To Charles and Dan re: reading group next week, then in response to Aimee,
Since it's such a hot property all of a sudden, I thought we'd go over the Nealon article in reading group next week. My computer's acting a bit funny and I may not be able to print copies off for 'yal, but let me know in class if you DON"T have it printed or accessible and I'll go do it at the library and put 'em in your boxes. I'm also going to check some of his references, See you in class.
On performance: There are a lot of people my age, University educated people, for whom listening to someone read a poem is just the most excruciating thing imaginable. It doesn't matter if it's good, or of a certain genre, or what have you, if they believe they are listening to a "poem", they shut off. A slightly smaller number of those folks will have the same response to a bit of drama, and a much smaller set will have the same response to a music performance, depending, paradoxically, upon whether or not it "has singing" in it (interestingly, I can't think of any acquaintence my age who doesn't have a collection of music recordings they love to listen to in the privacy of their car or cubicle). I think this is one of the preformance realities that SLAM and related venues (I don't really want to call them genres because think what is happening genre-wise at a poetry SLAM is way too interesting and demands its own analysis). SLAM attempts to speak to a culture that is divorced in some ways from a continuous poetic tradition, in the sense of being able to think of what the poetry of its ancestors was like and what is going on with that tradition today. It is not the poetry of our generation (I don't think any poetry fits that bill in any definitive way for contemporary culture), but rather poetry's response to a non-poem (though not an unpoetic) generation.
I say all this by way of observation of what goes on at SLAMs and what I feel the implicit motivations of performers are. Also from having bombed at so many of them I hardly care to count. What works at a SLAM are poems that embody, and not merely reference or satirize, other media and genres. Where a post-modern poem might take the tone of an voice-over or a comedian, a SLAM poem embodies it, sometimes ironically and sometimes not. In that sense it is like theatre, for it only works by way of full commital to the mode of communication, and can less afford a level of critical remove from which to comment on it (although certainly some theatre has incorporated modes of criticism into its production). If there is irony in a SLAM poem, the irony has to exist in that room, as the affect of the audience, and not as a context within the piece. So sometimes you have white MC's who will referene and poke fun at their race, and sometimes you have those who will refuse to acknowledge it; and the corollary is that sometimes the irony of the latter is present in the audience space, and sometimes it is not, no matter how obvious it might be outside that room.
I didn't want to limit myself to SLAM when I started writing about this, because I've thought a lot about all kinds of performance/poetry questions, but I should probably shut up soon anyways. I think I'll end on a personal note, in keeping with the mores of SLAM. I've gone through periods of getting little satisfaction out of writing to finding it devotionally funfilling. I've gone through periods of craving performance oppurtunities to avoiding them at all costs. The motivations for the two seem different, and one of the only differences I can point to right now is that in performance, the existence of an audience as context for the work creates possibilities not present in the act of writing (which is not to say anything about possibilities for other dimensions to a poem present in the act of reading). The concomitance of these possibilities with the experience of performing is a really precious thing. I've only been able to explore those possibilities with any success as an improvising musician. As a performing poet, I'm kind of a wooden stick (the reason why I'm going to go bomb tonight at the Berkeley SLAM). I do feel the potential of that kind of serendipity in a poetry performance and I wonder if anybody else has had more luck accessing it. So there's my parting question: what kinds of possibilities have folks explored for utilizing what's unique to a performance situation for the poet? What kinds of successes or failures have people encountered? Why do you perform and what good is it, anyways?
Since it's such a hot property all of a sudden, I thought we'd go over the Nealon article in reading group next week. My computer's acting a bit funny and I may not be able to print copies off for 'yal, but let me know in class if you DON"T have it printed or accessible and I'll go do it at the library and put 'em in your boxes. I'm also going to check some of his references, See you in class.
On performance: There are a lot of people my age, University educated people, for whom listening to someone read a poem is just the most excruciating thing imaginable. It doesn't matter if it's good, or of a certain genre, or what have you, if they believe they are listening to a "poem", they shut off. A slightly smaller number of those folks will have the same response to a bit of drama, and a much smaller set will have the same response to a music performance, depending, paradoxically, upon whether or not it "has singing" in it (interestingly, I can't think of any acquaintence my age who doesn't have a collection of music recordings they love to listen to in the privacy of their car or cubicle). I think this is one of the preformance realities that SLAM and related venues (I don't really want to call them genres because think what is happening genre-wise at a poetry SLAM is way too interesting and demands its own analysis). SLAM attempts to speak to a culture that is divorced in some ways from a continuous poetic tradition, in the sense of being able to think of what the poetry of its ancestors was like and what is going on with that tradition today. It is not the poetry of our generation (I don't think any poetry fits that bill in any definitive way for contemporary culture), but rather poetry's response to a non-poem (though not an unpoetic) generation.
I say all this by way of observation of what goes on at SLAMs and what I feel the implicit motivations of performers are. Also from having bombed at so many of them I hardly care to count. What works at a SLAM are poems that embody, and not merely reference or satirize, other media and genres. Where a post-modern poem might take the tone of an voice-over or a comedian, a SLAM poem embodies it, sometimes ironically and sometimes not. In that sense it is like theatre, for it only works by way of full commital to the mode of communication, and can less afford a level of critical remove from which to comment on it (although certainly some theatre has incorporated modes of criticism into its production). If there is irony in a SLAM poem, the irony has to exist in that room, as the affect of the audience, and not as a context within the piece. So sometimes you have white MC's who will referene and poke fun at their race, and sometimes you have those who will refuse to acknowledge it; and the corollary is that sometimes the irony of the latter is present in the audience space, and sometimes it is not, no matter how obvious it might be outside that room.
I didn't want to limit myself to SLAM when I started writing about this, because I've thought a lot about all kinds of performance/poetry questions, but I should probably shut up soon anyways. I think I'll end on a personal note, in keeping with the mores of SLAM. I've gone through periods of getting little satisfaction out of writing to finding it devotionally funfilling. I've gone through periods of craving performance oppurtunities to avoiding them at all costs. The motivations for the two seem different, and one of the only differences I can point to right now is that in performance, the existence of an audience as context for the work creates possibilities not present in the act of writing (which is not to say anything about possibilities for other dimensions to a poem present in the act of reading). The concomitance of these possibilities with the experience of performing is a really precious thing. I've only been able to explore those possibilities with any success as an improvising musician. As a performing poet, I'm kind of a wooden stick (the reason why I'm going to go bomb tonight at the Berkeley SLAM). I do feel the potential of that kind of serendipity in a poetry performance and I wonder if anybody else has had more luck accessing it. So there's my parting question: what kinds of possibilities have folks explored for utilizing what's unique to a performance situation for the poet? What kinds of successes or failures have people encountered? Why do you perform and what good is it, anyways?
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