My Problem With People Who Have a Problem With Poetry Slams
In the most recent issue of Columbus Monthly (October 2010), columnist Jory Farr penned an article entitled “My Problem With Poetry Slams”. Being not only a poet but someone who runs a poetry slam in the magazine’s target area and demographic, I was certainly curious to see what he had to say. Beyond that, I am the president of the only national-level non-profit set-up specifically to oversee the interests of poetry slams worldwide. So you could say that the statements I am about to present are almost a perfect storm of ingredients for a good gunfight…except for the part where I know a lot about poetry slams and Jory Farr knows very little.
Slams have changed the face of poetry in the last twenty-plus years, most notably in its access by audiences and poets alike…something Farr clearly thinks poetry could use less of, at least on the part of poets. He describes the work he sees in poetry slams as:
“Self-conscious, frequently bombastic and often self-aggrandizing, they’re like old-time carneys - traveling amusement shows."
He goes on in an attempt to get academically medieval on slam poets:
“…slams have lost sight of the lyrical and subtle. Instead, each poet seems to be on the same page, making the same pitch. At one slam, I watched a large poet knowingly riff on her weight in a way that would make Oprah crow…others have n poetic mandate. I’ve watched one slam poet repeatedly launch snarky diatribes against dubious celebrity. If there’s anything worse than dubious celebrity, it‘s reciting a poem, about it. And then there was the porn poet, reading bawdy trash off his cellphone.”
Trust me when I say Farr isn’t saying anything I haven’t heard a slam poet say about another slam poet in the last week. I might have even said it. But we say it understanding that poetry slams are not the problem…bad poetry is the problem. Much like the jam session down at your local tavern, when you open the stage to anyone with an instrument you run the risk of getting someone who probably should have spent more time taking guitar lessons and less time perfecting their grunge growl. I can extend this metaphor through as many art forms and venues as you like, but I think you get the point. When you open the doors to allow anyone to play - something poetry slams do that almost no other art forum does to the same extent - you’ll end up with some passion plays, some diatribes and some bad art. But suggesting, as Farr does, that poetry slams are somehow inherently responsible for bad poetry is akin to stating that the radio is responsible for bad music, or that computers are responsible for bad magazine articles.
If poetry slams have a problem it is not that, as Farr puts it:
“Poetry slams are not about poetry. In fact, they’re more like dramatic monologues or stand-up comedy routines than anything else.”
Of course poetry slams are about poetry. What Farr confuses about slams is their intent. He confuses the tool with the work ethic of the carpenter or the resultant lean of the house. Slam doesn’t generate poetry; it funnels it. What poets opt to put into the hopper doesn’t make Slam responsible for the ingredients (why and how they do it) or the outcome (what they do on stage). As I wrote in an article about slams for World Literature Today in December of 2007 (because Farr isn't the only with a national magazine credential):
“Contrary to what most journalists who print stories about poetry slams write, poetry slams are not an art form. Poetry slams are a device, a trick to convince people that poetry is cooler than they’ve been led to believe by wearisome English classes and dusty anthologies, and that they should engage themselves with it every once in a while. By dressing up poetry in the raiment of a fight or a contest, it appeals to the modern taste for sensationalism in art without - when done right - delving into mere caricature or entertainment. A good slam is fun, loud and filled with good poetry performed well. In the event that any of these elements are missing, it’s perfectly acceptable to refer to the event as a poetry slam but the mission might not be fulfilled. People can get good poetry delivered to them via the internet in the comfort of their own homes any hour of the day if it occurs to them to do so. By contrast, Slam offers a way to experience that work in a way that no book or computer can capture, and that you might even be able to influence the course of the event with your participation.”
Farr is also guilty of fueling the stereotypical and tired arguments of slam poets versus academic poets…an exercise most notable slam poets and academics have gotten over a long time ago. I have read similar versions of this article a couple dozen times in the last ten years…most by equally ill-informed pedestrian observers with deadlines. Where are the good poets?, they ask. Farr does so pointedly in his article:
“…name one slam poet who has come up with anything resembling Neruda’s The Heights of Macchu Picchu. Or quote me a slam poet who reaches the mystical intensity of William Blake, the profundity of T.S. Eliot or the passion of Luis Rodriguez and Langston Hughes.”
