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The following essay was originally intended for American Poetry Review, or some comparable organ of the American Poetry Establishment. But before I had much chance to offer the article around, Sourcebooks expressed an interest in it for “The Spoken Word Revolution Redux.” Because that volume would include numerous examples of the best Spoken Word poetry, the snippets presented here would have been redundant, so the version that appears in that book is abbreviated, in that and a few other respects. This present version is the full essay as it was originally conceived. All of the poets represented here have given their permission.
Sometimes my wife Carol will call my attention to a newspaper paragraph about a famous poet who has died in another country. She’ll read me a sentence about people weeping in the tavernas, reciting the poet’s work from memory. And she’ll ask me why this never happens in the United States.
* * *
For most of the twentieth century, the term “American Poetry” came inexorably to refer to a branch of literature that Dana Gioia describes as “typographic,” to the exclusion of the auditory. The last twenty years, on the other hand, have seen a resurgence of oral poetry from several directions. Gioia cites cowboy poetry, slam poetry, rap, and hip hop as disparate elements in a grass-roots movement subsumed under the more general term “Spoken Word.” This is not really a new movement at all, more a spontaneous reclaiming of the ground that “typographic” poetry has willingly abandoned.
* * *
Genuinely new artistic developments...tend to move dialectically from the margins of established culture rather than smoothly from the central consensus. —Dana Gioia, “Disappearing Ink,” The Hudson Review, Spring, 2003
The first time anyone ever interviewed me about poetry I said, “American Poetry is like some ritzy academic town, like maybe Hanover, New Hampshire; the kind of town where if you work there, you can’t afford to live there. The Spoken Word Movement is a carnival that sets up shop on the outskirts of that town. The poetry slam is the freak show in that carnival, where people pay to stare at mutants. But evolution happens by mutation.”
In that interview I also used the term “popular poetry,” and I likened its resurgence to the emergence of jazz in the last century. I testified to “a hunger out there for the particular delights of the spoken word.”
Without doubt the most surprising and significant development in recent American poetry has been the wide-scale and unexpected reemergence of popular poetry —Dana Gioia, ibidem
If we’re going to talk about “popular poetry,” it behooves us to offer a few samples. Snippets will be scattered throughout this article without further introduction, much the way that a Robert Ludlum tosses in an inexplicable episode of graphic violence anytime he feels his story dragging.
The passages that I have chosen come from some of the best Spoken Word poets in the country. If you haven’t heard of these poets, it’s not because you’re not knowledgeable or they’re not successful; it’s because they’ve been working in a parallel universe of which the typographic side of American Poetry has been blithely unaware, and to which only a few scattered wormholes presently exist.
If you are not familiar with Spoken Word, bear in mind as you read that probably all of these poems were written with an eye toward performance. You ask how that might affect your approach to this material. I answer with this anecdotal fragment: I once received a rejection from an editor who wrote, “Not what we’re interested in at all—although they do seem to work better when I sort of listen to them in my head.” Prior to that, I had not been aware that there was any Other Way to read a poem. If you typically practice some Other Way, I suggest that you set it aside as you read these passages, and instead, “sort of listen to them in your head.”
from Building Nicole’s Mama, by Patricia Smith
I am astounded at their mouthful names— Lakinishia, Fumilayo, Chevellanie, Delayo— their ragged rebellions and lip-glossed pouts, and all those pants drooped as drapery. I rejoice when they kiss my face, whisper wet and urgent in my ear, make me their obsession because I have brought them poetry. They shout me raw, bruise my wrists with pulling and brashly claim me as mama as they cradle my head in their little laps, waiting for new words to grow in my mouth. You. You. You. Angry, jubilant, weeping writers—we are all saviors, reluctant Hosannas in the limelight, but you knew that, didn’t you? Then let us bless this sixth grade class, 40 nappy heads, 40 cracking voices, and all of them raise their hands when I ask. They have all seen the Reaper, grim in his heavy robe, pushing the button for the dead project elevator, begging for a break at the corner pawn shop, cackling wildly in the back pew of the Baptist church. I ask the death question and forty fists punch the air, me! me!
* * *
In 2004, The Worcester Review invited me to write an article about the differences between writing for the page and writing for a poetry slam. This present essay is more about Spoken Word and open mikes in general than about poetry slams, but slam will come up a lot, because slam is an extreme, and attitudes are most clearly visible when observed under extreme conditions; and also because almost every slam poem begins its public life as a Spoken Word piece being read from a page at an open mike.
