Jayne Cortez

Jayne Cortez

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Jayne Cortez - "Womanist Warrior Poet"

Jayne Cortez was born in Arizona, grew up in California and lives in New York. She is the author of ten books of poems and nine recordings. Her most recent book of poems is Somewhere In Advance of Nowhere (Serpent’s Tail/High Risk Books). Her previous collections include Mouth on Paper and Coagulations, and with her band, The Firespitters, she has recorded six CD’s including the critically acclaimed Cheerful & Optimistic.

Her latest CD recording Find Your Own Voice was released by Harmolodic/Verve/Polygram. Jayne Cortez has performed, lectured, and taught at universities, museums, and festivals, including the Museum of Modern Art, UNESCO in Paris, the Berlin Jazz Festival, the Fourth World Congress on Women, and many others.

Her poems have been translated into twenty-eight languages. Her awards include Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, the International African Festival Award, and the American Book Award.

There It Is
by
Jayne Cortez

And if we don't fight
if we don't resist
if we don't organize and unify and
get the power to control our own lives
Then we will wear
the exaggerated look of captivity
the stylized look of submission
the bizarre look of suicide
the dehumanized look of fear
and the decomposed look of repression
forever and ever and ever
And there it is

Somewhere in Advance of Nowhere
(click to buy online now)

Author: Jayne Cortez
Publisher: Serpent's Tail
Date Published: May 1996
Format: Trade Paper

The author of six books, Cortez writes verse that's fiercely frank and urban. These poems range from the overtly political, even didactic, to the streetwise sensuality of Cortez's better rhythmic, percussive efforts which, no less harsh and glaring, provide an unflinching glimpse at life's ugliness. Occasionally, this grim point of view produces a keen, if gritty, kind of insight, and hence a hopefulness arising from clarity, as in "Compaera (Ana Mendieta)," in which Cortez writes of a sculptor friend, "a cyclone in blue tennis shoes/ a sequin dress machete," who was thrown out of a window by a drunk lover: "Why not say/ after the exit of two great drummers/ & in between the entrance of/ one monumental earthquake/ a huge volcano eruption/ & reappearance of the tail of Halley's comet/ We lost Ana/ but Ana did not leap/ because Ana knew/ Ana could not fly." Despite much loss, the speaker of these poems manages to survive. This resilience animates Cortez's work and supports the unwavering, and compelling directness with which she confronts the world. (June)

"I am essence of Rose Solitude
my cheeks are laced with cognac
my hips sealed with five satin nails
i carry dreams and romance of new fools and old
flames
between the musk of fat
and the side pocket of my mink tongue."
-Jayne Cortez, Rose Solitude

There It Is by Jayne Cortez

There It Is
by
Jayne Cortez