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Schtick is a tale of Jewish assimilation and its discontents: a sweeping exposition on Jewish American culture in all its bawdy, contradictory, inventive glory. Exploringin his own family and in culture and politics at largehow Jews have shed their minority status in the United States, poet Kevin Coval shows us a people’s transformation out of diaspora, landing on both sides of the color line.
Price: $16.00
Pages: 232
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Imprint: Haymarket Books
Publication Date:
30 April 2013
Trim Size: 8.38 X 5.50 in
ISBN: 9781608462704
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
"Coval does for the Jews what Whitman did for America."
—MARC MARON, comedian, host of WTF
"[Coval's] newest work may be his best work... a sensational collection, alternately heartfelt, humorous and provocatively political."—Rick Kogan, Chicago Tribune
"[Coval's] newest work may be his best work... a sensational collection, alternately heartfelt, humorous and provocatively political."
—RICK KOGAN, Chicago Tribune
"A take-no-prisoners Jewish classic."
—RABBI BRANT ROSEN, Mondoweiss
"Coval's frank admissions of contempt are often balanced by tenderness, affection, and complicated analyses of identity. "Schtick" implies routine, but Coval's book is anything but. Instead it's an outpouring of self-assessment, cloaked in a tallith of vivid, streetwise language."
—TAL ROSENBERG, Chicago Reader
"Coval gains fluidity and depth with each collection. In his fourth book, this line-crosser and bridge-builder—of suburb to city, white to black to Jewish, literature to hip-hop—wrestles with his Jewish American identity in rambunctious, irreverent, and staccato rants, raps, and laments. Coval veers into memoir in trenchant and rueful prose poems about his youth and family. Gliding between the personal and the communal, the sacred and the profane, the painful and the absurd, Coval muses over the fate of European Jews filtering through Ellis Island, losing names and shedding identities, and the treacheries of assimilation. He offers clever, hilarious, and melancholy odes to Jewish holidays and Jewish comedians, lashing protests against both anti-Semitism and the plight of Palestinians, and such barbed riffs as this snap from 'how jewish boys get irish names': 'cuz america is afraid of what it can’t / pronounce.' Propulsive, provocative, shrewd, sorrowful, tender, and soul-baring, this is a watershed collection for Coval and his readers."
—DONNA SEAMAN, for the American Library Association's Booklist Magazine
"Coval leans all the way in with Schtick, exposing the grimy, slippery truths about how we live and love and hate with his characteristic wit, rhythmic cadence and unflinching honesty. Powerful."
—TRICIA ROSE, author, Hip Hop Wars
“A poet once observed that ‘poetry is the music of facts.’ Kevin Coval's poetry rings with that music. From the grit and turmoil of everyday life, Coval constructs a new beauty that inspires and transforms."
—BERNIE SAHLINS, founder, The Second City
“I dig this book, for many reasons, mainly because it makes me think. Any literature that causes us to use our brains and contemplate our roles within the human condition is a good thing! I love... how it mixes Humpty-Hump in with the likes of American iconism. Also I'm part Jewish (it's a slice of my mutt-ism).”
—SHOCK G, aka Humpty Hump of Digital Undergound
“Historical/hysterical... reverent/blasphemous...this book bursts with pride/shame/joy/pain. Coval bravely edits nothing. His dazzling images/ideas fly at you, as if scattershot from some Yiddish theater/circus cannon.”
—TIM KAZURINSKY, cast member, Saturday Night Live (1981-1984)
“Kevin's poems are hugely influenced by the fact I performed at his bar mitzvah. Yes, I said the word doody. And yes, now he's brilliant.”
—JEFF GARLIN, co-star and Executive Producer, "Curb Your Enthusiasm"
Praise for L-vis Lives! and Kevin Coval
"This book is bold, brave and morally messy – twelve rounds of knock-down, drag-out shadowboxing against a shapeshifter. The dark humor, intellectual fervor, and emotional rigor Coval brings to bear animates these pieces, turns caricatures to characters, implicates us all. It's about time."
—Adam Mansbach, author, Go the F**k to Sleep
"A radically candid collection...daring, historically grounded, and socially cathartic poems... Coval’s air-clearing honesty about violent and insidious racism and authenticity and creativity is blazing and liberating."
—Donna Seaman, for American Library Association's Booklist magazine
“One of my favorite poets.”
—Mos Def
"Kevin Coval is a new, glowing voice in the world of literature."
—Studs Terkel
"A prophet…a tour-de-force…he can soothe and scathe, hurt and heal, in the course of a single poem."
—Providence Journal
"Coval’s greatest strength is his rhythmic, beautiful prose and his willingness to speak truth to power, no matter what the personal cost."
—URB
"A concious Jewish phenomenon…[Coval’s] work speaks to the Jewish relationship to the American color line."
—Jew School
—MARC MARON, comedian, host of WTF
"[Coval's] newest work may be his best work... a sensational collection, alternately heartfelt, humorous and provocatively political."—Rick Kogan, Chicago Tribune
"[Coval's] newest work may be his best work... a sensational collection, alternately heartfelt, humorous and provocatively political."