I don’t know which is more criminal: that Farr asks this as if there is no one in the whole of Slam capable of answering this question (let alone in this town), or that he’s largely comparing apples and oranges. I mean, if I must draw correlations between widely disparate schools, styles, languages and forms of poetry to satisfy his question I can, but isn’t it good enough for me to just say that I can do this without having to show the work? Do I actually have to do the homework to expose this catcall for the demystifying insult it is? I mean, he’s not being very empirical here either: “resembling”, “mystical intensity”, “profundity”, “passion”.
(Yes? Okay, fine, but not here. I’ll do it in another article. Just know that I got this.)
Much like Farr wanting to love the self-deprecating poise of the poetry of fat women, I wanted to agree when he suggests poetry comes from “deep waters”. However, my fence-riding comes less from knowing what he means by “deep waters” (itself extreme hyperbole) and more because what he really means is that poetry should strive to be more like the kind of poetry HE likes; that poets who don’t strive for the kind of artistic mission he believes should be inherent in all poetry are hacks, or worse, not poets at all.
In all honesty, I debated addressing the article at all. Certainly drawing attention to it suggests it carries more scholarship than its meager contents afford. There was also the matter of having my show, the Writers’ Block Poetry Night, mentioned directly as an exception to the type of slam work that Farr has encountered. So even though poetry like Farr describes has occasionally made its way onto my stage (and we allow it as any open institution should), I largely did not get the impression he was talking about most of the poets or slams at my night. The work my poetry reading produces has in fact been written about by Farr before, in Columbus Monthly no less. We also made national press in an article about poetry slams a year before in Paste magazine. So really, I could have walked away from this. If the rock don’t hit you, don’t holler.
But the math didn’t add up. While there are many poetry nights in Columbus, only two of them feature regularly occurring slams. The Writers’ Block has been around for over thirteen years while the other, Writing Wrongs, has been around for two years. The Writers’ Block is the only slam that ever gets any mainstream press. We have probably had two hundred slams of varying types (since not all slams are of the type Farr describes) at my reading alone since 1998. We are also the crew that facilitated the national Women of the World Poetry Slam earlier this year, which brought in poets from all over the country and beyond for a three-day poetry competition, some of whom bearing credentials that outstrip mine and Farr’s combined.
My point is, how are WE the exception? Why aren’t the dozen or so slams that Farr has seen in three years (an average of one every three months in a city with slams at least three times a month) the exception? And if he admits that the poetry he describes as essentially worthless is not typically being exhibited at the longest-running, most-lauded, most-active and most-talked about poetry slam in the area, then how are any of his impressions about poetry slams as a whole valid? Again, the math doesn’t add up.
Let me not fail to point out that the type of slams that Farr describes - three-minute competitions designed to advance poets to national competitions - while traditional and common, are not the sum total of the type of slam one might encounter in the Slam world. Most slam venues I am aware of put on slams featuring every style from sonnets to haiku to free verse to Prince lyrics. Even Farr’s beloved Neruda has made multiple appearances in Dead Poet Slams, as have a host of other historically important poets of which Farr would surely approve. If I remember correctly Farr himself has appeared in one or more of my slams, so it is wholly possible this treatise comes from the deep waters of a disgruntled and frustrated poet.
Perhaps some of this is my fault. In the April 2007 issue of Columbus Monthly, Farr wrote an article about me (which was glowing, if I may say) and halfway through the article there is the following paragraph:
“Though Woods coaches slam poets for competitions, he has a love/hate affair with the slam world. He believes it has reinvigorated poetry in a way that nothing else could have - brought it closer to theater and mystic-storytelling, which are its ancient roots. But mediocre poetry - even deftly memorized and performed with tics and stylized effects nicked from more talented poets - maddens him. ‘Half of the slam poets I see around the country ain’t saying nothing,’ Woods says. ‘But then half the page poets are not speaking to me, either.’”
Oh snap! I said that out loud?
