Today, I want to revisit some topics.

First, people are still asking if poetry matters. (Yeah, we've done this before.)

Gregory Cowles of The New York Times doesn’t offer any new thoughts — (no, poetry no longer matters; no, it is not the audience’s fault; poetry has become insular and will not matter again until it speaks to the public) — but he answers in such a way as not to make my teeth grate, which is an accomplishment.

Second, remember Michelle Kerns’s book review cliché bingo? Well, Flavorwire created a version for music reviews.

Third, Paul Edwards wrote a book titled How to Rap. I reviewed it.

Now, Edwards has posted an uncut interview with Kool G Rap that he did as research for the book.

I enjoy reading about artists’ creative processes. It doesn’t matter if that artist is G Rap or Victor Hugo.

Fourth, The New Yorker has published the best explanation I’ve seen on the state of the publishing industry thus far. One of the most insightful thoughts comes from Russ Grandinetti, the vice-president in charge of Kindle Content. From The New Yorker:

"In Grandinetti’s view, book publishers—like executives in other media—are making the same mistake the railroad companies made more than a century ago: thinking they were in the train business rather than the transportation business. To thrive, he believes, publishers have to reimagine the book as multimedia entertainment."

But here’s the most telling fact:

"In reality the profits earned by the relatively small percentage of authors whose books make money essentially go to subsidizing less commercially successful writers. The system is inefficient, but it supports a class of professional writers, which might not otherwise exist."

In other words, Dan Brown, Stephenie Meyer and J.K. Rowling are probably funding some of your favorite, current authors. We should be grateful.

Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

P.S. Thank you, Seth, for The New Yorker link. Lebron still isn't going to the Knicks.

If you can’t tell from my unnecessary Wu-Tang Clan references, my goal is to turn The News-Herald Book Club into the definitive literature blog for hip-hop heads.

I’ve quoted The Rza’s Tao of Wu and reviewed Adam Bradley’s Book of Rhymes, which explains how MCs use poetic techniques when writing their lyrics.

Now, I add Paul Edwards’s How to Rap: The Art and Science of the Hip-Hop MC to the reading list for the studious hip-hopper.

How to Rap is (as the title implies) a book that suggests ways aspiring MCs can hone their craft. What makes it interesting is Edwards doesn’t give his own advice. Instead, he’s interviewed more than 100 artists and compiled their suggestions.

I’ve read a lot of books about writing—Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White’s The Elements of Style, Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction, Stephen King’s On Writing and Barbara Drake’s Writing Poetry, among others—and none of them allow the masters of the field to speak for themselves. The closest literary equivalent I could think of is Frank Conroy’s The Eleventh Draft, which invited authors like Doris Grumbach and Barry Hannah to discuss their creative process. (This Guardian article also does something similar.)

Edwards has a master’s degree in postmodernism, literature and contemporary culture from the University of London. His interviews cover all facets of U.S. hip-hop. He talks to lyrical godfathers Kool G Rap (who writes the foreword) and Big Daddy Kane, multiplatinum artists will.i.am and Nelly, and underground wunderkinds Royce Da 5’9’’, Crooked I and Pharoahe Monch.

If you don’t know who any of those people are, you probably won’t care about How to Rap.

That’s one of the few knocks I have on Edwards’s book. If you don’t care about hip-hop as a fan, it has nothing for you. But if you have even a passing interest in the genre’s creative process, it would be worth cracking the cover.

However, many rappers—like athletes—have learned to speak almost exclusively in clichés. For example, several of the interviewees stress how you need to write music the listener can “feel.”

Well, duh. But how?

Fortunately, some give very specific advice that all writers, not just MCs or songwriters, would be wise to follow.

“Try to elevate your mind, no matter how that may be. For some people it could be reading books, for other people it could be meditating, for other people it could be being hands-on with whatever they want to learn about,” Crooked I recommends.

My favorite suggestion comes from RBX: “Practice, practice, [expletive deleted] practice, practice, practice, and practice, then you go practice some more.”

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com