Slam Criticism VII: The Yawning
A comment I made over here about the recent spate of attention (read, criticism) Slam has received. I post it here because I won't be doing a column about it because my whole poetry career is proof that the criticism is stale and uninformed.
With footnotes!
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Is it that point in the cycle again? Man, let me break out my shroud and cowbell.*
I'm with Darby: Have any of these critics been to a haiku deathmatch? A dead poets slam? A group piece showcase? A prop slam? ** The thing can't be dead if it's constantly changing its focus and presentations and range. There are plenty of slams in plenty of places - more than we'll ever know for sure - that don't just go 3-minute-yell/score-of-10. As a movement, this is natural and pervasive development. It's the sort of thing that probably isn't much of a minority anymore at the local level if anybody bothered to do the math.
So as a criticism, try telling me something that I can't anticipate because I've heard it all. Tell me something new about Slam that is bad that wasn't said about it five years ago. Or ten years ago.*** Show me a new criticism, because I can surely show you ten poems for every point you make at any given National Poetry Slam (or iWPS or WOWps) that prove you wrong. And that's just out of a pool of 300 poets (or 60 and 60 respectively, many of whom appear in all national competitions).
And let's not even get started with the ghettoization of poetry that journals create. ****
This is why no one is allowed to criticize Slam but me; because everyone else is stoopid.
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* - Every time Slam gets some national-level attention the termites come out. This happens about once every few years. Some major paper will interview Marc Smith and a few critics and taa-daa: deadline met. Then the blogs and the boards and the journals and a couple of magazines might run a column or a blurb or a snatch or a rant about how Slam has destroyed poetry...like any journal ever shut its doors because it's erudite reading audience stopped reading their magazine to go see a bunch of slammers meet in a coffeehouse once a month. The only difference in this cycle from the others is that more slammers seem to be coming to its defense. Not that anyone cares, mind you: the press was done with this when Marc Smith got off the phone. So we're just codifying (many of us again) our positions in case anyone from the New York Post ever calls us up. Put on death shroud, ring cowbell, call for dead, rinse, repeat. See you in three years, or at the next White House Poetry Jam, whichever comes first.
** - Of COURSE bad poetry shows up in these events too. Show me the poetry event that didn't have ONE bad poem in it.
*** - I'd have said twenty years ago, but then most of the criticism back then didn't have the hip-hp influence to swing at, which is what almost all of the current criticism loves to bat around. Even I bat that one around. So the criticism of Slam HAS evolveed that much; they have broadened their hate.
**** - I am working on a column about a very specific aspect of this issue, but I have to be very careful. It could get me killed...by POETS, no less.
With footnotes!
================
Is it that point in the cycle again? Man, let me break out my shroud and cowbell.*
I'm with Darby: Have any of these critics been to a haiku deathmatch? A dead poets slam? A group piece showcase? A prop slam? ** The thing can't be dead if it's constantly changing its focus and presentations and range. There are plenty of slams in plenty of places - more than we'll ever know for sure - that don't just go 3-minute-yell/score-of-10. As a movement, this is natural and pervasive development. It's the sort of thing that probably isn't much of a minority anymore at the local level if anybody bothered to do the math.
So as a criticism, try telling me something that I can't anticipate because I've heard it all. Tell me something new about Slam that is bad that wasn't said about it five years ago. Or ten years ago.*** Show me a new criticism, because I can surely show you ten poems for every point you make at any given National Poetry Slam (or iWPS or WOWps) that prove you wrong. And that's just out of a pool of 300 poets (or 60 and 60 respectively, many of whom appear in all national competitions).
And let's not even get started with the ghettoization of poetry that journals create. ****
This is why no one is allowed to criticize Slam but me; because everyone else is stoopid.
===============================
* - Every time Slam gets some national-level attention the termites come out. This happens about once every few years. Some major paper will interview Marc Smith and a few critics and taa-daa: deadline met. Then the blogs and the boards and the journals and a couple of magazines might run a column or a blurb or a snatch or a rant about how Slam has destroyed poetry...like any journal ever shut its doors because it's erudite reading audience stopped reading their magazine to go see a bunch of slammers meet in a coffeehouse once a month. The only difference in this cycle from the others is that more slammers seem to be coming to its defense. Not that anyone cares, mind you: the press was done with this when Marc Smith got off the phone. So we're just codifying (many of us again) our positions in case anyone from the New York Post ever calls us up. Put on death shroud, ring cowbell, call for dead, rinse, repeat. See you in three years, or at the next White House Poetry Jam, whichever comes first.
** - Of COURSE bad poetry shows up in these events too. Show me the poetry event that didn't have ONE bad poem in it.
*** - I'd have said twenty years ago, but then most of the criticism back then didn't have the hip-hp influence to swing at, which is what almost all of the current criticism loves to bat around. Even I bat that one around. So the criticism of Slam HAS evolveed that much; they have broadened their hate.
**** - I am working on a column about a very specific aspect of this issue, but I have to be very careful. It could get me killed...by POETS, no less.