Franco, Finally

Last year, after a North Korea torpedo sunk one of its warships, South Korea aimed speakers across the border and blasted the pop song “HuH (Hit Your Heart).” The girl group 4minute chirped out, “Baby, you’re kidding me?/I do what I want and I do it my way.” All hail the power of the right verse. You might have encountered something similar this month as O, Miami organizers did their damndest to expose 305ers to poems. They dropped rhymes from airplanes, yelled odes from Ferraris, screened poetry on DMV monitors, and printed stanzas on menus. And that’s all in addition to their ambitious event programming. For this, its last week, O, Miami peaks with five phenomenal events. On Thursday, for Yale Anthony of Rap, Adam Bradley and renowned MCs will prove why hip-hop lyrics deserve a place next to Yeats in the canon. It all goes down at 7 p.m. at New World Center. Later, at 10 p.m., Opium Magazine’s Literary Death Match will take over Purdy Lounge (1811 Purdy Ave., Miami Beach), where poets will spar and compete. Friday, at Poetry & Persona, James Franco, his professor Tony Hoagland, and local poet Campbell McGrath will read their own verse at the New World Center’s SunTrust Pavilion. Afterward at Purdy, Broken Social Scene’s Andrew Whiteman and DJ Le Spam will mix up experimental verse and vinyl for Broken Social Spam. And finally, on Saturday, the last day of O, Miami, U.S. Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin will join Mexican poet Carla Faesler for a bilingual reading at NWC’s SunTrust Pavilion. Events at Purdy are free. Otherwise, tickets cost $10 to $30.
Thu., April 28, 7 p.m., 2011