discursive

• definition: arguing and reasoning to conclusions
• elements: assertions, points, evidence, comparisons, conclusions
• interest: persuasion, possibility of truth
• examples: essays, speeches, proverbs
o related words and terms: contention, claim, assertion, explanation, analogical reasoning, counterargument, fallacy, rhetorical question, allegation, rebuttal, dispute, reduction ad absurdum, persuasion, support, warrant, appeal to reason, appeal to passion, appeal to trust, logos, ethos, pathos, justification, testimony, evidence, stipulate, conclude, call to action

Killer Mike – “Reagan” (2012)

[Sample: Ronald Reagan]
Our government has a firm policy not to capitulate to terrorist demands. That no-concessions policy remains in force, despite the wildly speculative and false stories about arms for hostages and alleged ransom payments, we did not, repeat, did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we.

The ballot or the bullet, some freedom or some bullshit
Will we ever do it big, or keep just settling for little shit?
We brag on having bread, but none of us are bakers
We all talk having greens, but none of us own acres
If none of us own acres, and none of us grow wheat
Then who will feed our people when our people need to eat
So it seems our people starve from lack of understanding
Cause all we seem to give them is some balling and some dancing
And some talking about our car and imaginary mansions
We should be indicted for bullshit we inciting
Hand the children death and pretend that it’s exciting
We are advertisements for agony and pain
We exploit the youth, we tell them to join a gang
We tell them dope stories, introduce them to the game
Just like Oliver North introduced us to cocaine
In the 80’s when the bricks came on military planes

[Sample: Ronald Reagan]
A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not

The end of the Reagan Era, I’m like ‘leven, twelve, or
Old enough to understand the shit’ll change forever
They declared the war on drugs like a war on terror
But it really did was let the police terrorize whoever
But mostly black boys, but they would call us “niggers”
And lay us on our belly, while they fingers on they triggers
They boots was on our head, they dogs was on our crotches
And they would beat us up if we had diamonds on our watches
And they would take our drugs and money, as they pick our pockets
I guess that that’s the privilege of policing for some profit
But thanks to Reaganomics, prisons turned to profits
Cause free labor is the cornerstone of US economics
Cause slavery was abolished, unless you are in prison
You think I am bullshitting, then read the 13th Amendment
Involuntary servitude and slavery it prohibits
That’s why they giving drug offenders time in double digits
Ronald Reagan was an actor, not at all a factor
Just an employee of the country’s real masters
Just like the Bushes, Clinton and Obama
Just another talking head telling lies on teleprompters
If you don’t believe the theory, then argue with this logic
Why did Reagan and Obama both go after Qaddafi
We invaded sovereign soil, going after oil
Taking countries is a hobby paid for by the oil lobby
Same as in Iraq, and Afghanistan
And Ahmadinejad say they coming for Iran
They only love the rich, and how they loathe the poor
If I say any more they might be at my door
(Shh..) Who the fuck is that staring in my window
Doing that surveillance on Mr. Michael Render
I’m dropping off the grid before they pump the lead
I leave you with four words: I’m glad Reagan dead

Tillie Olsen – “I Want You Women Up North To Know” (1934)

(Based on a Letter by Felipe Ibarro in New Masses January 9th, 1934)

i want you women up north to know
how those dainty children’s dresses you buy
at macy’s wannamakers, gimbels, marshall fields,
are dyed in blood, are stitched in wasting flesh,
down in San Antonio, “where sunshine spends the winter.”

I want you women up north to see
the obsequious smile, the salesladies trill
“exquisite work, madame, exquisite pleats”
vanish into a bloated face, ordering more dresses,
gouging the wages down,
dissolve into maria, ambrosa, catalina,
stitching these dresses from dawn to night,
In blood, in wasting flesh.

Catalina Rodriguez, 24,
body shrivelled to a child’s at twelve,
catalina rodriguez, last stages of consumption,
works for three dollars a week from dawn to midnight.
A fog of pain thickens over her skull, the parching heat
breaks over her body,
and the bright red blood embroiders the floor of her room.
White rain stitching the night, the bourgeois poet would say.
white gulls of hands, darting, veering,
white lightning, threading the clouds,
this is the exquisite dance of her hands over the cloth,
and her cough, gay, quick, staccato,
like skeleton’s bones clattering,
is appropriate accompaniment for the esthetic dance
of her fingers,
and the tremolo, tremolo when the hands tremble with pain.

Three dollars a week,
two fifty-five,
seventy cents a week,
no wonder two thousand eight hundred ladies of joy
are spending the winter with the sun after he goes down—
five cents (who said this was a rich man’s world?) you can
get all the lovin you want
“clap and syph aint much worse than sore fmgers, blind eyes, and t.b.”

