Review: Up The Street Around The Corner

04/02/2009 19:22

Font size:

Ratpack Slim

Cory Besskepp Cofer is well known in Southern California as a conscious poet and poetry host. His first collection of short stories take his already formidable skills and raise the bar...

Disclaimer: I met Cory "Besskepp" Cofer in 2000 at the Hollywood open mic Da Poetry Lounge. It was kind of a Renaissance for the whole slam movement, and the level of talent in the room was intimidating and inspiring. Besskepp took the mic and started talking about Special Education. His tone and rhythm were hip hop, his words born from someone who knew what the hell he was talking about. It was funk that could not be faked.

Nearly a decade later, after two Teacher of the Year awards and an amazing stint as host of A Mic and Dim Lights (one of SoCal's biggest weekly open mics), Besskepp has channeled his energies from poetry and rhyming to a collection of short stories, Up The Street Around The Corner. The result is vintage Besskepp in a whole new package.

The thing about Cofer's prose is that it's really raw, like Iceberg Slim, if Slim had been born in the Hip Hop era. Its terseness and accessibility are a lot like his verse; it can make you laugh, it can make you cry, and it always makes you think. He tells tales on the page that capture the best parts of the oral tradition--the little nuances that make a good story into a great one. Everything from a neighbor who calls young Cory sneaky because he was quiet, to what Lou's liquor sold, to sneaking a first kiss in The Alley, come to life under Besskepp's nuanced pen. The illustrations by Nicole Klaymoon create a great abstract vibe to lighten and enhance the grounded words on the page.

Up The Street, the first offering by Dimlights Publishing, is a book I'd offer up to the literati and the homeboys alike. If you can't glean something real from these words, you may be heart-dead. Cory Besskepp Cofer knocks yet another artform straight out the box. And I'm gonna be one of those folks to say I knew him when.

An excerpt from this book titled "The Rhyme", is featured in Kotori's fiction section this month. Check it out, and to get hold of Besskepp, hit him up at Dimlightsbooks@aol.com.

Add to: DIGG