Slams—once the bane of poetry, if the boon of grungy environs, has left the barrooms and stormed academia, as the first conference on hiphop and rap took place in Norfolk, Virginia at the turn of this century. Still—the Def Jam generation has yet to produce giants as impressive as Ginsberg, Kerouac and Kaufman, although it has been a joy to see the spoken word so enthusiastically refreshed. One of my favorite moments of being blasted out of my ears took place in the sweaty confines of a Pacifica radio booth when Austin Straus and I interviewed Jack Micheline (aka Harry Silver, November 6, 1929 – February 27, 1998), on our defunct Poetry Connexion program circa 1995. Feverish in his delivery, Jack forgot himself, sprung up from his chair and began to swing his arm as he sang his paean to Kerouac with the reverence of a Bau gong. The Naropa Institute, in the dedicated hands of Beat survivor Anne Waldman (the eye of the falcon, on fast speaking music) fosters the oral tradition as well as the written. In my playbook, the Tracie Morris “musical poet” experience ties with Ayisha Knight (until, empowerment records), a deaf poet who redefines the art. I laugh out loud whenever I “hear” Ralph LaCharity’s electrifying “Bob” poem, performed at the “post-Beat,” “pre-hiphop” Bisbee, Arizona poetry festival. Say what one may say about “the oral tradition,” connecting to another’s humanity via living forums is an unparalleled event, regardless of venue, place or time.
Hello Wanda-finally your blog is up and its really interesting. I like your embrace of the slam world since I’ve had my issues with the focus on spoken word esp. for “minority” poets as a career path. However, whether oral or written attention to the word is a positive. But most of all I enjoyed your take on the Inauguration. There are a bunch of us writing poems in response to Aretha’s hat because well she WORE IT WELL. And there’s a sense of collective affirmation unlike anything I’ve seen in my 50 plus years on this planet as an American of African descent and from Arkansas at that!. Pride is just part of us. Respect may be what is really at hand here-respect for hard work and discipline; respect for intelligence; respect for art and culture. So much disrespect was shown to writers and thinkers and ordinary people over the past 8 years, I think people are giddy with the sense that our national ideals and ideas can be of use again. I hope we continue to make our President and representatives understand that. And that we connect ourselves with those demanding respect around the globe. The future is a mystery, but the present is fascinating and invigorating much like your description of Jack M.’ s spontaneous poem. I await more of your wise words.
Posted By: patricia spears jones on January 30, 2009 at 8:52 pmPeace
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One thing about Ginsberg’s “Howl,” the language in it is “electric” (especially THEN) and does NOT require extra emotion “Outside of the words on the page,” i.e., in the delivery.
Posted By: Steve Tills on January 31, 2009 at 9:48 amSame with Kerouac’s poetry, which IS a kind of “jazz on paper” (though I suppose one COULD throw in the same sort of question, “How much, when Kerouac is accompanied by, say, Steve Allen, are the words bolstered by the music, that is, dependent on the music to decorate them, dress them up, like an actor getting a face lift to look exactly like a character he/she is playing, but NOT, other than that, truly much sounding or gesturing like that character at all?”
I have attended some Def Jam poetry over the years, and recently (three-four weeks ago, in fact) and I DO often have trouble relating to the excessively dramatic or melodramatic delivery of the poetry, as if SHOUTING words makes them MORE effective. For one thing, individual words and lines and poems should all and each manifest their own distinct and local and individual nuances, not THE SAME THE SAME THE SAME overarching cliche “Emotion” that the poet paints them with by imposing via the delivery exaggerated pathos and generically “passionate” tone. I.e., the words should be equally “effective” whether they are read by a poet with booming voice or a poet small, soft-spoken, and gentle of affect. Otherwise, it’s the same “poetry” time after time, isn’t it, with Nothing particularly unique or delicately nuanced or precisely articulated or sensitively contacted, I myself often think.
I do not understand why DEF JAM and most all SLAM poets are not, evidently, encouraged to take their prodigious and courageous and unique and fabulous and immensely human ENERGY and interject it into the actual textures and nuances and local semantic and syntactic musculature of their words rather than drowning out their poetries with external, excessively dramatic delivery, a kind of “over-acting,” if you will.
Perhaps you could comment on this, Wanda?
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I’m not sure what sure Def Jam poetry is, but what I can gather from Mr. Tills’ comment is that he is/was not impressed by the poetry of the people he’s seen in slams and open mics. This is not an unreasonable response, of course. Most of the slams I’ve been to lately have been dreadful affairs. Although I must say, they’re much more fun for me than the endless retakes on “Howl” I’ve heard from many too many Beat-worshipping open mikers. On that point, I will vigorously assert that it is indeed possible to make Ginsburg’s classic a horrifying experience from the stage. Trust me. I’ve seen it done.
Posted By: Rich Villar on January 31, 2009 at 4:21 pmIt is an unreasonable response, I think, to assert that words themselves have a kind of power that everyone regardless of performance style can comprehend as “effective.” Words, in fact, contain syllables; individuated, accented sounds that MEAN something when placed side by side, and speech must in some way reflect that, even when the poetic device in question is not as obviously sound-inflected or lyrical. I would argue that as poems become more and more conversational, any reading that is not conversational does a disservice to the poem. Why would you bother talking to someone who speaks-to-you-slowly-in-a-monotone-speaking-voice-implying-that-you-must-pay-attention? I’d rather die. Likewise, I’d rather read the poet myself, and sound out his/her work on my own, than listen to her/him butcher his intentions, inflections, and my eardrums on a staid-lecturer voice.
