Today’s edition of The New York Times carries an article by Larry Rohter entitled “Is Slam in Danger of Going Soft?” in which Rohter points out that the growing popularity of slam poetry is beginning to threaten its very existence as a subversive literary movement. Marc Kelly Smith, founder of the slam poetry movement, and the guy with whom I had the honor of co-authoring Take the Mic and Stage a Poetry Slam, is quoted throughout the piece. Here’s one short clip:
“At the beginning, this was really a grass-roots thing about people who were writing poetry for years and years and years and had no audience,” Mr. Smith said recently, just before his weekly Sunday night slam at the Green Mill. “Now there’s an audience, and people just want to write what the last guy wrote so they can get their face on TV. Well, O.K., but that’s not what people in this country, from Marc’s point of view, need. We’ve got too much of that. This show wasn’t started to crank out that kind of thing.”
All I have to say is if slam is in danger of going soft (in a watered-down, commercial way), Marc certainly isn’t. Just try to equate Poetry Slam with Poetry Jam and see what happens – it ain’t pretty. Check out Marc’s post “Slam Goes Daily,” with a clip fromThe Daily Show in which Jon Stewart questions whether anyone cares about the difference between a Poetry Jam and a Poetry Slam. The video clip itself is worth a visit.