Talking about slams, Gioia says,
The poems are typically performed in competition and judged by the audience or a representative jury—an arrangement that both Sophocles and Pindar would find quite natural but which would be as unusual at an academic poetry festival as a bathing-suit competition. —Dana Gioia, ibidem
I had occasion to send a pre-publication version of The Worcester Review article to Donald Hall and he wrote back to disagree with virtually every assertion I had made. That was the beginning of what to me has been a fascinating correspondence.
In a subsequent column by Don in American Poetry Review, I came to this passage:
“I have a slammer friend with whom I write long letters of combat. He writes me an argument which he thinks will be a winner. He bets me that I cannot find a poem printed in Poetry or The New Yorker which, read aloud at a slam, will win first prize. I could not agree with him more. To me, the notion of the argument reveals its poverty. What the hell do I care, considering a poem's virtue, about the votes of a bunch of cheerful self-chosen enthusiasts in a bar?”
I immediately dashed off a note to Don that began, “It would have killed you to say, ‘I have a slammer friend named Jack McCarthy?’” At subsequent readings, I had fun telling the story, reading the APR quote, and ending, “So you’re not looking at just any poet here. You’re looking at a poet who has had his best ideas refuted by an American icon in a major American journal.”
One of my purposes in this present essay is to exhort our erstwhile Poet Laureate to speak for the whole of the American Poetry community, which includes Spoken Word, and not just for the variously defined segment generally referred to as the “American Poetry Establishment.”
(From this point forward I shall use the abbreviation “APE” to refer to The American Poetry Establishment, which I perceive as a shadowy entity rather like Keyser Soze in the film “The Usual Suspects:” everybody involved is sure that it exists, that it isn’t good, and that it isn’t us.)
Granted, in judging the merits of a poem, it’s not inappropriate to give more weight to the opinion of the connoisseur than, say, the bartender; but imagine a poem that appealed to both the connoisseur and the bartender. All else being equal, wouldn’t that be a greater accomplishment than a poem that appealed only to the connoisseur? Frequently, APE’s answer to that question seems to be, “No; it would make it a lesser accomplishment.”
Getting back to Carol’s question: as an old teacher, I’ve learned that it’s always best to answer a difficult question with another question. In this instance, the question I’ll answer Carol with is Donald Hall’s: “What the hell do I care... about... the votes of a bunch of self-chosen enthusiasts in a bar?”
The reason there is no weeping in American taverns when a poet dies is that for about a century, the APE has not cared about the opinion of the “people in the taverns.” (I leave it for scholars to discuss exactly when the divorce decree became final; as a jumping-off place for their discussion, however, I might suggest the moment, after publication of “The Waste Land,” when William Carlos Williams wrote in his journal, “The idiot! He has given poetry back to the Academy.”)
from T.S Eliot’s Lost Hip Hop Poem, by Jeremy Richards
Bring the bass.
Straight out of Missouri, Harvard University in your face. I’ve got ladies in waiting all over the place, singing each to each; do I dare to eat a peach?
You’re damn right I’ll eat a peach. Who shall stop me, with my hip hop non-stop, clippity clop, clippity clop I hear the horses carrying the wassailers I’m ready to impale their ears with my verse rolling off my parched tongue the way trousers roll off my ankles.
I get it done better than John Donne, Pound for pound, like Ezra Pound, No other literati around can confound the post-Victorian quickness I bring to the microphone, though I shall die alone.
But not before I rock the house.
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One hundred years ago in America, there was also a thriving tradition of popular poetry. A huge audience existed for verse who read it in newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, books and almanacs. —Dana Gioia, ibidem
The reason that American poems are not recited in American taverns is that for the better part of a century, the poems of the APE have not been made to be recited; not in the taverns, nor anywhere else for that matter. How many of their own poems have they bothered to memorize? And why should they, if a poem’s only meaningful existence is on the page?
In the paragraph in the APR column before he mentioned his “slammer friend,” Donald Hall wrote,
“I've been to the Nuyorican and other castles of slam, and I have laughed and applauded—but I was never responding to poems. I heard no line breaks; I heard only thrust and energy. I heard no vowel and consonant play, only drive and good timing and jokes or outrage. In print the work remains inert. Nothing in the marks on the page, those jagged lines on the right, carries the vigor performance supplies.”
