Annual Thoughts On Teams And Slam

​The best week of features I've seen in Boston in five years should be enough to balance the worst fucken non-NPS slam I've ever been a part of.

Kevin Mahoney at The Cantab Lounge put on an absolutely brilliant piece of performance art involving audience interaction (and not in that "When I say poetry, you say slam" lameass way), cross-dressing, and even some damn fine poetry. Behind the stage was a poster for his new book "Serendipity is a Son of a Bitch". Every time he did a poem that didn't go over well with the audience, or something even more creepy than his usual fare, one of his friends would come up and change the price of the book. It started at 19.95, and near the end of his set, it was all the way down to 6.95, when he stripped out of his usual accountant suit, revealing a flowery sun dress. At this point, one of his friends took the stage, glowered at him, and marked the book down to sixty-nine cents. Brilliant. I had the unenviable position of sitting next to his mother. Why is this unenviable? Kevin has a poem that he performed during his feature about his mother approaching him wearing nothing but combat boots and offering him sex. I guess if you raised Kevin, that sort of thing doesn't surprise you, but it made me uneasy.

Sunday at The Lizard Lounge, delisile was a last-minute fill in for Mahogany Brown, who broke her ankle recently. delisile did an amazing story type feature, where she weaved her non-slam poems into a multi-voiced piece about a painter who falls in love with a dream. The story was narrated by special guest, Oz. A-fucken-mazing, especially given that it was a last minute project that they threw together in a week.

I'm tempted to write that all the really good people in Boston, are getting away from slam. But there's still your mom_star, your Eric Hagen, your Alice, but they're not doing as well as they should be. 

Last night, Afro Dysiac won the slam, and I dislike his Saul Williams derivative crap almost as much as I dislike Art's "I'm a better poet than God" shit. But that's what Lizard Lounge audiences want. Sure, I win there all the time, but only when I do "Hacks" or "Truth is a Revolution" or "Bad Sodomy". When I attempt to do actual poetry, it tanks.

This is not to say the Lizard Lounge should like my poetry. I've heard friends mention that they've "lost their faith in the Boston scene" because the lowly audiences of Boston don't like their high and mighty art. I think that's a load of shit. If an audience doesn't like your work, it's either because you suck or because you're going after the wrong audience. That's what's disappointing me, what I do is no longer relevant to slam audiences. So why should I waste their time performing new stuff that they won't enjoy, or worse, giving subpar performances of slam pieces that I no longer enjoy doing?

This is why I won't be trying to make The Cantab Team this year. I'll do three new poems in the semifinals, and likely be knocked out. Even if I don't get knocked out, I plan on hosting, not participating in, the finals.

As for the Lizard? I won't make it. Last night's audience reminded me that I've never won a slam at The Lizard that involved a black poet with political pieces. Never. And with Chris Johnson (who is amazing this year, he's come a long way from "I can slam, but why" and "I fuck chicks with my poetry"), Marlon Carey (who's still the same old Marlon), Afro Dysiac, Art, and Ross qualified already, I don't stand a chance. And frankly, I won't be on a team if I don't like the poetry of the other team members? What's the point? 

Also, no women have won a LL slam this year. Of course, neither Iyeoka nor delisile have slammed, but a couple of weeks ago, mom_star and diana4poetry got absolutely robbed by Hassan (you may know him, he only has three poems, and he's been doing them for at least eight years: "I, Carnivore", "Ciao, Ciao Baby" and the other one that's not as good as those two).

Blah.
Current Mood:  apathetic
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Mon, Mar. 28th, 2005 02:16 pm (local)
johnpowersADAM YOU ARE EVERYTHING THAT IS WRONG WITH SLAM!!!!

GAH BLARPGIFINUDITIDDLE! %()R#&*)

Just kidding.

"If an audience doesn't like your work, it's either because you suck or because you're going after the wrong audience."

I think this is a perfect way of putting it and I agree. I wish I were a witness to the great poetry you saw. I am jealous and unmotivated lately to search out good work. I'll get there.
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Mon, Mar. 28th, 2005 02:22 pm (local)
radioactiveartOr, you're ahead of them.

This happens pretty rarely.
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Mon, Mar. 28th, 2005 02:40 pm (local)
johnpowersTrue true. But doesn't being ahead of your audience mean they are the wrong audience for you at that moment in time? But then that brings the question of what if you're ahead of ALL of the audiences? Gah.
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Mon, Mar. 28th, 2005 02:47 pm (local)
radioactiveartGah, indeed.
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Mon, Mar. 28th, 2005 03:53 pm (local)
akamuuThe only time I can think of where a poet was truly ahead of a slam audience was when George McKibbens was in Boston. We gave him no love because his poetry seemed mean and judgmental. The sort of poetry most of us are writing now, and doing well with.
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Mon, Mar. 28th, 2005 02:43 pm (local)
stefan11"I guess if you raised Kevin, that sort of thing doesn't surprise you, but it made me uneasy."

