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

I like where I started last week allow me to continue

The previous post was about making sure you attend your immediate circumstances before your art, now that is only the beginning. Truthfully that should have been my first post and this should be my second. Slam poetry is based on real life experiances, I've heard a lot of it and most doesn't involve Peter Jackson style talking trees and magic amulets. So if your writing poetry from your life and putting your energy, passion, and creativity into it(talk to me about something else if your not) then when your done with a piece you should have learned something. If you didn't then you didn't stretch yourself.

Since your writing about real life experiances that you have and unless your BATMAN are shared by others then each piece is a development in your logic. Each reflection opens new ideas and helps you grow, this can dispense with the disconnected writer so bound to his craft that he lives in misery devising it. This way your work helps you as you help it.

There is a problem with this, it leaves the artist at a constant challenge. Everything you do has the weight of moving you as a person further in the right direction. This way you don't allow yourself the easy way out by writing Slam pieces about how much of a jerk Newt Gingrich is. Create empathy for every dimension in your writing and grow it with care, it is scary though to be writing and at the point where you re-read what you have done and say to yourself "I have never done anything like this." Its that push that changes everything not just for you but for the people you show it too. It gives way to a ripple effect.

I will be honest, I was asked a while ago why I go to the North Star Cafe on Tuesday for spoken word and replied that it was like writing, I didn't know why I did it but that never stopped me. I just do it. I left out one aspect however, I don't go there for the social perks...don't get me wrong a lot of the writers there are wonderful people and some good friends but meh. I have friends. I go there because of that sonic push, that moment when someone comes and reads something that is going to shock us all and push us to stretch our own abilities not to match them but to overtake them.

Can we do it?

life and art, church and state

You don't have to live it how you write it. As the author your work is important but your life is even more important. Writing at all consistently can leave you wondering why you do it, if you do it to be acknowledged by others and of course no matter who you are you do to a certain extent. It is easy to fall so far into writing that you lose a grip on how important other things are.

Writing is so wonderful isn't it? You have power over words and a whole fictionalized world that you can both build and destroy at any point. You can articulate any number of important points and when others read them they won't have thought about it before. Not like that.

Most of us spend our time writing about the activity of humans, so how much do you miss when you don't dedicate yourself enough to the humans around you. Make hard choices, hug the ones you might lose and value humanity and good humor over intelligence. Value the chance you have to make other people happier for having known you, and the chance you have to be happier for knowing them.

I don't need to build that many worlds, I already have one and the more you try to escape it the harder it taps on your shoulder to turn you back around.

Fuck you

this isn't corny

the hardest step in not sucking major butt in poetry

I didn't start out a poet. A lot of people are like me, a lot of people write plays, short stories etc etc to find out what they like and go with it. By the time I began writing poetry I walked headfirst into the biggest trap you find right inside the doorway.

Everytime I began a line with the best of intentions, with a clean and clear idea to present...I would write it and then when I began the next line a part of me would say "Well, you know a poet is supposed to rhyme the last word of that last line. C'mon kid what is your rhyme scheme here? You haven't thought of one? OH...I see your just going to take this line off....lazy moron." Needless to say it was not my kindest inner voice but it was based off of all the preconceived expections i had of poetry. The idea that what makes poetry poetic is rhyming and thats it. If it rhymes it is and if it doesn't it isn't.

If your laughing at my stupidity then you should come to the North Star Cafe, a lot of new people fresh into performing or reading will get up there and suffer the same problem. What problem? What is wrong with rhyming all the time? Well outside of writing verse that sounds like roadblock from GI Joe it takes you out of the theme and point of your topic, it puts you in a frame of mind where all you want to do is find something even moderately related with "that sound" to it.

My solution is simple, poetry is what we all agree is poetry so just write it. Just write what you need to write the best you can and if it sucks it won't be poetry it will be deleted or thrown away. If its good work on it, understand its individual form, like dating. You don't try and fit that person into a box that fits anyone within a genre you take that person as unique and just listen and understand. Don't force anything. The same applies.