Just read a great post by StrUHT dealing with poetry slams and the mentality behind them. I highly suggest reading it and checking out the article he refers to ”Do We Still Need the Poetry Slam?” by Carlos Andres Gomez.

I really do enjoy the experience of a poetry slam, but unfortunatley the lesser, quiet, more introspective poet sometimes gets lost in the grandeur of the other more vocal and animated slammers. Yes, I know that is a big part of the poetry slam–how well you move and excite the crowd and I do believe that a truly great poem can out-shout a loud-mouth by the sheer beauty of the words, but still….

My heart just bleeds for the little guy.

The poet that pours his soul into the paper. The poet that literally becomes exhausted at the end of writing an eight line poem that would never be entered into a slam, but dies to be heard. I know that is what open mic events are for, but still…

I ache for the little guy with the small voice.

Poetry slam is quickly losing its function as a community building force among poets, which is often the first reason a lot of “old-timers” site as why the poetry slam was created. We need to move on from the ill-fated slam and find another forum or structure by which to network, support, and push each other as performers and writers. Slam has devolved into a place where we rarely offer honest critical advice, relying solely on the affirmation of audience applause or winning of a slam as “evidence” of our credibility as an artist.

–Carlos Andres Gomez

Well said, Carlos.

Well said, StrUHT.

Here’s a great article on the importance of poetry.

There’s actually an odd correlation between these ideas: poetry is either inadequate, even immoral, in the face of human suffering, or it’s unprofitable, hence useless. Either way, poets are advised to hang our heads or fold our tents. Yet in fact, throughout the world, transfusions of poetic language can and do quite literally keep bodies and souls together – and more.

Why do all most of the good poetry newspaper articles come out of the UK?

Here’s a great article on Dana Gioia, the chairman for the National Endowment for the Arts. He’s a poet and is the creative force behind such great projects as “Poetry Out Loud” which I featured on Cloudy Day Art #65.

Some of you probably believe that the NEA’s take on poetry is probably too upscale for the average American, but at the same time Mr. Gioia and crew have done a lot of work to get poetry out of the academics and into everyday society. The Poetry Out Loud project is just one small example.

“…Gioia found he disliked the cloistered academic world and the fact that he was being trained to write a kind of poetry his own family would never enjoy. “It’s bad as a society if you have all your poets at a university. There should be a broader life experience open to writers,” he says. “I was being taught a professional language that was spoken by about 600, 700 people in the world.”

When he decided to leave Harvard to study business at Stanford, most of his professors couldn’t understand his decision to abandon a promising academic career. But Gioia saw himself following poets like T.S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens, who had worked in commerce and wrote on the side. His questions about the system would crystallize in one of his most famous and debated writings, a 1991 essay for The Atlantic, “Can Poetry Matter?” in which he argues the form has become too elitist.”

The NEA has received a lot of bad press for the “art” that it has endorsed over the years, but perhaps Mr. Gioia is changing that perception–one poet at a time.