I think his judgment offers very serious grounds for appeal. First, even in the “castles of slam,” competition is first come, first served. As at any open mike, you might hear something brilliant, but on any given night, some of the poets will probably be trying out stuff they wrote that same morning. (Patricia Smith once beat me with poems she had written at the bar during the open mike.)
from Help Wanted, by Shane Koyczan
grandma told me young man you can't be concerned with whatever it is they've got the only reason they think they're beautiful is the same reason they think you're not
and young man you have beauty beyond measure you're a treasure entrenched in this earth you can't let strangers determine your worth rise and shine
so I rose and I shone put on my shoes and I was gone
see grandma bought me my first phone she said young man from time to time I too need to smile would you do me a favor and keep me on speed dial
yes grandma…I will and still to this day I can call her up and hear her say it's a game you play you win you play you lose you play
* * *
At any open slam or open mike, you cannot expect to see the Super Bowl of Poetry; what you’re watching is usually more like an exhibition game in the sweltering heat of the dog days of August; half the players will be cut before the season starts. There does not exist any one forum where all the poets bring their best work at the same time. Judging Spoken Word as a whole on the basis of one or two visits to these venues is like pronouncing the death of page poetry on the basis of a collection of first drafts from random workshops.
But what I most object to in Don’s paragraph is one word in the clause, “I was never responding to poems” [italics mine]. Clearly, that contention rests on the perception that what is apprehended in performance is something other than a “poem,” that a “poem” is a typographic entity that exists on the page and nowhere else, and that in being read or recited for an audience, it is transmuted into a different kind of entity (once you add vermouth to the gin, it isn’t gin any more).
In that perception, it seems to me that Donald Hall has spoken not for the whole American Poetry Community, but only for the typographic segment of it, the APE, whose poems are never recited in the taverns because they were never made to be recited anywhere at all.
When did the APE accord itself the right to dismiss all other choices as something other than poetry? When did we lose the right to prepare a text as script for a performance, and call that performance “poetry?” And what new name shall we give to the scrap heap to which several millennia of oral tradition have been relegated?
from naming and other Christian things, by Roger Bonair-Agard
...I cannot summon the sympathy for Mary Magdalene cannot help her weep tears of distress only wish I could retroactivate a name change for her show her my grandmother carrying 30 pound sacks of coffee dragging her swollen leg behind her rising from her deathbed to fight her daughter’s battles
One day if I am worthy of her expectations I will become a man worth crucifying and all her beatings her lessons her Puritanism and super-human strength will have taught me that surrender is not an option
On that day I expect to see standing at the foot of whatever urban cross they fashion all five-foot-ten of Lena pointing one huge gnarled finger at me the shining authority of her eyes coming from the black forest of her flesh the white electricity of her hair lips trembling in rage —Get down off that thing boy and fight! —What kind of man do you intend to become?
* * *
I sent Donald Hall an early draft of this essay and in his reply he went into some detail on the subject of sound in poetry. I was left feeling that I had overly simplified his stance. In fairness, and for its intrinsic value, I quote that passage here.
There is one matter where we disagree about what I think I am doing—though I’m not asking you to change a word in your article. I think that everything I do with a poem is dedicated toward its out-loud existence. And when I read a poem silently, to myself, I hear every bit of it. It is not always good hearing, and I often stop reading a poem because it doesn’t make a good noise in my head.
When I read the Boston Globe I do not hear the prose. When I read Henry James I hear every syllable... there is a self-adjusting machine that knows when to pronounce the words and when to let them lie flat on the page as information.
But every time I alter a linebreak, and often when I change a noun or a verb, I am doing it for the sound it makes. I don’t care whether anybody reads it aloud or not, the sound is still there. Linebreaks and punctuation are a crude kind of musical notation for the sound of a poem. They are not there just to be looked at, and the sound is the first thing.
(I think of one exception...a long poem called “Baseball” ...)
But it is what I concentrate on, normally, and why I need to revise over and over again, because I can make it sound better.
As I speak of sound in a poem, I speak of something separate from performance. Performance can add things to poems—expression, sarcasm and rage and irony and mockery, for instance—which are not there in the brutal plain sound of the words. I do this performing sometimes when I read aloud, as in “To A Waterfowl” which is on the CD. But performative sound is not the same as raw sound, but something added on top of it... and it is the raw sound that I tend to miss in slammers.
* * *
A few years ago I attended a reading by Charles Simic and Mark Doty. During the question period they were asked how it made them feel to hear someone else read one of their poems. They both said they hated it, because the other person never reads it right.
