This is what MODERN POETRY is really like....

[slampoet]

There are craploads of people defending the poetry style of reading today as "Modern" when in fact the style that was read today is in fact a style of poetry reading that DIED BEFORE WWII.

Here is an example of what Actual Post-Modern poetry of the last 20-40 years sounds like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppwowTJg0mI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMwAUPThmc0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLYlcrKhUDg




To tell the People of Democratic Underground that THEY don't know the difference between good poetry and bad poetry is the most UN-DEMOCRATIC patronizing thing.

Learn something about what the world of poetry has been doing LATELY before you open your yap. (or yop)

Even Whitman performed Leaves of Grass and That was 140 years ago.



BTW- THE POETRY SLAM WAS INVENTED IN CHICAGO. It's winningest champion (Patricia Smith now of MS. Magazine.) in ALSO FROM CHICAGO.


I have witnessed at least 38,700 poems read live in front of audiences in the last 20 years and that poem was horrible. The performance was worse.

This is a perfect example of WHY academic poetry sucks. Even Edgar Allen Poe thought that academic poetry sucked and said so 165 years ago.

[Cronus Protagonist]

1. Any of these would have been better, much better

What we got was really, really out of whack.

[Bonobo]

2. Serious question: Is speaking so fast a necessary component of Slam Poetry?

[slampoet]

6. It is a side effect of that fact there is a 3 minute limit. Before we had that rule ...

...poets would go on all night and venues would threaten to kick us out at closing time when we had half the show to go yet.

If a "Slam Poet" is actively competing it is likely that they will read faster. Once they stop competing there is a tendency to return to a normal speed.

[Shakespeare]

3. Oh boy. Modern and post-modern are two entirely different things.

And no form of poetry is "dead."

There are haiku and there is slam poetry, there are elegies and sestinas and sonnets. And on and on and on.

There are good examples of all forms, and it's rather dumb to suggest that any particular form "sucks."

[slampoet]

12. No form of poetry is "dead." (it just smells that way.)

Sorry but this is simply NOT true.


When is the last time you heard a Cinq-Cinquain? an Epistle?

Kyrielle contest anyone?

have you written a Terza Rima? Was it in English or the original Italian?

Tritinas and Sestinas are similar but when is the last time you heard a Tritina? (I heard a Sestina last year)


poetry forms die out but there are ALWAYS stiffs who didn't get the message.


The arrogance of some writers is that they insist on using antiquated language and styles and seem to think they can do better.

i don't write poems in Spanish because i am not a native speaker and I admit that poeple who have been speaking Spanish all their lives are better at it.

The same goes with antiquated forms of poetry and english. Geofrey Chaucer spoke Middle English all his life and LIVED HIS LANGUAGE, but you'd be surprised at how many hundreds of bad poems i have heard where the speaker thinks they can write decent poetry in Middle English.

[EFerrari]

15. Oh, my.

The Magician Suspends the Children

With this charm I keep the boy at six
and the girl fast at five
almost safe behind the four
walls of family. We three
are a feathery totem I tattoo
against time: I'll be one

again. Joy here is hard-won
but possible. Protector of six
found toads, son, you feel too
much, my Halloween mouse. Your five
finger exercises predict no three
quarter time gliding for

you. Symphonic storms are the fore-
cast, nothing unruffled for my wun-
derkind. Have two children: make three
journeys upstream. Son, at six
you run into angles where five
lets you curve, let me hold onto

your fingers in drugstores. Too
intent on them, you're before
or behind me five
paces at least. Let no one
tie the sturdy boat of your six
years to me the grotesque, the three

headed mother. More than three
times you'll deny me. And my cockatoo,
my crested girl, how you cry to be six.
Age gathers on your fore-
head with that striving. Everyone
draws your lines and five

breaks out like a rash, five
crouches, pariah of the three
o'clock male rendezvous. Oh won-
derful girl, my impromptu
rainbow, believe it: you'll be four-
teen before you're six.

This is the one abracadabra I know to
keep us three. keep you five and six.
Grow now. Sing. Fly. Do what you're here for.

