"Trouble Funk poems" Alum Reading -Douglas Manuel (MFA'13)

“Douglas Manuel's Trouble Funk is sharkskin and unfiltered cigs, blue-lit basements and sedans with wings, the bop and slow drag and every street corner where strangers lift their voices to make song. It's a preacher goodfootin' across the pulpit and blue screams from both sides of a closed door. Trouble Funk is the quintessential soundtrack for the era that scarred and blessed the best of us, it's a DJ spinning stanzas of fam, the trials of manhood, God's glory in the body, and the unquestioned ferocity of black love. As defined within its pages, Trouble Funk "is funk. Is rock. Is blues. Is jazz. Is ragtime. Is work song. In short: is Black, always Black on both sides all the way down." --Patricia Smith