I did. I was sitting in Farr’s living room when I said it. If I am completely honest, I have said far worse about poets. I even write a monthly column entitled “Poetry is Doomed”, I relish criticizing poets so. And the quote above is a statement I stand by. At the same time, when you don’t consider the math or the love at its base, it sounds worse than it is. I tend to speak about artistic movements mathematically, meaning I steer clear of absolutes and assign empirical value to statements like these. “Half” or “some” or “50%”are very popular qualifiers with me. And that’s important, because when I say “half of the slam poets I see around the country ain’t saying nothing,” I’m making that statement having engaged a pool of thousands of poets that I can cut in half. Farr makes a far more absolute and ill-defined statement with a glaringly smaller pool from which to draw. I mean, he lived much of the last twenty years in California and he didn’t go to ANY slams? That state probably has more slams per poet capita than any state outside of New York and Farr casually dismissed it entirely for two formative decades without so much as a visit. He likely attended slams between two venues and exorcises one from his critique (more or less) and has the evidence of what is wrong with slam based on half the field? That is the worst show-me-your-work math problem ever.
More to the point, in the same article in the very next paragraph Farr has a quote from Marc Smith, the creator of poetry slams, which starts out about as rough as my quote, but pulls the nose of the plane up at the end with:
“…Slam is pro-am: the person who started writing poetry last week is on the stage with the seasoned veteran. And it’s meant to be that way.”
And there it is, the whole exercise distilled down to this one fine observation: that poetry is for everyone, not just the people who do it well or mine it for emotion. That is a commitment to not only be applauded, but defended. Where else can anyone from any walk of life go - from the crackhead to the college professor to the lesbian pregnant mother, and I have seen them all - and truly be heard on their own merits like they can at a poetry open mic? And what else but the poetry slam “competition” extends that commitment even further by challenging these same poets to take it up a notch and do so with engagement as a rule and not just for therapy or sharing? Almost none of us are 100% ourselves at work, in our homes, at church, in our love lives…anywhere. But in a slam you have a chance to recreate yourself or amplify what is already there, and you have the chance to discover the merits of those artistic decisions immediately. It is the ultimate democracy in art, and more.
I have seen even weak slams turn mice into lions. Unfortunately for Farr, he has seen only that some of them are not masters of the form and seem content with that, and because of this I guess we won’t see him at a poetry slam for another twenty years.
Slams have changed the face of poetry in the last twenty-plus years, most notably in its access by audiences and poets alike…something Farr clearly thinks poetry could use less of, at least on the part of poets. He describes the work he sees in poetry slams as:
“Self-conscious, frequently bombastic and often self-aggrandizing, they’re like old-time carneys - traveling amusement shows."
He goes on in an attempt to get academically medieval on slam poets:
“…slams have lost sight of the lyrical and subtle. Instead, each poet seems to be on the same page, making the same pitch. At one slam, I watched a large poet knowingly riff on her weight in a way that would make Oprah crow…others have n poetic mandate. I’ve watched one slam poet repeatedly launch snarky diatribes against dubious celebrity. If there’s anything worse than dubious celebrity, it‘s reciting a poem, about it. And then there was the porn poet, reading bawdy trash off his cellphone.”
Trust me when I say Farr isn’t saying anything I haven’t heard a slam poet say about another slam poet in the last week. I might have even said it. But we say it understanding that poetry slams are not the problem…bad poetry is the problem. Much like the jam session down at your local tavern, when you open the stage to anyone with an instrument you run the risk of getting someone who probably should have spent more time taking guitar lessons and less time perfecting their grunge growl. I can extend this metaphor through as many art forms and venues as you like, but I think you get the point. When you open the doors to allow anyone to play - something poetry slams do that almost no other art forum does to the same extent - you’ll end up with some passion plays, some diatribes and some bad art. But suggesting, as Farr does, that poetry slams are somehow inherently responsible for bad poetry is akin to stating that the radio is responsible for bad music, or that computers are responsible for bad magazine articles.
If poetry slams have a problem it is not that, as Farr puts it:
“Poetry slams are not about poetry. In fact, they’re more like dramatic monologues or stand-up comedy routines than anything else.”
