My Not Quite Finalized Final Draft

 

Here's a more polished draft of my essay tentatively titled The Power of Slam Poetry (which is still in progress). I am always open to suggestions, so let me know what you think, thank you!

“The death of art” is what the literary critic Harold Bloom in The Paris Review labeled slam poetry. He saw this fledgling form as primarily “rant and nonsense.” 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, however the performance aspect  of this tradition 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.

Slam poetry and ancient poetry, despite being on the opposite book-ends of time, have a lot in common. Both modes of poetry are performed in front of a live and captive audience and 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 and delivered. The words of the poems recited were always different and each performance was a unique event, much like slam poetry and theatre, where the performer takes into account the energy of the crowd and caters to the different circumstances each performance delivers. Slam poetry even relates to ancient Greek poetry in a musical sense. Greek poetry was usually performed as a rhythmically sung song which was musically accompanied by the four-stringed phorminx (Danek). The songs the poet sang along to were not melodic, but were there to establish a rhythmic style that was easier to listen to. Many slam poets connect directly back to this exact mode of performance alongside musical accompaniment. Some John G. Rives’ poems include a live band, like his piece“Sellout.” While Rives recites his poem, the band sometimes stops and starts at certain parts to accent certain phrases and at other times keeps a steady rhythm, like what the phorminx did in ancient Greek poetry. Slam poetry’s strong connections to the original style of poetry in regards to oral performance legitimizes slam’s form and grounds it in history.

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. Poetry spilled into the lyrics of songs and made its way into plays, which display finely written scripts that can be akin to poetry paired with a theatrical performance. These modes somewhat upheld the human interaction one received when listening to a bard recite poetry that was lost when the form of poetry went silent. 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 with 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.It is this uniqueness, this electric uncertainty that is exhilarating and engaging. The actress Maggie Smith describes this magic 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, while referring to theatre, can be applied to slam poetry even more so due to the fact that 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. Take Shake the Dust by Anis Mojgani, for example. Being a fairly popular slam poem, there are are multiple versions of the same poem as performed in a couple different venues. After watching a few different videos of this same poem, it becomes clear that Mojgani’s performance changes according to the reactions and the feeling of his audience. Sometimes his opening line “This is for the fat girls” elicits a cacophony of laughter, other times an uncomfortable chuckle. The slam poem is a living and breathing thing that fluctuates, and that is what makes it infinitely engaging. When compared to reading of the poem on a page, the live performance of a slam poem conveys the emotion and concept of the poem clearly and strongly. Communicating emotion is something that slam poetry does particularly well and better than most mediums because it is less structured and rigid and more like a personal diary entry. The emotions of the slam poet are laid out bare in front of the audience, and slam poets often speak about real experiences from their own lives. 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.

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 and opinions of the poetry being 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, like a comedy play, 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. Take the poet Aja Monet, a 19-year-old from Harlem who speaks from the heart of the harshness in poverty-stricken urbanity in her poem What I’ve Learned. She speaks frankly about alcohol and insanity and sex and captures the sadness and joy and madness of her entire life in a beautiful and very raw way. She shows how slam poetry returns poetry to real life. 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.

After delving into the engaging and unifying elements unique to slam poetry and returning back the beginning critique of Bloom’s that slam poetry is “the death of art,” it appears that slam poetry is actually the revival of art in so many ways. For one thing, the performance aspect of slam revives the original oral tradition of poetry that was used for centuries and centuries. This form leaves room for improvisation and opens the performance up to chance—it is a riskier style, which creates an increased sense of interest and excitement. Slam poetry also benefits from the human connection that takes place during slam competitions. Slam poetry is not an isolated event but rather an extremely social one which brings people together and creates emotional connection with the powerful messages the slam poet. Perhaps slam poetry does not have impeccable iambic pentameter, and maybe it doesn’t properly entreat the muses, but it does entreat the audience and it does change and unite the audience under one common humanity. Even if the poetry is not perfect, it simulates life in its realness. Slam poetry is a medium that can change the world through the deep power of human connection.