I said something intelligent this week and i'm not letting it go without a fight

All I can do when telling someone how I felt about their piece creatively is be specific. Of course there is tact involved I can't just say "What the hell were you talking about? It is just not true that legalizing marijuana would end war!" Letting people know what they do well or what they have as their major challenge in front of them(in my sometimes malformed understanding) is key to let them know I'm listening and hopefully that scares them into making more sense then they would if they were babbling non-sense to their invisible friends(don't deny it poets).

Slam poetry and performance poetry is different from just writing poetry, is what I told this person. It is hard to teach the difference, there is physical movement in the poetry even as it is written when you are talking about slam poetry. The comparison I made is that Slam is to academic poetry as writing a novel or novella is to writing a play, the great plays are written for movement and action to directly lead the audience into your point with you. Every word is presented for a different reason, the phrasing is less passive and more visual.

The problem with telling people this is that I have a hard time giving specific examples but I have experienced so many. So many people have come to me with poetry that on the page was amazing but even after a well performed shot at it the crowd was lost. Beyond performing it right and diction and breathing right something else has to be there. A narrative power has to lead the audience, look at hip hop where ninety percent of the songs are first person walks through someones perspective. Its often called a limited viewpoint to work from but its longevity disapproves that, hip hop talks to people.

Slam has to scream