Voice, like verse, is all about enactment. If you read Canto XII of THE HEIGHTS OF MACHU PICCHU in a still small voice, I think you miss the point of being at the heights of Machu Picchu—which is, of course, the poet’s desire to speak (Speak? Yes, speak.) for the mouths of the dead. Likewise, if your conversational poem converses with a slam audience at 1000 decibels, 1000 miles an hour, you might lose something in translation, as it were.
Finally, lest we toss all slammers and “Def Jam” poets under the same bus, there’s a happy medium to be found between the musculature of words and the necessary vehicle of the human voice, and I think you’ll find it in the work of acclaimed African-American poets like Sekou Sundiata, Oscar Brown Jr., Sonia Sanchez, all the way up to Patricia Smith, another notorious “slam poet” who managed to put together a National Book Award-nominated masterpiece called BLOOD DAZZLER. Musculature, indeed.
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The simple fact is most “slammers” are rappers w/o turntables or Jr. identity-politicians. Growing up in a generation where slam was very prevalent, forced upon us in PC schools, and propped-up by the hip-hop set, I can say that it is just corny hyper-populist McPoetry. I mean: “Slam” -how much of a flashy hip-hop cliche can you get? It is like those corny movies “You Got Served” and anything MTV. No, I don’t think the Beats were “slammers” by any means. Slam is spectacle analogous to a Bruckheimer film, it is verbal pornography in most cases.
Posted By: Manoel Cartola on January 31, 2009 at 7:18 pmLoudmouth Americanism.
“Slam” is what the self-righteous baby-boomers forced on my generation and it was something only the “geeks” did. (sorry to use the term “geek” but I think it is a term that needs to be seriously taken in consideration)
-Manny
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Without commenting yet on the rest of your post, Manny (though I’d like to), can you clarify what you mean by slam being “forced upon” you “in PC schools?” THAT’S a hella interesting sidebar to the slam debate.
Posted By: Rich Villar on February 1, 2009 at 6:58 amReport this comment
Okay, nobody “held a gun to our heads.” But the college I went to (and the high school) never sponsored any “traditional” poetry readings, there were only “slams” and “slam-competitions” where the only subject-matter was some tired form of identity politics. The criteria for judging said competitions was (in my view): “whoever says what the professors (or the “groundlings”) wanted to hear most accurately wins.” It was propped up by the pseudo-left faculty and was always a part of their RCG agenda. It wasn’t about art so much as demonstration and politics, which is fine if you are attracted to ideology. I found it to be empty noise.
Posted By: Manny Cartola on February 1, 2009 at 1:30 pmSlams were the mainstream for me.
-Manny
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Yes, always very “mainstream” for me, too. And that’s okay, sort of, of course. After all, the participants are, quite simply, just other humans/persons getting involved in activity that might be very meaningful and self-actualizing and social and positive in infinite ways.
Posted By: Steve Tills on February 1, 2009 at 6:22 pmHowever, these same participants COULD also be introduced to abundantly deeper, more enriching, more profound “experience” with language, which in many (no, of course not all) cases would involve interacting with words, sound, meaning, an infinite other stuff that takes them places far more extraordinary than most, not all (I surely wasn’t being fair to Wanda by suggesting that all SLAM is, forgive me, quite pedestrian) mere shouting performances.
AND, I am extremely skeptical of the universities that “use” students by taking advantage of this “popular/popularist” phenomena to sell what is essentially extremely WEAK concepts of poetry which, as you point out, functions more to sell RCG agendas than to genuinely turn students on to what they might do if they are challenged a bit more caringly to read and write more “difficult” poetries
It’s a damn good start, though, surely. And I was amazed at how many students showed up at the event that I attended a few weeks back. I just know that these kids could go a lot further, or I believe that, and I care to suggest that they should be encouraged to.
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Funny you should say that, Steve. I attended a slam event in the South Bronx hosted by Urban Word NYC just this past Friday. The young lady who won it, Cynthia, was one of over 40 teen poets in attendance, and her words, combined with her performance, were absolutely transcendent. Identity poems? Sure. But these were 16-year-olds. And it’s their right to write whatever they want.
Posted By: Rich Villar on February 1, 2009 at 8:08 pmI think we might be getting a bit off Wanda’s original topic, but I just wanted to say that there are some massive generalizations being made here about what kind of poetry gets taught in high school and college, not to mention the people and organizations who teach them. I believe in poetry that does something, that is useful beyond the theoretical. I also believe in well-crafted poems that live on page and in the air. That’s what good poems do. The students of Urban Word write a lot of good poetry. Ask them if poetry is useful, and I think they can teach all of us about literature that matters, poetry that lasts.
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Rich,
Posted By: Steve Tills on February 2, 2009 at 11:59 amYes, I agree:
“The young lady who won it, Cynthia, was one of over 40 teen poets in attendance, and her words, combined with her performance, were absolutely transcendent. Identity poems? Sure. But these were 16-year-olds. And it’s their right to write whatever they want.”
And I also agree wholeheartedly and genuinely with you here:
“but I just wanted to say that there are some massive generalizations being made here about what kind of poetry gets taught in high school and college, not to mention the people and organizations who teach them. I believe in poetry that does something, that is useful beyond the theoretical. I also believe in well-crafted poems that live on page and in the air. That’s what good poems do. The students of Urban Word write a lot of good poetry. Ask them if poetry is useful, and I think they can teach all of us about literature that matters, poetry that lasts.”
Thank you for your response. Your points are well put and well taken.
Steve
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