Of course poetry slams are about poetry. What Farr confuses about slams is their intent. He confuses the tool with the work ethic of the carpenter or the resultant lean of the house. Slam doesn’t generate poetry; it funnels it. What poets opt to put into the hopper doesn’t make Slam responsible for the ingredients (why and how they do it) or the outcome (what they do on stage). As I wrote in an article about slams for World Literature Today in December of 2007 (because Farr isn't the only with a national magazine credential):
“Contrary to what most journalists who print stories about poetry slams write, poetry slams are not an art form. Poetry slams are a device, a trick to convince people that poetry is cooler than they’ve been led to believe by wearisome English classes and dusty anthologies, and that they should engage themselves with it every once in a while. By dressing up poetry in the raiment of a fight or a contest, it appeals to the modern taste for sensationalism in art without - when done right - delving into mere caricature or entertainment. A good slam is fun, loud and filled with good poetry performed well. In the event that any of these elements are missing, it’s perfectly acceptable to refer to the event as a poetry slam but the mission might not be fulfilled. People can get good poetry delivered to them via the internet in the comfort of their own homes any hour of the day if it occurs to them to do so. By contrast, Slam offers a way to experience that work in a way that no book or computer can capture, and that you might even be able to influence the course of the event with your participation.”
Farr is also guilty of fueling the stereotypical and tired arguments of slam poets versus academic poets…an exercise most notable slam poets and academics have gotten over a long time ago. I have read similar versions of this article a couple dozen times in the last ten years…most by equally ill-informed pedestrian observers with deadlines. Where are the good poets?, they ask. Farr does so pointedly in his article:
“…name one slam poet who has come up with anything resembling Neruda’s The Heights of Macchu Picchu. Or quote me a slam poet who reaches the mystical intensity of William Blake, the profundity of T.S. Eliot or the passion of Luis Rodriguez and Langston Hughes.”
I don’t know which is more criminal: that Farr asks this as if there is no one in the whole of Slam capable of answering this question (let alone in this town), or that he’s largely comparing apples and oranges. I mean, if I must draw correlations between widely disparate schools, styles, languages and forms of poetry to satisfy his question I can, but isn’t it good enough for me to just say that I can do this without having to show the work? Do I actually have to do the homework to expose this catcall for the demystifying insult it is? I mean, he’s not being very empirical here either: “resembling”, “mystical intensity”, “profundity”, “passion”.
(Yes? Okay, fine, but not here. I’ll do it in another article. Just know that I got this.)
Much like Farr wanting to love the self-deprecating poise of the poetry of fat women, I wanted to agree when he suggests poetry comes from “deep waters”. However, my fence-riding comes less from knowing what he means by “deep waters” (itself extreme hyperbole) and more because what he really means is that poetry should strive to be more like the kind of poetry HE likes; that poets who don’t strive for the kind of artistic mission he believes should be inherent in all poetry are hacks, or worse, not poets at all.
In all honesty, I debated addressing the article at all. Certainly drawing attention to it suggests it carries more scholarship than its meager contents afford. There was also the matter of having my show, the Writers’ Block Poetry Night, mentioned directly as an exception to the type of slam work that Farr has encountered. So even though poetry like Farr describes has occasionally made its way onto my stage (and we allow it as any open institution should), I largely did not get the impression he was talking about most of the poets or slams at my night. The work my poetry reading produces has in fact been written about by Farr before, in Columbus Monthly no less. We also made national press in an article about poetry slams a year before in Paste magazine. So really, I could have walked away from this. If the rock don’t hit you, don’t holler.
But the math didn’t add up. While there are many poetry nights in Columbus, only two of them feature regularly occurring slams. The Writers’ Block has been around for over thirteen years while the other, Writing Wrongs, has been around for two years. The Writers’ Block is the only slam that ever gets any mainstream press. We have probably had two hundred slams of varying types (since not all slams are of the type Farr describes) at my reading alone since 1998. We are also the crew that facilitated the national Women of the World Poetry Slam earlier this year, which brought in poets from all over the country and beyond for a three-day poetry competition, some of whom bearing credentials that outstrip mine and Farr’s combined.
