Slamming out my rough draft (slam poetry--hehe)!

Introduction:

“The death of art” is what the literary critic Harold Bloom labeled slam poetry. He saw this fledgling form as primarily “rant and nonsense” (Somers-Willett). However, if one actually takes into account the performance of slam poetry and how it connects to ancient history, it is hard to agree with Bloom’s position. The art of poetry predates literacy and documentation. Before anything was written down, stories were told and performed to preserve the history and culture of a people. The oral performance of a story is something that has always united a community and reminded them of their heritage. From Mesopotamia's Epic of Gilgamesh to Homer's Iliad in Greece to Beowulf in Anglo- Saxon England, history and folklore was stylized into stories that were always performed, and their existing text is oftentimes an inadequate representation of the performance that characterized poetry up until the middle ages. The roots of all poetry are intertwined with this ancient oral tradition which put value and emphasis on the performance of the poem, but the performance aspect has been lost somewhere along the way. With the emergence of slam poetry, the art of oral performance from the original poetic tradition is evoked once again. Though many view slam poetry as inferior to what they see as "traditional" poetry, the slam style is actually superior because the performance element ties slam poetry back to the poetic oral tradition and makes the medium more engaging and communally uniting.

1. More about the connections between the history of slam poetry and ancient poetry (Does this need its own paragraph? Or just integrate this connection throughout?)

Slam poetry and ancient poetry surprisingly have quite a bit in common. Both modes of poetry are performed in front of a live and captive audience. Both the ancient Greek poet and the modern slam poet usually recite the poem by heart but at the same time leave room for improvisation. The bard or troubadour would tell a story that was passed down to them from another poet, who had the poem passed down to them as well. This oral tradition was how poetry was retained as well as delivered. The words of the poems recited were always different, never written down until later, and the material was always spoken aloud and even performed as a rhythmically sung song musically accompanied by the four-stringed phorminx (Danek). [Insert more details about ancient Greek poetry]. Slam poetry’s connection to the first kind of poetry in regards to performance legitimizes slam’s form because it shows how performance was originally a key aspect of poetry that was lost but then found again in the more modern forms of poetry such as slam poetry.

2.  How the performance of slam poetry is more interesting than written poetry.

The first poetry in civilization was performed for centuries and centuries in the oral tradition before it became largely silent and printed on a page. In the absence of a storyteller, who was a central part of the community’s entertainment, performance poetry took other forms that varied from the printed page in order to satisfy the human need for interaction with art that is performed. The lyrics of songs can be seen as relatives of performance poetry as well as plays, which display (sometimes) finely written scripts in a theatrical performance. These modes upheld somewhat the human interaction one received when listening to a bard tell a story. However, song lyrics and theatre are often not as well done as actual poetry, and arguably do not feel as intimate or as exciting as slam poetry because there is not as much of a possibility for variance or improve. With ancient poetry, as well as slam poetry, the bard often drew upon a basic plot structure and filled the rest in as he went along, which made for performances that were unique every time. The actress Maggie Smith says of performance: “I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost - it's there and then it's gone.” This same statement can be applied to slam poetry, but even more so, because slam poets often incorporate more improve into their poems than actors do in their parts. It is this very element of uncertainty that requires on the spot sprezzatura, or timely wit, that makes watching these performers infinitely more entertaining than reading the poem on one’s own. It is the human vulnerability of the slam poet that allows for more engagement and interest on the part of the listener. The fact that when the stakes are higher, the entertainment will be better is something that was true when poetry came about and is still true today in poetry’s more modern forms.

3.  How the performance of slam poetry is more communally uniting than written poetry.(may have part of the conclusion in it at this point)

Besides being more entertaining, slam poetry serves the deeper, more valuable function of community unification. Being at a slam poetry concert supposedly feels like you’re at a soccer game, where people are riotous, engaged, and very vocal about their feelings of the poem that was just performed. The slam poetry arena is a place where anyone can participate, if they have the guts. The open participation makes way for the whole community to take part and unites the audience through the power of performance poetry. The feeling of a slam poetry performance can be likened unto a comedy play, where the audience and the actors become one big community by the end, and a feeling of camaraderie seems to connect everyone. Slam poetry is very similar in that it has the power to connect an audience. Just as the Greek and Anglo-Saxon bards were able to connect audiences and people together with stories that enveloped them into their culture, so does slam poetry envelope the audience into one cognizant, human whole. However, the slam poetry audience isn’t a whole that adheres to one culture and history, in fact slam poetry is notorious for poets and audiences made up of dramatically different individuals. Slam poetry is all about true emotions and pride in difference. Many of the videos that pop up when “slam poetry” is searched on you tube feature non-white poets often from poor backgrounds. It is refreshing, really. When poetry became sealed up in anthologies and libraries away from people, performance poetry, including slam poetry, took it down and gave it back to the community in its most meaningful source as a unifying power. As Woods says, slam poetry “has taken poetry out of the classroom and repositioned it firmly in the hands of people.” Poetry is so much more connected to the rawness of the individual in the slam form, which creates an openness that invites the whole community in to become united under a common humanity.