Did you sense she was uncomfortable? ~curious

I would suggest -- try to make the team with the new stuff.
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Mon, Mar. 28th, 2005 03:48 pm (local)
akamuuShe was definitely uncomfortable. Lots of drinking. Though, maybe she's just a drunk. Who am I to judge?

As for going out for the team, it's entirely possible that I will make the team with new stuff. You never know what the judges are going to feel on a given night. But I have no desire to be the bitter, judgmental guy who goes to Nationals, and spends the entire time miserably picking apart the bad poetry that will inevitably make it to the finals. I did that last time, and I'm not proud of that. 

For me, I think it's better to take time off from slam. If I end up writing the sort of thing that I think will go over well, I'll come back to it. Or if I decide I miss the community. To go nationals, there shold be some sort of desire to spend time enjoying the show, otherwise you're just masturbating on a stage where the audience doesn't want to watch your stuff.

At iWPS, a poet who I sort of like, told me he wasn't having a good time because he didn't make the finals stage. When I asked, "Well, apart from that, are you having a good time?" He said "No. I come here to win. If I don't win, I don't have a good time." I have never and will never go, just because I want to win. I go to enjoy myself, and if I'm not enjoying the poetry, I should just stay home and communicate with my slam friends via Livejournal, and let someone else go to Albuquerque.
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Mon, Mar. 28th, 2005 03:55 pm (local)
stefan11I understand, I really see your point of view. Last year I did not try out for our team and I had a blast in SL.

I do not know I'll try for the team this year, maybe I will just travel for kicks, maybe I'll help with coaching.

I used yo be more idealistic about the slam. I think these days I am more realistic, and I have more fun. 'hope to see you in ABQ.
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Mon, Mar. 28th, 2005 02:44 pm (local)
sashashsure, but don't you think we have a responsibility as poets (NOT as entertainers, mind), at some level, to teach? to elevate people's expectations? one of the reasons i feel so bad leaving the boston scene is the old 'you can't change it by leaving it' philosophy.

i'll grant you that you can't just expect them to come with you, but c'mon. there IS work that is more challenging than other work. this is not to excuse the poet from her responsibility to clear communication. but you said it yourself: do "actual" poetry at the lizard, and it tanks. what is "actual" poetry supposed to be, then, if not more challenging in some way than the "fake" stuff we're all bitching about?

what i'm saying is this: if the poets are not willing to take on the task of pushing their home audiences' taste and openness forward, then what are we doing? to me, it's the same question of craft: to balance experimentation against accessibility. kwesi davis does it. mom_star does it. in a lot of ways, patricia smith does it. good lord, mstegosaurus does it. bernard dolan, postmaudlin, monkeypudding, buddy wakefield... the list goes on.

savvy?
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Mon, Mar. 28th, 2005 02:50 pm (local)
radioactiveartTo teach? No.

My responsibility is to write and deliver the best work I can do. 

I like connecting with the audience, but communication isn't only through accessible channels; sometimes, presence and sheer repetition of a style or trope will create the accessibility.

If my audience isn't there, sometimes my job is to create it.
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Mon, Mar. 28th, 2005 03:03 pm (local)
sashash: rightthis is a better articulation of what i mean to say.
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Mon, Mar. 28th, 2005 03:29 pm (local)
myainselI think my responsibility as an artist is to be true to my art. My responsibility as a socially aware person is speak truth & to try to bring some of what I see to light in a way that may help people consider what I believe are important ideas about politics, culture, or philosophy. My responsibility as an entertainer is to try and entertain.

These are seperate roles that intertwine and often conflict with one another.

There are as many objectives for art as there are artists, and I find it counterproductive to generalize most of the time. There's room for everyone under the tent.

When I write, I try to be accessible because I hate obscurity for the sake of obscurity. However, what I write now is informed by many years of background in poetry and requires a level of familiarity and attention that's not what most slam is designed for--which is a first-time poetry audience. 

This is not to denegrate poets whose work adapts well to slam. Some musicians have a gift for crafting pop songs with substance & bringing the audience to them. Some only appeal to a few. My love of Stravinsky doesn't interfere with my love of Elvis Costello or Pamela Means. 

I don't care what box it's in as long as it's good and I hold pop-music & classical-music artists in equal regard for mastering their chosen forms.

For me personally, this means that what I'm writing right now is pretty dense and perhaps a little hard to grasp if you're not with me from the beginning and willing to go where I'm going--but hopefully it pays off in depth. 

I spend too much time writing these days to devote much time to memorization and blocking and I don't really feel bad about it because I want the audience to put the writing first, not the theatrical aspect. 

