Look at me!!!!!

Everything I have learned in my short time working with poets in the realm of Slam can be summed up in the title. If you haven't heard this slam piece you need too, don't look it up and read it you need to have it performed for you. Its the like folklore that lives through the stories enthusiastic parents tell to their children, every slam poet that reads it on any stage pulls heads towards him and for the first time it clicks what we do here.

The goal of slam is direct dialogue with the audience. Poetry like everything else is cut into sub genre's of people who do the same thing but think they are so different they wouldn't spit on each other to put out the fire. Academic poetry is what we call it. I would like to call it something else, calling any poetry outside of slam academic poetry makes it sound like Slam poets dislike the education system at large and this is not true. The argument we would have is against the overstructuring of poetry, the restriction that exists in adhering to thousand or two thousand year old formats. Slam poetry is more popular then Formal poetry(like my new term?) and it should be, its less convoluted and you can begrudge the simplicity and ease of not having a format if you want too but it reaches more people.

Lenny Bruce understood that there are certain things you can say on stage that the audience can't ignore. Swears. Jarring imagery and volume or lack of volume. If you can gauge what the audience thinks is normal and then do the opposite you will have them interested. This is the complication of simplicity because one you LOOK AT ME I have to say something important.