Swab the Deck
Arrgg, me Arties
Ah, summer. The days are long, the nights warm
and you’re feeling frisky
24/7. The head swims with anything-is-possible
thoughts and you’re
writing, you’re painting, you’re sitting on your
front porch, watching
girls. It all feels creative and inspired.
August warns that the summer will eventually come
to a close. How can
one celebrate, explode into a ball of sexy yet
vulnerable exhibitionism?
Why not head to the National Poetry Slam? Converge
with like-minded
know-it-alls, strut your innermost private thoughts
to a crowd of total
strangers, and see if your demons are worth high
scores, back pats or
maybe even a blowjob in a hotel parking lot.
Inspire and be inspired,
perspire and drink, drink, drink. Make soul mates
for life (or a
reasonable on-line facsimile), get into nasty
arguments about banal
rules and regulations, and get drunk in a different
time zone.
Now if you don’t know what a poetry slam is, you’d
better get with the
program (I think it’s ‘60 minutes’ this November)
or visit the website
(www.poetryslam.com).
Because if the hype is to be believed, Slam Poetry
is gonna change the world, brother, three minutes
at a time. Or at the
very least, it’ll provide a community and a nice
modicum of fame and
glory for soul-searching artists, the degenerate
and very serious alike,
who’ve fallen in the crack between theater and
literature.
The 10th National Poetry Slam took place in the
birthplace of the slam,
Chicago. It was a Chicagoan named Marc Smith
who invented slam and lest
you forget this oft-repeated fact, there was
his face on everyone’s
access pass. There was a lot of ballyhoo about
the Chicago "Green Mill"
team, why they even went so far as to detail
in their bios how they’d
spend the prize money. It would be easy to see
why they’d be favored to
win: hometown advantage! And let’s make it clear,
Chicago rocks. It’s
hip without being self-conscious, modern yet
sweetly decrepit, a pool of
inspiration, a poet’s town. On any given night
of the week, you can find
a spoken wordy event or two providing a mic and
an audience for the many
diverse scenes of wordsmiths this town houses.
With such a breeding
ground the odds were good that the two Chicago
teams would score big.
But, in a slam it’s all a crapshoot. There is
no logic to the rankings.
Oh sure, there is a difference between a horrible
poem and a brilliant
one. And yes, strategy is not to be dismissed.
But ultimately it all
boils down to the moods and tastes of five people.
Five people who will
be influenced by their own prejudices, their
own insecurities and the
myriad of factors affecting the minutes before,
during and after the
performance in question. And one need only look
back at the rankings
from year to year to see how radically tastes
vary from one host city to
another. Aside from the gifted Chicago native,
Reggie Gibson, none of
1998’s top ten poets made it to 1999’s top ten.
A reason why
superstitious little old me, coming in 9th place
this year (representin’
for the white chicks of the poetry nation) is
seriously considering
bowing out for a year or two…
Every year there are official complaints lodged.
Every year there are
one or two issues that divide the camp of otherwise
hug-happy poets. I
myself am thankful for the polemic, I’m a bitchy,
cynical girl and I get
nervous when I have too many friends. It’s so
much easier to have an
issue do the filtering for you. An unfortunate
thing is that these
issues are generally brought to the table by
a losing team or individual
wishing to bring down a winning team. Another
unfortunate thing is that
the complaints ultimately lead to the drafting
of yet another rule for
the slam constitution. Last year, the fever inducing
issues revolved
around nudity and sportsmanship. This year the
plaintiffs are urging to
legislate just how supportive and vocal a team
and its entourage can be
of its poets. It’s often very gray and a little
boring.
When three Bay Area teams advanced to the finals,
words flew. There
might even be words flying right this minute
in cyberspace (write to
slam-subscribe@datawranglers.com to smell
all the laundry, dirty and
clean, the slamworld is hanging out to dry).
People were convinced that
these teams would never have done as well as
they did if they hadn’t
been there for each other, cheering at each other’s
bouts. Seems a
little silly, doesn’t it? Even if that were the
key to success (uh,
love) well, wouldn’t that be a really easy idea
to steal? Kinda takes
the bite out of the cutthroat competition of
slam poetry, don’t it? When
two of these teams tied for first place (San
Francisco and San Jose) and
then decided to forego a tie-breaking round and
share the money and
title, anarchy love filled the Chicago theater
and the karmic points
were racked up for years to come.
There are a few truths about the National Poetry
Slam that will always
frustrate me. Competition brings out the ugliest
side of humanity.
Sentimental, first person poetry always scores
big, to the extent that
poets are willing to drag out their most gruesome,
traumatizing
experiences (or those of folks they know) in
order to emotionally
blackmail judges. The American Art Audiences
are largely comprised of
guilty white liberals who respond most favorably
to work that sounds
like something they’ve heard before. Women judges
are hardest on women
poets. These are conclusion I have drawn through
my experiences in three
National Poetry Slams and several local and regional
US slams. You may
disagree, that’s your prerogative.
In general, I found the audiences in Chicago to
be quite sophisticated,
open-minded and intelligent. The NPS really is
the crème de la crème of
the performance poetry scene in North America.
I saw some kick ass work
this year, a lot of it from the Bay Area and
NYC but also from the
Pacific Northwest, Texas and, yes, Chicago. Every
single one of the
poets in the individual semi-finals was a gifted,
practiced performer
and writer. To have made it to the semi-finals
was, for me, an honor. I
also had a lot of fun and that’s what this yearly
convention is all
about, meeting and bonding with people who live
on the other side of the
continent, people who inspire you, move you to
tears, make you laugh out
loud. And that is what sends me year after year.