I have since heard many poets express the same sentiment about hearing their work read by others. I maintain that any poet who says that is acknowledging 1) that in the mind of the poet there can be a Right Way to read a particular poem, and 2) that it can be difficult and perhaps impossible to put enough cues on the page to allow a reader to arrive at that Right Way.
I contend that when poets acknowledge those things, they are admitting, however involuntarily, the primacy of the performed poem over the typographic entity. And I grant that Simic and Doty would probably deny acknowledging any such thing. And the APE would disown them if they did acknowledge it.
Donald Hall too would probably fight me on this contention. But I find it interesting that Don’s new book includes a CD, and that in his first utterance as Laureate-elect, one of the things he talked about was getting more poetry on the radio.
* * *
APE, this article is not a declaration of war on you. No one is going to argue that “our poetry”—a poetry of thrust and energy, good timing, jokes, outrage and vigor—is better than “your poetry” of brilliantly spotted line breaks, vowel and consonant play. My purpose here is to suggest that American Poetry might be big enough to include both kinds. This is a petition asking you to consider expanding the limits of your definition of poetry to include work that values “thrust and energy, good timing, jokes, outrage and vigor” over “line breaks and vowel and consonant play.” Dear old APE, do you really believe that works that reflect those choices are disqualified from the name “Poem?” Do you believe that future generations will endorse their disqualification?
We just want to join the party. We’re willing to sit below the salt for a while, but we think we should have a place at the table.
from blackbirds, by Ryler Dustin
If I ever decided to believe in angels I’d believe in street wanderers watching us from alleys and the sides of greasy dumpsters, hanging on gutters, drinking out of paper bags on rooftops, muttering in the shadows about human struggles, unanswered prayers, the demons snickering between our shoulder blades.
They’d communicate with each other through the curling graffiti that most of us assume is the work of some gang but no one can really understand.
* * *
My vision of the future of American poetry is already coming to pass. Spoken Word poets, dear APE, are coming to your colleges, routinely being paid $1500-2500 by your Student Affairs Committee for a one-hour show, and departing the same night for the next stop on their tours. (I tell you this because you may not be aware of it; usually, nobody from the English faculty comes to these shows.)
Meanwhile, graduates of your MFA programs are submitting their poems to little magazines published by other graduates of your MFA programs, magazines where, if they ever do get published, those poems might be read by fifteen or twenty people tops, while I’m writing a new poem in the morning and sometimes reading it the same night to—well, to more people than that. Closet poets are entering MFA programs and being graduated without learning anything about performance. Some of them will go back into the closet, the only discernible reward for their investment: a coupon book for the monthly college loan payments they’ll be making for the rest of their lives. I believe that the Spoken Word movement is going to bring about a new Golden Age of American Poetry. It will happen with you or without you. It will be better for everyone if it happens with your active assistance.
from The Jeweler’s Revenge, by Simone Beaubien
The jeweler’s revenge:
a bracelet that fits so perfectly
I can’t fasten it
by myself.
It’s just jewelry, it doesn’t mean anything
but every time I wear it, I remember:
the golden suns of Greece
the jeweler’s eyes like greedy diamonds, his hair a wine-dark sea
and how I laughed, but didn’t say anything.
That was when I didn’t know there was something to be said,
but I’m saying it now:
America, I still love you
and I won’t leave you.
Call me a fool, but I still believe you can change.
I’m not asking you to commit, I just really think
you should stop chasing those rich old men
maybe seek an alternative lifestyle.
* * *
Up to this point, APE, everything I’ve said has been arguing the case that you need us, and you do. You need our vigor, and I suspect that you would not say no to a share of our audience. But we need you too. In a recent eight-page publication from Dartmouth, there was an article on page 7 about “independent” poetry projects, which are in fact assiduously supervised. One of the students is quoted as saying, “My professors’ comments are so interesting. Something so small as a line break changes a whole poem. They go for every word. My poems are short but their marks are endless.” (Lest I get a letter beginning, “It would have killed you...?”, the student’s name is Reiko Harigaya.)
As much as you need our vigor; we need your rigor. Can’t we find a common ground?
And finally: Hey, Carol: American poems are being recited in the taverns, but not mournfully. We, the outliers of American Poetry, the marginalized migrant workers in the fields of Spoken Word, are performing them, with “thrust and energy, good timing, jokes, outrage and vigor”—joyfully!!
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