Carole Oles

[slampoet]

19. Yet you couldn't use Google?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=216x1696


Life must be great when you can get other people to do it for you.



BTW - isn't this poem from 1978? 79? i admitted ABOVE that i heard a Sestina last year.

[EFerrari]

25. Why would I use the google for the verse I have in my head?

You are perfectly entitled to have your preference in form, theory and substance. But if you must make yourself ridiculous in dissing what you don't understand and in making claims that are so illiterate as to be laughable, I hope you have someone to comfort you with kittehs.

[Shakespeare]

30. It may astonish you to read this, but...

...more often than you apparently think. I've also written in most of those forms.

No form of poetry is dead. Not every attempt of any form of poetry is successful (including slam poetry).

It's really that simple.

You seem determined to (1) pronounce yourself an absolute authority on poetry, and (2) pronounce certain forms that aren't to your liking "dead."

The silliness of both of those things seems apparent to everyone on this thread except you.

[EFerrari]

4. LOL! I love posts slamming posters that enact what they criticize.

Keeper!

"This is what MODERN POETRY is really like...."

"To tell the People of Democratic Underground that THEY don't know the difference between good poetry and bad poetry is the most UN-DEMOCRATIC patronizing thing."

:rofl:

[A-Schwarzenegger]

7. Heh.

:)

[slampoet]

14. Thank you for posting so fast you couldn't have clicked on the links.

Proves that you don't even want to try.

[EFerrari]

16. When the premise is cR2p, the evidence can't save it. n/t

[The Night Owl]

5. Style? Who cares about style?

Only silly formalists care about style.

[tishaLA]

8. well if it's "actual post modern poetry"

why doesn't someone bother to talk about the ontological basis of what constitutes "actual" and what constitutes "poetry"? I mean, isn't anti-foundationalism supposed to be, er, foundational to postmodern aesthetic production?

[A-Schwarzenegger]

10. You said it.

:*

[slampoet]

13. I don't engage in Somanticide.

In doing so you prove why academic analysis fails.

[tishaLA]

20. I can understand that. After all....

in poetry words and ideas are terribly unimportant.

[gauguin57]

9. Alexander said the other day she was using Whitman as inspiration.

I think she paid homage to "I hear America singing, its varied carols I hear" very well in her wonderful poem today.

[nolabear]

11. Have a heart, slampoet!

The poems you posted are wonderful, and right for their purpose, and among my favorite kinds of poetry. But EA had a different take and a different agenda. After reading the poem I thought it was pretty flawed too, but the FORM isn't flawed; it's just a different one. (Btw I appreciated how far over three minutes the poems posted went. I am TERRIBLE at sticking to the time limit!)

[vaberella]

17. I was hoping he'd have Amiri Baraka read....but that would just cause drama. n/t

[slampoet]

22. Me too. Amiri is a gracious person in person but he is Scathing from the Stage.

I heard him read a poem about Clarence Thomas that was brutal.

[vaberella]

27. Completely, but that's what makes him so exceptional.

However, not for the feint of heart---especially since people will want to get into a tizzy about something. Conservatives would find it proof that he hates America considering Amiri's Somebody Blew Up America and Bush is sitting to his left. :D

[Lyric]

18. Oh gag me. I'm a CW/Poetry major, and you are full of arrogant shit.

And as a matter of personal preference, I *thoroughly* dislike slam poetry. It's theatre to me, not literature, and it doesn't interest me at all. Give me "academic" poetry over someone spasming on a stage with maracas any day.

:hi:

[slampoet]

21. The Poetry Slam doesn't allow props like Maracas.

Funny how you sound just like what Longfellow said about Edgar Allen Poe.

[Bucky]

24. Not all performance poetry is slam poetry

niche poeple

[noiretextatique]

29. good performance poetry is like theater

back when i was a good performance poety, i performed in group poetry shows in a theater. it was fun and profound and moving and everything poetry and theater can be. even academic types liked it :7

[Bucky]

23. You know, normally it's the academics who take the ill-timed cheap shots at performance poets

Good for the goose, I guess (yes, goddammit, alliteration)

[slampoet]

26. Just like factory owners always try to crush unions.

[Lyric]

28. OMG how cute!

Painting yourself as a poetry freedom fighter. Adorable! I totally want the bobble-head.