My point is, how are WE the exception? Why aren’t the dozen or so slams that Farr has seen in three years (an average of one every three months in a city with slams at least three times a month) the exception? And if he admits that the poetry he describes as essentially worthless is not typically being exhibited at the longest-running, most-lauded, most-active and most-talked about poetry slam in the area, then how are any of his impressions about poetry slams as a whole valid? Again, the math doesn’t add up.
Let me not fail to point out that the type of slams that Farr describes - three-minute competitions designed to advance poets to national competitions - while traditional and common, are not the sum total of the type of slam one might encounter in the Slam world. Most slam venues I am aware of put on slams featuring every style from sonnets to haiku to free verse to Prince lyrics. Even Farr’s beloved Neruda has made multiple appearances in Dead Poet Slams, as have a host of other historically important poets of which Farr would surely approve. If I remember correctly Farr himself has appeared in one or more of my slams, so it is wholly possible this treatise comes from the deep waters of a disgruntled and frustrated poet.
Perhaps some of this is my fault. In the April 2007 issue of Columbus Monthly, Farr wrote an article about me (which was glowing, if I may say) and halfway through the article there is the following paragraph:
“Though Woods coaches slam poets for competitions, he has a love/hate affair with the slam world. He believes it has reinvigorated poetry in a way that nothing else could have - brought it closer to theater and mystic-storytelling, which are its ancient roots. But mediocre poetry - even deftly memorized and performed with tics and stylized effects nicked from more talented poets - maddens him. ‘Half of the slam poets I see around the country ain’t saying nothing,’ Woods says. ‘But then half the page poets are not speaking to me, either.’”
Oh snap! I said that out loud?
I did. I was sitting in Farr’s living room when I said it. If I am completely honest, I have said far worse about poets. I even write a monthly column entitled “Poetry is Doomed”, I relish criticizing poets so. And the quote above is a statement I stand by. At the same time, when you don’t consider the math or the love at its base, it sounds worse than it is. I tend to speak about artistic movements mathematically, meaning I steer clear of absolutes and assign empirical value to statements like these. “Half” or “some” or “50%”are very popular qualifiers with me. And that’s important, because when I say “half of the slam poets I see around the country ain’t saying nothing,” I’m making that statement having engaged a pool of thousands of poets that I can cut in half. Farr makes a far more absolute and ill-defined statement with a glaringly smaller pool from which to draw. I mean, he lived much of the last twenty years in California and he didn’t go to ANY slams? That state probably has more slams per poet capita than any state outside of New York and Farr casually dismissed it entirely for two formative decades without so much as a visit. He likely attended slams between two venues and exorcises one from his critique (more or less) and has the evidence of what is wrong with slam based on half the field? That is the worst show-me-your-work math problem ever.
More to the point, in the same article in the very next paragraph Farr has a quote from Marc Smith, the creator of poetry slams, which starts out about as rough as my quote, but pulls the nose of the plane up at the end with:
“…Slam is pro-am: the person who started writing poetry last week is on the stage with the seasoned veteran. And it’s meant to be that way.”
And there it is, the whole exercise distilled down to this one fine observation: that poetry is for everyone, not just the people who do it well or mine it for emotion. That is a commitment to not only be applauded, but defended. Where else can anyone from any walk of life go - from the crackhead to the college professor to the lesbian pregnant mother, and I have seen them all - and truly be heard on their own merits like they can at a poetry open mic? And what else but the poetry slam “competition” extends that commitment even further by challenging these same poets to take it up a notch and do so with engagement as a rule and not just for therapy or sharing? Almost none of us are 100% ourselves at work, in our homes, at church, in our love lives…anywhere. But in a slam you have a chance to recreate yourself or amplify what is already there, and you have the chance to discover the merits of those artistic decisions immediately. It is the ultimate democracy in art, and more.
I have seen even weak slams turn mice into lions. Unfortunately for Farr, he has seen only that some of them are not masters of the form and seem content with that, and because of this I guess we won’t see him at a poetry slam for another twenty years.