I think people have the idea slam poetry has to be political, in your face, memorized, more verbal than written, more aural than reading, more emotively going for the jugular. I think a lot of that is false dichotomizing and limits both slam and page poetry. It's too bad because I think audiences are coming around to accept more of the entertainment performative angle over the content a lot of times & the poets in turn play to that, but maybe that's a sign of the times. Also, there's a tendency from poets to slam various tropes of oppression & traumatic experiences, which corners judges into an awkward, subconscious space~ "scoring" them seems weird, that might cast them as sexist racist/etc.I believe in slam as an outlet for pieces which aren't read very much on paper & that the proliferation of certain kinds of pieces and themes is a result of where people are culturally. I mention these two things up front because I think they shape people's perceptions about there being a "slam" poetry or style.There's some truth to it, but then again... I'm the sort who believes good poetry is good poetry.If you listen to tapes of Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Auden, Millay~ when they read, they have a reader's voice like actors have an actor's voice.Anne Waldman and Allen Ginsberg and and Baraka Bukowski and Kerouac~ those were and are poets who read their work with vigor, energy, enthusiasm. They're as much "slam" poets as poets or the other way around. Maybe part of slam is to bring that reality into focus and break those false dichotomies, at least it is to me. I think the challenge of a slam poem is the economy of it.Working a brain from the page can be linguistically, verbally slower and the form can be the litmus paper for the meaning to rise.With slam, you have to perform this, you have to bend the brain more aurally (yet I believe the best poetry does both), it has to work a little like a song. Really effective pieces often balance and cram a lot of really sharp images or clever wordplay into a short space, but if there's too much, there's a risk people couldn't have caught all of it, or if there's too little, then it's not satisfying. The slam poets I admire have a virtuosity with pacing~ sometimes the way they deliver lines, the characters they are on stage, even their breath becomes part of the form and the punctuation or their presence (Gottlieb, Rachel Mckibbens, Christa Bell,Buddy Wakefield).
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good poetry is good poetry
Date: 2005-08-30 05:51 pm (UTC)Also, there's a tendency from poets to slam various tropes of oppression & traumatic experiences, which corners judges into an awkward, subconscious space~ "scoring" them seems weird, that might cast them as sexist racist/etc.I believe in slam as an outlet for pieces which aren't read very much on paper & that the proliferation of certain kinds of pieces and themes is a result of where people are culturally.
I mention these two things up front because I think they shape people's perceptions about there being a "slam" poetry or style.There's some truth to it, but then again...
I'm the sort who believes good poetry is good poetry.If you listen to tapes of Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Auden, Millay~ when they read, they have a reader's voice like actors have an actor's voice.Anne Waldman and Allen Ginsberg and and Baraka Bukowski and Kerouac~ those were and are poets who read their work with vigor, energy, enthusiasm. They're as much "slam" poets as poets or the other way around.
Maybe part of slam is to bring that reality into focus and break those false dichotomies, at least it is to me.
I think the challenge of a slam poem is the economy of it.Working a brain from the page can be linguistically, verbally slower and the form can be the litmus paper for the meaning to rise.With slam, you have to perform this, you have to bend the brain more aurally (yet I believe the best poetry does both), it has to work a little like a song. Really effective pieces often balance and cram a lot of really sharp images or clever wordplay into a short space, but if there's too much, there's a risk people couldn't have caught all of it, or if there's too little, then it's not satisfying.
The slam poets I admire have a virtuosity with pacing~ sometimes the way they deliver lines, the characters they are on stage, even their breath becomes part of the form and the punctuation or their presence (Gottlieb, Rachel Mckibbens, Christa Bell,Buddy Wakefield).
Ah, I could talk about this for hours...