[slampoet]

35. Actually i was talking about my Great Uncle From the Flint Sit down strike but you didn't know....

....so i won't say anything about your family.


BTW - Have you ever been fired for trying to join a union? i have.

[EFerrari]

38. Your random analogies are not poetry until you make them into poetry.

And they certainly are not arguments.

[slampoet]

41. If you knew anything about debate you'd know you already lost by Ad Hominem.

[EFerrari]

42. Apparently, you need to add a Latin dictionary to your to do list. n/t

[Runcible Spoon]

31. I don't give a fuck about academic vs. performance poetry or

post-modern vs. modern. Bottom line is, that poem was really trite and gave me more than one eye-rolling "oh brother" moments.

[EFerrari]

32. Have you read it?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=8115108&mesg_id=8116691

[Runcible Spoon]

33. yep, read it and watched it.

Why? Am I not allowed to dislike it or think it's full of maudlin cliche? I am not berating anyone else for liking it. It's pointless trying to tell people their aesthetic tastes are "wrong".

[EFerrari]

34. Whoa, Tex, I asked a question.

And there are no cliches used as cliches in the poem. Like it or not as you like.

[Runcible Spoon]

36. "And there are no cliches used as cliches in the poem"

Whatever that means...cliche has to be used as cliche in order to be cliche? :shrug:

For what it's worth I think the OP overstates their case. I grew up with my father force-feeding me opera; don't really care for anyone suggesting that someone I like is inappropriate or lowbrow or I should enjoy something because of its pedigree.

[EFerrari]

37. Yes, cliches have to be used as cliches in order to be cliches.

Or else you're doing something else. You're calling up something in particular which is the opposite of lapsing into dead phrases.

Whatever. People like what they like. But saying this poem is trite is not saying what you like or don't like. At that point, you are making a critical argument that you haven't demonstrated.

[Runcible Spoon]

39. I don't know why you're pushing this.

I don't know where you got the idea that something has to be deliberately used as a cliche in order to BE a cliche. There is nothing in the dictionary definition or any discussion of language usage in my entire education that warrants that specific semantic distinction. I understand it to be, simply, overused and tired language or expressions. I would love to learn something new, so point out to me if you have knowledge of some esoteric meaning. If it means something different in the poetry world than it does in everyday usage, then you're being disingenuous.

Does EVERY FREAKING THING said on this board need a 50 paragraph exposition so that it carries any sort of legitimacy?

FINE: here is what I think to be the most egregious recycling of tired imagery:

"We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”

Yes, the life as a journey analogy. Where have I heard THAT before? :eyes:

[EFerrari]

43. Good. Where is the cliche?

You do know, right, that cliche is different than trope? A cliche is different than our founding metaphors, right?

Or, do you?

Maybe this freaking discussion wouldn't need 50 paragraphs if we could get some terms down.

"We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”

There is no cliche in that line. There is an invocation of a trope of American life. It's also an iambic line that breaks up at "then others" just as it should because "others" break things up, and then goes back to the same beat.

Just because the trope is familiar to you doesn't make the words cliched. Tropes are what bind us as a people into themes we care about.

And just because you believe you are reading cliche doesn't mean you know in any way what is happening in this poem, line by line. And if you don't know what is happening line by line, you still haven't read this poem.

That's why I'm pushing on this.

ETA: But, you're right. What I'm doing is not laying out the amazing craft that went into this piece -- that anyone can mistake for banality or for triteness. It's a good thing DU isn't a poetry seminar or I would flunk.

[librechik]

40. thanks for this (links)

they are on my wavelength, totally!

[RetroLounge]

44. Yawn...

Is that you Henry Rollins?

:eyes:

RL

[jkirch]

45. Allan

[Critters2]

46. Thanks for posting these. That first performance was really powerful,

and the poem really beautiful. It occurs to me that Rev. Lowry's prayer was closer to that style than the poem was. The inaugural poem didn't seem like a poem at all. Seemed like a prose reading. If that was academic poetry, I have to agree with you and Edgar Allen Poe.