Celebrated poet, spoken-word artist and scholar Tim’m West has penned a new literary gem, Flirting, as a follow- up to his highly acclaimed “poetic memoir” Red Dirt Revival. Released just a few weeks ago, the work is strikingly different in tone from his previous offering. In Red Dirt the pallet of colors he chose ran to pensive, reflective and even solemn hues as he came to terms with the richness of experience given him by his childhood and adolescence in Arkansas; now even the solemn moments are touched with soaring exaltation and spiritual serenity. He cavorts with ease in lofty poetic heights, his phrases frequently achieving that transcendent quality the English poets called “sublimity.”

            West is not afraid of spiritual or emotional nakedness and as in Red Dirt, the myriad facets of his being-ness are examined and displayed. Thus, Flirting is divided into six sections: With Memory, With Girls, With Boys, With Danger, With Politics and With Romance. Tim’m has the command of word-painting and his poetic voice has the rhetorical volume to tackle such a wide range of musings; he effortlessly ranges from sensual, erotic croon to epic, Baldwin-like prophetic thunder without so much as batting an eyelash. Tim’m the Stanford educated English Major appears in his mastery of form; his work always displays impeccable symmetry and he never says in six lines what could be said in three, but, to paraphrase Mark Twain, Tim’m’s education never interfered with his schooling; the red dirt of Arkansas remains on his hands and in his shoes; the wail of blues-women and the rhythm of the basketball court are clearly heard. In Irony, he laments the passing of originality in his beloved hip-hop art form and plants himself in the great tradition of the socially conscious lyricists who nurtured the form in its infancy; in Fragile, he stares into the mirror of his own heart, caressing his most deeply held hopes in silvery, pensive lines: “every time I look at the leather left/that I’ve only worn as dress-up/I think: what a fragile fucker/preferring cuddles over slings/a wedding over a whip/and perhaps/I will someday/have them both”.

In With Girls, he exults in the fact that his pure, intense pursuit of love crosses gender-lines, though he is by no means “down-low” and the utter enormity of his love is too large for the label “bisexual”; She is a stunning remembrance and tribute to a female love he prefers to leave nameless. With Politics is a sheaf of revolution-inciters; the socially conscious, angry citizen is clearly seen in the dazzler of that set, Pre-occupation Propoganda. In the set With Boys he pays tribute to the men who have passed through his life, whether best friends or that fine brotha he saw on the train one morning. The set With Romance displays his mastery of erotica, not pornography; the difference being that erotica is the art that conceals unabashed desire, whereas pornography is that which makes no effort to hide unabashed lust. Foreplay #22 from that set packs more erotic force in six passages of iridescent word-pictures than most pornographers can manage to cram in a four-hour fuckfest and the pieces What Do I Call This and Return to Joy give voice to the poet’s sinuous, almost unbearable longing. In all, this book is a brilliant follow up. Tim’m keeps going from strength to strength and glory to glory and this author intends to follow him every step of the way.