Slamville
What's funny to me is that most poetry slam folk are city folk, but Slam itself, especially in the internet age, functions as a really small town.
If you fuck up, everyone knows about it. Those who don't hear about it immediately hear a telephone-ized version of it down the line. Gossip spreads quickly, and everyone is in each other's business. Major American cities, reduced to their poets, become mere blocks in this small town: a little more intimate, but no more than a stone's throw from the next city. We can hear each other through the walls and across the street. We have our village elders. We have our village idiots. We have our mayor, and our ministers. We have our teachers, policemen, and men and women of loose reputation. We have no shortage of the old guys down at the Veterans Club nursing their beers and kvetching about kids these days while pretending they don't wish they weren't still so blithely foolish. And those foolish youngsters, full of bluster and hormones and stupid ideas, occasionally burn down the barn or drive into a tree. And everyone tries to enforce the manners, traditions, and moral standards of a somewhat mythological past.
By the same analogy, we support one another the way small town folks do. We come to the high school play. We come out to our annual picnic. We know almost everyone else by name, and greet each other warmly.
I prefer small towns to big cities, and maybe that's what I like about slam. If this thing ever gets so big that I don't feel that constant concern, that slight nosiness, and that general goodwill for one another, I don't know where I'd go.
If you fuck up, everyone knows about it. Those who don't hear about it immediately hear a telephone-ized version of it down the line. Gossip spreads quickly, and everyone is in each other's business. Major American cities, reduced to their poets, become mere blocks in this small town: a little more intimate, but no more than a stone's throw from the next city. We can hear each other through the walls and across the street. We have our village elders. We have our village idiots. We have our mayor, and our ministers. We have our teachers, policemen, and men and women of loose reputation. We have no shortage of the old guys down at the Veterans Club nursing their beers and kvetching about kids these days while pretending they don't wish they weren't still so blithely foolish. And those foolish youngsters, full of bluster and hormones and stupid ideas, occasionally burn down the barn or drive into a tree. And everyone tries to enforce the manners, traditions, and moral standards of a somewhat mythological past.
By the same analogy, we support one another the way small town folks do. We come to the high school play. We come out to our annual picnic. We know almost everyone else by name, and greet each other warmly.
I prefer small towns to big cities, and maybe that's what I like about slam. If this thing ever gets so big that I don't feel that constant concern, that slight nosiness, and that general goodwill for one another, I don't know where I'd go.