most dangerous of violence and terror to incite a riot.


"It's Sunday. What happened to Saturday.
As soon named as soon strangeness of living
As soon named as soon strangeness of living"
Track 10 is Akilah Oliver's poem/song "STRANGENESS OF LIVING." Here is where you feel a poet who has taken a long road, nothing taken for granted, nothing left unexamined, no pain that needed to be felt left unfelt. It's a harbor for the world to feel completely alone together. Love is the very last thing taken for granted though, and it's important to understand that, for the poet, for the poem, and for the reader. This is political in the best sense, meaning a political letting NOTHING and NO ONE fuck around with the borders where we need to breathe the clean air. You'll be hearing from her if you do fuck around. Or, as she says in the poem/song, "In other words, leave me alone motherfuckas cause I'm in a position of trust and responsibility then besides, I can't afford to be off my ass." You can hardly believe how much this CD builds, and then you get to THIS poem/song! Here's an amazing excerpt, but when you buy the CD (you really will want this CD, so just shut up and buy it!), you'll get the full impact:

spitting out "prophecy" as if it were bad grammar, back in those goblin days before T spelled out in Oakland, before i had expanded my vocabulary: decedent, aporia, Sheol, elegiac, switchblade.
Spruce is a street to go down. to go down. to look for. so impossible. Anne sends a quotation in the midst of words i wanted: in this impossible break of a single line "had beautiful teeth", "had beautiful teeth", i break while inventing Kentucky bluegrass and alcoholism.
[who knew what a bestseller either of these would be? i'm laughing "all the way to the bank" [as they say] yeah yeah yeah how come you want to treat my baby so bad, how come you want to treat me so bad, baby? good to you,
have i been?
good, to be
Good. To be unknown
To be broken to be
Sentry to be just to
Be good earth I've been back back been back many times been been back here good earth I've been back back many times been back been back here

THIS CD WAS PUT OUT BY GARY PARRISH'S FARFALLA PRESS AND FAST SPEAKING MUSIC AND IF YOU SHOOT PARRISH AN E-MAIL farfallapress@gmail.com HE'LL SELL YOU A COPY. MAKE THE EFFORT, NOT MUCH OF AN EFFORT AT ALL, JUST E-MAIL HIM, YOU NEED THIS.