—RICK KOGAN, Chicago Tribune
"A take-no-prisoners Jewish classic."
—RABBI BRANT ROSEN, Mondoweiss
"Coval's frank admissions of contempt are often balanced by tenderness, affection, and complicated analyses of identity. "Schtick" implies routine, but Coval's book is anything but. Instead it's an outpouring of self-assessment, cloaked in a tallith of vivid, streetwise language."
—TAL ROSENBERG, Chicago Reader
"Coval gains fluidity and depth with each collection. In his fourth book, this line-crosser and bridge-builder—of suburb to city, white to black to Jewish, literature to hip-hop—wrestles with his Jewish American identity in rambunctious, irreverent, and staccato rants, raps, and laments. Coval veers into memoir in trenchant and rueful prose poems about his youth and family. Gliding between the personal and the communal, the sacred and the profane, the painful and the absurd, Coval muses over the fate of European Jews filtering through Ellis Island, losing names and shedding identities, and the treacheries of assimilation. He offers clever, hilarious, and melancholy odes to Jewish holidays and Jewish comedians, lashing protests against both anti-Semitism and the plight of Palestinians, and such barbed riffs as this snap from 'how jewish boys get irish names': 'cuz america is afraid of what it can’t / pronounce.' Propulsive, provocative, shrewd, sorrowful, tender, and soul-baring, this is a watershed collection for Coval and his readers."
—DONNA SEAMAN, for the American Library Association's Booklist Magazine
"Coval leans all the way in with Schtick, exposing the grimy, slippery truths about how we live and love and hate with his characteristic wit, rhythmic cadence and unflinching honesty. Powerful."
—TRICIA ROSE, author, Hip Hop Wars
“A poet once observed that ‘poetry is the music of facts.’ Kevin Coval's poetry rings with that music. From the grit and turmoil of everyday life, Coval constructs a new beauty that inspires and transforms."
—BERNIE SAHLINS, founder, The Second City
“I dig this book, for many reasons, mainly because it makes me think. Any literature that causes us to use our brains and contemplate our roles within the human condition is a good thing! I love... how it mixes Humpty-Hump in with the likes of American iconism. Also I'm part Jewish (it's a slice of my mutt-ism).”
—SHOCK G, aka Humpty Hump of Digital Undergound
“Historical/hysterical... reverent/blasphemous...this book bursts with pride/shame/joy/pain. Coval bravely edits nothing. His dazzling images/ideas fly at you, as if scattershot from some Yiddish theater/circus cannon.”
—TIM KAZURINSKY, cast member, Saturday Night Live (1981-1984)
“Kevin's poems are hugely influenced by the fact I performed at his bar mitzvah. Yes, I said the word doody. And yes, now he's brilliant.”
—JEFF GARLIN, co-star and Executive Producer, "Curb Your Enthusiasm"
Praise for L-vis Lives! and Kevin Coval
"This book is bold, brave and morally messy – twelve rounds of knock-down, drag-out shadowboxing against a shapeshifter. The dark humor, intellectual fervor, and emotional rigor Coval brings to bear animates these pieces, turns caricatures to characters, implicates us all. It's about time."
—Adam Mansbach, author, Go the F**k to Sleep
"A radically candid collection...daring, historically grounded, and socially cathartic poems... Coval’s air-clearing honesty about violent and insidious racism and authenticity and creativity is blazing and liberating."
—Donna Seaman, for American Library Association's Booklist magazine
“One of my favorite poets.”
—Mos Def
"Kevin Coval is a new, glowing voice in the world of literature."
—Studs Terkel
"A prophet…a tour-de-force…he can soothe and scathe, hurt and heal, in the course of a single poem."
—Providence Journal
"Coval’s greatest strength is his rhythmic, beautiful prose and his willingness to speak truth to power, no matter what the personal cost."
—URB
"A concious Jewish phenomenon…[Coval’s] work speaks to the Jewish relationship to the American color line."
—Jew School
Kevin Coval is the author of ALA Book of the Year” finalist Slingshots: A Hip-Hop Poetica, Everyday People, and most recently, L-vis Lives! Racemusic Poems. Founder of Louder Than a Bomb: The Chicago Youth Poetry Festival, Coval is the artistic director of Young Chicago Authors. He is a regular contributor to WBEZ Chicago Public Radio and teaches creative-writing at schools across the city.
