19 Sep 2008, Written by Erica Ellen Phillips in literary
Living and Breathing Everyday People
When Kevin Coval writes and speaks about Chicago, he is blunt like the city itself. A native of the metro area, Coval’s poetry carries a pulse that instantly calls the urban jungle to mind, from frenetic Lakeshore traffic, to pounding El trains, to sultry silent alleys in the city’s often-neglected neighborhoods. Though sometimes his images sting, this only makes the beautiful moments stand out as truer and more poignant.
Upon reading his work, one is reminded immediately of Carl Sandburg or Walt Whitman, and Coval himself mentions Nelson Algren as an influence. All three writers capture a hard and masculine reality of America without much flourish. Coval’s America, as portrayed in Everyday People, is Red-White-and-Blue Chicago- roots in Southern Illinois and cosmopolitan flirtations with New York.
this Chicago, this why the world works
under the common wealth of forced gas heat,
open kitchen ovens and corrupt politicians.
this city/country are the same
beauty at first glance
and after toiling in the rush-hour commute
grit sticks and melts the bones
of those called to work in the dirt of empire
- excerpt from The Corner Store
Unlike Sandburg, Whitman, and Algren, Coval’s stanzas beg to be spoken aloud. Indeed, on paper some of his poems appear flat, but to witness Coval perform is to understand that his work is truly a musical, live form of poetry. Coval is the founder of Louder Than A Bomb: The Chicago Teen Poetry Festival and he performed for four seasons on HBO’s Def Poetry Slam. So important is the poetry slam forum to Coval’s ethos that he dedicates a number of the poems in Everyday People to the topic.
But he doesn’t stop there. Coval is also a firm believer in, and vocal proponent of, hip-hop, which he has worked diligently to make accessible to broader populations. “What hip-hop taught us to do,” he explains, “is just tell our stories and where we come from.” He continues: “Hip-hop asks one eternal question: ‘What do you represent?’”
When Coval himself faced this question, having found a creative outlet in hip-hop at a young age, it took him some time to negotiate exactly how he wanted to answer. Having grown up with his mother and one brother in a Jewish household in the suburb of Northbrook, Illinois, Coval said in a recent interview that he was not always up-front about his suburban identity when he first explored Chicago’s hip-hop scene.
However, it was this very same internal question which became the impetus for much of his self-examination and poetic articulation. As he grew as a poet, he worked to educate young adults around the city, across the state, and around the world on the power of this particular art form. Today he teaches at the School of the Art Institute, University of Illinois-Chicago, and is poet-in-residence at the Jane Adams Hull House. In an earlier work, which Coval performed on the opening track of Idris Goodwin’s 2004 EP, he posits:
this is hip-hop
it is alive and well
it lives elsewhere than your radio MTV BET station
it has saved a generation of kids who write
and bomb
and break
and make beats
and read books on their own time outside of institutional gazes
cuz they heard De La or Rakim or Big Daddy Kane or Pac
or saw Style Wars
…
and wanted to do that
tell stories like that
truth like that
rep who you are what you feel where you come from like that
Everyday People is a testament to Coval’s now established presence in the hip-hop world and his influence on the next generation of spoken word artists. His voice is young at times – relatable, expressing frustration with nepotism and learning to make ends meet on one’s own. At other times, such as the more epic Parting the Red, White, and Blues, his knowledge is sagacious, and his words flow quickly and powerfully.
For the fullest experience of the book, read it out loud on a street corner, in a club, or on the train. Backed with the industrial noises of the street or the hum of human voices, Coval’s words come alive.
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