Maria Vasquez, spinster,
for fifteen cents a dozen stitches garments for children she
has never had,
Catalina Torres, mother of four,
to keep the starved body starvng, embroiders from dawn to night.
Mother of four, what does she think of,
as the needle pocked fingers shift over the silk—
the stubble-coarse rags that stretch on her own brood,
and jut with the bony ridge that marks hunger’s landscape
of fat little prairie-roll bodies that will bulge in the
silk she needles?
(Be not envious, Catalina Torres, look!
on your own children’s clothing, embroidery,
more intricate than any a thousand hands could fashion,
there where the cloth is ravelled, or darned,
designs, multitudinous, complex and handmade by Poverty herself.)

Ambrosa Espinoza trusts in god,
“Todos es de dios, everything is from god,”
through the dwindling night, the waxing day, she bolsters
herself up with it—
the pennies to keep god incarnate, from ambrosa,
and the pennies to keep the priest in wine, from ambrosa,
ambrosa clothes god and priest with hand-made children’s dresses.

Her brother lies on an iron cot, all day and watches,
on a mattress of rags he lies.
For twenty-five years he worked for the railroad, then they laid him off.
(racked days, searching for work; rebuffs; suspicious eyes of policemen.
goodbye arnbrosa, mebbe in dallas I find work; desperate swing
for a freight,
surprised hands, clutching air, and the wheel goes over a leg,
the railroad cuts it off, as it cut off twenty-five years of his life. )
She says that he prays and dreams of another world, as he lies
there, a heaven (which he does not know was brought to
earth in 1917 in Russia, by workers like him).

Women up north, I want you to know
when you finger the exquisite hand-made dresses
what it means, this working from dawn to midnight,
on what strange feet the feverish dawn must come
to maria, catalina, ambrosa,
how the malignant fingers twitching over the pallid faces jerk them to work,
and the sun and the fever mount with the day—
long plodding hours, the eyes bum like coals, heat jellies the
flying fingers,
down comes the night like blindness.
long hours more with the dim eye of the lamp, the breaking back,
weariness crawls in the flesh like worms, gigantic like earth’s in winter.
And for Catalina Rodriguez comes the night sweat and the blood
embroidering the darkness.
for Catalina Torres the pinched faces of four huddled children,
the naked bodies of four bony children,
the chant of their chorale of hunger.
And for twenty eight hundred ladies of joy the grotesque act gone over-
the wink-the grimace-the “feeling like it baby?”
And for Maria Vasquez, spinster, emptiness, emptiness,
flaming with dresses for children she can never fondle.
And for Ambrosa Espinoza-the skeleton body of her brother on his mattress
of rags, boring twin holes in the dark with his eyes to the image of christ,
remembering a leg, and twenty five years cut off from his life by the railroad.

Women up north, I want you to know,
I tell you this can’t last forever.

I swear it won’t.

meditative

• definition: serious thoughts without set conclusion
• elements: contemplation, self-examination, association, episodic
• interest: self-examination, possibility of truth
• examples: daydream, prayer, meditation, open-ended discussion
o related words and terms: aporia, ambiguity, recursive, the sublime, reminisce, rumination, metamorphosis, vacillation, waver, dither, linger, equivocate, fulminate, internal debate, linger, fixate, focus, revise, shift focus, recalibrate, zigzag, apeirophobia, deflection, loop back, speculation, theorize, intuition, judgment, hesitation, speculation, realization, apprehension, perception, rationalization, inference, stream of consciousness

Earl Sweatshirt – “Chum”

Earl Sweatshirt – “Chum” (2013)

Something sinister to it, pendulum swinging slow
A degenerate moving through the city with criminals, stealth
Welcome to enemy turf, harder than immigrants work
“Golf” is stitched into my shirt
Get up off the pavement, brush the dirt up off my psyche (psyche, psyche)

It’s probably been twelve years since my father left, left me fatherless
And I just used to say I hate him in dishonest jest
When honestly I miss this nigga, like when I was six
And every time I got the chance to say it I would swallow it
Sixteen, I’m hollow, intolerant, skip shots
I storm that whole bottle, I’ll show you a role model
I’m drunk, pissy, pissing on somebody front lawn
Trying to figure out how and when the fuck I missed moderate
Momma often was offering peace offerings
Think, wheeze cough, scoffing and he’s off again
Searching for a big brother, Tyler was that
And plus he liked how I rap, the blunted mice in the trap
Too black for the white kids, and too white for the blacks
From honor roll to cracking locks up off them bicycle racks
I’m indecisive, I’m scatterbrained, and I’m frightened, it’s evident
And them eyes where he hiding all them icicles at

Uh… time lapse, bars rotten, heart’s bottomless pit
Was mobbin’ deep as ‘96 Havoc and Prodigy did
We were the pottymouth posse crash the party and dip
With all belongings then toss em out to the audience
Nothing was fucking awesome, trying to make it from the bottom of Syd’s
Feeling as hard as Vince Carter’s knee cartilage is
Supreme garment and weed gardeners garnishing spliffs
With Keef particles and entering apartments with ‘zine article
Tolerance for boundaries, I know you happy now
Craven and these Complex fuck niggas done track me down
Just to be the guys that did it, like, “I like attention”
Not the type where niggas trying to get a raise at my expense
Supposed to be grateful, right? Like, “Thanks so much, you made my life
Harder, and the ties between my mom and I are strained and tightened
Even more than they were before all of this shit”
Been back a week and I already feel like calling it quits.