1. gensis or(-igin) bars
translation
on disaporism
chosen
semite
kike
midrash of the body
mezuzah
two portraits of the wandering jew
ben
shtick: an arse poetica
dvarim
kol nidre
2. fam
on becoming a man
shtick at e’s bar-mitzvah
the speech’s at E’s bar-mitzvah
Not Kane
midrash of my parents doomed marriage
at the passover seder
ode to gelfite fish
hamotzi
Rosh Hashanah in the suburbs
writing on Yom Kippur
my father is a tzaddik
midrash chicago fire
3. assimlation and its discontents
treif
no juden
the parables of jesus
explaining hanuka
why we may wish to be white
lost at the seder table
diaspora or ennui
Derrick
Game Over
allegory of the jewish
how jewish boys get irish names
4. shiksas
portnoy’s complaint
shiksas
debbie does
assimilation nightmare 1
assimilation nightmare 2
diamonds
inheritance
5. an american parody in parts
undoing the pyramids
joyce nose job poem
punch line-mom nose job
remembering baby
Warhol nose america
boxer
no nose job
Babs
bird
ode to the schnozz
yacub’s theory
6. shtick
al jolson
the cabal of x-ian names
monica lewinsky
allen ginsberg
nothing sacred- lenny bruce ode
Mean Woman Joan Rivers
thanking G-d later-Drake
sid ceaser
l’art of silence
Roseanne
wwLBd
the white dream of irving berlin
Don Rickels roasts Ronald Reagan
7. tuesdays with mel gibson
old testament one liner (a hai coup)
The Centurion Classic
nazi pope
henry ford wraps hitlers
assimilation nightmare #4
strange bedfellows:
quisling- joe liberman
hill billy bob’s plan of action
passion of the kike
season’s greetings
on the charge of deicide
deicide
8. blacks & jews
on how jews became white
matzah is a big ass cracker
The Break(oceanhill)
assimilation nightmare #3
easta time
matisyayu as the jazz singer
portrait of israel’s favorite rapper
blonde ambition
unlearning the hard way
jesse jackson/ tailsman
public enemy #1
Louis Farrakhan
the serect relationshop between Blacks and jews
the conversion of Sammy
Don Rickels roasts Sammy Davis
jewtown
48 hours ars poetica
the holocaust calls for its orthonym
Avraham, The Parriarch was Black
9. palestine
self-hating jew
what it’s like to be the grandson of ziontist
why i stopped going to shul
explaining myself
assimilation nightmare #5
birthright
burning books
the wall
sharks/pirates
israel as golem
vetting the mayor
portrait of a slumlord
portrait of ariel sharon
Nows the Time to be fresh- SJP ode
shiksa angel ode to rachel corrie
occupation
david v. goliath
all the pharaohs
what will i tell my jewish kids
translation
on disaporism
chosen
semite
kike
midrash of the body
mezuzah
two portraits of the wandering jew
ben
shtick: an arse poetica
dvarim
kol nidre
2. fam
on becoming a man
shtick at e’s bar-mitzvah
the speech’s at E’s bar-mitzvah
Not Kane
midrash of my parents doomed marriage
at the passover seder
ode to gelfite fish
hamotzi
Rosh Hashanah in the suburbs
writing on Yom Kippur
my father is a tzaddik
midrash chicago fire
3. assimlation and its discontents
treif
no juden
the parables of jesus
explaining hanuka
why we may wish to be white
lost at the seder table
diaspora or ennui
Derrick
Game Over
allegory of the jewish
how jewish boys get irish names
4. shiksas
portnoy’s complaint
shiksas
debbie does
assimilation nightmare 1
assimilation nightmare 2
diamonds
inheritance
5. an american parody in parts
undoing the pyramids
joyce nose job poem
punch line-mom nose job
remembering baby
Warhol nose america
boxer
no nose job
Babs
bird
ode to the schnozz
yacub’s theory
6. shtick
al jolson
the cabal of x-ian names
monica lewinsky
allen ginsberg
nothing sacred- lenny bruce ode
Mean Woman Joan Rivers
thanking G-d later-Drake
sid ceaser
l’art of silence
Roseanne
wwLBd
the white dream of irving berlin
Don Rickels roasts Ronald Reagan
7. tuesdays with mel gibson
old testament one liner (a hai coup)
The Centurion Classic
nazi pope
henry ford wraps hitlers
assimilation nightmare #4
strange bedfellows:
quisling- joe liberman
hill billy bob’s plan of action
passion of the kike
season’s greetings
on the charge of deicide
deicide
8. blacks & jews
on how jews became white
matzah is a big ass cracker
The Break(oceanhill)
assimilation nightmare #3
easta time
matisyayu as the jazz singer
portrait of israel’s favorite rapper
blonde ambition
unlearning the hard way
jesse jackson/ tailsman
public enemy #1
Louis Farrakhan
the serect relationshop between Blacks and jews
the conversion of Sammy
Don Rickels roasts Sammy Davis
jewtown
48 hours ars poetica
the holocaust calls for its orthonym
Avraham, The Parriarch was Black
9. palestine
self-hating jew
what it’s like to be the grandson of ziontist
why i stopped going to shul
explaining myself
assimilation nightmare #5
birthright
burning books
the wall
sharks/pirates
israel as golem
vetting the mayor
portrait of a slumlord
portrait of ariel sharon
Nows the Time to be fresh- SJP ode
shiksa angel ode to rachel corrie
occupation
david v. goliath
all the pharaohs
what will i tell my jewish kids