Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1075243 in Books
• Published on: 1994-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Poet and performance artist Beatty's ( Big Bank Take Little Bank ) second collection is obviously meant to be performed: the long poems read like a course in pop culture, covering everything from TV reruns to meditation and Mickey Mouse. Summoning up such black heroes as James Brown, Paul Robeson and Charles Mingus, he raises fascinating questions about the relationship of the African American past with present realities of a racially divided society. One poem, appropriately titled "Verbal Mugging," suggests he's arrived at a position that combines anger with humor. He can become didactic at times, but the writing is so lyrical that readers don't feel shouted at or wrongfully accused. The imagery is vivid: describing a black poet he feels sold out to the establishment, he speaks of his "platforms" being replaced by "hush puppies"; in another poem he depicts his house as a "shooting gallery" where he "used to play connect the dots with the pock marks and scars / on my daddys arms." As good as he is, Beatty writes in one pitch which grows tiresome after a while, but it isn't long before some startling new image comes along and screams out for attention.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Once described as the "premier bard of hip hop," Beatty reflects the stylistic and thematic influence of jazz, comic books, and kung-fu films as well as rap music. In his most recent collection, rhythms are sharply, almost militarily, accented, and he writes to confront as well as enliven. References to pop culture appear rapid-fire throughout Beatty's historical and social observations, and one poem's title, "Verbal Mugging," sums up the mood Beatty tries to conjure. Sometimes he comes across sounding arrogant, as when, in "Sitting on Other People's Cars," he lazily places himself alongside jazz legends in importance ("This mingus CD / reminds you of me"), and sometimes his diatribes are hackneyed. But much of his work is promising. "Two Pink Dots? You Positive?" is a compelling description of unwanted pregnancy whose verses mix pathos with humor, and the pseudohaiku, "Why That Abbott and Costello Vaudeville Mess Never Worked with Black People," shorter than its title, is hilarious. Aaron Cohen

Review
About The Author
Annotation Of A Funky Breakdown
At Ease
Big Bowls Of Cereal
Daryl Patterson And Bugs Bunny's Black Nationalist Cheerlead
Desert Boots
Dib Dab
Independent Study
Mickey Mouse Build A House
No Tag Backs
Quote Unquote
Sitting On Other People's Cars
Stall Me Out
Tap Tap On Africa
That's Not In My Job Description
Two Pink Dots? You Positive?
Verbal Mugging
Why That Abbot And Costello Vaudeville Mess Never Worked
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Customer Reviews

Read and re-read, Beatty brings cadence to societal chaos.
These poems are what happens when you mix the raw straight forwardness of hip-hop flows with literary prose. Joker, Joker, Deuce grabs the reader because it hasn't been said like this before. My personal favorite "That's Not in My Job Description" is a biting look at how integration and expected assimilation can make the workplace a danger zone. His use of present historical references gives this book a foothold on pop culture from the dawn of the Old school to the age of the Now school.

Laughed So Hard, I cried.
One Word: hilarious. This is my favorite poetry book of all time. If you like Aaron McGruder's "Boondocks" comic strip, you should like this. If you're not a poetry person, Beatty's "The White Boy Shuffle" may be more to your liking. On another note, instead of buying the book or the collection of poems, try renting them from your local library.

Great Novelist but..
White boy shuffle is my favourite books of all time. I own three different editions of it. I spent a year having a crush on a boy just because he read and loved the book too, in fact this guy had a plan to write a letter to Paul Beatty and keep it in his back pocket, just in case he met da man.

But Paul's Poetry speaks very little to me. Partly because there are far too many basketball references which I don't understand, not growing up in the States, and when i read it to myself, I can't pick up the meter and the rythm of the words.

I think it is good, but if you know nothing about basketball, and don't really like rap, you, like me, will probably not get what the author intended us to hear. If only there was a cassette version.