Kendrick Lamar – “Feel”

Ain’t nobody prayin’ for me (X4)

I feel like a chip on my shoulders
I feel like I’m losin’ my focus
I feel like I’m losin’ my patience
I feel like my thoughts in the basement
Feel like, I feel like you’re miseducated
Feel like I don’t wanna be bothered
I feel like you may be the problem
I feel like it ain’t no tomorrow, fuck the world
The world is endin’, I’m done pretendin’
And fuck you if you get offended
I feel like friends been overrated
I feel like the family been fakin’
I feel like the feelings are changin’
Feel like my thought of compromise is jaded
Feel like you wanna scrutinize how I made it
Feel like I ain’t feelin’ you all
Feel like removin’ myself, no feelings involved
I feel for you, I’ve been in the field for you
It’s real for you, right? Shit, I feel like—

Ain’t nobody prayin’ for me (X4)

I feel niggas been out of pocket
I feel niggas tappin’ they pockets
I feel like debatin’ on who the greatest can stop it
I am legend, I feel like all of y’all is peasants
I feel like all of y’all is desperate
I feel like all it take is a second to feel like
Mike Jordan whenever holdin’ a real mic
I ain’t feelin’ your presence
Feel like I’ma learn you a lesson
Feel like only me and the music, though
I feel like your feelin’ ain’t mutual
I feel like the enemy you should know
Feel like the feelin’ of no hope
The feelin’ of bad dope
A quarter ounce manipulated from soap
The feelin’, the feelin’ of false freedom
I’ll force-feed ’em the poison that fill ’em up in the prison
I feel like it’s just me
Look, I feel like I can’t breathe
Look, I feel like I can’t sleep
Look, I feel heartless, often off this
Feelin’ of fallin’, of fallin’ apart with
Darkest hours, lost it
Fillin’ the void of bein’ employed with ballin’
Streets is talkin’, fill in the blanks with coffins
Fill up the banks with dollars
Fill up the graves with fathers
Fill up the babies with bullshit
Internet blogs and pulpit, fill ’em with gossip
I feel like this gotta be the feelin’ what ‘Pac was
The feelin’ of an apocalypse happenin’
But nothin’ is awkward, the feelin’ won’t prosper
The feelin’ is toxic, I feel like I’m boxin’ demons
Monsters, false prophets schemin’
Sponsors, industry promises
Niggas, bitches, honkies, crackers, Compton
Church, religion, token blacks in bondage
Lawsuit visits, subpoena served in concert
Fuck your feelings, I mean this for imposters
I can feel it, the phoenix sure to watch us
I can feel it, the dream is more than process
I can put a regime that forms a Loch Ness
I can feel it, the scream that haunts our logic
I feel like say somethin’, I feel like take somethin’
I feel like skatin’ off, I feel like waitin’ for ’em
Maybe it’s too late for ’em
I feel like the whole world want me to pray for ’em
But who the fuck prayin’ for me?

Ain’t nobody prayin’ for me
Who prayin’ for me?
Ain’t nobody prayin’

John Berryman – “Of Suicide” (1971)

Reflexions on suicide, & on my father, possess me.
I drink too much. My wife threatens separation.
She won’t ‘nurse’ me. She feels ‘inadequate’.
We don’t mix together.

It’s an hour later in the East.
I could call up Mother in Washington, D.C.
But could she help me?
And all this postal adulation & reproach?

A basis rock-like of love & friendship
for all this world-wide madness seems to be needed.
Epictetus is in some ways my favorite philosopher.
Happy men have died earlier.

I still plan to go to Mexico this summer.
The Olmec images! Chichén Itzá!
D. H. Lawrence has a wild dream of it.
Malcolm Lowry’ s book when it came out I taught to my precept at Princeton.

I don’t entirely resign. I may teach the Third Gospel
this afternoon. I haven’t made up my mind.
It seems to me sometimes that others have easier jobs
& do them worse.

Well, we must labor & dream. Gogol was impotent,
somebody in Pittsburgh told me.
I said: At what age? They couldn’t answer.
That is a damned serious matter.

Rembrandt was sober. There we differ. Sober.
Terrors came on him. To us too they come.
Of suicide I continually think.
Apparently he didn’t. I’ll teach Luke.