Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive: Poems

Rating:
Summary: FULL OF VOICE AND SENSUALITY AND DAMN good poems
Review: Just finished this book and wow, it's full of beat, thumping, and gorgeous turns of phrases that slap you upside the face when you least expect it. I will be recommending this dazzling, fully competent writer to my colleagues. No pretense here. Just brilliant and sensual poems. A fresh debut--Rosal is a poet to watch!!!

Rating:
Summary: not just hip hop poems
Review: This debut collection is informed by the rhythms of hip hop and shares the rage and grief associated with the best and worst of hip hop culture. Yet these poems straddle the often discrete worlds of literary verse and spoken word. The first section among other things, explores the blur between boyhood and manhood. The second section deals with eros, elegy, and familial silence, all with a relentless commitment to the music of the language. Even the best volumes of verse have their flaws and while Rosal sometimes sacrifices the polished line, he consistently strives for a rawness of emotion and an energetic pulse in every stanza. This is a book worth reading and re-reading, aloud or otherwise.

Rating:
Summary: A ground breaking work of poetry
Review: Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive is a ground breaking work of poetry by a gifted young Filipino poet by the name of Patrick Rosal. Filled with emotion, energy, and the geist of trying to sort out one's life, loves, and ambitions, Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive is a singularly vivacious and memorable work of poetic insight and energetic commentary. Igneous: Within the body too there's grit/sawdust slag The hard-at-work/capillaries the chugging veins And deeper://the dark quarries where slabs of sun/gird the ragged digs of the body's rock/the handsome jags How can I arrive//at the innermost core/the sun-absent center of me:/slow flowing tectonic molten/and luminous?