Star poets and poet stars: the rise of the celebrity bard goes to the heart of what role verse plays in our lives.

In the past five years, we've experienced a salvo of celebrities such as Alicia Keys, Ashanti and T-Boz emerging with poetry-related texts. Because much of this celebrity poetry doesn't possess the maturity of craft to satisfy the finicky palettes of the literati, because much of it has an unfortunate resemblance to journal entries, because we are most likely to see poems of this caliber in the context of our Intro to Poetry classes, many of us are inclined to view this trend as a purely capitalistic venture for these pop icons.

Kwame Dawes, a poet and professor at the University of South Carolina, differs in opinion. "These artists are millionaires. Selling sixty-thousand books of poetry (record numbers for verse), will still be a drop in the bucket for many of these artists," he says.

Walter Dean Myers, a prolific and respected writer of books for young people, says it's the publishers who are naturally motivated by profit. "Economically, they [celebrity books] often make sense to the publisher," he adds. "I believe that Ashanti and Keys have probably even been writing for a while and earnestly believe in what they're doing. Often it's the publicist or agent who suggests publication."

So why are some of these celebrities, who are unarguably more stellar in other areas, choosing to publish poetry? "I think that these celebrities want a deeper connection with their fans ... and poetry is a great way to do that," comments Allison Joseph, poet and editor of Crab Orchard Review, a biannual journal of creative works. This makes sense; celebrities must have some intrinsic desire to be truly understood, deplasticized.

However, does the fact that celebrities--and many others--choose to publish poetry say less about them and more about how poetry is regarded as an art form? For instance, on a flight to the East Coast from Los Angeles two years ago, I was seated next to the rather charming Antwone Fisher, who proudly proclaimed that he was a poet. He then spoke proudly of his poetry book Who Will Cry for the Little Boy? (William Morrow, 2003) with the same, if not greater, sense of accomplishment as his screenplay for the 2002 movie The Antwone Fisher Story and his best-selling memoir Finding Fish (HarperTorch, December 2002).

Esteem Versus Profit

Perhaps, to be a poet or "weaver of words"--as Kwame Dawes puts it--is still considered one of the most esteemed occupations in the land, like the African djeli. Sure, when Rita Dove releases a book the masses aren't ravaging the shelves all in the name of poetry (can someone say Harry Potter?), but it's far from being a dead market.

"Poetry will sell if we push it or give it away like AOL did with its software," says E. Ethelbert Miller, the Washington, D.C., poet and literary activist. "We say there is no market for poetry, but then we publish poetry by Alicia Keys and it sells. I remember when folks said there were no markets for black dolls. Some storeowners kept the black dolls in their back rooms and then later shipped them back to the company saying they didn't sell. It's the same with poetry. Look at where the poetry sections are in the bookstores. Put the books in the windows and up front and watch the stuff sell."

Still, celebrity poets breed a little resentment among "serious" poets. Joseph, the literary review editor, adds, "I think poets resent that these celebrities haven't served the apprenticeship we have-collecting rejection slips, revising and rewriting, taking classes and getting critical commentary and struggling to get a book published."

The function of our literature continues to be a major concern in African American letters. During the Black Arts Movement, few writers could escape the social pressure to create work with a tangible societal function, whether they chose to do so or not. So during these times of deleterious illiteracy, what kind of literature do we need to keep our youth interested in reading? And at what cost?

As dubious as some of us may be to its literary merit, does Keys's book of poems and song lyrics have the propensity to draw significant numbers of young people (who might not normally choose books) to reading?

"As an editor, I read a lot of poetry that is head-scratchingly inaccessible," says Joseph. "I think that the accessibility of music and the lure of celebrity bring a lot of people to these books."

Verse for Everyday Use

Dawes has a different take on the issue of accessibility. "There's a block that comes from the suspicion that people have, that poets are trying to hide something from them. No one feels that way when they encounter a Bob Marley song that they don't understand. They trust the artist. They enjoy it anyway," he says. "Poets are not granted the same leeway. That's a shame because it is fundamental to the reading of poetry that we come to it with an emotional openness and a sensibility that allows us to feel things long before we understand them.

"Some contemporary poetry seems inaccessible and that is intentional," Dawes continues. "This doesn't mean we can't react to it. I have always said that there is a place for the poem as a public entity. The greeting card poem is its own thing. I can't write the greeting card poem because it makes me weary to spend time trying to be generic. But I do buy greeting cards, and I give them to the people I adore the most in my life. What is that about? So now, am I going to lambaste the greeting card as pure trash? What is that saying about me or about what I feel about the people I love?"

Miller has a partial answer. "The 'academic poetry' extends our intellectual tradition," he adds. "W.E.B. Du Bois wore suits, so should some of our poems.... Poetry demands patience and time to understand. If a poem is 'inaccessible' then I suggest the reader listen to Cecil Taylor or Anthony Braxton and read the poem again. Jazz can be inaccessible at times. Do we ask folks not to play it?"

Meeting Poetry Halfway

Many poems are indeed seemingly impossible to access, in terms of its intellectual and/or emotional center. Or have we as a society become collectively lazy in our reluctance to meet poems halfway. Are we quicker to watch the Matrix trilogy repeatedly for greater understanding than to read a poem twice in an attempt to feel its sweet burn? Poetry is an art form that demands our intellectual and emotional excellence as readers and writers, and it always should. I still believe that it possesses the power to elevate the collective consciousness of a society, if only given the chance.

It's so easy for the denizens of black literature, steeped heart deep in centuries of text, to bash these celebrity "vanity" books--as Myers phrases it.

I have read reviews of these books filled with enough fire and ice to make any writer wince, that is "Go waste your money on something else, like a dog house made of pine cones." I have also read glowing comments by people who spell beautiful "butiful." Are we being too hard on these artists? Doesn't everything have its rightful (and perhaps wrongful) place? like Joseph, I, too, think these often aqueous texts have the capability to draw people, especially our youth, to the joyful enterprise of reading even if the initial lure isn't the joy of literature per se, but the inner life of their favorite celebrities. However, I ask more of these publishers, more of these artists, and more of these books. I ask that these publishers heighten their standards. I ask that these artists heighten, their knowledge and wielding of the craft before they publish, And I ask that these books turn people on to reading poetry at large) not just the "vanity" books of its kind.

A SHORT HISTORY

A brief timeline of recent poetry-related books by black celebrities

1999: Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins, from the charismatic trio TLC, released Thoughts (HarperCollins, November. $19.95, ISBN 0-061-05183-7) a collection of poems. photos and essays.

1999: MTV Books posthumuosly published The Rose That Grew From Concrete (November, $21, ISBN 0-67102844-8) Tupac Shakur's book of poems that he wrote at the age of 19, before he reached fame.

2002: Ashanti published a collection of poems and short essays entitled Foolish/Unfoolish: Reflections on Love (Hyperion, November $16.95, ISBN 1-401-30030-8).

2003: Screenwriter and memoirist Antwone Fisher published Who Will Cry for the Little Boy? (William Morrow & Company, January, $9.95, ISBN 0-060-54932-7), a collection of poems that he wrote while in the military.

2004: Alicia Keys published Tears for Water: A Songbook of Poems and Lyrics (G. P. Putnam's Sons, November, $19.95, ISBN 0-399-15257-1).

2005: Jill Scott's collection d poems, The Moments, the Minutes, the Hours: The Poetry of Jilt Scott. is forthcoming from St. Martin's Press in the spring.

Samantha Thornhill is a Trinidadian poet and performer living in New York City,