Not everyone will like what I do. Dream Corridor will bomb in a slam and get fours. These reactions are fine. It doesn't mean that I feel slighted or that I need to change my writing to win that audience back. There's nothing wrong with that audience or my writing, we just want different things.
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Mon, Mar. 28th, 2005 04:04 pm (local)
akamuuApart from two weeks in April of 2000, Kwesi's envelope pushing was laughed at or ignored by all of the poets in Boston. If he was lucky, he got 7s on nights when Tommy Mendez, Michael Brown, the Okoawos, Simone, and I were getting 9s. His making the 2000 team was a beautiful fluke brought on by the fact that Michael chose slam poets as judges: Sean Shea, Simone Beaubien, Kim Jordan, Seth Jarvis, Leah Gardener. If the judges had been random people, that team would have been Oz, Iyeoka, Corrina, and Tommy.

Corrina being the only real envelope pusher of the group.

As for the rest of the list, I agree that all those names are full of impressive writers who push the boundaries of slam. Do they all do it with poetry? Depends on your opinion. You could easily argue that Patricia Smith writes great monologues. If you've ever tried to read Buddy's material on page, it sucks. It's fucken brilliant performance art, but it's not poetry.

Even given that, do you know how many years Buddy tried to make the Seattle team, and failed? Not when he was young and not that talented, but when he was writing groundbreaking performance art like "Pretend", he couldn't even make the team. He had to compete as an indy for the NPS in his own state. And even though he got lots of love for doing "Pretend" on the finals stage, he didn't make it there as a competitor, he was part of the preshow.

The only poet I've seen who's pushed the performance and poetry envelopes and managed to stay successful is mstegosaurus. And I get the impression that he's as jaded as I am these days.

Another thought: Pushing the envelope and staying true to your style until the slam audience comes to you is fine and dandy when you're new to an area. But I've been on six slam teams, four of them here in Boston. If they're not going to acclimate to my style now, then they're probably not going to, ever.
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Mon, Mar. 28th, 2005 04:37 pm (local)
hot_rod_poet: Ramble warning...Thoughts from throughout the thread, in no good order:

The Boston crowds are pretty acclimated to your style, as much as any whoever-walks-in-the-door crowd can be. I don't think it's any stretch to say that you've been more successful at winning or placing well than anybody else in Boston this year. Even reading out of your notebook last month at Cantab, you were right there against some really good material from Dawn.

The slam crowd at Lizard often likes to be told how think. I've always said of my poetry that it's overly didactic and that you have to be pretty drunk to NOT get it. My success in some venues as a result of that unfortunately lulls me into complacency, and I don't push my craft as much as I should. You know I try to write on unique topics, but that doesn't mean I push unique form or style. I'm writing one piece for finals rounds that is really different. Didactic, but with a style/oratory gimmick I've never heard anybody use before. It'll either kill, or fall too far outside the accepted norm-of-the-night and get killed. I'm not too worried about reading it though- I'm fine with reading material that the crowd might not enjoy. I'm cocky like that. On the rare occasions that I slammed this winter, it was with shit I wrote that day, or during the open, or had half-memorized. I'm ok with losing, and I'll always have a good time doing it, as long as I'm with friends or getting drunk with strangers while doing it.

I don't know which team to try hard for. If you'd asked me six months ago (and why would you, i know- it's rhetorical), I would have told you Lizard, but I'm not seeing the people on the qualifier list that I had hoped to. Particularly, zero of the great female performers who either aren't there, or aren't winning there.

I'm pissed I missed another good show last night. I skipped Cantab on Wednesday because I didn't want to hear a bunch of shit from the mic about my boycott of the 8x8, but I missed Kevin's performance. I drove by Lizard last night at 9:00, but figured it would be quiet holiday crowd, and was tired after the ride home from Maine. If I knew it was Delisile and Oz, I wouldn't have hesistated.
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Mon, Mar. 28th, 2005 04:38 pm (local)
akamuuCorrina being the only real envelope pusher of the group. is a lot harsher than what I meant to type. 

Oz is a very talented envelope pusher as well, he just knows when and how far to push it without offending the sensitivities of an audience. He's the perfect balance between good writing, and slam sensibilities.

While I don't think much of Iyeoka's actual writing, she certainly knows an audience, and how to push their buttons in her own way. I can't think of any other slammers who do quite what she does, though I certainly wouldn't call it envelope pushing.

And, Tommy? I wish I'd gotten to know him better as a person before he left for TX, but as a slammer, he was a pretty by-the-book formulaic writer when he was in Boston. He knew exactly what the Cantab audience wanted to hear, and he spoon fed it to them every week.
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Thu, Mar. 31st, 2005 03:14 pm (local)
hot_rod_poetDid you see the qualifier list today from Lizard? Looks like there could be some serious weeding out (or, depending on the judges, some serious non-weeding out) in that first semi. And since most of the male poet "regulars" are in that first one, it may give not-yet-qualified female poets like Adina, Dawn, and Iyeoka a good chance of making the finals.
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Thu, Mar. 31st, 2005 07:54 pm (local)
mstegosaurus: The Other One"I Am Intimate with My Brush", his love poem to his toothbrush. 

Incidentally, maybe you should coach this year. That's what I'll be doing, it looks like.