Thanks so much for this really clear, well-written, overview of the history of slam poetry! It’s a form I have thought about quite a bit, love its history, believe in its mission, and in fact my thesis advisor in grad school, while I’m not sure was a “slam” poet, was part of the Punk poetry scene Chicago in the 80s. However, your post was also thought-provoking, and made struggle again with it, because even though it should be right up my alley, I actually do not like slam poetry very much as a form, while at the same time fully support people’s enthusiasms for it. Let me explain a bit:
In one sense, slam should be right up my alley artistically, and should excite me, because Iit brings together the two art forms I have pursued in grad school and beyond: acting and poetry. While in the writing program, I became highly influenced by the beats, and especially Charles Olson and the Black Mountain poets, because of the primary structural device for poetry was the poetic line as BREATH, and the primacy of SOUND in the meaning in the poem. YES. Poetry is meant to be embodied, and its meaning is not language-as-logic, but language distilled: language as music, sound carrier of meaning, spoken to be experienced, known through experience, not rational. This, in fact, made up my theme in my critical thesis: poetry as sound, poetry as spoken.
Which is what Slam's all about, right? Well, maybe it was different in the 80s, but to be honest, the slam poetry I’ve seen, what I felt was all self-performance, and not very good poetry. I want to be careful, here, however. I am a white male. Slam has been a very important movement for Black and Hispanic writers to celebrate, declare, and fully acknowledge their worth and humanity. You mentioned the Negritude movement, which was awesome. I LOVE the Negritude poets. Sadly, though, the actual poetry I’ve heard in slam felt a bit forced, a bit predictable and at times tedious with the rhymes, and then I just felt that though the celebration and self-empowerment of identity is a crucial, and needed, experience for many minorities to embrace, and reclaim, I still felt the theme of every slam performance I have seen was pretty much the same, and thus, got repetitive, and lost some of its meaning, power, and impact.
I’m sure there are excellent slam poets out there, and I almost feel like as a white poet, my criticism may feel illegitimate, but yes, performance is good, and yes, poetry needs to live off the page, and yes, identity should be celebrated, but ultimately, the originality of the words, and the structure, still matter, and if rhymed, the rhymes need to be a surprise, and not predictable. Finally, I feel that self-empowerment and self-proclamation can be effective but if that’s always the PRIMARY meaning of the slam, the art of the poetry and nuance of performance can often become secondary, may feel a bit amateurish, and perhaps not worked on as artfully as they could, if the goal isn’t art, but rather self-empowerment.
I hope that made sense and wasn’t offensive. I DO support the form, but I feel if a true art form, it needs to be treated as art. If it’s a fun thing to try, it’s or a fun thing to watch, but that serves a different purpose. But in thinking about it artistically, maybe budding slam poets should go back to the Negritude poets a bit more, or find different ways, definitions, and expands one's idea of expression, and also what authentic identity is for each individual: what it is, explore its complexities, and find their own unique way of expressing it. And finally, even though it’s a performance, the words, structure, music, and language, should never be secondary, or an afterthought, or, as I've experience, forced to fit the form. Instead, the form and words must both be essential, unified, and of equal importance. I personally suggest exploring NOT rhyming, but that is not a criticism but more an individual preference.
Regardless, I support any striving poet and the continual search in making it new. And as to the life of a poem, YES! Get it off the page! Keep embodying it, and when speaking it, my last thought is that the performance should be an organic outgrowth of the music of the words. You don’t have to perform the words. Allow the words to imbue the performance!
