It's My Blog and I'll Critique If I Want To ...
Very sorry to anyone who's annoyed at the sheer amount of navel-gazing poetry slam theory I've been spewing lately. I'm working on writing something, and the blog's always been my best sounding board, and frequently, I find myself arguing against myself, just to test things out in my head.
Still, I understand slam's more than an academic concept to ( Read more... )
Still, I understand slam's more than an academic concept to ( Read more... )
Guilty as charged on the typos; I am a fast typist and a poor proof reader of my own work. But I'd venture that such is the case with most of us here. But dull and monotonous?
One wouldn't thinks so, since a good many have read the entry with some interest and even acknowledged some points they'd agree with. Which is fine--the point was to provoke a discussion about the nature of slam and whether the best of these slammers will grow out of what is, essentially, a limited approach to employ the Language. The writer who stays interesting through a dedicated career is the one who stops telling the world what he or she thinks of in stilted slant rhymes and begins to unearth the unseen, the unnoticed, the un-commented upon, using a honed lexicon that converts style from an excuse to talk as loudly as one desires and makes it instead where real mastery takes place; the ability to convey nuance.
Slam isn't about nuance, but about variegated forms of boasting, whining, declaiming, exclaiming, an approach glutted with personal pronouns locked into one speed, one volume level, one check list of style requirements.
Gentle people, it's time to grow up and learn what you can really do with that pen.
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However, and I apologize for the directness, I'm afraid your critique could stand a little nuance. I think, for your criticisms to have weight, you need to express explicitly what you mean by slam, what -- out of a 20+ year history -- you're counting and discounting. Are you considering the non-slam work veterans of the slam competition have done since? (Or, if we're going back in the day, often current-to or even before slamming?)
I fear you need to define your terms, or admit you're working from a straw-man stereotype.
However, one point I need to make:
Gentle people, it's time to grow up and learn what you can really do with that pen.
If we take into account Patricia Smith, Susan Somers Willett, Jeff McDaniel or any of a large number of poets who have produced excellent books and been published in well-regarded journals, I'd say they already have. My problem when it comes to generic cirticisms of slam -- and sorry, that's what you've got there -- is that they insist on focusing on the worst the movement has produced, honing in on stereotypes of the kids starting out, and avoiding the question of the best it's produced. It becomes an unfair argument, and works from the assumption that not only will these poets not change and grow over time, that they can't. When even the most casual observation reveals that to be simply not true.
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What I said was a broad outline of slam, yes, but the outline is sharp and telling and pretty much typifies the slam experience. My exposure to slam might be limited compared to others on this board, but I think after spending three years attending a good number of slam oriented events, including the Artists on the Cutting Series series organized by poet Quincy Troupe, the impressions I spoke of, I think, are largely accurate. Spot on. You read what I wrote and you get the idea "that's why they call it slam." It's not an unfair argument at all. Sooner or later the interest in slam battles and the like will abate and one wonders what those who've invested so much in one approach to verse will do when they become profoundly bored with their own work. It's a fair question--as was said before, one could broaden their points of poetic reference and broaden their ears to rhythms other than the clang and clatter now favored.
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Of course, that's not to say that you're entirely wrong -- there has been a lot of tripe. And of course interest will wane, or the nature of the event will change. One or the other. But those facts are to be expected. One can't judge the success of a literary movement on its imitators, students and acolytes. You have to judge it on its masters and its successes.
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