My Paper: A Memoir

I feel like my essay really relates to Drake's rap song that repeats: "We started from the bottom now we here" a billion times. This is because at the beginning of the process I had no idea where I was going to go (like all beginnings I guess), but I knew that I wanted to do something with slam poetry because I was really intrigued by it. My first post regarding my paper entitled "Let's Rewind to My Love for Slam Poetry," announces my official decision to write on slam poetry and also talks about my first social interaction on my essay through Facebook. For my social assignment, I posted a status of my tentative thesis and asked for people's opinions. I wasn't expecting a lot, but a random acquaintance from high school commented who is studying drama and poetry (including slam poetry) at NYU and was very knowledgeable and helpful. He told me his favorite slam poets and the variety of styles within performance poetry of which slam poetry is only one of many. I became interested in performance poetry at large for awhile and in my second post, Claims about Slam Poetry, I

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.

Let's Rewind to My Love for Slam Poetry



I am currently in the process of revising and refining my thesis statement, but I definitely know my topic at least! After looking through all my old posts and seeing which ones revved up my interest the most, I found that I was most intrigued by the one I did about slam poetry. I started to think about the powerful and emotional effect slam poetry has over me and wondered if anyone else felt the same way. I also wondered if people prefered this medium of poetry over merely reading the poetical text. After some revision I posted this to my facebook page:

"Poetry was originally part of an oral tradition which put value and emphasis on the performance of the poem. In the slam poetry genre, the art of performance is once again united with the art of writing poetical text. Is this style of poetr...y more exciting/appealing than poetry that is merely read? Do you think poetry is supposed to be performed? What do you think about it!? (this is for a class J) Here is an example of slam poetry if you haven’t seen it before: Rives "Levitate". "

I feel kindof like a weakling at having to tell everyone that the post was for class, but I never post statuses on facebook, and those that follow me might've thought that it was weird (stupid I know), but I included a smiley face next to my admittance which made it all ok (?) haha. Anyway, after I posted that some people that I actually talk to commented and gave me some good ideas. Then later on, there was this random kid from my highschool that  commented who is studying performance poetry and acting at NYU and had some interesting insights and information. He told me to ask him any questions that I had! So cool! So I would say it was a very successful post and helped me develop my ideas.

If you guys feel so inclined, you can comment on what I posted on facebook too! What do you guys think about slam poetry? Do you like it more than just reading poetry? Do you agree or disagree that poetry is meant to be performed?