Keeping track of the types of slam poetry

The 21st annual National Poetry Slam is well underway in the Twin Cities, where over 500 spoken-word artists from seventy-six teams have come to partake in the the “Superbowl of slam poetry.”

The Star Tribune has kept up with the latter-day "Walt Whitmans, Amiri Barakas, and Nikki Giovannis":

The poems in the slam, many R-rated, often fit into certain types. There were bullet-pointed list poems, poems about politics and contemporary issues, war and intractable social problems. Spirituality and sex, with partners and one's self, were frequent topics in frank rants that sounded like personals ads. And there were anthems, as well, with some performers declaring comfort in their girth ("I'm not fat"), sexual orientation or religious beliefs.

All of those topics are standard fare for slams, even if delivered with mastery by the likes of Khary Jackson, of Soap Boxing. One of his poems was a celebration of gay black sexuality.

Themes of hope and survival -- a mother surviving cancer, a young woman surviving violence -- surfaced in some of the most poignant poems . . .